In 1927, the young German scholar Ernst Kantorowicz published his groundbreaking biography of Emperor Frederick the Great, who ruled Germany and Sicily in the 13th century. The book, which combined immense erudition with nationalist enthusiasm, earned its author a full professorship at the University of Heidelberg at an unprecedented early stage in his career; Hermann Goering sent an inscribed copy to Mussolini and Hitler told one of his generals that he had read it twice. Kantorowicz himself was involved in right-wing circles from World War I until the Nazis came to power, then left Germany for the United States in 1939 and spent the rest of his career as a professor at Berkeley and Princeton, where he wrote a highly influential study of medieval political thought. Reviewing a recent biography of Kantorowicz by Robert Lerner, Robert E. Norton tells part of this fascinating figure’s story:
In many ways . . . Ernst Hartwig Kantorowicz was representative of the assimilated Jewish haute bourgeoisie in Wilhelmine Germany. Born in 1895 into a family of considerable wealth (his father owned a thriving liqueur firm) in Posen in West Prussia (now Poznań in Poland), Kantorowicz instinctively, even proudly, saw himself as an unhyphenated German. Later in life he would say he was of “Jewish descent, not Jewish belief.” His family celebrated Christmas and Easter, and only scattered Yiddish words were ever spoken at home. As a youth he attended the exclusive Royal Auguste-Viktoria Gymnasium, where he learned Greek, Latin, and French. Along with the values of the Prussian [educated middle class], he also imbibed a kind of reflexive patriotism and nationalist pride that was frequently stronger among Jews than among their Gentile compatriots. . . .
[In the late 1950s], several publishers . . . pleaded with Kantorowicz to allow another reprinting of his biography of Frederick II. Without explaining why, he steadfastly refused, at one point saying only: “the man who wrote that book died many years ago.” It was probably another death that stiffened his resistance to resuscitating the portentous emperor.
Kantorowicz had left most of his family behind in Germany when he made his escape in 1938, including his cousin Gertrud Kantorowicz and his mother, Clara. In 1942, aged sixty-five and eighty respectively, they had managed to reach the Swiss border, where they were caught, transported back to Germany, and shuttled among a succession of camps. In February 1943, Kantorowicz’s mother died in Theres¬ienstadt. There is no record of his ever commenting on his mother’s death, but a friend in Princeton reported him as having once said, “as far as Germany is concerned they can put a tent over the entire country and turn on the gas.”
Read more on Times Literary Supplement: http://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/ernst-kantorowicz-life/