As we have seen, the 26 protagonists of this book imported, translated, and adapted knowledge and cultural capital on very different levels and in very diverse ways. Finding models for capturing, comprehending, and analysing the multitude of abstract information is one of this final chapter’s most fruitful tasks. The journey through this book’s protagonists’ memories showed us how people were socialized, how they operated their “cultural keyboard,” and how their upbringing and their environment created and formed their cultural and social capital. It furthermore showed how knowledge and cultural capital were moved from one continent to another. The particular perspective on fragmented memories of knowledge thereby allowed us to highlight the difficulties and chances of the process of moving knowledge between different societies and cultures.
All of this book’s protagonists, however different their upbringing and social status may have been, had one thing in common: they were forced out of the country after the Nazi takeover in Austria. When they left their homeland, they were deprived of most of their economic capital and, additionally, lost their social status. Nevertheless, all of them managed to build lives and careers in the new hostland. In many cases, refugees who had lost all of their material possessions because of their displacement started afresh in Australia and, from their new position, even managed to build quite specialized careers. In some cases, their career development or their cultural or social achievements would have been impossible for them to realize in Austria, as Gertrude Langer recalled. Like many members of the group of displaced Austrians in Australia, some of this book’s 26 protagonists left a social, economic, or cultural footprint in their new home society. Finding answers to how they did so is one of this book’s key tasks. More importantly, this belongs to the foremost questions in the field of history of knowledge. Acquiring more information about this process will increase our understanding of how knowledge can be successfully moved, negotiated, and applied. This issue has become increasingly important in our 21st-century global knowledge and information society, which is more than ever characterized by migrations.
The biographical accounts of this book’s 26 protagonists provided us with valuable insights into those elements of knowledge transfer which they, with the wisdom of hindsight, regarded as important. As the journey through their memories has shown, there were many different ways in which displaced people
The following concluding pages summarize the most important overall findings of this book in the form of questions and answers. These insights can be of particular interest in comprehending the complex and so far grossly under-researched processes of knowledge circulation, translation, and adaption undertaken by refugees.
9.1 What Is Displaced Knowledge?
This book introduced and analysed knowledge in various forms and shapes. As historian Martin Mulsow recently noted, “when speaking of ‘knowledge’—especially in composite terms like ‘cultures of knowledge,’ the history of knowledge, or knowledge management—it becomes essential to clarify whether we are speaking of knowledge in a broad or narrow sense.”1 This book uses a broad understanding of the concept that includes different forms of knowledge. This practice has become relatively common and is employed in many different recent studies on the history of knowledge and on migration history.2 Since it analysed the translation experiences of a diverse group of people, it does not make sense to restrict this study to a specific form, such as professional or academic knowledge. Consequently, the term “knowledge” in this book encompasses the academic and scientific, as well as the social and the everyday knowledge formed through experience and in close connection with particular cultural practices.
With his concept of the different forms of capital, sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has introduced effective terms to cope with this broad understanding of knowledge. Additionally, his differentiation of incorporated mental, economic, and social forms of possessions is of great interest in explaining people’s immaterial and material acquisitions in their different forms. The importance of immaterial forms of human possessions becomes apparent through the application of his concept, particularly when dealing with displaced people, who, in many cases, are unable to take their economic capital with them. This whole book relies upon his ideas of human capital to identify the different forms of this
A complex but fluid term such as “knowledge” can be logically approached by focusing on perceptions, understandings, and memories of the actual translators. In this sense, the memories analysed here have demonstrated that the cultural capital the refugees brought with them was essential in building their careers and their social and cultural existence in Australia. In addition to cultural capital in its immaterial form, such as ideas or education, or in its material forms, such as personal libraries or tools, refugees also profited from their social capital, particularly when trying to leave Austria. The least important form of capital, from the point of view of this book’s protagonists, was economic capital. Most of them arrived in debt or without any money at all that could have supported their efforts at building a new life. Cultural capital, as we have seen, was also very diverse. All of this book’s protagonists brought cultural capital in its embodied form with them to Australia. Here, we can detect the most interesting tensions and differences, triggered by the diverging expectations of people who had learnt to operate different “cultural keyboards.” The differences in incorporated cultural capital led to initial tensions, known as “culture shock” and, not surprisingly, most of this book’s protagonists had very pronounced memories of their encounter experiences. Cultural capital in its objectified form was among the few accumulated valuable and material possessions some of this book’s protagonists could take out of Nazi Germany. In many cases, it helped the members of our sample group to establish new careers and lives in Australia. The libraries of Gertrude Langer and Paul Hirsch, for example, enabled them to continue their work in Australia. The same holds true for Richard Tandler’s drawing and photographic equipment, which he used to rebuild his career as an architect in Melbourne. Cultural capital in its institutionalized form, on the other hand, was more difficult to transfer to Australia. As most of our examples show, Austrian university degrees were not, or at least not fully, recognized in Australia and thus this form of capital experienced devaluation. Members of certain occupational groups, such as physicians or accountants, were not allowed to practice their profession. In other cases, university degrees, such as Gertrude Langer’s PhD in art history, were mostly unknown and therefore not appreciated in their new environment. Nevertheless, some of this book’s protagonists reskilled themselves in Australia, gained Australian university degrees, and managed to get their knowledge institutionalized for a second time. Thus they had it fully accepted and recognized. In these cases,
As knowledge can be understood as socially transmitted meaning and meaning is mainly derived from society, that is, adopted, stored, and classified by others, knowledge can be understood as meaning that has become social. In this context, the initial “value” of migrated knowledge depends on how it was perceived in a new society. As most of our case studies showed, the disruption that knowledge experienced when being displaced presented this book’s protagonists with crucial challenges. In the long run, however, the opportunities displaced knowledge offered its mediators outweighed the initial difficulties: many of this book’s 26 protagonists, after a time in Australia, managed to profit from the fact that they introduced their Austrian knowledge into their Australian environment and that they implemented it in different forms after an initial orientation and adaption phase.
9.2 How Did the Refugees Use Their Social Capital?
Social capital, in the form of networks and interhuman relations, was crucial for this book’s protagonists to get out of the country and build a new existence in Australia. Here, again, non-material forms of capital turned out to be particularly important, especially since we observed and analysed the plight of forced migrants, who were usually not allowed to transfer their financial resources out of their homeland and thus were left with only their cultural and social capital.
As we have seen in many cases, the existence or nonexistence of social capital was the decisive point that made the difference between life and death in 1938 and 1939. The existence of networks and ties to people abroad at the very least simplified the escape, as the stories told in this book showed. It was much easier for Richard Tandler, for example, who enjoyed the support of an Australian (who was temporarily resident in Vienna at the time of the Anschluss) to get a guarantor for his visa application, or for Richard Bowen, who had many contacts to people in the United Kingdom and even knew the British consul in Vienna, than it was for many others who had no one abroad to back their much-needed visa application. Reinhold Eckfeld’s depiction of his agonizing and depressing daily routine of waiting in front of different consulates or refugee organizations showed us the enormous difficulties of obtaining a visa without the existence and support of social capital. Grete Vanry’s undocumented escape through the Austrian and Swiss Alps and her subsequent desperate situation as an undocumented and thus illegal migrant in France offers
The 26 members of the sample group relied upon different types of networks. Chapter 5 identified five overall categories of networks that became important to our refugees. Most of the people who fled National Socialist Vienna escaped due to the help of denominational aid organizations and, therefore, ties based on religious or ethnic origins were crucial for the escape of most of this book’s protagonists. Given the fact that the largest part of those at least 60,000 people who fled Vienna up to 1941 comprised Austrians of Jewish faith, or at least those who were made “Jewish” by the Nazis, Jewish aid organizations played a pivotal role in saving Austrian refugees during that time. A number of this book’s protagonists recalled having received money or other support from Jewish organizations or influential Jewish donors such as the Rothschild family. Some also mentioned having received sponsorship from a Jewish organization to get a visa for Australia. Others recalled that Christian refugee organizations, such as the Quakers, were crucial for their escapes. Further important forms of social capital were ties based on friendship or ties based on business relations. Chapter 5 also offered some interesting examples of refugees who made it out of Austria because they had a friend abroad or a business partner who supported their escape and their visa application. Other forms of social capital that were used to facilitate escapes were ties based on family membership and those based on shared intellectual and cultural interests. Paul Herzfeld’s example illustrated how the Boy Scouts operated a global network of ties to their members to get some of their people out of the Nazi-occupied territories. Paul Hirsch’s escape, on the other hand, was organized by his sister-in-law and thus was based solely on ties of family membership.
The analysis of this book’s protagonists’ social capital also revealed some interesting insights into their networking behaviour and the significance of their networks at different stages of their lives: as we have seen, they used the networks for different activities. Before their escape, many of their network activities were aimed toward organizing and facilitating their spare-time pursuits. During their escape, many of this book’s protagonists mobilized all of their contacts, particularly those abroad, to get out of the country. Social capital was also of particular importance for the refugees in building a new existence in Australia. This was the most difficult part, since most of this book’s protagonists did not know many people in Australia before their escape and thus had very limited local networks. After a time, when many of them had managed to establish themselves economically, they again used their networks
9.3 How Did Knowledge Change during the Process of Being Displaced?
As a general pattern, this book has shown that the refugees’ knowledge and their cultural capital almost always underwent a process of devaluation after leaving its home territory. This can best be explained by the cultural, economic, and social differences between their Central European homeland and their semicolonial British-Australian hostland. People in Australia had learned to operate different “cultural keyboards” than their Austrian contemporaries. Consequently, they did not initially see much need for ideas introduced by Austrian refugees. Furthermore, the social position of the Austrians as refugees and “strangers,” who apparently came without any resources, was very weak. Refugees were expected to assimilate themselves gratefully and silently into their new environment and therefore the majority population did not expect any innovative inputs from them and thus was rather averse to imported cultural, economic, and social ideas. Additionally, many of this book’s protagonists had to overcome a language barrier, which weakened their position as cultural mediators even further. Many of them had to learn a new language, as Paul Hirsch, Viola Winkler, and Hans Eisler described, or had to increase their proficiency in it to strengthen their position as mediators of knowledge.
It was not surprising to see that most of the initial translations were not accepted and that it frequently took the refugees several attempts to introduce their ideas. This process took some of them years, as Gertrude Langer’s or Charles Anton’s long-term struggle over the acceptance of their ideas and cultural capital exemplified. In general, several similar patterns stood out here: after their arrival, many of this book’s protagonists had tried to implement their ideas very quickly. They were not known to their environment and likewise did not know their environment when first introducing their knowledge. More importantly, some of them had initially tried to import their ideas without adaption and without fitting them to their new Australian environment. Marie and Otto Bergel’s idea of a company that produced apple juice in Adelaide was one such example. As Marie Bergel recalled decades later, locally produced apple juice was virtually unknown in Adelaide and most people had confused it with cider. Consequently, there was not enough demand to keep the business running and the Bergels shut it down after a while. There was also some initial hostility toward refugees in certain positions that were regarded
In most cases, knowledge and ideas underwent a transformation and adaption process after being introduced to Australia. As we have seen, most of this book’s protagonists’ successful translations took place after they had settled in, and after they had connected and identified themselves with their new environment. In order for a translation to be accepted by the majority population, cultural translators usually had to be able to operate the cultural keyboard of their host society. If able to do so, they had a much more accepted and appreciated position as translator, since they knew the market and the demand for their social, cultural, or economic inputs. A few years after their arrival, they knew much better what their new fellow citizens would be able to accept as a translation and, consequently, they were able to adapt their ideas accordingly. Gertrude Langer, for example, only managed to become an accepted part of Queensland’s cultural scene, after having taken a job as a newspaper art critic and after having worked as a private tutor in the field for over a decade. In order to get that position, she had to adapt the ways she presented art. These adaptions were not easy for her; she later claimed she had the greatest problem with the “popular” style of writing that she felt “wasn’t worthy of an art historian,” which she used because she “was constantly trying to coax people to have a look at it [the art].”3 The same holds true for Hanny Exiner, who increasingly adapted her idea of performing and lecturing in modern dance toward teaching dance as a therapeutic method. Exiner even took a university degree in Australia in order to have her cultural capital institutionalized.
In some cases, knowledge transformations and adaptions even found their way back to the refugees’ country of origin in the sense of a circulation of knowledge. Gerhard Felser’s business activities as an accountant for Austrian refugees who attempted to have their stolen possessions restituted after the war is one example of the importance of displaced knowledge in the process of leading Austria back to normality after the war. Another interesting example was Felser’s commitment to strengthening Australian-Austrian relations, which culminated in the foundation of the Austrian-Australian Cultural Society in 1962 and its sister society the Australian-Austrian Society in Vienna five years later. Charles Anton’s activities in the snow leisure industry also intensified connections between Australia and his former homeland of
9.4 What Were the Main Problems Displaced Knowledge Encountered and What Strategies Did the Refugees Rely Upon to Promote Their Knowledge?
The main concern for this book’s 26 protagonists with respect to their knowledge and ideas was how to deal with the devaluation of their displaced knowledge after they had left Austria. All of them had varied encounter experiences, as described in Chapter 6, ranging from friendly support and sympathy, through tolerance, rejection, bullying, and antisemitism to violent assault. The experiences they had upon their arrival affected the degree of cultural identification they had with their host society and, subsequently, the ways in which they applied their cultural capital.
In terms of their position as mediators of knowledge, this book’s protagonists by and large faced a rather precarious initial situation, since there was almost no public awareness of their plight, and a considerable number of them even recalled being mistaken for National Socialists because of their by then officially German descent.4 Legally, they did not arrive as refugees, but rather as migrants, whom the Australian government expected to provide for their own needs. The lack of support complicated their difficult financial situation. Some of them, such as Viola Winkler and Helen Roberts, did not receive any support, which, as Chapter 6 showed, affected their levels of identification and the ways they used and applied their cultural capital and exercised agency. To make things worse, public discourse was largely against them and they were widely perceived as a threat to the labour market as well as to the homogeneity
As the memories analysed in Chapter 6 revealed, the ways this book’s protagonists had been welcomed and treated after their arrival affected their level of identification and thus also the points in time at which they decided to apply their knowledge and exercise agency. We have furthermore seen that all of them largely relied upon four wider strategies to implement their ideas and their cultural capital within different target groups. Therefore, the question of how, when, and to which target group this book’s protagonists decided to pitch their cultural capital was crucial not only for the success or failure of their translations but also for the degree of their adaptions and transformations. As we saw in the preceding section, many refugees focused their translations and their professional and social activities on local ethnic or religious migrant communities. Since most of the members of those communities had suffered a similar fate, had similar origins, and had similar experiences, they had also learned to operate a similar “cultural keyboard.” As a consequence, they were much more receptive to introduced cultural capital. This leads to the fact that, within their own community of like-minded people, cultural imports or translations did not have to be intensely explained, negotiated, justified, or significantly adapted. Applying translations within such a context necessarily eased and reduced the efforts of exercising agency. Jewish or migrant communities were accessible in terms of size and scope and as a result, members knew each other. Therefore, information about introduced ideas circulated much more quickly and steadily, as shown by the example of Richard Tandler, who acquired his customers mainly within the Jewish migrant community, where members were more likely to appreciate the modernist turn-of-the-century architectural style he had adopted in Vienna.
However, the initial advantages of having a smaller but more closely related target group that allowed the introduction of imported ideas more quickly turned out to be an obstacle after a while. Many of this book’s protagonists extended the range and scope of the group of people they applied their knowledge to, after having established themselves economically. Focusing on wider cultural or economic markets (in most cases with adapted ideas) helped people such as John Hearst, Gerhard Felser, Marie Bergel, Helen Roberts, and others to grow their businesses considerably.
Focusing their translations and mediations on overseas activities was another strategy some of this book’s protagonists used to apply and promote their cultural capital. Here, again, the social capital of the transcultural refugees and their ability of operate the “cultural keyboards” of different societies played an important role for their mediations.
How they exercised agency and where they applied their knowledge affected the level of transformation of their cultural capital. Consequently, who the mediators addressed was important for the development of cultural capital. As shown in the preceding section, ideas and knowledge required a lesser degree of adaption if applied within the framework of smaller groups of like-minded people (such as minority communities). Gerhard Felser’s Kleines Wiener Theater was a good example of this process. The members of his theatre, like his audience, were all part of Sydney’s German-speaking refugee community and had no interest in changing the theatre’s repertoire or in expanding its activities. Therefore, the introduced idea of providing theatre plays for the specific group of German-speaking forced migrants that centred “around the identity bias between Austria and Australia and a comparison between the cultures”6 and reminded its audience of “the good old days back home”7 did not change for decades. In this and in other similar cases, knowledge underwent a low level of transformation. Other mediators transformed their ideas much more intensely: out of the initial idea of establishing a cabinetmaking shop for his predominantly Jewish migrant clientele in
9.5 What Can We Gain from Studying Displaced Knowledge?
This is the vital question that remains to be answered at the end of this book. Why is it important to gain information about displaced knowledge? What can we learn about past dealings with the migration, transformation, and adaption of knowledge? Answers to all these questions can be found in the political and social challenges and the debates within many modern societies. For at least four decades, our world has been characterized by a heavily intensified process of coming together and entanglement that creates connections and increased information flows throughout the planet.8 As a consequence, knowledge and access to knowledge, as well as the understanding of its underlying processes, has become increasingly important. Some scholars have even gone so far as to announce the beginning of an “Age of Knowledge.”9 It is broadly accepted that we live in an information society and therefore the general value of knowledge and information had been rising for decades, triggered by current social and political debates. Today, more than ever, it is increasingly important to understand how processes of migration-related knowledge acquisition and production work. In this sense, the historical sciences have been addressing the analysis of knowledge, particularly since the so-called “cultural turn” of the 1990s. Thanks to these developments, the history of knowledge has grown into
This book has elaborated further on these aspects. Analysing the memories this book’s protagonists had of their migration-related knowledge translations was crucial, not so much to highlight knowledge as a static product that was brought into a new environment, but rather to increase our understanding of knowledge as an immaterial value—a form of cultural capital—which is mobile, fluctuating, and has a large potential for transformation and change. Focusing on the performative aspects of their knowledge has helped us to understand the complex practices and processes involved in the creation, the adaption, and the dissemination of knowledge. It has furthermore helped us to question and understand a phenomenon that has recently been gaining in importance in modern societies. It has encouraged us to rethink displaced knowledge by understanding it not as an abstract entity but rather as a tangible value that has been crucial for displaced people in rebuilding their lives and careers, as many of the diverse examples mentioned in this book have shown.
A further essential insight this book has offered is a new perspective on how displaced people recalled dealing with their displacement by using what were frequently the only valuables they had left: their cultural and social capital. This, again, boldly underlined the importance of the non-material forms of human capital. It also showed the different approaches migrants as carriers, translators, mediators, and producers of knowledge had taken to get their “alien” knowledge recognized and appreciated in a foreign environment. Learning about these processes can be a first step in finding answers to the current challenges and opportunities offered by migration in our modern society, particularly as historical processes can help us to see the present in a new light. In this sense, this historical perspective will probably also encourage us to rethink migration in terms of its conception as a phenomenon that brings problems, burdens, and hurdles to a host society. As this long-term perspective has shown, initially unwanted people, of whom many Australians did not expect anything but quiet assimilation and gratitude, in “record time”11 turned
This book can be understood as an attempt to illuminate an emerging area of research by offering a comprehensive analysis of the displaced knowledge of a cohort of people. It seeks not only to depict individual performances of translation but rather explains them by highlighting the voyage of their underlying ideas from Austria to Australia (including their transformations). The field of history of knowledge has rarely dealt with migration, despite the potential for rich results of focusing on migrants as mobile actors of knowledge. Herein, however, lies very promising research agendas for a future actor-centred history of knowledge that explores not only academic knowledge embodied in books but also knowledge rooted in experience.
The following paragraphs will point to important future topics and research desiderata at the intersection of the history of knowledge and migration history to encourage future research into actor-centred forms of knowledge and cultural capital that is created and culturally translated during forced migrations. As mentioned above, much more work requires to be done at this intersection to broaden our understanding of how knowledge was displaced, imported, translated, and adapted. Studies about how displaced people in different regions of the world and at different times applied and translated their knowledge are needed to increase our understanding of those complex and accelerating processes at the point where migration and knowledge interact. Studying the performative aspects of knowledge can be particularly fruitful in providing us with crucial answers on how displaced people developed knowledge which was not available to the receiving society and which gave them an advantage in establishing themselves in their new host societies.12
Another important field of interest might be the essential question of refugee agency. We do not know much about what displaced people did to exercise agency and about “how they interacted with and conduced to implicit or explicit power formations.”13 However, since we know that migration is marked by encounters and the interplay and negotiations between socially unequal
Long-term studies comparing processes of knowledge acquisition, translation, and adaption are particularly valuable. The historical perspective helps us to understand those processes in their full dimension and this could potentially change commonly held expectations of migration and of migrants. During different times and in different countries, people have commonly regarded migrations as a burden to “their” society. As this book and other long-term analyses of migrations have shown, exploring the longue durée effects of migrations often reverses that initially negative picture. Studying migrant knowledge from a long-term perspective could thus enrich our understanding of migration processes in general.
Last but not least, there is a topic that has been widely untouched by researchers. Migrations did not only trigger circulation of knowledge and the creation of new knowledge. In many cases, knowledge experienced devaluation and, in some cases, it even got lost in the process of being displaced. Unearthing these marginalized and lost aspects of history by examining displaced knowledge and the actors behind these processes allows us to “draw conclusions about once effective ideas, values, and practices that were subsequently forgotten, suppressed, or superseded.”15 Here, again, a transnational perspective that considers not only the hostlands but also the homelands of displaced people could be very fruitful.
This is one of the first comprehensive studies of the knowledge acquisitions, translations, and transformations of a group of displaced people. Naturally, it is far from being complete. However, it shows that it is not only promising but crucial to analyse complex phenomena such as migrations through the lens of a long-term perspective. It also sought to sketch out and debug perspectives and approaches that can be used to grasp abstract terms such as knowledge and cultural capital, and bring them into the spotlight to analyse them. Many more studies are required to shed much-needed light on the complex processes of knowledge transportation and translation—developments we are
Mulsow, Knowledge Lost, 2.
Comp. Lässig and Steinberg, “Knowledge on the Move,” 320; Strobl, “Migrant Biographies.”
nla, Gertrude Langer Interviewed by Barbara Blackman [sound recording], Oral trc 1171 (transcript), 62.
Since Austria was occupied in March 1938, the refugees were legally regarded as Germans.
Wiemann, “German and Austria Refugees,” 48; Knabl, Petutschnig, and Röck, “But Sympathy Cannot,” 81.
Lang, Fahrt ins Blaue, 21.
Felser, Kammerspiele Sydney, 27.
Comp. Philipp Strobl, “The Dawning of a Global Age: Globalization and Global Cities 1600 to 1900” (PhD thesis, University of Innsbruck, 2014); Philipp Strobl, “Defining the ‘Indefinable’: World Cities as Indicators for the Process of Globalization,” in The Phenomenon of Globalization: A Collection of Interdisciplinary Globalization Research Essays, ed. Philipp Strobl and Manfred Kohler (Frankfurt: Peter Lang Academic Research, 2013), 39–54.
James Dzisah and Henry Etzkowitz, eds., The Age of Knowledge: The Dynamics of Universities, Knowledge and Society (Leiden: Brill, 2012).
Lässig and Steinberg, “Knowledge on the Move,” 319.
Kwiet, “Re-Acculturation,” 39.
Lässig and Steinberg, “Knowledge on the Move,” 336.
Rass and Wolff, “What is a Migration Regime?,” 20.
Lässig and Steinberg, “Knowledge on the Move,” 322.
Lässig and Steinberg, “Knowledge on the Move,” 320.