MORGENTHAU, HANS J. b. February 17, 1904; Coburg,Thuringia d.July 19, 1980; New York City
Eminent German Jewish political scientist who fled Nazi Germany in 1933 and emigrated to the United States in 1937. Though completely unknown when he arrived in the United States, Morgenthau quickly climbed the academic ladder in his adopted homeland, spending much of his professional life at the University of Chicago.
But Morgenthau was not one to limit himself to the Ivory Tower. He pursued a dual career as a foreign policy commentator out of a belief that it is “impossible for a man dealing in a theoretical and academic manner with politics to remain silent when those great issues are before the public and before the government” (Morgen thau 1967). A persuasive and prolific writer, his influence was widespread in American foreign affairs, and policymakers from Henry Kissinger to Condoleeza Rice consider him their “intellectual mentor.”Morgenthau was confronted with antisemitism early in his life. When Morgen- thau graduated from Coburg’s Gymnasium (university preparatory school), he was the valedictorian and thus chosen to lead an important school ceremony. When the townspeople heard that a Jew would preside, a wave of protest erupted. The eighteen-year-old Morgenthau prevailed nonetheless. After he delivered his oration, the attending dignitaries held their noses in disgust. During the subsequent parade, bystanders shouted obscenities at the young Morgenthau and spat upon him. He recalled the event as the “worst day of my life” (Morgenthau 1968).
When Morgenthau entered the university, his father took great efforts to ensure that his son acquired all the trappings of elite German society. For example, his father pressed school officials to admit his son to a fraternity that excluded Jews. Morgenthau was rejected but joined a Jewish fraternity that aped the customs of the Gentile students. His participation in fraternity saber duels left him with a permanent facial scar that impressed generations of American college students.
The experience of antisemitism in his childhood made Morgen- thau think deeply about the philosophical issues that would become crucial to his later work as an analyst of international politics— such as the impact of the lust for power on human existence, morality, and personality.At the University of Munich where he studied law, Morgenthau was exposed to the political theories that would shape his viewpoints on the way power functioned in society and the international arena. He also found inspiration in the active political involvement of his most beloved professors, some of whom risked their lives to oppose the Nazis. Two of his most influential professors were historian Hermann Oncken, whose specialty was Bismarckian foreign and military policy; and Karl Rothen- bucher, a Max Weber expert. Morgenthau’s thesis adviser was Karl Neumeyer, an international law scholar (arrested by the Nazis) who dwelled on the limitations of treaty making as a way to resolve interstate disputes rather than diplomacy. Morgenthau’s dissertation, “The International Judicial Function: Its Nature and Its Limits,” examined the problems of managing world conflict through legal means because of the intrusion of politics. This would be the overriding theme of Morgenthau’s work for the next half century. From 1928 to 1930, Morgenthau served as a clerk to Hugo Sinzheimer, the prominent labor and crim
inal law judge who helped author the Weimar Constitution. In 1931 he was appointed acting president of the Labor Law Court in Munich, an unpaid position with less prestige than the title would suggest and one that Morgenthau was eager to escape for a life in academia.
When Morgenthau was ready to start a university career in Germany, the doors shut completely on his ambitions with the Nazi law expelling Jews from the civil service (April 7, 1933). This dire situation led Morgenthau to move with his fiance Irma Thormann to Geneva, where he continued to write about international political matters.
In 1935 the Morgenthaus were forced to move again and settled shortly in Madrid. After the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, Morgenthau began a four- country search for an exit visa to the United States. Eventually he secured the necessary papers in Switzerland by “dating” a Swiss girl who knew the inner workings of the American consulate.Morgenthau and his wife arrived in New York in July 1937. He brought his parents to the United States before they were deported, but a beloved grandmother was killed at Theresienstadt. After teaching night classes at Brooklyn College and at the University of Kansas City, Morgenthau landed a position at the University of Chicago in 1945.
At Chicago, Morgenthau authored his most influential books: Politics among Nations (1948) and In Defense of the National Interest (1951). The former, which one reviewer called a “primer for utopians” (Chamberlain 1948) and another considered the “bible for realism” (Hoffmann 1977), was the best-selling foreign policy text for at least two decades. Today, they are considered cold war classics that helped make realism a practical guide to foreign policy making when the United States emerged as a global power after World War II.
Though generally satisfied with cold war foreign policy in Europe, Morgenthau was a dissenter regarding U.S. affairs in Asia, where he believed adherence to “dogmatic anticommunism” undermined strategic goals. Morgenthau was one of the first foreign policy experts to publicly criticize U.S. military support for South Vietnam. The scholar viewed the conflict as a civil war with little impact on American national interest. Through his antiwar activities, including a famous 1965 television debate against Kennedy aide McGeorge Bundy, Morgenthau became known beyond elite foreign affairs circles.
Ellen G. Rafshoon
See also Intellectual Exile; Kissinger, Henry
References and Further Reading
Chamberlain, W. H. “Problems in the Realm of Statecraft.” Chicago Tribune Sunday Magazine October 17, 1948.
Frei, Christoph. Hans J. Morgenthau: An Intellectual Biography. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 2001.
Hoffmann, Stanley. “An American Social Science: International Relations.” Daedalus 106, no. 3, Summer 1977.
Morgenthau, Hans J. “Concept of the Realist Theory in the Light of the War in Vietnam.” Unpublished lecture delivered at Columbia University, Oct. 1967, in Hans J. Morgenthau Papers, Manuscript Divison, Library of Congress.
------. Interview by Bernard Johnson 1968, tape recording Morgenthau Collection Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division, LOC, Washington, DC.
Rafshoon, Ellen G. “A Realist's Moral Opposition to War: Hans J. Morgenthau and Vietnam.” Peace and Change, January 2001: 55-77.
Thompson, Kenneth W., and Robert J. Myers, eds. Truth and Tragedy: A Tribute to Hans J. Morgenthau. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1984.