How the Pre-Hitler German Universities Were Run
| Author | Ernst H. Kantorowicz |
|---|---|
| Published | November 10, 1945 |
| Format | Talk |
TL;DR — Historian Ernst Kantorowicz’s 1945 address to the Western College Association on how German universities were governed before 1933.
A scanned excerpt from the Western College Association’s printed Addresses from its fall meeting at Mills College, California, on November 10, 1945. The session was on “The Problem of Administrative Overhead”; Kantorowicz, then a lecturer in history at the University of California, spoke first, followed by talks on Oxford’s administration and on American institutions. The booklet’s second half covered the Harvard report General Education in a Free Society.
Kantorowicz, a German émigré medievalist (later author of The King’s Two Bodies), describes the running of German universities before the Nazi era from the inside: professors handling student matters themselves, and an administration so small it did not need its own building, offered as a contrast to American administrative overhead. The scan’s OCR is poor in places.
What it is: a short conference address by a major historian, printed in an association’s proceedings. A primary source rather than a scholarly article.
Where this came from
- A copy saved in October 2026.
6 pages. A PDF copy is held in Kyle’s private archive; it is not linked or shared here.