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Abstract
Beyond Germany, Leo Waibel (1888–1951) built a distinguished reputation for his work in Africa and the Americas. Today he is remembered especially in Brazil, where he boosted the development of geography as a research discipline in the years 1946–1950. During his tenure of the chair in geography at Bonn (1929–1937), Waibel's main research preoccupation became the role of the tropics in the world economy. In early 1937, he sought research leave to make an extended field trip to Brazil. Stripped on political grounds in the same year of his chair, Waibel came to the United States, where he became the only geographer to receive help from the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars. He would eventually serve as one of the very limited core staff on President Franklin Roosevelt's “M” Project on migration and settlement. This paper reconstructs the context of his work in the United States, clarifying especially the nature of his collaborations with Isaiah Bowman, widely regarded at the time as the leading geographer within the United States. Waibel's correspondence from the United States, and later from Brazil, reveals an international career marked by contradictions.
The research and writing of this article were supported by the Council on Research of the Academic Senate of the Los Angeles Division of the University of California and by a resident fellowship at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, Munich. I also thank Professor Gerd Kohlhepp of Tübingen for giving me access to his private archival collections and for his cordiality in longtime intellectual support. The cartographer Matt Zebrowski prepared the illustrations and I am grateful for his help.
The research and writing of this article were supported by the Council on Research of the Academic Senate of the Los Angeles Division of the University of California and by a resident fellowship at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, Munich. I also thank Professor Gerd Kohlhepp of Tübingen for giving me access to his private archival collections and for his cordiality in longtime intellectual support. The cartographer Matt Zebrowski prepared the illustrations and I am grateful for his help.
Notes
The research and writing of this article were supported by the Council on Research of the Academic Senate of the Los Angeles Division of the University of California and by a resident fellowship at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, Munich. I also thank Professor Gerd Kohlhepp of Tübingen for giving me access to his private archival collections and for his cordiality in longtime intellectual support. The cartographer Matt Zebrowski prepared the illustrations and I am grateful for his help.
1. This is part of Thomas Mann's famous reaction, sent on New Year's Day 1937 from Zurich, on learning from the briefest note that the University of Bonn had stripped him of his honorary doctorate (Mann Citation1937, 5). Later that year, Leo Waibel would also maintain a principled position under pressure from the administration of the same university (Böhm Citation1991, 236–238).
2. Gladys Wrigley (1885–1975) was the first woman to gain a PhD in geography from a United States university. Douglas McManis (Citation1990) has provided a fascinating overview of the distinguished character of her editorial work.
3. The only other geographer to fill this chair in the university's history thus far appears to be Carl Troll, Waibel's successor at Bonn, who visited Wisconsin in 1953. Just as Waibel's career was marked by international layers, the same can be said of Credner. Beyond work on the economic geography of Sweden and the United States, he is most remembered for extensive researches on Southeast Asia, especially Thailand. Credner served as the initial head of geography at Sun Yat‐sen University, the oldest academic department in China, founded in 1929. After World War II, Troll described him as part of the “healthy core” (1948) of German academic geography. Credner served as the key figure in the postwar reorganization of academic geography within the American and French occupation zones until his sudden death in 1948 at Munich (Troll Citation1948; Pelzer Citation1949).
4. Schmieder succeeded Waibel when the latter was appointed to head the Geographical Institute at Bonn in 1929. This had necessitated a quick departure for Schmieder from the Department of Geography at Berkeley, news Sauer took poorly, since it came as an unwelcome surprise when he was away doing fieldwork (Schmieder Citation1972, 168).
5. Schmieder was soon to be a key leader of the Nazi movement within the German geographical academy, offering himself as “Führer” of German geography at the geographers' 1940 annual meeting held in Vienna. The Deutsche Geographische Gesellschaft was founded as a new umbrella organization on 23 July 1941 with Schmieder at its head; he had joined the NSDAP only three weeks earlier. He played a key role in the ideologically inspired group research project Lebensraumfragen europäischer Völker, which drew on the energies of a large part of German academic geography (Böhm Citation2008, 374–381). In 1943, Carl Troll confided to his botanist brother Wilhem his problems with Schmieder's arrogance, egotism, and authoritarian ways, fearing that the “Lebensraum” project would leave little space for individual research within geography (Böhm Citation2003, especially 47, 53–54).
6. Unusually for an American geographer of his era, Crist had studied widely in continental European universities, including in 1932 within Waibel's institute at Bonn.
7. Pelzer received his PhD from the University of Bonn, most definitely not from the University of California, Los Angeles as the late Neil Smith records (Smith Citation2003, 296).
8. This important document is dated 5 January 1944, but my close reading of the internal content within the typescript establishes the year should be 1945.
9. Soon after Waibel made his return from Brazil in 1950, the Department of Geography at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, voted unanimously in favor of appointing him to a vacant professorial position. However, Waibel experienced the “bitter disappointment” of seeing this proposal turned down by the administration, seemingly on the grounds of his age (Waibel Citation1951).