Klemens Klemperer-Klemenau

Born:	11-02-1916
Faculty:	Law School
Category:	Expelled student

Klemens KLEMPERER-KLEMENAU, born on November 2nd, 1916 in Berlin/Germany (entitled residency ('heimatberechtigt') for Kasten/Lower Austria, Citizenship: Austria), died on December 23rd, 2012 in Easthampton, Massachusetts/USA, son of Dr. Ing. Herbert Klemperer-Klemenau (director of a facory) and his wife Frieda nee Kuffner.
After he had graduated from high school ("Franzoesisches Gymnasium") in Berlin in 1934 he began to study at the Balliol College in Oxford/Great Britain, and moved to the University of Vienna in 1935, where he studied legal history with professor Heinrich Mitteis. Since his university years in Vienna he was a close friend of the brothers Otto and Fritz Molden and fellow student Helmuth Joerg, with whom he was politically active. He lived in Vienna 19th district, Vegagasse 1, was enrolled finally in spring term 1938 at the Law School in the 4th year of his studies (in spring term 1938 he was able to continue his studies in the context of the Numerus clausus of Jewish Students until the end of the term).

After the "Anschluss" in March 1938 Klemens Klemperer was involved in the resistance against National Socialism. Initiated by his father he emigrated to New York/ USA in November 1938, where he was already awaited by his brothers Franz and Fred. He found his first job in the Rare Book Department of the Columbia University Library, located in King’s College, worked as a tutor in summer 1939and then was able to study history at the University of Harvard under a program of the Roosevelt government for refugee scholars from Europe. "Having been so generously received by Harvard on my arrival in America had freed me from the turbulent ideological struggle that had swept us students along in Germany and Austria. Ideologies tend to engulf one and are accordingly very tempting. In a world of so much incongruity and fragmentation, the grand and cohesive scheme proposed by an ideology such as National Socialism offered great attractions. Although it was not hard for me and my friends to expose it in all its deceptiveness and iniquity, the very effort of battling it was absorbing and channeled much of our energies into politics. Student life at the University of Vienna had less to do with a quest for knowledge and understanding than with declaring one's political loyalities and affiliations. In America, I could leave that climate safely behind me." [KLEMPERER 2009, 67] From 1942 to 1946 he served as an intelligence officer in the US-Army.
In 1949 he was graduated Ph.D. in Harvard and became professor of history at Smith College in Northampton, Mass., USA in the same year. He taught there for 37 years and also met his later wife Elizabeth nee Gallaher (later professor of literature at Smith College) there: "In Northampton I came to appreciate fully the merits of the American liberal arts college system. The University of Vienna, where I started my advanced studies before emigrating to the United Stated, was a huge impersonal factory of learning. At Harvard, the large size of the university was more or less mitigated by the residential houses that had been created in the 1930s at the initiative of President Lowell. At Smith, the college was the whole institution, not one of several faculties. Its excellent faculty was a stimulating group, eager to exchange ideas and indifferent to academic rank. It included a number of European scholars, among them several refugees from Nazi Germany. These gave the college a distinctly cosmopolitan tone. What was not European, however, was the faculty's easy accessibility to students." [KLEMPERER 2009, 80f.]

He published about several many fields of history of resistance against National Socialism, e.g. Adam von Trott zu Solz, Christian ideals in the resistance and about Hitler-assassin Georg Elser, but also the biography of Ignaz Seipel (1972 in English, 1973 in German), an Austrian priest who became chancellor in the 1920s. In Germany Klemperer was best known for his 1992 work, "German Resistance Against Hitler: The Search for Allies Abroad, 1938-1945". Klemperer was guest scientist in Oxford, at the "Wissenschaftskolleg" in Berlin etc.
In 1997 the Republic of Austria awarded him the Decoration for Science and Art, 1st class. In 1998 he held an commemorative speech for theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Westminster Abbey on the occasion of the unveiling of the statues of ten martyrs of the 20th century.
From 2000 to 2005 he was board member of the Volkswagen Foundation and from 2000 until his death consultant of the "Forschungsgemeinschaft 20. Juli 1944".
In 2009 – at the age of 93 years - he published his memoirs under the title "Voyage Through the 20th Century".

Klemens Klemperer-Klemenau died on December 23rd, 2012 in Easthampton, Massachusetts/USA. He left his widow Elizabeth Klemperer, his son James Klemperer, his daughter, Catharine, married Utzschneider, and four grandchildren.

Lit.: information from Anthony Swing, United Kingdom, 2009; Dennis HEVESI, Klemens von Klemperer Dies at 96; Wrote of Nazi Era, in: The New York Times, January 7th, 2013; Klemens von KLEMPERER, Voyage Through the Twentieth Century. A historian's recollections and reflections, New York/Oxford 2009; Klemens von KLEMPERER, Deutscher Widerstand gegen Hitler - Gedanken eines Historikers und Zeitzeugen, lecture 2001 (pdf); KNIEFACZ/POSCH 2017a; Gerald STOURZH, Klemens von Klemperer: Er war der Jugendfreund von Fepolinski und Waschlapski, in: Die Presse, January 25th, 2013; obituary by the Forschungsgemeinschaft 20. Juli; "Tribute to Klemens" by Ekkehard KLAUSA 2013 (pdf).

Katharina Kniefacz