Education: Chairs for the Exiled

When the Allies sliced Berlin four ways, the Russians got the University of Berlin. Last week U.S. authorities had approved a school for their zone which will start in where the University of Berlin leaves off. Their model is Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study, which an exiled German scholar named Albert Einstein first put on the map.

German scientists and educators thought up the idea, got a quick yes from the U.S. military government. They hope to recruit some of the faculty for the German School of Advanced Studies from scholars exiled by the Nazis. Courses will be taught in German and the school will be paid for mainly by 3,500,000 marks ($350,000) of German local-government funds. Probable site: the old Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute in the U.S. sector of Berlin.

For the first term, next September, about 400 graduate students will be admitted, mostly from the U.S. zone. The School of Advanced Studies will teach one subject hitherto largely neglected by the Germans: how to teach. Its sponsors hope that graduates of the two-year program will staff Germany’s scholar-shy universities and laboratories.