page_title: Ernst Posner
section_title: Leaving Germany
hierarchical_section_title: Ernst Posner / Leaving Germany
caption_attribution_description: Original Caption: Dr. Solon Justus Buck, Second Archivist of the United States, ca. 1941 U.S. National Archives’ Local Identifier: 64-NA-1761 From:Historic Photograph File of National Archives Events and Personnel, compiled 1935 - 1975 Created By:: General Services Administration. National Archives and Records Service. Office of the Archivist of the United States. (1949 - 04/01/1985) Production Date: ca. 1941 Persistent URL: research.archives.gov/description/5928169 Repository: National Archives at College Park - Still Pictures (RD-DC-S) For information about ordering reproductions of photographs held by the Still Picture Unit, visit: www.archives.gov/research/order/still-pictures.html Reproductions may be ordered via an independent vendor. NARA maintains a list of vendors at www.archives.gov/research/order/vendors-photos-maps-dc.html
context_page_description: Ernst Maximilian Posner was a Prussian state archivist who fled to the United States during World War II where he served as the history department chairman, dean of the graduate school, and director of the School of Social Science and Public Affairs at American University. Additionally, he was a frequent archival consultant to the United States government.
context_section_description: In 1937 Albert Brackmann, the Director-General of the Privy State Archives, wrote a letter of recommendation vouching for Posner's archival abilities and popularity. Brackmann did this as a way to vouch for Posner under the early years of Hitler's Nuremberg Laws. Posner had to take leave of his various positions and in 1937 he and his wife, Kathe, decided to emigrate to the United States. Posner traveled to the United States for two months in the Spring of 1938. With the help of friends, Eugene Andersons of American University in Washington, Waldo Gifford Leland of the American Council of Learned Societies, Solon J. Buck of the National Archives, Posner began to position himself within the world of archives in America. At the National Archives he delivered the Good Friday 1938 lecture on the topic of German archival administration. However, the National Archives was reticent to offer employment to an alien. Posner then traveled to Harvard, Yale, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Oberlander Trust looking for any type of employment. Since he was not successful, he eventually returned to Germany. In November 1938, after Kristallnacht, he was arrested and sent to the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp.
  After six weeks, through the help of his wife and a German officer, he was released. In 1939 American University offered him a lectureship in archival administration. Still needing a visa, the Posners ended up in Sweden for four months where he was able to present a lecture entitled "Archival Administration in the United States." Soon after, the American Consul General in Stockholm provided the Posners with visas. As his wife was still in Berlin they both made their way separately to London and then to New York without any of their belongings.
caption: Dr. Solon Buck
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