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In late 1935, the renowned violinist Licco (Liko) Amar (1891–1959) held a concert at the Alman Lisesi (German High School), a prestigious institution located near Galata Tower in Istanbul’s Beyoğlu quarter. The Hungarian Jewish virtuoso conducted an orchestra of Turkish musicians performing pieces of Beethoven before an audience of local patricians, international guests, Turkish state representatives and members of the Nazi diplomatic mission to the Republic of Turkey. Among the attendees were also exiled German-Jewish scholars such as the philologist Leo Spitzer (1887–1960). At the end of the concert, an incident occurred which Spitzer described as »shameful«: when Nazi diplomats came to congratulate the musicians, they explicitly avoided shaking the hand of the Jewish conductor. Spitzer’s response was unusual – and even dangerous.

Born in Vienna, Leo Spitzer had arrived on the shores of the Bosporus two years earlier in 1933. Until that year, he held the philology chair at the University of Cologne. On 7 April 1933, the National Socialist regime implemented the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, which forced allegedly »non-Aryan« state employees such as Spitzer to retire. In subsequent years, following the enactment of the Nuremberg Laws in 1935, numerous scholars of Jewish descent, alongside those deemed political adversaries, lost their university positions. For Spitzer and his dismissed colleagues, a unique opportunity opened in Istanbul in the summer and autumn of 1933.

This effort was initiated by the Emergency Committee for German Scholars Abroad (Notgemeinschaft Deutscher Wissenschaftler im Ausland). Founded in Zurich by German Jewish scholars who had been driven to exile in early 1933, the organization became a crucial network for scholars fleeing the Reich to various parts of the world. Within a few months of its founding, the emergency committee developed a comprehensive card index that documented individuals at risk in Germany or seeking asylum abroad. By summer of the same year, its cofounder Philipp Schwartz (1894–1977) came into contact with the Swiss educator Albert Malche (1876–1956), who was commissioned by the Kemalist regime to reform the higher education system in Turkey.

With the support of foreign experts, the government in Ankara  pursued a redesign of Turkey’s academic landscape. It dismantled the Dârülfünûn-i Şahane (Gate of Sciences), an Ottoman university established in the late nineteenth century, to create instead the İstanbul Üniversitesi (Istanbul University), inaugurated on 1 August 1933. As the government sought to integrate »renowned international teaching staff«, this transition paved the way for more than thirty exiled scholars from Germany to move to Istanbul in 1933/34. Eventually, eighty-five refugee scholars were appointed as professors, heads of institutes and advisors to ministries across Turkey. Among them were both Leo Spitzer and Licco Amar. The latter had similarly fled persecution in Germany and found refuge in Istanbul, where he took on the role of professor of violin.

In 1935, Leo Spitzer witnessed the refused handshake which he perceived as an act of humiliation towards Amar. The scholar was appalled by the behavior of the official German delegation and felt compelled to address the German vice consul Axel Toepke with a letter. This document, preserved in the Political Archive of the Foreign Office in Berlin, reveals Spitzer’s open critique of the racial and antisemitic policies of the Nazi regime and its international representations. This critique could have led to his imprisonment had he remained in Germany, but  even in Istanbul it could have resulted in significant sanctions.

»What an embarrassing and contradictory impression must it have made«, Spitzer wrote, »that the official representatives of the German Reich listened to a concert by a Jewish artist, yet considered it appropriate to shake hands not with him but with his colleagues, whom he had brought to this artistic height«. »Is the virus transmitted by the ear«, he wondered sarcastically, »less dangerous than the one transmitted by a handshake? Do we want to undo the fact that an unwanted violin gave rise to Beethoven’s sounds?«

Though he was feeling confident enough to voice such critique, Spitzer was in a perilous situation. His stay in Istanbul depended on the issuing of legal documents by the German consulate, for which he needed to stay on good terms with the diplomatic mission. While forced migrants reported that the consulate officials behaved politely and correctly towards them, pressure was steadily mounting. Toepke was still reluctant to take steps against emigrants in 1935, yet the leader of the local Nazi group had been gaining supporters within the German colony who were willing to spy on the exile community.

To establish familiarity, Spitzer mentioned in his letter a previous meeting with Toepke, during which they had discussed »the emigrant problem« in a candid and sensitive manner. The mere mention of this acquaintance, however, seems to have embarrassed Toepke. While the vice consul admitted, in a handwritten note on Spitzer’s letter, that he had met with the Jewish scholar in the past, he distanced himself from the content of their conversation and stated his loyalty to the Nazi regime.

Given the precarious nature of his sojourn in Istanbul and the delicate relationship between the German exiled community and the German diplomatic mission, Leo Spitzer’s letter testifies to a rare form of commitment to humanistic values and basic social norms. It shows his courage and agency to directly confront representatives of the Nazi regime, even at the risk of losing his safe haven in Turkey. Toepke’s distancing note on the letter only confirms the imminent danger.

Spitzer’s protest was not without consequences. A few days later, he was summoned to the consulate and forced to sign an apology. The diplomats then chose to let the matter rest. It is unclear whether Spitzer’s departure from Turkey in 1936, seizing the opportunity to take up a professorship at Johns Hopkins University in the United States, was a direct result of the conflict in Istanbul. By contrast, Licco Amar, who was appointed head of the string department at the State Conservatory in Ankara, remained in Turkey until 1957. His musical success in Turkey confirmed Spitzer’s words that Beethoven »does the right kind of propaganda: he wins hearts«.

Sebastian Willert is a Research Associate at the Leibniz Institute for Jewish History and Culture – Simon Dubnow. His research focuses on forced migration at the intersection of migration and humanitarian studies. | willert(at)dubnow.de

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