| Between 1948 and 1955, the American government invited more than 12,000 Germans to visit the United States for stays which lasted from one month to two years. 2,000 Americans received grants to visit Germany and roughly the same number of Germans were sponsored to study within Europe at a time when travel money was still widely considered a scarce resource. Many more exchanges, on both sides, profited from private grants. High point of these programs was the period between 1949--1952, which coincided with the civilian occupation administration under McCloy (HICOG) and the militarization of the cold war in Korea.; While our statistical record of the exchanges remains incomplete, there can be little doubt that its American sponsors thought both short- and long-term. The programs targeted a broad spectrum of Germans, old and young: teenagers and students, farm youth and trainees, aspiring careerists as well as large numbers of professionals already established in their fields. The younger generation, for the most part, was bound to stay for longer periods averaging eight to 12 months, and expected to explore a new world as individuals, one by one, on their own; the joint Trans-Atlantic voyage was often the only in-group bonding Americans encouraged among these future "democratic elites." Those in positions of responsibility, in turn, tended to stay for shorter spans up to six months, and often arrived in organized groups that were given rich incentives for networking. Unlike Rhodes scholarships, which took sixty years to "produce" a cabinet member among alumni, these American exchange grants allowed 25 percent of the Bundestag to visit the U.S. by 1955, and included many later political leaders and committed "Atlanticists" such as Willy Brandt, Helmut Schmidt, Franz Joseph Strauss and Hildegard Hamm-Bruecher.; By attempting to connect the general exchange program with the specific local and personal experiences of the individuals involved, my study seeks to analyze the origins, structure and function of visitor programs as part of American cultural diplomacy in postwar Germany. |
