Uploaded November 2025 | Updated September 2026, 1 hour ago
Lecture at the conference "Other People's Fascisms", October 10, 2025
After 1933, foreign students and researchers in Germany became tools of Nazi propaganda. Those receiving financial support from the Germans, including Humboldt fellowship recipients, were particularly compromised. This study examines the role of Humboldt fellowships in the political and ideological exchange between Nazi Germany and Romania, reconstructing the fellows’ profiles and assessing how the fellowship influenced their political and ideological development. During the 1930s, the number of young Romanians studying and conducting research in Nazi Germany rose sharply, supported by increased German funding, including more Humboldt fellowships. This trend reflected both Nazi Germany’s interest in cultivating ties with Romania, and Romania’s own drift toward far-right radicalization, as students and young people became Nazi sympathizers or members of the Iron Guard. Romanian Humboldt fellows were instrumentalized politically: they engaged in far-right activism, absorbed Nazi ideology in their professional work and writings, and in some cases assumed positions within Romania’s bureaucratic or diplomatic apparatus under Ion Antonescu’s far-right military dictatorship during World War II.
Lecture at the conference "Other People's Fascisms", October 10, 2025
After 1933, foreign students and researchers in Germany became tools of Nazi propaganda. Those receiving financial support from the Germans, including Humboldt fellowship recipients, were particularly compromised. This study examines the role of Humboldt fellowships in the political and ideological exchange between Nazi Germany and Romania, reconstructing the fellows’ profiles and assessing how the fellowship influenced their political and ideological development. During the 1930s, the number of young Romanians studying and conducting research in Nazi Germany rose sharply, supported by increased German funding, including more Humboldt fellowships. This trend reflected both Nazi Germany’s interest in cultivating ties with Romania, and Romania’s own drift toward far-right radicalization, as students and young people became Nazi sympathizers or members of the Iron Guard. Romanian Humboldt fellows were instrumentalized politically: they engaged in far-right activism, absorbed Nazi ideology in their professional work and writings, and in some cases assumed positions within Romania’s bureaucratic or diplomatic apparatus under Ion Antonescu’s far-right military dictatorship during World War II.
