252 J.-A. PEMBERTON
in the 1920s of a Laura Spellman Rockefeller Fellowship which had
allowed him to spend two years studying in the United States and one
year studying in Paris.^38 On a visit to Vienna ten days before the Prague
conference commenced, Kittredge met with Voegelin. The latter imme-
diately informed the former of the ‘intention to liquidate’ the Austrian
Coordinating Committee for International Studies which in 1937 had
replaced the Konsularakademie as the direct Austrian member of the
conference. In his capacity as secretary of the committee, Voegelin had
commenced the process of liquidation in April.^39 It was because of the
liquidation of the Austrian committee that another of its members,
namely, Verdross, had found himself in the position, as Gross wrote to
Bourquin on May 3, 1938, of being ‘obliged to retract his acceptance
of some weeks ago’ of an invitation to collaborate in the proposed vol-
ume on the subject of political and psychological factors that condition
procedures of peaceful change. As Gross observed in the letter he sent
to Bourquin on May 3 after having noted that Berber had expressed a
desire to speak to Bonnet about the proposed volume on the occasion
of the Prague conference, ‘the decision [in respect to both German and
Austrian collaboration] is in the hands of the Berlin Committee.’^40
Voegelin’s position in Austria was now precarious as Kittredge was
well aware. In his writings, Voegelin had identified National Socialism
as a ‘satanic force for evil’ and had sought to expose its ‘mendacity and
apocalyptic fantasies,’ such that, as Barry Cooper observes, even the
‘most dull-witted employee of the Gestapo [had] to realize the author
was not on side.’^41 In order to ascertain his prospects of academic
advancement, Voegelin had addressed himself to Oswald Menghin, the
minister of education. As he told Kittredge, the response of Menghin
was to ‘strongly advise’ Voegelin to seek a position in the United States,
advice confirmed in a letter which was interpreted as ‘formal permission
(^38) Barry Cooper, Eric Voegelin and the Foundations of Modern Political Science
(Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1999), 11.
(^39) Tracey B. Kittredge to Henri Bonnet, 7 July 1938, AG-IICI-K-I-4.b. See also Eric
Voegelin to Henri Bonnet, 24 June 1938, in Jürgen Gebhardt, ed., The Collected Works of
Eric Voegelin, vol. 29, Selected Correspondence 1924–1949, translations from the German by
William Petropulus (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2009), 170–71. See also
League of Nations, International Institute of International Co-operation, The International
Studies Conference: Origins Functions, Organisation, 41.
(^40) Gross to Bourquin, May 3, 1938, AG 1-IICI-K-I-18.q, UA.
(^41) Cooper, Eric Voegelin and the Foundations of Modern Political Science, 9–10.