254 J.-A. PEMBERTON
On May 17, an edict issued by the Austrian ministry of educa-
tion provided further confirmation of Voegelin’s outsider status: he
was removed from his post at the University of Vienna as of the first
day of June 1938, his salary being discontinued on the same date.^47
As evidenced by a letter Kittredge sent to Bonnet on July 7, the latter
had been aware of Voegelin’s situation for some time and of his plans
to leave Austria.^48 However, what Bonnet had only more recently dis-
covered was that in a letter dated June 1 which was delivered to by a
messenger on June 3, Voegelin had been informed of his dismissal from
the office of secretary of the Austrian Coordinating Committee. This let-
ter was signed, so Voegelin told Bonnet in a letter dated June 24, by
the committee’s vice-chairman, namely, Bruno Dietrich, rector of the
Academy for World Commerce (Hochschule für Welthandel). Further to
this, Voegelin told Bonnet, ‘the archives and the folders containing [the
committee’s] current correspondence’ had been ‘taken from...[him]...
by employees of Professor Dietrich.’ According to Voegelin, the pre-
text for his dismissal from the position of secretary, which, according to
Dietrich’s letter had the agreement of the committee’s chair, was that he
no longer held a position at the University of Vienna.^49
Anxious to get to the United States, Voegelin wrote to Gross at the
IIIC asking him to inquire at the American consulate in Paris about the
possibility of obtaining in Paris an American visa and to help procure for
him and his wife a French visa for the months of August and September.
Voegelin explained to Gross that applying for a visa in Vienna would
involve considerable delays. He told Gross that the American consulate
in Vienna was a ‘mad-house, swarming with thousands of Jews who want
to get Visa[s]’.^50
(^47) On the edict issued by the Austrian Ministry of Education, see Voegelin to Austrian
Ministry of Eduction, 3 June 1938, in Gebhardt, ed., The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin,
vol. 29, Selected Correspondence 1924–1949, 167.
(^48) Kittredge to Bonnet, 7 July 1938, AG-IICI-K-I-4.b, UA. AG IICI-K-I-4.
(^49) Eric Voegelin to Henri Bonnet, 24 June 1938, in Gebhardt, ed., The Collected Works of
Eric Voegelin, vol. 29, Selected Correspondence 1924–1949, 170–71. Voegelin further stated
in his letter to Henri Bonnet the following: ‘Professor Dopsch [the chairman of the com-
mittee] did not know anything about this letter [of dismissal], but was happy to remember
that he had given order to dismiss me a few yours later’ (ibid., 171).
(^50) Eric Voegelin to Leo Gross, n.d., 1938, in Gebhardt, ed., The Collected Works of
Eric Voegelin, vol. 29, Selected Correspondence 1924–1949, 171–73. See also Cooper, Eric
Voegelin and the Foundations of Modern Political Science, 17. Barry Cooper notes that
Voegelin’s letter to Gross was written in early July.