3 CONFERENCES AT PRAGUE AND BERGEN AND THE LOOMING WAR 271Negotiations regarding German participation in the 1939 confer-
ence were at the outset more fruitful and it appeared that up until late
July of that year, at least two German professors would attend. Berber
assured Bonnet that Andreas Predöhl, the director since 1934 of the Kiel
Institute for the World Economy would almost certainly participate. He
also assured the director of the IIIC that Brinkmann, (who had been
among the economists participating in the Prague meetings on economic
policies in relation to world peace), would attend. As for Berber him-
self, in a letter dated July 23 which he sent to Bonnet from Salzburg,
Berber explained that it would remain uncertain up to the last minute as
to whether he could personally attend.^104
berber’s reicH service
Berber was forced to greatly curtail his involvement in the ISC in 1939.
Berber was among those who were expected to attend a meeting of the
ISC’s executive committee in Paris on March 24 and 25. On March 4, he
informed Bonnet of his ‘lively regret’ that he would be unable to come
to Paris. He told Bonnet the following: ‘unfortunately, I have had a new
attack of my bile and I am forced to spend the month of March in Karlsbad
in order to finally re-establish myself.’^105 Berber was preoccupied that
year with much more than his health: he was having a very full year in the
service of the Reich. By way of marking Hitler’s fiftieth birthday, Berber
offered praise of the Führer’s foreign policy, celebrating the fact that it
had caused German scientists of international law to reconceptualise their
subject matter. Fassbender records that drawing on Carl Schmitt’s recent
work, Berber in the name of ‘German Science’ stated the following:^106
(^104) Fritz Berber to Henri Bonnet, 23 July 1939, AG 1-IICI-K-I-25.b, UA. See also
‘List of Participants in the Eleventh Session of the International Studies Conference,’ in
Zimmern, ed., The University Teaching of International Relations, 346. Carl Brinkmann
attended a meeting of the ISC’s Programme Committee held at the IIIC on November
4, 1938. See Economic Policies in Relation to World Peace, Report of the Meeting of the
Programme Committee held at the International Institute of Intellectual Co-operation on
November 4, 1938, AG 1- K-XII-2a., UA.
(^105) Fritz Berber to Henri Bonnet, 4 March 1939, Conférence permanente des hautes
études internationales: Comité exécutif à partir du 1er septembre 1937 à décembre 1946,
AG 1-IICI-K-I-2.
(^106) Fassbender, ‘On Writing the History of International Law in the “Third Reich” and
After,’ 500–1.