In this sweeping study, Christian Fleck turns to three topics—the development of empirical social research as a new and innovative branch of academic practice; the forced migration of German-speaking social scientists during the 1930s and 1940s; and the decline of the German university system and the rise of the American academic culture—and reveals their historical bonds. During an expansion phase of higher education in the United States (a prerequisite for the European intellectual migration wave that had already begun before Fascism), the invention of social research took place. Based on a realist and empirical approach, the social sciences department of the Rockefeller Foundation (among other philanthropic institutions) implemented this approach as a mandatory selection criterion for fellowship grants. Consequently, many German-speaking social scientists were pushed into this direction as well.

To substantiate this narrative, Fleck gathers a wide range of data: a sample of more than 800 cases of individuals who, in one way or another, can be defined as “sociologists.” It is a great accomplishment to bring to light the historical sources detailing the family background, education, career paths, and academic contributions of these men and women, many of them long forgotten or sometimes never even acknowledged by peers as members of academia. The methods of analyzing this empirical data are creative: sometimes the reader virtually experiences the joy that Fleck must have felt when applying the modern techniques of social sciences, which are in part the result of the collective effort of the very same sociologists he bases his analysis on.

What makes this contribution invaluable for further research is the nuanced and refreshing analytical output. For example, it will now be much more difficult to ignore the major differences between the potential strength of Austrian (mostly Viennese) and German scholars during the interwar period who have been so often underestimated. Further, there can no longer be doubt about the foundations of innovative American institutional networks in promoting the advancement of social sciences and their huge impact on the development of empirical social research. In other words, this study is full of analytical insights into the intellectual, institutional, and socioeconomic history of social research (and social scientists).

The data provide a unique basis for empirical analysis and hence an examination of many blindfolded hypotheses that have so far dominated the realm of research. True, many of the German-speaking emigrés found their niches and hence contributed heavily to the further rise of American social sciences; but they did not, as is often told in continental Europe, invent major parts of it. Hence, it is no longer possible to claim that European influence was decisive for the development of modern social sciences—indeed, the Americans had already achieved a singular level of analytical insight and methodical rigidity. The author also shows that the history of the transatlantic transformation and re-transformation of the social sciences from the 1930s to the 1950s had some astonishing, surprising, and, unfortunately, also negative influence on how social research was finally returned to Germany and Austria. Sometimes the author tends to overstate his position, particularly in the chapters about the collaboration of Paul Lazarsfeld and Theodor W. Adorno. Adorno was not an especially good sociologist, and he definitely was not one to collaborate with other scholars. In Germany and Austria, the extent of Adorno's contributions to some of the major sociological surveys of the time was (and still is) exaggerated. However, the book gives no explanation as to why exactly this detail of these intellectual adventures needs to be discussed at such length (whereas others remain hidden).

Fleck's study sets a new standard among publications addressing historical investigations on the related topics of the invention of social research, the impact of totalitarian regimes in Central Europe on universities, and the internationalization (or Americanization) of academia. The ultimate reason for this high standard lies in a geographic perspective that embraces both continents. Transatlantische Bereicherungen recognizes a simple fact that is quite often neglected in most research: that the diverse contributions to the emergence of empirical social research stem from a certain, historically unique structural background, as well as from individual innovations and working collaborations.