3 The New York Years (1931–1953)

Citizenship 251
middle of World War II, and Mayr did not know of Stresemann’s recommendation.
In hindsight, of course, this is what saved Mayr’s life. In Germany, he would have
been drafted into the army with little chance of surviving the war. Legally, Ernst
and Gretel Mayr remained “enemy aliens” in the United States for the duration
of the war, but thanks to the broadmindedness of his colleagues, he never had
any difficulties in pursuing his ornithological work at the AMNH, in arranging
meetings of the “Committee on Common Problems of Genetics, Paleontology and
Systematics” or publishing articles and books. When F. M. Chapman heard that
Jean Delacour was coming to the Department of Ornithology (AMNH) in 1940, he
was afraid that they (a Frenchman and a German) “would kill each other.” Instead,
they behaved like old friends and started writing a joint paper within a few weeks
after Delacour’s arrival in New York.
For more than 10 years, Ernst and Gretel Mayr suffered a most unpleasant
treatment by the Immigration Service, as repeatedly referred to in Mayr’s letters
to Stresemann:
“I have to be grateful that I was not deported because of my relief work for the
German ornithologists” (27 March 1950). “I had hoped to tell you personally [at
the IOC in Uppsala] through what hell we have gone these past 8 years! With letters
being no doubt read all the time I have to refrain to write about it. There is no sense
in going abroad until I have my citizenship. Here I am protected by my American
born children, abroad I am vogelfrei [outlawed]. Actually all my American friends
and acquaintances, and particularly the Jewish ones, have been standing by us in
the most wonderful manner. It is merely the Beamten [civil servants] who act like
that!” (28 April 1950).
The delays by the U.S. Immigration Service to issue his passport prevented Mayr
from attending the first postwar International Ornithological Congress in Sweden
(June 1950). He was afraid that if he left the States without a valid U.S. passport, he
would not be allowed to reenter the country. Mayr wrote on the issue of citizenship
in his autobiographical notes:
“The Bulletin of the American Academy of Science Vol. 44, no. 4 (January 1992)
has a very perceptive essay on the meaning of citizenship and the treatment of
immigrants or foreigners. It brings back to my mind my situation when I came
to the States in the early 1930s. In America, nationalism in the European sense of
ethnocentricity is hardly developed at all, and one is proud of the country being
a melting pot. A third generation immigrant is usually English-speaking and hardly
distinguishable from any other American. In Europe each country has a somewhat
different attitude toward foreigners or immigrants. Germany is almost at one
extreme; in the 1920s there was still the memory of the unification of Germany
in 1871, the end of a long period of extreme separatism, of literally hundreds of
little states. The result was an almost extreme nationalism and emphasis on the
ethnic aspect. According to the above mentioned article, this is true even today.
Even a third generation Turkish immigrant is considered a Turk.
This caused a real dilemma for a German, particularly an upper-class German,
who in the 1920s or 30s immigrated to America. The Americans expected him
to cast off his past citizenship like a shirt and become at once an American. The