137 - Arthur I. Miller [82]
James Conant, Harvard’s dynamic young president, read out Jung’s official citation for his honorary degree thus: “Doctor of Science. A philosopher who has examined the unconscious mind, a mental physician whose wisdom and understanding have brought relief to many in distress.”
Jung’s lecture, on the morning of September 7, drew the largest crowd of all the seminars given. He spoke on “Psychological Factors Determining Human Behavior,” of how the “human psyche lives in indissoluble union with the body.” Afterward there was a spellbinding conversation between Jung and the American modernist poet Charles Olsen on mandala imagery in Herman Melville’s novel Moby-Dick.
The Jungs stayed in Milton, Massachusetts, at the home of G. Stanley Cobb, an eminent medical researcher. As was European custom, every evening Jung left his shoes outside their bedroom door to be shined, apparently unaware that they did not have live-in help. So as not to embarrass his guest, Cobb shined them himself.
As part of the climax of the splendid celebrations, on September 17 there was a spectacular fireworks display on the Charles River. Half a million spectators lined the banks.
After the celebrations at Harvard Jung gave a series of lectures at Bailey Island (Maine), New York City, and Yale University, where he spoke about how he had treated a brilliant but troubled scientist. Back home he got down to work on his “long overdue” book on alchemy.
According to one (unsubstantiated) story Jung shortly afterward interrupted his work for an undercover assignment. Josef Goebbels, Nazi minister of propaganda, summoned him to Berlin to attend official ceremonies with Hitler, Hermann Göring, commander of the German Air Force, and Heinrich Himmler, head of the feared SS. Jung’s task was to assess whether they were crazy. Presumably, if so there would have been a coup. According to the story Jung quickly realized they were all madmen, and, fearing for his life, left immediately.
Germany heads for war
Shortly afterward a very serious problem arose for Pauli—the question of his status in Switzerland. Germany annexed Austria in March 1938 and as a result Pauli’s Austrian passport became a German one. He immediately applied for Swiss citizenship but his application was refused. There were problems with residency requirements, added to which Pauli’s command of the Swiss-German dialect was not good. The mayor of Zürich informed him that his residency requirement would be fulfilled in spring 1940, after which he should reapply for Swiss citizenship.
So Pauli ended up back at the German consulate in Switzerland. After a cursory examination of his family history, the officials there declared him half Aryan, qualifying him for a straightforward German passport without the “J” stamp (meaning “Jewish”). His German passport was issued in November 1938 and was valid for two years. In Jewish tradition being Jewish is passed through the mother and so Pauli actually was not Jewish. But in German terms he was, because he had Jewish ancestry through his father’s family. In fact, under the grotesque arithmetic of Nazi racial theory, Pauli was 75 percent Jewish. As well as his father being Jewish, his mother’s father was too. If the Germans were to occupy Switzerland his passport would receive the dreaded “J” stamp, which would mean almost certain death.
As Pauli put it in his inimitable English to Frank Aydelotte, the director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey:
By the fact that Switzerland didn’t make possible my naturalization in the moment of the annexation of Austria by Germany I was forced to accept a German passport. The German consulate counted me to the half-Aryans without further examination and so I got a non-Jewish (that means without J) passport. Actually I suppose I am after German law 75 percent Jewish. This would mean that in the case of German occupation of Switzerland