The First Class of Fulbrighters - Fulbright-Kommission

AT VIRTUALLY THE SAME
TIME, a freshman senator from
Arkansas, J. William Fulbright, initiated
a new program in the United States
intended to bring Americans out of their
own brand of cultural isolation and to
connect students and scholars worldwide
on a basis of equality. A Rhodes Scholar
worried that so few Americans had studied
abroad or experienced foreign cultures,
Fulbright, who was profoundly
moved by the bombings of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, conceived of an imaginative
new use of the obscure War Surplus
Property Act of 1944. His idea was to
use a portion of the monetary credits
derived from war surplus overseas to send
young scholars abroad with the twin
goals of advancing knowledge and furthering
mutual understanding. A convincing
advocate and skilled political
strategist, Fulbright won over the initially
hesitant Congress, Treasury, and State
Department, and on August 1, 1946
President Truman signed off on the P.L.
584 Amendment. Using State Department
infrastructure for support, the program set up an
independent Board of Foreign Scholarships (renamed the J.
William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board in 1991) so
that participating nations could select qualified scholars and
educators to visit the U.S. while the BFS would choose
young scholars to send abroad.
KNOWN AS THE FULBRIGHT ACT, the program
was destined in Germany’s case to overtake the
exchange program in the American Zone, elevating the
underlying purpose of the exchange from postwar re-orientation
to genuine partnership. The Fulbright Exchange Program
began operation in 1948, first targeting former Allied
nations that were recovering most rapidly from the war.
The possibility of creating a German Fulbright Program
was first addressed in 1949 after the establishment of the
Federal Republic of Germany. Chancellor Konrad Adenauer
and U.S. High Commissioner John J. McCloy entered into
lengthy negotiations, but because the Federal Republic had
Senator J. William Fulbright
2 3
not yet attained full sovereignty and because of funding
intricacies and legal issues delays ensued. The United States
signed the (Fulbright) Executive Agreement with the Federal
Republic on July 18, 1952, and the binational Fulbright
Commission came into existence.
Beginning with the academic year 1953-54, approximately
200 American graduate students, twenty teachers,
and a handful of senior scholars arrived in Germany, while a
comparable group of German students, teachers, and senior
scholars traveled to the United States. From its inception,
the program was a great success, as evidenced by the summary
reports submitted by participants at the conclusion of
their year-long programs.. On both sides, the participants
found their Weltanschauung and their understanding of people
(as distinct from nations) immeasurably widened, just as
Senator Fulbright had so fervently wished.
- James Tent is a professor for German history at the University of Alabama
at Birmingham.