College Record 2019

MEMORIES OF WOLFSON
for short periods by a succession of his
friends and acquaintances. As Hans wrote
to the SPSL in April 1940: ‘I have managed
to find some hospitality between March
and Christmas 1939, but altogether I had to
move more than twenty times from place
to place.’ That works out to moving about
once a fortnight. Willy was more fortunate.
Through his pen-friend Donald Baron he
was given residency in Pusey House, Oxford,
for the two months of Trinity Term.
By the time the war broke out, on 3
September 1939, Willy and Hans were back
together and made strenuous efforts to
contact their parents, with a view to finding
a way to get them out. Surprisingly, despite
the war, a letter dated 14 September got
through to them from Ferdinand saying: ‘My
dearest children, we got your messages and
we are very happy to hear that you both
are well and live together. We had to take
a new flat of two rooms and kitchen. It is
a very nice flat with modern comfort.’ For
all Ferdinand’s upbeat manner, it was clearly
a step down in the world. Their spacious
apartment in the centre of town had been
commandeered by the Germans, and their
small new flat in the suburbs was rented in
Lissy’s name, so that it would not be taken
away from them because of Ferdinand’s
Jewish origins.
In late December 1939, Hans finally made
it to the Hastings Chess Congress. It was a
mere shadow of its former self with only
eight players, seven of whom were British,
so Hans single-handedly made it into an
International Congress.
1940 was a better year for Hans. He
decided to take another doctorate, this
time a DPhil at Oxford. He contacted the
Postgraduate Aid Committee, chaired by the
Master of Balliol, and renewed his requests
for help from the SPSL.
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A letter from Ronald Bell, Fellow and Tutor
in Chemistry at Balliol, who was secretary
of the Postgraduate Aid Committee, to
Miss Simpson, the secretary of SPSL, makes
it clear why Hans’s case was particularly
difficult. ‘Though young,’ he writes of Hans,
‘he is considerably more experienced than
most of the people with whom we have to
deal, and it seems to me that he rather lies
in the No Man’s Land between the SPSL and
this committee. At this end I have managed
to persuade Exeter College to admit him
with remission of all fees, and this would also
exempt him from any University dues. On
the other hand, we are not able to make any
direct financial grant to him for maintenance.’
Hans’s own letters to Miss Simpson give
interesting insights into his precarious
financial situation. In April 1940, he writes
that he has ‘found a room with full board
and everything included for 27 shillings a
week.’ Eventually, the SPSL agreed to fund
him at a rate of £100 a year, but only for
three months at a time pending a further
application, so his money worries continued.
He matriculated as a graduate student
at Exeter College on 4 May 1940 and
soon afterwards received his first monthly
payment from SPSL of £8 6s 8d. His
supervisor was G. D. H. Cole, then at Univ.
Hans first proposed a broad subject for his
thesis, building on his work in international
law and political science: a comparison of
attempts at international co-operation from
the Concert of Europe up to and including
the League of Nations. In the manner of
DPhil supervisors, Cole urged Hans to
focus more narrowly, suggesting the earlier
period. As a result, Hans’s transition from
international lawyer to historian came about
more by chance than by conscious choice.
By 1942, Hans had begun to earn some
money, lecturing twice a week in Exeter
College on European Economic History
1815–48. In Michaelmas Term, he began
to give tutorials to students in LMH and
COLLEGE RECORD 2019