1 EDGAR ZILSEL: THE EXCELLENT QUALIFICATIONS OF AN AWKWARD MAN 1 Christian Fleck, Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna Abstract: Edgar Zilsel lived from April 1939 until March 1944 in the United States. During these five year he wrote and published articles which secured him after their rediscovery a permanent place within the field of history and sociology of science. The chapter describes and analyzes in detail the American years of Zilsel, his contacts with refugee help organizations, philanthropic foundations and fellow refugee scholars. It is argued that Zilsel lacked a mentor helping him to open the doors to American academia. Furthermore Zilsel’s cautious behavior and old-fashioned European personality influence the failed establishment abroad. Contemporaries reporting on Edgar Zilsel’s American years portray him as a very reserved, even shy man, while those who remember him from his Viennese years describe a sociable but sharply argumentative person who stood politically on the left wing of Austrian Social Democracy. 2 His publications, written before he fled Vienna, show us someone who was not afraid of quarreling and who probably did not only make friends with his pronounced statements. When Zilsel finally arrived in the United States he was forty-eight years old and unable to reinvent himself 1 An earlier version of this chapter appeared in Christian Fleck, Etablierung in der Fremde. Vertriebene Wissenschaftler in den USA nach 1933. Frankfurt: Campus 2015, pp. 261-294. The detailed comments and suggestions of two anonymous reviewers helped to clarify some of my arguments. It goes without saying that all remaining errors are mine. 2 Herbert Feigl, „The Wiener Kreis in America,” in: Donald Fleming/Bernard Bailyn (Eds.), The intellectual migration: Europe and America, 1930–1960. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press 1969, pp. 641–2; Paul Zilsel, “Über Edgar Zilsel,” in: Friedrich Stadler (Ed.), Vertriebene Vernunft II. Emigration und Exil österreichischer Wissenschaft 1930-1940. Wien: Jugend & Volk 1988, pp. 929-932; Gustav Bergmann, „Erinnerungen an den Wiener Kreis: Brief an Otto Neurath,” in: Ibid., pp. 171-180. Karl R. Popper, Unended quest: An intellectual autobiography. London: Routledge -1992, p. 82 and 84; Karl Menger, Reminiscences of the Vienna Circle and the Mathematical Colloquium, ed. Louise Golland, Brian McGuinness, and A. Sklar. Dordrecht: Kluwer 1994, p. 67. The following unpublished sources contain additional background information: Interview of Paul Zilsel by Steven J. Heims on 1988 March 21 and 26, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics, College Park, MD USA, (www.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohr-library/oral-histories/5066); Kurt Gödel Protokolle notebooks 1937-38 (http://budiansky.com/goedel), Eric T. Hounshell, A Feel for the Data: Paul F. Lazarsfeld and the Columbia University Bureau of Applied Social Research, Ph.D. thesis U California Los Angeles2017 (https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2pw736hz), 28.7.2020.