Prelude to Brazil: Leo Waibel's American Career as a Displaced Scholar

Abstract

Beyond Germany, Leo Waibel (1888–1951) built a distinguished reputation for his work in Africa and the Americas. Today he is remembered especially in Brazil, where he boosted the development of geography as a research discipline in the years 1946–1950. During his tenure of the chair in geography at Bonn (1929–1937), Waibel's main research preoccupation became the role of the tropics in the world economy. In early 1937, he sought research leave to make an extended field trip to Brazil. Stripped on political grounds in the same year of his chair, Waibel came to the United States, where he became the only geographer to receive help from the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars. He would eventually serve as one of the very limited core staff on President Franklin Roosevelt's “M” Project on migration and settlement. This paper reconstructs the context of his work in the United States, clarifying especially the nature of his collaborations with Isaiah Bowman, widely regarded at the time as the leading geographer within the United States. Waibel's correspondence from the United States, and later from Brazil, reveals an international career marked by contradictions.