Eric Warburg: A Transatlantic Life

Description

The history of the transatlantic partnership has become highly topical in recent years; in fact, in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, it has been felt as a key reassurance under threat from the United States’ increasing isolationism during Donald Trump’s second term in the White House. In her life of Eric Warburg, Jeanette Erazo Heufelder tells the story of the nephew of the art historian Aby Warburg, whose world-famous library Eric relocated to London and saved from the Nazis. Coming from a long line of German–Jewish bankers, Eric Warburg emerged from the looming shadow of preceding generations of Warburgs, and repurposed their liberal values to form the core of his own Atlantacist convictions. Warburg spent the inter-war years working closely with the American branch of his family and their connections in government to promote the cause of international peace and stability in the wake of the Great War. After Hitler’s rise to power and the period following his fall, Warburg became a helper of escapees, an intelligence officer in the US Army, a transatlantic bridge builder, and a Cold Warrior, and with the help of the cooperation channels he set up, West German and US social groups were aligned with the West amidst the turmoil of post-war Europe. His life, and that of Aby Warburg’s library, tells the story of Europe’s twentieth century, the legacy of which continues to inform and inspire the transatlantic partnership today.