| Davos University Conferences | |
| Native Name: | Cours universitaires de Davos Davoser Hochschulkurse |
| Formation: | August 1927 |
| Dissolved: | January 1933 |
| Type: | Academic conferences |
| Location: | Davos, Switzerland |
| Language: | French, German, English |
| Leader Name: | Gottfried Salomon |
| Key People: | Albert Einstein, Martin Heidegger, Léon Brunschvicg, Ernst Cassirer |
The Davos University Conferences (French: Cours universitaires de Davos; German: Davoser Hochschulkurse) were a project between 1928 and 1931 to create an international university at Davos in Switzerland.[1]
The Davos University Conferences owed their creation to two complementary initiatives, one local and one international.
Noting the large number of tubercular students who came to Davos,[2] as a mountain town known for its cosmopolitan atmosphere and as a luxurious place to convalesce,[3] between 1926 and 1927 a committee was formed by the local doctors to formulate a diversification project for Davos University.
The Davos project coincided with warming international relations,[4] particularly between France and the Weimar Republic (Germany) after the Locarno Pact of 1925.[5] The French intelligentsia wholeheartedly participated in projects of the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation, but the Germans, who were excluded from it by the Treaty of Versailles, instead founded the German: Deutsch-französische Gesellschaft (DFG, "German-French Society").[6] German intellectuals who wanted to participate in international academic conferences approached the Davos initiators and redefined their university project to become an annual conference.[7]
A committee made up of local and visiting academics was assembled under the chairmanship of Dr Paul Müller (instigator of the Spengler coup in 1923), the sociologist Gottfried Salomon (1892 - 1964), president of the Frankfurt DFG, and Erhard Branger (1881 - 1958), mayor of Davos, who made it their mission to invite élite European intellectuals to Davos for weeks of work and exchange of ideas. The committee was augmented in 1929 by three national committees (German, French and Swiss).
For four consecutive years, between 1928 and 1931, the committee convened a large number of important intellectuals,[8] mainly German and French, for conferences (in both languages) lasting three weeks at the end of winter. These academics were accompanied by promising students in a programme of French: communautés de travail ("Work communities") and as well as the conferences themselves there were opportunities to get to know academics from other countries who were working in the same field.
The first Conference was opened by Erhard Branger (mayor of Davos), Lucien Lévy-Bruhl (French philosopher and sociologist), Hans Driesch (German philosopher) and Albert Einstein.[8]
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See main article: Second Davos Hochschulkurs. The second conference was opened by Giuseppe Motta (Federal Council). It was noted for the "Cassirer–Heidegger debate" between Martin Heidegger and Ernst Cassirer.[8]
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The third conference was opened by Federal Councillor Heinrich Häberlin.[8] It was the first conference to be conducted partly in English.
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The fourth conference was opened by Carl Heinrich Becker (lately the Prussian Minister of Culture).[8]
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The 1932 conference could not be held because of the Great Depression. Adolf Hitler's ascension and granting of absolute power on 30 January 1933, led to the exile of many German intellectuals and put an end to Franco-German co-operation in science, which made it impossible to continue the conferences.[9]
Fernand Baldensperger
Friedrich Hertz
Maurice Ansiaux