“Hyperborean Fields”

This chapter continues the discussion of Ernst Kantorowicz's life in Berkeley. Despite the five and a half years of uncertainty about his employment in Berkeley and concurrent dismaying news from Europe, on the whole, Kantorowicz was happy. Contributing to this was the arrival of three German émigrés in Berkeley in successive years: Walter Horn, Manfred Bukofzer, and Leonardo Olschki. Horn, Bukofzer, and Olschki, all with Heidelberg credentials, spoke Kantorowicz's language in both senses of the expression. Horn, born in 1908, studied in Heidelberg before gaining a doctorate in art history in Hamburg under the direction of Erwin Panofsky. Musicologist Bukofzer, born in 1910, studied in Heidelberg and Basel, where he received his doctorate after the Nazi takeover. Olschki, an expert on the medieval literature of Italy, was the one with whom Kantorowicz was closest.