conflict & communication online, Vol. 17, No. 2, 2018
www.cco.regener-online.de
ISSN 1618-0747

Olaf Morgenroth
In the first place, we don't like to be called refugees. Hannah Arendt’s essay We refugees of 1943

In We refugees, published in 1943, Hannah Arendt describes and analyses the efforts of Jewish emigrants in coping with their situation. The central theme is the struggle for identity. The attitude toward one’s social affiliation and cultural heritage and regaining one’s lost past and developing a perspective for the future are two major aspects of this struggle. Arendt concludes that the assimilation strategy favored by many emigrants is insufficient in the political context of that time. A comparison with a paper by the German psychologist Erich Stern, published 1937 in his Paris exile, reveals congruencies as well as discrepancies.

The author:
Olaf Morgenroth studied psychology at the Technical University Berlin. 1998 he earned his doctorate (Dr. rer. nat.) from the Humboldt University in Berlin with a dissertation on identity propositions of teenagers of Turkish origin in Germany. 2007 he achieved his postdoctoral qualification for a professorship in psychology [Habilitation] with his studies in the field of the psychology of time. 2010 he was called to a chair in health psychology at the Medical School Hamburg. In his current research he deals with the effects of psychological distance on psychological health, time-related coping strategies, and attentiveness. Furthermore, he is interested in the history of psychology and in cultural comparative psychology.

Address: Medical School Hamburg – University of Applied Sciences and medical University. Fakultät für Humanwissenschaften, Department Psychologie, Gesundheitspsychologie. Am Kaiserkai 1, 20457 Hamburg, Germany.
eMail: olaf.morgenroth@medicalschool-hamburg.de