In the book, the author examines how intellectuals behaved during the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century, exposed to the temptations of Nazism and Communism. Like all people, publicly active scholars have a choice – to succumb to the allure and join the powerful, whether out of conviction, opportunism, or careerism, or to resist the enticing whistle of unfreedom. Dahrendorf chose the generation born between 1900 and 1910 for his study and asks what qualities these individuals must have possessed to resist during times of unfreedom. Among such personalities with a clean slate, Dahrendorf includes Raymond Aaron, Isaiah Berlin, Karl Popper, Norberto Bobbio, Jan Patočka, Theodor W. Adorno, Hannah Arendt, and Theodor Eschenburg. The author considers these figures to be indisputable members of his created Societas Erasmiana, that is, intellectuals following in the footsteps of the humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam (1465–1536). The book also features portraits of "candidates" for this society, such as Dolf Sternberger, Sebastian Haffner, Golo Mann, Marion Dönhoff, and Ernst Glaeser, but it does not overlook the so-called "foreign members," those who did not personally live under dictatorship but were able to describe it very clearly, such as George Orwell. And then they are subjected to...
