“Gedankenaustausch über Probleme und Methoden der Forschung”. Transatlantische Gastprofessoren aus Emigrantenkreisen in Westdeutschland nach 1945

The history of the sciences and humanities follows cycles in some of which there is greater emphasis on the continuity of developments, in others on the breaks in continuity. In recent years the main focus of research for the 20^th century has been on the continuities extending beyond the boundaries of 1933 and 1945. The main aim of this study, however, is to examine the impulses for the internationalization of German universities provided by a transnational group of academic migrants. These migrants, whose origins were in the German academic community, represented an alternative continuity beyond the boundaries of this period: they were visiting academics who were the conveyors and interpreters of ideas from Germany into the USA and Britain and vice versa. The study of this group therefore combines remigration history and the history of universities as institutions, focussing on actors, networks and innovations in teaching, with the history of individual subjects and disciplines.     

Organizing the ‘people’s community’: the NSDAP and the ‘ethnic Germans’ in Nazi-occupied territories

ABSTRACT

This article refers to recent scholarly debates on the term ‘people’s community’ (Volksgemeinschaft), which throughout the Third Reich remained rather vague and encompassed often contradictory purposes. It deals with the relations between the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, NSDAP) and some of the ‘ethnic German’ (volksdeutsche) organizations to exemplify how German society should be transformed into a ‘people’s community’ after 1933. Thus, it is necessary to analyse the ‘people’s community’ not by asking whether or not its different purposes were realized, but by examining its functions in the Nazi regime. This functional analysis of the ‘people’s community’ focuses on the NSDAP and its relations with ‘ethnic German’ organizations after 1933, primarily in Nazi-occupied territories during the Second World War. First, the article describes the NSDAP’s efforts to align the ‘Germans abroad’ (Auslandsdeutsche) after the seizure of power and to organize the German Front (Deutsche Front) in the Saar territories in 1934/35—an experience serving as a blueprint for the relations between the NSDAP and ‘ethnic German’ organizations during the Second World War. Second, it evaluates the creation of the Ethnic German Community (Volksdeutsche Gemeinschaft) in the General Government and its efforts to organize ‘ethnic Germans’. Third, it interprets the foundation of the German People’s Community (Deutsche Volksgemeinschaft) in Lorraine and its ongoing attempts to establish a racial hierarchy of ‘ethnic Germans’ over the autochthonous French population. Fourth, it looks at the connection between the Germanization of Lower Styria and the launch of the Styrian Homeland Union (Steirischer Heimatbund) as an ‘ethnic German’ movement. The article argues that the NSDAP’s operational routines regarding both the German population and the ‘ethnic Germans’ living in the occupied territories shaped the ‘people’s community’.     

Visualisierungen in der deutschen Geographie des 19. Jahrhunderts. Die Beispiele Robert Schlagintweit und Hans Meyer

Visualization in 19^th‐century German geography: Robert Schlagintweit and Hans Meyer as examples. – Visual representations of nature formed an essential part of 19^th‐century earth sciences. In particular, colonial photography – as a visual source, and as an instrument of the construction of national identities – serves essential research interests of current history and social sciences. The present paper is a case study on the role and function of photography in German geography of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries. It focuses on the work of the Munich geographer Robert Schlagintweit (1833–1885) and the Leipzig colonial geographer Hans Meyer (1858–1929); the early history of photography in India and the function of images in the geographical exploration of overseas territories are discussed. Although there is nearly half a century between the work of R. Schlagintweit and H. Meyer, their photography shows remarkable parallels. The ideas of both on the practice of visualization are rooted in pedagogic and didactic concepts as well as in popular science. For both geographers photography was essentially a technical help, which often needed graphic revisions. And they both preferred photography to depict people and buildings (compared, for instance, to landscapes). Concerning the more comprehensive question of how far their photography transmitted a specific German ‘image of abroad’, it is indicated that such a specific image should have its essential roots in a peculiar visual culture of German earth sciences in the first half of the 19^th century. Thus the paper offers a starting point for further studies discussing the change from a ‘Biedermeier image’ of foreign cultures to a more ‘colonial’ one in 19^th‐century German geography.     

Order and organisation

Abstract

In this paper we re-examine the relationship and possibilities for discourse between the academic disciplines called ‘sciences’ and those known as ‘arts’. Do they represent one culture or two? An apparent diversity of views emerges in two contemporary writers, George Steiner and Nicholas Lash, the former differentiating the two, the latter insisting that the ‘two cultures’ debate itself is misconstrued. We follow the principal threads of both arguments in the light of an intimate involvement with the practice of science and its communication in public and academic contexts. Visiting aspects of both arts and sciences that distinguish them from other disciplines, the role of theory, and the twin purposes of function and contemplation, we find that much of the pain of discourse between them arises from a failure to recognise common structures and functions. As a result, either function or contemplation may be overemphasised at the expense of the other. We suggest directions in which the tensions might be resolved in both public and academic arenas.     

Two Careers across Two Cultures

Beginning with my recollection of hearing C. P. Snow's ‘Two Cultures’ lecture, I sketch my experience of building two academic careers in succession, first in one of the natural sciences and later in the history of such sciences. I outline both the difficulties and the rewards that I encountered in crossing the alleged gulf between the sciences and the humanities, but also emphasise the diversity of cultures that I experienced within each. I describe my own encounter with the academic culture of continental Europe, within which the concept of a monolithic singular ‘Science’ could be dismissed as an ‘anglophone heresy’, and viewed from which the Two Cultures debate could seem both provincial and redundant.     

What's in a name? Anthrozoology,human‐animal studies,animal studies or…? (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

Human interactions with other animals feature regularly in the pages of Anthropology Today, and academic research focusing on the human‐animal relationship is undergoing something of a boom in the social sciences and humanities generally. This comment, prompted by Caplan's paper ‘Death on the farm’ in the last issue of AT, considers the place of human‐animal interactions in anthropology through a discussion of the terminology and methodologies employed by scholars within this area. It is argued that such a discussion is instructive because, as the etymology of the term suggests, anthropology is ultimately concerned with ‘understanding humans’. The ways that we, as researchers, choose to distinguish between humans and other animals, and the ways that we choose to represent our informants' interactions with other animals, can provide considerable insight into how all concerned think about what it means to be human.     

Prestige und gemeiner Nutzen Universitätsgründungen im deutschen Spätmittelalter

The medieval German university entered the picture late but thereby as a new and third type of university in Europe besides Paris and Bologna: This was the ruler-controlled ‘Four-Faculties-University’, which powerfully integrated the socially very different associations of liberal arts, theology, medicine, and law. From the beginning on the ‘German type’ was tied to the princely founder, his court, his dynasty, and his territory (in some cases also to the municipal leadership), and it was politically subjected to his will. All foundations produced prestige and dynastic need at first rather than public need (utilitas publica), respectively the advancing of common learned education and science. The great royal dynasties of Luxembourg, Habsburg, and Wittelsbach began founding in Prague, Vienna, and Heidelberg. Up to 1506 all the seven prince electors, some more important princes and big towns of the Holy Roman Empire had their university or had relations to a university. Public need was rather an indirect result: university students utilized surprisingly strongly the possibilities offered by the subsequent university foundations in Germany - about 200.000 people during a long-term 15^th century. However, it has to be thought over in the history of science and effectivity of the German universities in a European frame, that more than 80% of them were ‘only’ students of arts.     

The Mythos,Ethos, and Pathos of the Humanities

Summary

Justifications of the humanities often employ a mythos that exceeds their historical dispositions and reach. This applies to justifications that appeal to an ‘idea’ of the humanities grounded in the cultivation of reason for its own sake. But the same problem affects more recent accounts that seek to shatter this idea by admitting an ‘event’ capable of dissolving and refounding the humanities in ‘being’. In offering a sketch of the emergence of the modern humanities from early modern humanism, the paper argues that these twin philosophical justifications fail to capture both the array of intellectual arts that have informed the humanities disciplines and the variety of uses to which these arts have been put. Nonetheless, the two philosophical constructions have had a concrete impact on the disposition of the modern humanities, seen in the respective structuralist and poststructuralist reconfigurations of the disciplines that began to take place under the banner of ‘theory’ during the 1960s. In discussing the effects of theory on the humanities in Australia, the paper focuses on the unforeseeable consequences of attempts to provide arts-based disciplines with a foundation either in cognitive structures or in an ‘event’ that shatters them.     

Die Fotografie – ein neues Bildmedium im Wissenschaftspanorama des 19. Jahrhunderts. Einführung in das Symposium

Photography – a novel medium of scientific representation in the XIXth century array of arts and sciences. To delve into various nineteenth century academic disciplines under the heading ‘photography in the arts and sciences’ as did last year's annual conference of the History of Science Society – the interest in such a topic only partly stems from the ‘iconic turn’ that has generally enlarged the scope of the social sciences in recent years. A more poignant feature in any such present day study will probably be a basic scepticism facing the fact that in public use photographs have been manipulated in many respects. Yet, while shying away from any simple success story, a historically minded approach to changing ‘visual paradigms’ (Historische Bildwissenschaft) has begun to emerge. In this context, it has proved of considerable heuristic value to reconsider the role of early photography in an array of science, arts and technology: Since the reliance on the traditional ways of sketching reality persisted, in many an instance where photography was introduced, the thoughts the pioneer photographers had about their new, seemingly automated business, call for close attention. Thus scholarship sets up a parallel ‘discussion room’; the lively debate on the benefit of academic drawings as opposed to photographic portraits is a case in point. Some fairly specialised reports on photographically based analyses, such as electron microscopy, point to a borderline where the very idea of representation as a correspondence of reality and imagination gets blurred. Even though any ‘visual culture’ will have to shoulder the ‘burden of representation’, it is equally likely that it will offer a deeper sensibility for the intricacies entailed in the variegated ways of illustrating or mapping chosen subjects of scientific interest. Scholarship may thus somewhat control the disillusionment that by now has become the epitome of writing on photographic history. Provided with a renewed methodological awareness for the perception process and its photographic transition, historians may strike a better balance between the ever present tendencies of a realistic and an aesthetic way of picturing the world we live in.     

Studying the International,Serving the Nation: The Origins of International Relations (IR) Scholarship in Germany, 1912–33

This paper examines the dynamics of internationalist and nationalist political thought in the formation of International Relations (IR) scholarship in Germany during the early twentieth century. It argues that while liberal internationalism played a significant role in shaping the discipline, IR scholars were often devout nationalists and worked for their government rather than for international peace. German institutions for the study of IR, like their Anglo-American counterparts, were founded in the aftermath of the First World War. Celebrated during the 1920s as ‘bulwarks of democracy’, they were nationalised by the Nazi government, lost their academic profile and since then have been largely forgotten. This paper explains the origins of IR research at the Institut für Auswärtige Politik, based in Hamburg and directed by Albrecht Mendelssohn Bartholdy, as well as at the Deutsche Hochschule für Politik, led by Ernst Jäckh in Berlin. Formally inaugurated in 1923 and 1920 respectively, both institutions drew on pre-war intellectual traditions as well as wartime networks. In light of recent re-appraisals of inter-war IR scholarship in other countries, the German case offers new and important insights into the complex intellectual traditions of what has traditionally been oversimplified as a first ‘great debate’ between ‘idealists’ and ‘realists’.     

THE HISTORY OF THE BROOKHAVEN NATIONAL LABORATORY PROJECT IN ARCHAEOLOGICAL CHEMISTRY,AND APPLYING NUCLEAR METHODS TO THE FINE ARTS

This paper traces the events leading up to the formation of a project in 1954, in the Chemistry Department at Brookhaven National Laboratory, dedicated to the application of those new developments that were rapidly transforming postwar nuclear science to the parallel humanistic disciplines of archaeology and the fine arts. The further evolution of this effort involved the enlightened support of the Department of Energy (then AEC and ERDA) coupled with the lively interests of the archaeological, fine‐arts and art‐historical communities, their professional academics and the many graduate and undergraduate students who participated in the Brookhaven project. But more than new scientific methodologies, concepts and instrumentation were deployed. What developed was a large‐scale, truly interdisciplinary effort, where scholars of the humanities and sciences worked side by side in a remarkable way, each led by the other, to the mutual benefit and increase of their knowledge and understanding. A paradigm of co‐operation between arts and sciences was initiated: this paper presents a record of the process and its outcome, a novel blending of science and humanism that is very much taken for granted by research workers today.     

Approaching selfhood

Often overlooked is the fact that postmodern theory brought to the fore a crisis in the humanities. The implied universalism of the current “iconic turn” in postmodern thinking is a blow to the traditional sciences grouped around national literatures and cultures. In the 1980's, postmodern practitioners in the United States began to assault the discursive practices of the mainstream under the banner of cultural studies. The current crisis in the humanities surfaced in the emancipation of the various studies from their traditional fields in the humanities. The German Studies practiced today in the United States for instance, has no counterpart in Germany's traditional departments of Deutsche Philologie. Whereas the icon in the United States has become an object of investigation for the various studies, it has not yet displaced the littera in Germany's literary sciences. However in the 1990's, the historical sciences in Germany responded to the challenge of the various studies by directing their attention not to cultural studies, but to cultural history, with its well-defined set of methodologies. But what kind of cultural history is it? Is it built on 19th century German foundations, or is it grafted to current North American notions of post-industrial culture? In this paper I show that the supposed opposition between cultural studies and cultural history is artificial. Through a close reading of Hayden White's extremist questioning of historical practice in Metahistory (1973), I demonstrate that there is no opposition between the icon and the littera in this recent radical critique of mainstream humanistic science. The vehement German reaction to his North American assault on European Kultur is based on a misunderstanding of White's premises. Rather than being constructed on a hodgepodge of postmodern approaches, I show that White's postmodern history is in fact conventionally grounded in 19th century Nietzschean thinking.     

兰克在新中国史学界的境遇

马克思受德国左翼知识分子的影响,曾对兰克作了否定性的评价,后经苏联学者的进一步发挥,兰克被定格为反动派。马克思的兰克评语早在1945年即已通过苏联学者的论文译介到中国,但最初似无影响,至1960年代初借助各种译著的传布,始被中国史家所熟知,深刻影响了他们对兰克的认知。1958年开始中国史学界推行"兴无灭资"的史学革命,开展两条路线斗争。为了更好批判中外资产阶级史学,1960年代初大陆史学界密集译介兰克的资料,有些史家积极批判兰克,但所凭借的文献多为二手著作,很少有人直接阅读兰克作品。进入"文革"时代,兰克话题已然进入禁区。     

Second Laws,Two Cultures,and the Emergence of an Ecosystem Aesthetics

Abstract

The appropriation of scientific concepts by the humanities and the visual arts exemplifies what many feel are both the pitfalls and possibilities of interdisciplinary engagement. The principle of entropy, which C. P. Snow claimed could serve as a litmus test of the ‘two cultures’ divide, provides an excellent starting point for exploring how artists have employed scientific concepts far beyond their original contexts. As a case study in interdisciplinarity, the use of entropy in the visual arts is also a lens to consider the evolution of an artistic proposal from the 1960s known as ‘system aesthetics’. As an early challenge to the clean demarcation of art and science, system aesthetics was a precedent for what might be described as the emergence of an ecosystem aesthetics within contemporary art and design today.     

Assessing the value of political science in the era of relevance and impact

The political science profession, like other social sciences, is under pressure from many quarters to demonstrate its ‘relevance’. This need arises primarily from requirements for universities to justify public investment in their teaching and research. Competition across the full range of science and humanities disciplines for public and private funding makes this an important challenge for all. This article reflects on how political scientists have seen the public value of their professional work. It concludes by suggesting some alternative ways of thinking about relevance, value and impact.     

Going unscripted: A call to critically engage storytelling methods and methodologies in geography and the medical‐health sciences

Geography and the medical‐health sciences have long histories of engaging the humanities. The last decade has seen for both disciplines a significant growth in theoretical frameworks, pedagogic strategies, and research methods that draw upon visual and literary arts, critical self‐reflection, creative tools and expressions, and even direct engagement or partnership with artists, curators, authors, theatre‐practitioners, and other professionals in the arts. Both geographers and medical‐health professionals, then, are increasingly (re)making and understanding various worlds through the humanities. In this paper we explore the histories of humanities in both geography and the medical‐health sciences, especially medicine: we argue the two disciplines have much to learn from each other's engagement and work with the humanities. Focusing on the increasing use of narrative and storytelling in both disciplines, we argue that deployment of humanities‐based frameworks and impulses must not be taken up without careful and critical analytical reflection. Finally, we ground our theoretical explorations with empirical examples from recent community‐based work about the risks and benefits of storytelling and visual arts when looking at the health geographies of Indigenous and settler peoples in Northern British Columbia.

De manière impromptue : vers une démarche critique sur les méthodes de mise en récit et les méthodologies en géographie et en sciences médicales et de la santé

L'intérêt pour les sciences humaines par la géographie et les sciences médicales et de la santé s'inscrit dans une longue tradition. Au cours de la dernière décennie, les deux disciplines ont connu une importante croissance de cadres théoriques, de stratégies pédagogiques et de méthodes de recherche qui font appel aux arts visuels et à la littérature, à l'autoréflexion critique, à des outils et modes d'expression novateurs, voire même à une participation directe ou à des partenariats avec des artistes, conservateurs, auteurs, praticiens de l'art dramatique et d'autres professionnels du domaine des arts. Autant les géographes que les professionnels de la médecine et de la santé contribuent de plus en plus à (re)constituer et comprendre divers mondes à travers les sciences humaines. Cet article brosse un tableau historique des sciences humaines tant en géographie qu'en sciences médicales et de la santé, en particulier la médecine : nous soutenons que les deux disciplines ont beaucoup à apprendre l'une de l'autre sur l'intérêt que chacune porte aux sciences humaines. En mettant l'accent sur le recours grandissant par les deux disciplines à la narration et à la mise en récit, nous faisons valoir l'idée que le déploiement des cadres et des impulsions fondés sur les sciences humaines ne peut pas être envisagé sans mener au préalable une réflexion analytique minutieuse et critique. Enfin, nous fondons cette étude du champ théorique sur des exemples empiriques tirés de travaux réalisés à l'échelle communautaire sur les risques et les avantages de la mise en récit et des arts visuels quand on se penche sur les aspects géographiques de la santé des peuples autochtones et colonisateurs dans le nord de la Colombie‐Britannique.     

Das Förderprofil der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft 1949 bis 1969

The DFG, short for ‘Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft’ (German Research Foundation), was founded in 1920 and re‐founded after the 2. World War in 1949. This article concentrates on the activities of the DFG in the period between 1949 and the end of the sixties and on the two major programmes (the so‐called ‘Individual Grants Programme’ and the so‐called ‘Priority Programme’) because until now it has not been known, how many — and more importantly — which studies in which disciplines had been financed by the DFG. All together almost 54.000 studies (36.500 in the ‘Individual Grants Programme’ and 17.400 in the ‘Priority Programmes’) were accomplished with the support of the DFG, whereas — in the ‘Individual Grants Programme’ — less than 3.000 proposals were declined (there are no figures for the ‘Priority Programmes’). Till the end of the seventies the whole amount of money allocated for the ‘Individual Grants Programme’ was not fixed for the different disciplines in advance. Consequently every proposal submitted in the ‘Individual Grants Programme’ had to compete against all others for the overall allocated funds. Who — in other words: which of the disciplines — won this competition? The analysis shows a clear result. With regard to both, the number of successful proposals and the money received, the winner was medical science (with 23 percent of all successful proposals in the ‘Individual Grants Programme’). Chemistry finished second with 15 percent and then biology a distant third (9 percent), followed by physics (8 percent) and agronomy (8 percent). Coming to the ‘Priority Programmes’, which were instituted in the middle of the 1950s, it must first be stated that here the topic is fixed in advance. The broad issue of investigation is devised by the DFG itself or — to be more precise — by the Senate of the DFG. In contrast to the ‘Individual Grants Programme’ the ‘Priority Programme’ can therefore be seen as an important instrument of the politics of research support. This leads to the following question: Which programmes did the DFG establish between 1954 and 1969? In other words: Which research topics or fields were, in the view of the DFG, the most important ones? The database again shows a clear result. Almost 50 percent of the money distributed overall and more than 50 percent of all programmes were benefitted to natural science, another fifth part to engineering technology (which didn't play an important role in the ‘Individual Grants Programme’). Medical science which was the most successful discipline in the ‘Individual Grants Programme’ received 16 percent of the funds. With regard to — first — the number of successful proposals within a Programme, — second — to the money received and — third — to the duration there were three frontrunner programmes: nourishment research, research on water and hydraulic engineering, and aeronautical research. And the humanities? The DFG didn't grant much relief giving only 7 percent to these disciplines.     

Geography’s Emerging Cross‐Disciplinary Links: Process,Causes, Outcomes and Challenges

In Australian universities the discipline of Geography has been the pace‐setter in forging cross‐disciplinary links to create multidisciplinary departments and schools, well ahead of other disciplines in humanities, social sciences and sciences, and also to a greater extent than in comparable overseas university systems. Details on all cross‐disciplinary links and on immediate outcomes have been obtained by surveys of all heads of departments/schools with undergraduate Geography programs. These programs have traced their own distinctive trajectories, with ramifying links to cognate fields of enquiry, achieved through mergers, transfers, internal initiatives and, more recently, faculty‐wide restructuring to create supradisciplinary schools. Geography’s ‘exceptionalism’ has proved short‐lived. Disciplinary flux is now extending more widely within Australian universities, driven by a variety of internal and external forces, including: intellectual questioning and new ways of constituting knowledge; technological change and the information revolution; the growth of instrumentalism and credentialism, and managerialism and entre‐preneurial imperatives; reinforced by a powerful budgetary squeeze. Geographers are proving highly adaptive in pursuit of cross‐disciplinary connections, offering analytical tools and selected disciplinary insights useful to non‐geographers. However, this may be at cost to undergraduate programs focussing on Geography’s intellectual core. Whereas formerly Geography had high reproductive capacity but low instrumental value it may now be in a phase of enhanced utility but perilously low reproductive capacity.     

Environmental History within a Revitalized Integrative Research Methodology for Today and Tomorrow

Abstract

In the past decades, historians and scientists worldwide have focused intensively on researching and recording the micro and macro trends of the environmental history of many places with reference to numerous aspects of nature that involve people. Yet no definite methodology, epistemology or even theory has resulted from these research contributions, which were and are being conducted within disciplinary and sometimes interdisciplinary frameworks. The transdisciplinary research approach, at least as practiced by historians, is a ‘newcomer’, although it features familiar criteria. For several reasons, some historians appear to be neither in favour of, nor familiar with, research co-operation with other disciplines, private practitioners or informed community members. There are obstacles to using a research methodology that complements the interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary approach, especially the grey areas of research quality, source validity, methodology and publication value. However, if approached constructively and meaningfully, transdisciplinary research may result in what we could call higher-order research because it is all-inclusive and can provide diverse perspectives on any theme, for example, environmental history. This article discusses the possibility of progressing towards ‘transdisciplinary’ as part of an integrative multidisciplinary approach in research on environmental history. An integrative multidisciplinary (‘triangular’) research model is proposed, especially for use by historians and others who want to approach environmental research from disciplinary, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary perspectives. It is also hoped that this discussion will stimulate the debate by historians on research co-operation with the social sciences and humanities, as well as collaboration with non-related sciences in environmental history.     

Re‐creating ‘Dutchness’: cultural colonisation in post‐war Holland

Abstract. Following the liberation of the Netherlands from German occupation in 1945, many Dutch intellectuals were seriously concerned about the moral comportment of the Dutch in particular its youth. In their view, the war led to a sapping of norms, values and virtues they deemed ‘typically Dutch’ which could bring about complete social disintegration. Therefore, they launched campaigns to reinstate the ‘old ways’. Based on what they believed to be the nation's authentic folk culture and character, they attempted to culturally colonise the Dutch. This article describes and analyses various forms of this institutional cultural nationalism in the second part of the 1940s.