The role of mathematical and scientific student clubs and corporations for knowledge production and scientific culture in Germany, 1850-1970

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Arne Schirrmacher
• Subject Area: History of Science
• Term: from 2010 to 2016
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 163732823

While students and socialization within student institutions is part of the discourse of social, political, gender and cultural history since long, history of science has neglected the question of scientific socialization and learning of epistemic procedures that determined the practice and research cultures of science largely. This project concerning mathematical and scientific student clubs and corporations aims at explaining the role these student groups played, which emerged in the middle of the 19th century in Germany and did not disappear in its scientific role until the late 1960s. On the basis of rich source material a first systematic study analyzes mechanisms of scientific socialization in order to exhibit breaks and continuities that not necessarily have to meet political periodizations. Apart from key student clubs and corporations as organized in association from 1868 on like the Arnstädter Verband mathematischer und naturwissenschaftlicher Vereine, the Goslarer Verband Goslarer Verband naturwissenschaftlicher und medizinischer Vereine or the Akademischen Ingenieur-Verband and since 1910 the Deutschen Wissenschafter Verband scientific student groups and student bodies, that gathered in the years before World War I and in the Weimar Republic shall be considered comparatively. The scientific biographies of involved scientists will be connected to this analysis. As it turns out, although the clubs and corporations were banned after 1935, still either informal groups of old members kept the activity alive or the NS-fraternities were used to keep up the tradition. This, finally, explains how in the early 1950s "new" (old) scientific clubs and corporations reappeared at many universities, which, however, had to face new "dynamic times" (Schildt) even within science and education.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants