"...wir sagen ab der internationalen Gelehrtenrepublik"? -- Germany's International Academic Relations between 1933-1945: Scientific transfer and cooperation practices between autarchy and hegemony for the example of philosophy and philology

• Applicants: Professorin Dr. Andrea Albrecht; Professor Dr. Lutz Danneberg
• Subject Area: German Literary and Cultural Studies (Modern German Literature) ; History of Philosophy ; History of Science
• Term: from 2016 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 313271404

The project, which has been funded since July 2016, reconstructs the academic relations between National Socialist Germany and the rest of the world in the period between 1933 and 1945, i.e. under the conditions of a strongly restricted and politically controlled scientific system. In the early years of the Nazi regime, a concept of the sciences and humanities was propagated that was extremely critical of the 'internationality' of the sciences; instead, a particularist conception of science was favoured, in which 'ethnic' location ties and racial-biological characteristics of the knowledge carriers were to determine the genesis and validity of knowledge. The international scientific community harshly criticized both the outward-looking isolation from Western influences and the inward-looking "cleansing" of the people, which had forced numerous scientists and scholars critical of the regime and/or of Jewish decent to emigrate since 1933. Nevertheless, scientific relations between Germany and abroad remained extraordinarily intensive, which hardly changed with the incipient war preparations. The political agitation against international scientific contacts even ebbed noticeably from the late 1930s onwards; instead of international contacts, more and more bilateral cooperations took the place of international ones, which gained further momentum as a result of the first successes in the war. Efforts at self-sufficiency and expansion led to modifications in the NS concept of science, which now combined explicitly formulated claims to hegemony with an aggressive European ideology and developed exclusive infrastructures and cooperation formats for this purpose. We examine the 'internationality' of the philologies and philosophy, above all by means of scientific journals, international conferences and congresses as well as individual travel activities. The material basis of our project is an extensive publication database and archive materials from the Reich Ministry of Education and the Federal Foreign Office. We apply for the continuation of our project primarily for the evaluation of these extensive archival materials, which, consisting of travel applications, permits, bans, and reports, allow comprehensive documentation of the travel activities of German scholars. The project group consists of Berlin and Heidelberg philologists and philosophers, including two doctoral students, and cooperates with renowned contemporary historians and historians of other scientific disciplines.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants