The Göttingen Academy from the First World War to the 1960s

The research project The Göttingen Academy of Sciences from the First World War to the 1960s: Between Elitist Self-Perception and Political Positioning investigated the Academy’s own history, with particular emphasis on the Nazi era. Its central aim was to reconstruct the continuities and ruptures in the Academy’s self-understanding and to contextualise these within its scientific and political environment.

The study also contributed to recent scholarship in the history of science by investigating the Academy’s (and its members’) distinctive self-image as a scientific elite, and how this identity evolved between the First World War and the early Federal Republic. While Göttingen served as a case study, the project remained attentive to local particularities. In addition to the Academy’s research activities, it explored the discourses and practices that structured academic life, including exclusions on racist grounds, politically motivated appointments, and their later partial reversals.

Furthermore, the project examined the Academy’s institutional and personal relationships with other scientific and political actors, as well as the linguistic and behavioural norms that shaped its culture. Five key areas were central to the inquiry: the consequences of Germany’s international isolation after 1918 for the Academy’s self-image and the changes following 1945; the Academy’s response to the rise of new research institutions, such as the Kaiser Wilhelm Society; its positioning with regard to changing research agendas and structures during the Nazi era and the post-war period; the political discourses within the Academy; and the influence of Göttingen’s local context on its self-conception.

Beyond these internal dynamics and external relationships, the project also included case studies of selected Academy members from specific groups, particularly those persecuted for racist reasons or forced out of the Academy, those dismissed after 1945, Academy officeholders, and members holding multiple influential roles.

The project was funded by the State of Lower Saxony as part of the PRO*Niedersachsen programme from 2016 to 2019. It emerged from the Academy Research Commission, which was active from 2014 to 2023 and chaired by Prof. Dr. Dirk Schumann, Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at the University of Göttingen.

The research findings are published in the study Umkämpfte Identitäten: Die Göttinger Akademie und ihre Mitglieder 1914-1965 [Contested Identities: The Göttingen Academy and Its Members 1914-1965] by Désirée Schauz, Wallstein Verlag 2022.