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There are two messages below:
1)
Submitted by: Gerald D. Feldman <gfeld@uclink.berkeley.edu>
[re yesterday's posting by Gerald Feldman]
Dear Colleagues,
Please forgive me for turning Hartmut Lehmann into "Herbert." I
can't even figure out where the Herbert came from!
Gerald D. Feldman
2)
Submitted by: Mitchell Ash <ash@mailmac.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de>
This is in response to Marion Gray's posting regarding the proposal to
close the Max Planck Institut fuer Geschichte in Goettingen.
I share Prof. Gray's dismay at this news, but not her analysis of what is
happening. Since the three other institutes slated for closing are in
astronomy, biology and behavioral research - the latter being the
institute at Seewiesen founded for Konrad Lorenz in the 1950s - the
proposal plainly does not reflect any lessening of Germany's commitment to
the humanities, however strong or weak that commitment may currently be.
As the statement sent to the institutes themselves makes plain,
considerations of content are not at issue. Rather, the move appears to
be based on strictly formal and financial criteria. The primary formal
criterion seems to be whether the current institute director is slated for
retirement in the next few years. The thinking seems to be that when the
director retires, the institute can expediently be closed - with
settlements paid to the remaining staff, if any.
The financial issue is, of course, the need to save money in a time of
fiscal austerity. The Max Planck Society, Germany's premier scientific
research organisation, is perhaps less affected by the current fiscal
crisis than other institutions, but its President, Hubert Markl, formerly
head of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and President of the
Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences, is under pressure to do his bit.
My impression is that he is trying to achieve that while making as few
waves as possible within the Society itself. Since I am of course
unfamiliar with the internal workings of the MPG, this is no more than a
semi-educated guess on my part.
As Prof. Gray notes, at present it is not yet certain that the Senate of
the MPG will actually approve the closings. Let us hope that a more
reasonable solution can be found that does not put an end to a long
tradition of innovative research in history.
Mitchell G. Ash
Department of History
University of Iowa
currently Visiting Scholar, Max Planck Institute
for History of Science, Berlin
 Humanities & Social Sciences Online 
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