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Submitted by: Alf Luedtke
Luedtke@MPI-G.GWDG.DE
BASIC RESEARCH WITHOUT HISTORY?
THE MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR HISTORY IN GOETTINGEN
THREATENED WITH CLOSURE
The Institute responds
In consideration of the serious financial problems
confronting the Max Planck Society in Germany, the
Society's new president has proposed to close four
of its research centers. Among these would be the
Max Planck Institute for History in Goettingen.
This abrupt decision has startled and deeply
troubled the directors and members of the
Goettingen Institute.
Clearly, difficult decisions face the parent
Society as it seeks ways to reduce costs and to
comply with the downsizing programs stipulated by
the the federal and state governments. But
shutting down the Max Planck Institute for History
as contemplated upon the retirement of its present
directors, in 2004, is the wrong solution. It
would be a devastating signal of German cultural
policy.
Consider the following:
1. The Max Planck Institute for History is a
wholly unique research center for historical
studies in the German Federal Republic. It was
founded by Hermann Heimpel in 1956 and inaugurated
at Goettingen by the the first President of the
Federal Republic, Theodor Heuss. Heimpel's
successors, Josef Fleckenstein and Rudolf Vierhaus
went on to develop important, innovative and
critical research into medieval and modern
history. Their high standards and initiatives
have been retained and extended under the
Institute's present directors, Hartmut Lehmann and
Otto Gerhard Oexle, both leading scholars on their
own accounts. Other leading historians from
within, but especially from outside Germany, and
other research centers in many countries
(including France, Great Britain, Poland, Russia,
and the United States), have engaged in
collaborative projects with the Institute.
Historians from many parts of the world have come
to Goettingen, since the Institute's foundation,
to carry on their research at the Institute.
Since 1988-89 especially, the participation of
researchers from Eastern Europe has dramatically
increased. Many recipients of Alexander von
Humboldt awards for research in Germany choose the
Max Planck Institute for history as the place to
carry on their work. This Institute has become a
stimulating center for the European and worldwide
historical research. Regular members of the
Institute, in addition to their own studies,
organize widely noted international conferences
and symposia held at the institute itself, but
also collaborate with scholars and scholarly
institutions in other countries to sponsor highly
visible historical meetings elsewhere. It has co-
sponsored comparative symposia in the history of
German emigration and of German cultural
interactions with other countries. It has
promoted international studies designed to place
the German historical experience in comparative
perspective. One example of this kind of
international collaboration is the assistance the
Institute provided in developing the Auschwitz
Memorial, and the Institute has continued to
assist the current development of similar
memorials marking extermination camps in Poland.
2. The Institute lays particular weight on its
close and formally organized cooperation with the
French, and more recently the British, historical
professions. For nearly twenty years, the Mission
Historique Francaise en Allemagne, under the
auspices of the French Ministry for Foreign
Affairs, has operated out of the Max Planck
Institute for History in Goettingen; it is
organizationally and intellectually fully
autonomous, but its infrastucture is contractually
established at the Goettingen Institute. This
arrangement has proved to be a model for
productive international cooperation.
The model was succesfully extended in May 1996,
when a consortium of British universities founded
the British Centre for Historical Research in
Germany, also within the organizational structure
and space of the Max Planck Institute for History
at Goettingen. This is the first British
initiative of its kind on the Continent.
Consequently, there is now a multinational
European research center in Germany, and that is
at the Max Planck Institute for History in
Goettingen. To close the Institute at this very
moment would put an end to this pioneering model
of international research and cooperation. It is
incomprehensible that this destructive action
should occur at a time of increasing political
integration of Europe.
3. A reason for the growing international stature
of the Institute at Goettingen is that since its
inception, it has been not only a focal point for
extending our knowledge in established areas of
historical research, but also for pathbreaking,
innovative modes of basic research which have had
a major impact on historical studies
internationally. Such work includes the
sophisticated application of computer technology
to cultural studies, research on the uses of
education in the German Enlightenment, proto-
industrialisation and the historical foundations
of industrial capitalism, the institutions of
medieval society, and the history of the sciences
and their cultures. New interpretive methods have
recently illuminated the medieval culture of
memory and the processes of secularization,
dechristianization and rechristianization in
modern Europe. The application of historical
anthropology to basic research has been developed
distinctively at the Goettingen Institut. Indeed
close scrutiny of the theoretical and
methodological foundations, conditions, and
limitations of historical understanding is an
integral part of all work done at the Institute.
4. Since the appointment of Otto Gerhard Oexle in
1987 and Hartmut Lehmann in 1993, the scope of the
Institute's activities has been further extended.
The physical facilities of the Institute were
greatly enhanced with the acquisition of a
neighboring building, and its extensive and costly
renovation in 1996. Appropriation by the Max
Planck Society met initiatives from the Goettingen
Institute, not only the integration this year of
the British Centre, but also the introduction of
regular "Goettinger Gespraeche zur
Geschichtswissenschaft", an interdisciplinary and
international forum for discussing current
problems of historical and other cultural studies.
It is hard to see how such promising undertakings
have escaped the attention of the President of the
Society in his plan to close down the Institute.
5. We are especially troubled that this
presidential conclusion was reached, as far as we
can tell, without any prior evaluation of the
qualities of the Institute, and certainly without
prior testimony from the directors or members of
the Institute. Neither the new President of the
Max Planck Society nor the its new General
Secretary has thus far even visited the Institute
in Goettingen. The plan to shut it down was
disclosed to the Directors at Munich on October
16, was announced by the President on the
following day, October 17, at the meeting of the
Scientific Council of the Society in Berlin, and
after presentation before the Humanities Section
of the Society, was released to the press on
October 18.
The attempt by both Directors to slow this rush to
judgment, to allow time for a sober evaluation of
the existing situation and for consideration of
the possible consequences of closure, failed at
that time. Compared with the time and trouble the
Max Planck Society takes for the founding of new
research institutes--international commissions,
consultation with numerous committees and foreign
advisers--this experience of the Goettingen
Institute can be deemed, at best, summary justice.
As a sucessfully functioning agency it is entitled
at very least to equal consideration.
6. Nor can the criterion of "Subsidiaeritaet"
(subsidiarity), unnecessary duplication of effort,
cited as grounds for this decision, be considered
any more justified than the procedures; and this
was the single explanation offered by the
President. The closure of the Max Planck
Institute for History in Goettingen would be
painful, he allowed; but historical research was
done in many places in the Federal Republic, so
there was no need for the Max Planck Society,
also, to support a research center in this field.
The obvious answer to this is that the criterion
"Subsidiaeritaet" is so flexibly vague that it
could used at will against other institutes of the
Max Planck Society just as easily. So this cannot
be a valid reason for choosing the Goettingen
Institute for closure. Moreover, it must be
emphasized, research taking place at the
Goettingen Institute is pursued nowhere else in
Germany, and the Institute has taken on functions
in the historical discipline that are performed by
no other facility. So the "Subsidiaeritaet"
argument of redundancy does not even apply.
7. Moreover, within the Max Planck Society
itself, a number of other Institutes have close
relationships with Goettingen, including the
Institute for European Legal History in Frankfurt,
the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome (for art
history), and the newly founded Institute for the
History of Science in Berlin. At each of these
centers there is research at an individual sub-
field of history, but only Goettingen bears the
task of basic research fundamental to all branches
of history. Should this Institute be closed down,
the others must lose their fundamental points of
reference, and a central position in the Max
Planck Society network must essentially break
apart. We cannot imagine how such an action can
be justified.
8. It is the task of historical study critically
to develop and sustain the cultural memory of a
society. The Goettingen Institute fulfills this
task through research into the patterns of thought
and the mentalities of individuals and groups,
examining the forms of their social exchanges and
the institutions that grow out of them. The
suggestion that this Institute should be closed
raises disturbing questions about the
understanding of scholarly scientific endeavor
within the Max Planck Society, and about the
relations among its several elements and among the
forms of knowledge they represent. To these very
ends it would be fatal if the Max Planck Society,
with its structural emphasis on the natural
sciences, should abandon the search for and the
sustainment of our cultural awareness, self-
recognition, and memory. Nowadays more than ever,
we need critically to analyze and to understand
the complex social, spiritual, and economic
transformations of the past centuries out of which
our own has been made. Every day, that task is
reshaped and renewed. But in no other way can the
historic processes of European and global
integration be successfully achieved: only with a
sober understanding of how the past has shaped the
present, and how past and present may shape the
future.
We believe that these inexhaustible objects of
research should be organized within a context of
international scholarly networks. This is the
course upon which the Max Planck Institute for
History has set itself.
On November 22, President Markl will present his
plan for the financial consolidation of the
Society, including the abolition of the Max Planck
Institute for History, before the Senate with his
request for its approval. The Institute seeks
understanding of its mission on the part of the
President, and help and support from the Senate.
The closing down of the Max Planck Institute for
History at Goettingen would be a serious and an
irrevocable error, drastically affecting the
political landscape of the sciences in Germany,
with international consequences.
Goettingen
---------------------------------------------------------------
The people at the Institute feel that at this point letters of
institutions and/or professional associations would be particularly helpful.
They should be sent to:
An den Praesidenten
und den Senat der MPG
Prof. Dr. Hubert Markl
Postfach 101062
D- 80084 Muenchen
fax: ++49-89-2108.1111
Copies to:
Prof. Dr. Lehmann
Max-Planck-Institut fuer Geschichte
Postfach 2833
D- 37018 Goettingen
fax: ++49-551-495670
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