Anniversary: One of many ...
... and yet something very special
Dieser Artikel auf Deutsch
By Christian Jansen
Let us imagine the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (AvH) were not an institution but a public figure. On the occasion of his or her 50th birthday, he or she would probably invite all his or her most important comrades-in-arms to a celebratory dinner. This would mean an illustrious gathering, and not just because, in the fifty years of its existence, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation has been active in two different areas - on the one hand, research sponsorship, on the other, foreign cultural relations.
Who would be invited? In my mind's eye, I see ten guests. They have often fought one another but managed to get their act together in the end, at least, that is the impression created by the lively gathering around the lavishlylaid table. In the last decades, they have fought and brawled most over funds, which are always in short supply, but also over staking their claims in research sponsorship and foreign cultural relations. However, they have also frequently pulled together in order to convince the public and the politicians how significant their work is. What an observer of the celebratory dinner would notice first of all would be the homogeneity of the guests' ages: they all belong to one generation, were all born between 1948 and 1961, i.e., in the long years of the Fifties. Too young to belong properly to the "raving 68ers", they are in the best years of their lives, at the peak of power and influence, part of what the sociologist, Heinz Bude, recently called the "Berlin generation": those in their late 40s and early 50s who have the say in the Republic
There is the Max Planck Society, founded in 1948, which is dedicated to basic research, the two sponsoring institutions of German industry, set up in 1949: the Donors' Association for the Promotion of Sciences and Humanities in Germany and the Carl Duisberg Society which, like the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, have made the international exchange of experience their business. Next to them is the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), reborn in 1950, probably the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation's closest contender which, after a tough struggle, has had to content itself with student exchange while the Humboldt Foundation continues to devote itself to seasoned academics.
In the corner are the two offspring of the year 1951: the largest and financially strongest of all - the German Research Society (DFG) - and next door, the Goethe Institute, which is sworn to disseminating the German language throughout the world. Since the year before last, it has been closely liaised with its contemporary, Inter Nationes, an institution which has passed written information and media to and from Germany since 1952 and, in particular, sponsored translation: in 2002 they fused with the Goethe Institute. The Fulbright Programme is the same age as Inter Nationes, a German- American academic exchange programme, just a year older than the host, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Finally, we can see two younger but financially very potent research sponsorship institutions, fed by the fortunes of weighty companies or entrepreneurial families - the Thyssen Foundation, brought into being in 1959, and the Volkswagen Foundation which eventually emerged from complicated negotiations between the Federal Government and the land Lower Saxony in 1961.
Amongst the group of major institutions active in research sponsorship and foreign cultural relations in Germany, which we have brought together in our mind's eye for a celebratory dinner, biographically-speaking, it is possible - if we remain with the personification for a while - to put them into two categories: on the one side, those who have had a colourful family history, first and foremost the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation which was first set up in 1860, then the Max Planck Society, originally established as the Kaiser Wilhelm Society in 1911, and then the German National Merit Foundation, DFG, DAAD, and Donors' Association, most of whom were born with different names in the 1920s. And on the other side, the genuine offspring of the Federal Republic or, rather, the era of the economic miracle: Carl Duisberg Society, Goethe Institute Inter Nationes, Fulbright Commission, Thyssen Foundation, and Volkswagen Foundation.
What are the historical reasons for the remarkable fact that a number of the most important institutions in German research sponsorship and foreign cultural relations are all about the same age, something observant readers of the features' and reviews' sections of the quality press cannot have failed to notice, given the plethora of these institutions' anniversaries and festschrifts during the last few years? The decade, in which the foundations and semipublic institutions cited were born or reborn, is the decade in which the Federal Republic was founded and experienced an unprecedented economic boom. It was the period of successfully building-up a functioning economy and democratic political institutions, it was the period of the developing market economy, Chancellor democracy, Western integration, and systems competition in the era of the Cold War. Following the creation of the Federal Foreign Office ("Auswärtiges Amt") in 1951, the young Federal Republic began to pursue an ever-more independent course in foreign policy, one of the special features of which was the degree of importance allotted to foreign cultural policy. Step by step, it was released from the guardianship of the victors of 1945: starting with the "Treaty of Germany" (1952), via joining the Western European Union (WEU, 1954), the Paris Pacts with entry into NATO (1955), and rearmament, and culminating in the foundation of the European Economic Community (EEC) with the Treaties of Rome in 1957. It was a period of consumerism, very soon of broadly-based affluence, and an evermore confident "we are somebody". But it was also a period of political suppression and, at least subliminally, a bad conscience.
The remarkable accumulation of new and refoundations of institutions geared to encouraging research and international exchange reflects something of each of the facets of the long years of the Fifties already mentioned. Essentially, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and her sisters were an expression of the new self-confidence of West German democracy - new in two senses: on the one hand, as a sign of having regained the ability to act economically and politically, on the other hand, as a profession of loyalty to Western values and disseminating them in the world.
Many of the new foundations were, however, also in the continuity of institutions which had been corrupted in the course of enforced conformity (unfortunately, frequently head-long voluntary conformity) during the Third Reich. By re-founding and re-formulating the respective foundation's objectives people wanted to express the change in political consciousness and the will to start anew. However, in terms of personnel and the respective fields of work they often carried on where their predecessors had left off. What was decisive for the success of the institutions cited, was that they helped train democratic elites for the evolving Federal Republic and thus specifically offered their services to foreign and cultural policy. In the Fifties, in the light of newly-regained sovereignty, growing economic potency, and the systems competition of the Cold War, institutions were created by the state and private industry which were supposed to enable German academics and German students to re-join the international republic of learning. In order for Germany to return to the community of states after the catastrophe of the Second World War and the unprecedented crimes committed by Germans, the academic tradition and the academic potential of the country initially seemed to be the only resources which could be used to meet the rest of the world confidently, without arousing fear and resentment once again.
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