The History of the German Association of Historians and the German Historians Conference since 1948

Basic data for this project

Description

Except for the United States, no country in the world possesses a historians association of such lasting continuity and high political and social influence as that of the Federal Republic of Germany with her predecessor s states. Surprisingly, the history of this association, founded in 1895, has not been studied up to now, whereas smaller national historians associations and other historical institutions have long been explored by their respective historiographers. The task of the Verband der Historiker und Historikerinnen Deutschlands not only consists in routinely organising the biggest European humanities congress, the Historikertag, which first took place in 1893 and for the 49th time in 2012. The Association also protected the interests of the field and represented it in public: it allowed for internal communication among historians, was part of the disciplination and institutionalisation process in the field, created international connections, addressed present-day questions, and competed for scanty educational resources in the History department of universities and schools; thus, it also acted as a venue for conflicts with politics. Above all else, the Association s archive, which spans from 1948 to the present day, gives valuable insight into internal decision-making processes with regard to the field, into processes of networking as well as the planning of the Historians Conference, including the decisions about admission and non-admission of sections and talks. These questions deserve to be addressed in a problem-oriented historical analysis of the Association. The project narrowly cooperates with a research project in Berlin and Potsdam treating the period between 1893 and the end of national socialism and focuses on latest contemporary history spanning from 1945 to the present.