Between Two Scholarly Cultures: Reflections on the Reorganization of the East German Historical Profession after 1990

Abstract

Studies of the East German historical profession and what became of it after 1990—which are now numerous—have primarily dealt with institutes in Berlin affiliated with the Akademie der Wissenschaften or the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (SED). Little attention has been paid to the academic institutions where most of the German Democratic Republic's historians and history teachers received their scholarly and political training, namely the history departments of the country's universities and the teachers' colleges (pädagogische Hochschulen). In this essay, in which I draw in part upon my personal experiences, I will therefore be less concerned with the well-researched “nerve centers” of the East German research establishment than with the long-neglected “academic provinces” and the everyday realities of academic life that, however absurd they might seem in hindsight, shaped the experiences of countless students, instructors, and professors.