German Commission for Intellectual Cooperation

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The German Commission for Spiritual Cooperation or, officially, the German National Committee for Spiritual Cooperation was founded in 1928 so that institutions and personalities of the German Reich were represented in organizations of the League of Nations . It existed without formal dissolution until 1936.

history

Reich President Hindenburg issued a decree on March 28, 1928 that 50 personalities from government, art and science were to represent German interests in the League of Nations in this commission. She belonged to the division of the Reich Ministry of the Interior , and since 1927 Adolf Morsbach was General Secretary . Its president was first Albert Einstein , then the physicist Max Planck . Fritz Haber and Thomas Mann were among many others who were appointed for a period of three years by the Reich Minister of the Interior in coordination with the Reich Minister of Foreign Affairs . When it was founded, the German commission had its seat in the Berlin Palace in Portal III. In 1932, 36 younger members were appointed to make the previously unproductive work more effective. A temporary staff in the Secretariat was the later DAAD -directors Kurt Goepel (1901-66).

The commission worked with the International Commission for Intellectual Cooperation (German member: Einstein), which had its seat in Geneva . There was also a collaboration with the International Institute for Intellectual Cooperation , which had been based in Paris since 1926 . Specific goals were to set up the International Archives Office or to increase the exchange of letters to students. But the Foreign Ministry tended to pursue the line of pushing back French influence and increasing German influence. When Germany left the League of Nations in autumn 1933, further cooperation was open.

Morsbach came close to the Röhm affair in 1934 and thus became meaningless. Goepel was still in charge of the International Museum Conference planned for 1935; his work for the German Commission was already integrated into his work at the DAAD . Correspondence continued until 1936, but the commission disappeared without official dissolution.

Before this commission there was an institution with the same name in the German Reich, which existed until the 1920s.

literature

  • Overview 1932
  • Reich Ministry of the Interior: Handbook for the German Reich , 35 (1931), p. 182
  • Cuno Horkenbach: The German Empire from 1918 to today , Berlin 1930
  • Matthias Bode: The Foreign Cultural Administration of the Early Federal Republic: An investigation into its establishment , Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2014 ISBN 978-3161522116 (esp. P. 227ff.)
  • Holger Impekoven: The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and Foreign Studies in Germany 1925–1945 , Bonn University Press, Göttingen 2013 ISBN 978-3899718690 (esp. Pp. 95ff. And 174ff.)