Hamburg Institute for Social Research

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Logo of the HIS

The Hamburg Institute for Social Research (HIS), founded in 1984, is an independent social science and contemporary history research facility supported by a foundation of the same name. In the two research groups “Macro-violence” and “Democracy and Statehood” as well as a large number of individual projects, the institute concentrates “on the dialogue, above all, humanities disciplines in the field of empirical social research , historical analysis and social science theory formation”.

The HIS also includes the Hamburger Edition publishing house , the Mittelweg 36 magazine , an archive and a library. In addition to publications, the institute also goes public with conferences, meetings and events.

On April 2, 2015, the Göttingen sociologist Wolfgang Knöbl took up the position of director of the HIS. In the management role, he replaced Jan Philipp Reemtsma , who retired after 30 years.

On October 4, 2018, the Hamburg Institute for Social Research awarded the Siegfried Landshut Prize, which will now be awarded annually for the first time . The first prize winner was the British sociologist Michael Mann . The name is reminiscent of the German-Jewish political scientist and political sociologist Siegfried Landshut , who died 50 years ago . It is awarded for outstanding work in the research fields in which the HIS is active, violence research, democracy and statehood, as well as questions on contemporary capitalism.

history

Beginnings

Jan Philipp Reemtsma founded the HIS in Hamburg in 1984 with funds from his inheritance and was a managing director from its foundation until the end of March 2015. In the year it was founded, the first programmatic institute was published. In addition to Reemtsma, Helmut Dahmer , Ernest Mandel , Margarete Mitscherlich-Nielsen , Jakob Moneta and Alice Schwarzer contributed to this publication; these five authors formed the advisory board until 1987. An Institute aim was and is to conduct explanatory promote thinking about society and the individual. Initially, the HIS was located in Laufgraben 37 in Hamburg-Rotherbaum , in 1986 it was moved to Mittelweg 36 in the same district.

Initially, the HIS only funded individual projects and was theoretically oriented towards analytical social psychology . That was a wrong path, the institute founder said later. In retrospect, the institute's early years are considered “chaotic”. In the academic milieu , the HIS was initially ridiculed, there it was considered “a hobby of a non-specialist, a millionaire [...]. That has changed over time ”.

Exhibitions on Wehrmacht crimes

The institute became known to the general public through its " Wehrmacht Exhibition " - the two well-received traveling exhibitions on the participation of the Wehrmacht in Nazi crimes during the Second World War in the Soviet Union and in the Balkans . The first exhibition with the title “War of Extermination. Crimes of the Wehrmacht 1941 to 1944 ”was opened in March 1995. Initially, the "Wehrmacht Exhibition" was only intended as a smaller exhibition alongside a larger one. However, it quickly generated intense debate among audiences and the media. The German Bundestag also dealt with the exhibition on March 13, 1997, as did some state parliaments. After criticism arose of, among other things, incorrect information about the assignment of some of the photos shown , the HIS withdrew this exhibition at the end of 1999. A commission of historians examined the allegations and found that the criticism of the exhibition was at least partially justified. The exhibition contains “factual errors”, “inaccuracies and carelessness in the use of the material” and “all too general and suggestive statements”. However, the criticism of the assignment of the images is justified for less than 20 of 1433 photos. The HIS then conceived a new exhibition on the subject, entitled “Crimes of the Wehrmacht. Dimensions of the War of Extermination 1941–1944 ”from 2001 to 2004. The historian Hans-Ulrich Thamer judged in retrospect that the presentation had caused a “change in consciousness” in Germany, that it had “destroyed the legend of the clean Wehrmacht”.

Central objects of investigation

From 1992 to 1997 there were four subject areas in which research was carried out, from 1997 to 2012/2013 these activities were organized in three work areas: "The Society of the Federal Republic" (headed by Heinz Bude ), "Nation and Society" (headed by Ulrich Bielefeld ) and “Theory and History of Violence” (headed by Bernd Greiner ).

In particular, Holocaust and genocide research received impulses from contributions from the HIS. These include Michael Wildt's work on the leadership corps of the Reich Security Main Office , Gudrun Schwarz's study on the wives of SS men, Ulrike Jureit's study on “the organization of rooms” and Alison Des Forges ' presentation of the genocide in Rwanda , which is published in the Hamburg edition in German Translation appeared.

What forms the “legacy of violence” of World War II took in the Cold War was the subject of a comprehensive research project at HIS. In this context, the institute organized an eight-part conference sequence between 2003 and 2011; the Hamburg edition published six anthologies from 2006 to 2013 under the series title “Studies on the Cold War”.

Since the late 1990s, the HIS has been researching issues such as exclusion , precariousness and the welfare state . A series of conferences were held on these topics, for example on “Exclusion, dispensable, superfluous” (February 2000), “Dimensions and perspectives of precarity research” (April 2012) or “Working in the job center. Between Demand and Excessive Demand ”(May 2013) A number of books presented the results of research, for example Heinz Bude's analysis of socially excluded or Berthold Vogel's study of conflicts of wealth. The HIS participates in the project "Hamburg - City for All". The journal Mittelweg 36 documented the debate on the question of exclusion intensively.

The HIS also made contributions to the controversies surrounding the 1968 movement and left-wing terrorist groups, in particular through the work of Wolfgang Kraushaar .

Current research

Since 2013, the scientific work has been organized in three research groups: "Crisis and Transformation of Empires", "Post-War Times" and "Future Production". The speakers of the research groups change annually. In addition, research takes place in individual projects.

Crisis and transformation of empires

The research group “Crisis and Transformation of Empires” examines the adaptability of the rich with their simultaneity of promises of participation and inequality . She pays special attention to processes in the periphery of empires, especially in phases of severe crises, change and uncertainty. She empirically deepens the corresponding questions for the British , Russian and Soviet as well as the Spanish and Portuguese empires.

Post-war times

The research group “Post-War Times” asks how post-war societies deal with the legacy of mass violence and how stable conditions emerge, although social, economic, cultural and normative pre-war certainties are called into question. She is particularly interested in political experiments to contain violence and to develop specific ideas and institutions to overcome it. The study period ranges from the early modern period to the present, the geographical scope from Central Europe to the global south , with the European-Atlantic area in the foreground.

Future production

The research group “Future Production” analyzes how the future is thought and produced in contemporary societies . She pays special attention to modes of describing the future that arise in the individual, economic or political context in phases of change and uncertainty, when certainties are called into question and planning as a mode of dealing with the future becomes critical. How the future of society is produced against this background and what possible and probable developments are to be expected is the focus of the relevant research.

Single projects

In addition to investigations in research and working groups, employees of the HIS advance many individual projects on sociological or historical topics. These projects include, for example, research on the sociology of European money, the health economy , labor justice , sexual violence in wars or the liberalism of the interwar period .

Events

The HIS regularly organizes scientific conferences, meetings and workshops on its research subjects. Such events include the interdisciplinary Berlin Colloquia on Contemporary History , which have been held four times a year since 2010. The HIS is the sole organizer of these formats or cooperates with other institutions such as the Einstein Forum , the Helmut Schmidt University / University of the Federal Armed Forces Hamburg or the “AG Social Hamburg”. The Frankfurt Institute for Social Research ( Frankfurt am Main ), HIS and the Munich Collaborative Research Center Reflexive Modernization jointly organized the conference “Return of Social Theory. Critical Social Research in Controversy ”, which dealt with the changing understanding of society and the topicality of social theory.

Furthermore, the HIS regularly conducts lecture series, individual lectures and discussion events. For example, employees of the HIS and external speakers have been reporting on their current research since 1999 in the so-called institute montages. The political dispute has been taking place in public in the Schaubühne on Lehniner Platz since 2012 . HIS employees also go public with readings and presentations of their books.

The research setting and the presentation of research results are often not restricted to one discipline. For example, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research funded a project on life in social transformation processes ( Über Leben im Umbruch ) as part of its program "Humanities in Dialogue" , in which, in addition to the HIS, the Humboldt University of Berlin , the Sociology Department of the University of Kassel , the Brandenburg-Berlin Institute for Social Science Studies , the Thünen Institute for Regional Development and the Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin were involved. In this project, the conditions in the former industrial city of Wittenberge were examined artistically and socially. Actors performed several plays in cooperation with the Gorki Theater.

From 1994 to 2004, the HIS also presented exhibitions on various topics, people and events.

Archive and institute library

archive

The archive, open to the research projects of the HIS and the interested public, was founded in 1988. It collects different sources on various topics of contemporary history, in particular on the subject of protest movements . The source categories include files , gray literature , magazines, posters and photos .

The special collection “Protest, Resistance and Utopia in the Federal Republic of Germany”, which has existed since 1988, currently has a total of 1,300 shelf meters (as of 2014). In this context, the HIS archive houses collections and files from people such as Rudi Dutschke , Birgitta Wolf , Konrad Tempel and Arie Goral-Sternheim . Such documents can also be found on groups, institutions or phenomena such as the KBW , the Socialist Lawyers' Collective , Commune I or the Kinderladen movement. The extensive inventory of the Red Army Fraction includes around 100 meters of shelf space (as of 2014). This and other material is considered "the largest collection of documents on German terrorism outside of the Federal Criminal Police Office ".

The number of archived posters is more than 9,000 (as of 2012), around 6,000 are digitized (as of 2014). They date from 1950 to 2010. The number of photos is around 350,000 (as of 2014); in many cases they document the history of protest in the Federal Republic. The corresponding collection by photographer Günter Zint is part of the HIS archive.

In the 1990s, the HIS archived sources on the subjects of mass violence in the 20th century, National Socialism and the crimes of the Wehrmacht in World War II, as well as sources from empirical social research since the turn of the millennium. The reason for the collection of these holdings is the research focus at HIS. Another source corpus consists of archived internal documents.

Library

The institute's reference library , which was set up in 1984 and is open to the public, holds around 45,000 print and online media, including 260 subscription journals. Users can also search in 30 databases (as of 2014). The task of the social science special library is to support the scientists working at HIS and other institute areas. The media inventory grows annually by around 1500 units. The library catalog is a full member of the joint library network .

Extensive collections can be found on wars and the history of violence in the 20th century, for example on the Holocaust , Stalinism , conflicts in the Cold War , the Middle East conflict , the Vietnam War , the genocide in Rwanda or the conflicts in former Yugoslavia . A large collection area is publications on the subject of the welfare state, social policy , labor market , working conditions, precariousness and social exclusion. In addition to the above-mentioned collection areas, there are larger holdings on the subjects of reparation and politics of the past , politics of Germany , nation and nationalism , xenophobia , anti-Semitism , right-wing radicalism , politics of foreigners , refugee politics , asylum politics , ethnicity and migration. Another focus of the collection is literature on social movements , new social movements and protest movements in the Federal Republic of Germany. This area complements the archive's collecting tasks. Until the 1990s, the library also collected research on science and technology .

Publishing house and magazine

The Hamburger Edition HIS Verlagsges. mbH , Hamburger Edition for short , is the science publisher of the HIS, in whose premises it is based. Since it was founded in 1994, it has published 190 titles by 149 authors (as of April 2014).

Mittelweg 36 is a German social science and contemporary history journal published by HIS. The magazine, which is named after the postal address of the institute, has been published every two months since 1992, and since 1994 in the Hamburg edition .

Media coverage

The HIS is widely represented in the media through guest contributions by employees in newspapers or magazines, through expert interviews, through reporting on events and through book reviews.

In 2009, on the occasion of its 25th anniversary, the daily newspaper said that the HIS had "developed into one of the most influential intellectual places in Germany". The Neue Zürcher Zeitung gave a similar assessment and said that the HIS was “among the institutes that work historically and sociologically in Germany, the one with the greatest public impact and the most keen eye for critical social developments”. The Germany radio pointed to the scientific achievements: the HIS had "made mainly with research on violence in the 20th century a name." The Deutsche Welle ruled that the HIS has an “excellent reputation”, many of its researchers “teach at universities in Germany and abroad and some of them hold visiting professorships. A scholarship or participation in the HIS is an important building block for the career of young scientists ”. In November 2012, on the occasion of Jan Philipp Reemtsma's 60th birthday, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung said that the HIS is the “only institute for social research in Germany that successfully follows on from the tradition of critical theory , because it is only that takes what it takes for his research into the history of the twentieth century and the society of the Federal Republic ”. The Hamburger Abendblatt also wrote in 2012 that the HIS is today “accepted as an independent voice in the scientific community” after it was “critically eyed” by the universities in the early years. Three years earlier this newspaper stated that the institute had become a “rich source of knowledge”.

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Website of the Hamburg Institute for Social Research (accessed on January 10, 2016).
  2. Wolfgang Knöbl. Hamburg Institute for Social Research, accessed on July 11, 2018 .
  3. Wolfgang Knöbl becomes director of the Hamburg Institute for Social Research ( Memento from June 3, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), HIS press release from February 23, 2015.
  4. Reemtsma says goodbye with a lecture on violence , Deutschlandradio Kultur from June 5, 2015, accessed June 12, 2015
  5. Questions of the greatest urgency . In: The daily newspaper: taz . October 2, 2018, ISSN  0931-9085 , p. 27 ePaper 23 North ( taz.de [accessed on October 3, 2018]).
  6. ^ Hamburg Institute for Social Research: Siegfried Landshut Lectures. Archived from the original on October 3, 2018 ; accessed on October 3, 2018 .
  7. Sociologist Michael Mann is the first award winner , boersenblatt.de of September 24, 2018, accessed January 20, 2020
  8. Hamburg Institute for Social Research 1984, (Hamburg) 1984.
  9. Tom Schimmeck : pupil and heir. Jan Phil. Reemtsma , in TransAtlantik 1/1985.
  10. a b Heide Soltau: From Marx to Migration Research , Deutsche Welle, June 9, 2009 (accessed on September 11, 2014).
  11. The Oracle of the Middle Way - the Hamburg Institute for Social Research celebrates its 25th birthday . Radio broadcast in the series IQ - Science and Research from Bavaria 2 , July 8, 2009.
  12. Wolfgang Bonß in Das Orakel vom Mittelweg - the Hamburg Institute for Social Research celebrates its 25th birthday . Radio broadcast in the series IQ - Science and Research from Bavaria 2 , July 8, 2009.
  13. On the significance of the Wehrmacht exhibitions for the institute, see, for example, Irene Armbruster: Arbitrariness am Mittelweg. The HIS, donated by Jan Philipp Reemtsma, has become an integral part of the public discourse , in: Aufbau , February 2011, pp. 25–27.
  14. Title: 200 Days and 1 Century . It addressed the time and hopes between the liberation of Auschwitz (January 27, 1945) and the day of Japan's surrender in World War II . See for example Dieter Scholz: World and home history of violence , in Critical Reports Vol. 23, No. 4 (1995), pp. 78-82.
  15. Minutes of the contributions to the debate , here pp. 14708–14730 (accessed on September 11, 2014).
  16. See Wehrmacht exhibition: Many enemies, many friends, a pause for thought four years on the road , in: Der Tagesspiegel , November 15, 2000 (accessed on September 6, 2014).
  17. ^ Omer Bartov, Cornelia Brink , Gerhard Hirschfeld, Friedrich P. Kahlenberg, Manfred Messerschmidt, Reinhard Rürup, Christian Streit, Hans-Ulrich Thamer: Report of the commission to review the exhibition “War of Extermination. Crimes of the Wehrmacht 1941 to 1944 ”. (PDF; 379.4 kB) HIS - Hamburg Institute for Social Research, November 2000, accessed on July 11, 2018 .
  18. Anne Lena Mösken: “Focus on the perpetrators”. New memory spaces in the pictures of the Wehrmacht exhibition , in: Inge Stephan, Alexandra Tacke (Ed.): NachBilder des Holocaust , Böhlau, Cologne [u. a.] 2007, pp. 235-253, here p. 238, ISBN 3-412-22506-1 .
  19. Quoted from millionaire Jan Philipp Reemtsma turns 60 , in: Rheinische Post online, November 25, 2012 (accessed September 11, 2014).
  20. ^ The "Science and Criticism" section was given up in September 1997. See projects, events, publications 1996–1999 , Hamburg Institute for Social Research, December 1997, p. 47.
  21. For his research activities and publications, see the relevant information ( Memento of May 1, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) on the HIS website (accessed on August 22, 2014).
  22. Information on the research areas and lines according to Harald Welzer : Die Impulsgeber. The Hamburg Institute for Social Research is celebrating its 25th birthday , in: Jüdische Allgemeine , July 2, 2009.
  23. Generation of the unconditional. The leadership corps of the Reich Security Main Office . Hamburger Edition, Hamburg 2002, ISBN 3-930908-75-1 .
  24. A woman by his side. Wives in the "SS clan community" , Hamburger Edition, Hamburg, 1997, ISBN 978-3-930908-32-5 .
  25. The arrangement of rooms. Territory and habitat in the 19th and 20th centuries , Hamburger Edition, Hamburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-86854-248-6 .
  26. No witness is allowed to survive. The genocide in Rwanda . 1st edition. Hamburger Edition, Hamburg 2002, ISBN 3-930908-80-8 (American English: Leave none to tell the story . Translated by Jürgen Bauer).
  27. The studies by Wildt, Schwartz and Des Forges are mentioned by Harald Welzer: Die Impulsgeber. The Hamburg Institute for Social Research is celebrating its 25th birthday , in: Jüdische Allgemeine , July 2nd, 2009. For Jureit see David Kuchenbuch: Review of: Jureit, Ulrike: The order of rooms. Territory and habitat in the 19th and 20th centuries. Hamburg 2012 , in: H-Soz-u-Kult , May 29, 2014.
  28. Information on the project ( Memento from May 1, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) on the HIS website (accessed on September 9, 2014).
  29. ^ Event report ( memento from May 1, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) on the HIS website (accessed on September 26, 2014).
  30. Conference program ( Memento from May 1, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) on the HIS website (accessed on September 26, 2014).
  31. Program of the conference ( Memento of May 8, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) on the HIS website (accessed on September 26, 2014).
  32. The excluded. The end of the dream of a just society , Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-446-23011-8 . See the review notes on Perlentaucher (accessed September 26, 2014).
  33. ↑ Conflicts of prosperity. Social questions that come from the center , Hamburger Edition, Hamburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-86854-200-4 . See the discussion in WSI Mitteilungen 3/2010 (accessed on September 20, 2014) and the review in the Archive for Social History from January 20, 2010 (accessed on September 20, 2014).
  34. ^ Project website (accessed September 10, 2014).
  35. See Hilde von Balluseck: Review of August 13, 2009 on: Heinz Bude, Andreas Willisch (Ed.): Exclusion. The “superfluous” debate. Suhrkamp Verlag (Frankfurt / M.) 2008. Orig.-Ausg., 1st edition. 335 pages. ISBN 978-3-518-29419-2 . In: socialnet reviews , ISSN  2190-9245 (accessed on August 19, 2014).
  36. ^ Directory of Kraushaar's publications ( Memento of May 2, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) on the HIS website (accessed on September 11, 2014).
  37. ^ Regine Klose-Wolf, Silke Greve, Una Gebhard: Foreword , in: Hamburg Institute for Social Research: Projects, Events, Publications 2012–2015 ( Memento from May 1, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), Hamburg, April 2014, p. 7 f .
  38. Overview of research groups, working groups and individual projects ( Memento from May 1, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) on the HIS website (accessed on August 22, 2014).
  39. Hamburg Institute for Social Research: Projects, Events, Publications 2012–2015 ( Memento from May 1, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), Hamburg, April 2014, p. 18.
  40. Hamburg Institute for Social Research: Projects, Events, Publications 2012–2015 ( Memento from May 1, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), Hamburg, April 2014, p. 20 f.
  41. Hamburg Institute for Social Research: Projects, Events, Publications 2012–2015 ( Memento from May 1, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), Hamburg, April 2014, p. 24 f.
  42. Short descriptions can be found in the regular reports of the HIS ( projects, events, publications ).
  43. Berlin Colloquia on Contemporary History. A project by the Hamburg Institute for Social Research in cooperation with the Einstein Forum, Potsdam. Einstein Forum , accessed on July 11, 2018 .
  44. ^ Website of the AG .
  45. See the corresponding section on such events in: Hamburg Institute for Social Research: Projects, Events, Publications 2012–2015 ( Memento of May 1, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), Hamburg, April 2014, pp. 112–145.
  46. Information on the Collaborative Research Center (accessed September 11, 2014).
  47. ^ Website of the event (accessed September 11, 2014).
  48. See the overview ( Memento of August 30, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) on the HIS website (accessed on August 23, 2014).
  49. See the corresponding section in: Hamburg Institute for Social Research: Projects, Events, Publications 2012–2015 ( Memento from May 1, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), Hamburg, April 2014, pp. 148–151 as well as the information ( Memento from 20. October 2015 in the Internet Archive ) of the HIS website (accessed on 23 August 2014).
  50. Information on the series on the Schaubühne website (accessed on September 11, 2014)
  51. See the overview ( Memento of August 30, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) on the HIS website (accessed on August 23, 2014).
  52. ^ Project website (accessed September 19, 2014).
  53. See also Detlef Baum: Review of November 25, 2011 on: Heinz Bude, Thomas Medicus, Andreas Willisch (ed.): ÜberLeben im Umbruch. Hamburger Edition (Hamburg) 2011. 350 pages. ISBN 978-3-86854-233-2 in: socialnet reviews , ISSN  2190-9245 (accessed on September 11, 2014).
  54. See the overview ( memento of October 9, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) on the HIS website (accessed on August 23, 2014).
  55. a b c Information about the archive on the HIS website (accessed on August 24, 2014).
  56. For the archive, see also the description on the website of the foundation archives in Germany (accessed on August 24, 2014).
  57. ^ Author Birgitta Wolf died at the age of 96 ( dpa report), Weser-Kurier , April 29, 2009.
  58. a b c Reinhart Schwarz: The archive of the Hamburg Institute for Social Research , in: Hamburg Institute for Social Research: Projects, Events, Publications 2012–2015 ( Memento from May 1, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), Hamburg, April 2014, p. 98 -102.
  59. a b Irene Jung: Productive source of knowledge , Hamburger Abendblatt, July 2, 2009.
  60. ^ Projects, events, publications 2010–2013 , Hamburg Institute for Social Research, April 2012, p. 56.
  61. Information on the library according to the HIS website (accessed on August 24, 2014).
  62. Information on the order on the HIS website (accessed on August 24, 2014).
  63. ^ A b Gudrun Döllner: The library of the Hamburg Institute for Social Research , in: Hamburg Institute for Social Research: Projects, Events, Publications 2012–2015 ( Memento from May 1, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), Hamburg, April 2014, p. 104– 107.
  64. Information on literature on the Balkan conflict from the library of the Hamburg Institute for Social Research (Flyer, as of April 2010).
  65. Birgit Otte: 20 Years Hamburger Edition , in: Hamburg Institute for Social Research: Projects, Events, Publications 2012–2015 ( Memento from May 1, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), Hamburg, April 2014, pp. 70–73, here p. 71; see also the publisher's program Hamburger Edition. Fall 2014 , pp. 14-17.
  66. https://web.archive.org/web/20140307155422/https://www.his-online.de/nc/presse/das-his-in-den-medien/
  67. Jan Feddersen : Civil society is dancing! , die tageszeitung, June 6, 2009 (accessed August 25, 2014).
  68. Joachim Güntner: Interesting foundation of a rich eccentric , Neue Zürcher Zeitung, June 30, 2009.
  69. Ursula Storost: Friend, Competitor or Threat , broadcast on July 9, 2009 (accessed on August 24, 2014).
  70. Jürgen Kaube : Of wolves and civilized people , in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, November 26, 2012.
  71. ^ Lutz Wendler: Reemtsma becomes Slovenia's honorary consul , Hamburger Abendblatt, March 15, 2012.

Coordinates: 53 ° 34 ′ 9.1 ″  N , 9 ° 59 ′ 41.2 ″  E