Max Planck Institute for History
The Max Planck Institute for History ( MPIG ) in Göttingen was a research facility of the Max Planck Society . It was opened in 1956 as the successor to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for German History in the presence of the then Federal President Theodor Heuss . In 2007 it was transformed into the Max Planck Institute for Research into Multi-Religious and Multi-Ethnic Societies , which is a new establishment in terms of both personnel and content.
The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for German History existed from 1917 to 1944 under the direction of Paul Fridolin Kehr and had four tasks:
- The "historical-statistical description of the Church of the Old Kingdom" ( Germania Sacra )
- the edition of the letters of Kaiser Wilhelm I ,
- the processing of the correspondence of Charles V,
- researching foreign archives for material on German history.
Of these tasks, the Max Planck Institute for History only took on Germania Sacra. The establishment of a historical institute in the Max Planck Society was debated from 1951 and took place in 1956 on the basis of a memorandum by the historian Hermann Heimpel , who became the institute's first director. His memorandum included four main research areas:
- Germania Sacra and comparative national history
- Methodology of the story
- Topics and problems of an overall science from the Middle Ages
- Studies on central questions of the 19th century.
In 1971 Josef Fleckenstein and Rudolf Vierhaus succeeded Heimpel as directors of the institute, at the head of the Medieval and Modern Era departments. In 1990 they were followed by Otto Gerhard Oexle (Middle Ages Department) and Hartmut Lehmann (Modern Age Department). Both directors retired in 2004.
Since the 1970s, the MPI for History has undergone a reorientation, which manifested itself primarily in the areas of everyday history, historical anthropology , as well as in the history of mentalities and "history as historical cultural studies" (Otto Gerhard Oexle). Identity and memory, the "reconstruction" of historical experiences and living environments became central research interests.
The MPI for History hosted a number of international missions:
- the Mission Historique Française en Allemagne ,
- the British Center for Historical Research in Germany and
- the Polish Historical Mission .
The International Max Planck Research School "Values and Value Change in the Middle Ages and Modern Times" was affiliated to the MPIG .
literature
- Rüdiger Hohls, Konrad H. Jarausch (Ed.): Missed questions. German historians in the shadow of National Socialism . DVA, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-421-05341-3 , pp. 510-511.
- Werner Rösener : The Max Planck Institute for History (1956-2006). Fifty years of historical research. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2014, ISBN 978-3-525-30063-3 .
- Hans Erich Bödeker : Max Planck Institute for Research into Multi-Religious and Multi-Ethnic Societies , in: Denkorte. Max Planck Society and Kaiser Wilhelm Society. Breaks and Continuities , Sandstein-Verlag, Dresden 2011, ISBN 978-3-942422-01-7 , pp. 306–315 (the article deals almost exclusively with the MPI for History)
- Eckart Henning , Marion Kazemi : Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for German History / Max Planck Institute for History , in: Handbook on the history of the institute of the Kaiser Wilhelm / Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science 1911–2011 - dates and sources , Berlin 2016, 2 volumes, volume 1: Institutes and research centers AL ( online, PDF 75 MB ), pp. 558–574 (chronology of both institutes).
- Peter Schöttler : The Max Planck Institute for History in a Historical Context: The Heimpel Era . Berlin 2017.