Association of German Universities

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The Association of German Universities ( VDH ) was the national interest group for university teachers at German universities and technical colleges in the Weimar Republic . It was founded at a meeting of representatives from 23 universities and 11 technical colleges from January 4th to 7th, 1920 in Halle (Saale) , merged with other organizations to form the Reich Association of German Universities in 1933 and dissolved by ministerial decree in 1936 .

According to the historian Franz Bauer , the advocacy group acted during the Weimar Republic as a “national-conservative professional organization that remained in a position of external defensive and internal distance to the parliamentary party state”. After the National Socialists came to power, there was initially uncertainty and disorientation. "To an open position against concrete injustice measures of the ruthlessly establishing itself NS-Regime such as the so-called ' Law for the Restoration of Professional Civil Service ' of April 7, 1933 and the ' Law against the Overcrowding of German Schools and Universities ', that limited the proportion of Jewish students to 1.5 percent, the association could not pull itself together. One will probably come to the conclusion that the professional and class organization of German university professors has not behaved morally better, but also not categorically worse than many comparable institutions. Measured against the traditional claim of the German professors to represent the intellectual elite of the country - a claim that was never justified intellectually, but also always ethically and idealistically - that was disappointingly little. "

On an extraordinary university day on June 1, 1933 in Erfurt, the " self-alignment " was also carried out institutionally through the election of a new National Socialist board under the professor of soil science at the Agricultural University Berlin , Friedrich Schucht . In November 1933, the VDH was merged with other higher education political associations and associations to form a single organization called the "Reich Association of German Universities". The formal dissolution took place on 7 July 1936 by ministerial decree.

Efforts to create a new interest group based on the VDH model after the war resulted in the establishment of the German University Association (DHV) on March 4, 1950 .

Chairperson

literature

  • Franz J. Bauer: History of the German University Association , Munich 2000, pp. 11–24 ( online in the Google book search)
  • Eckhard Oberdörfer: The VDH in the Weimar Republic , In: Karl Strobel (Hrsg.): The German University in the 20th Century, Vierow near Greifswald 1994, pp. 69-88.