The Latest at Goethe

The Goethe-Institut was founded 60 years ago. It was the beginning of a great success story, but not the birth of international cultural policy, as the history of the Deutsche Akademie founded in 1925 shows. A look at what went before. By Matthias Bitzl

It was the year 1878 when international cultural policy began in Germany. Admittedly, this is a very generous interpretation, however it was the first time that small sums of state funds were provided for German schools abroad. Yet, if we could speak of cultural policy, it was not carried out with any proper strategy. It was not until a few years before the beginning of the First World War that comprehensive schemes for international cultural policy were implemented. In the wrestling match of the nations, Germany could not be allowed to fall behind its rival neighbour of France they said; it was time to carry German culture abroad. Cultural policy became cultural propaganda.

The First World War put an abrupt end to the ambitions of the German Empire. Among German intellectuals the opinion grew that the war was lost only because national interests had been clumsily presented to the international public. So, how could a unified cultural awareness be conveyed in Germany while maintaining cultural relations overseas? The newly founded cultural section of the Foreign Office was hardly capable of this at first as there were far more important concerns than culture after the lost war.

Hence, this task was initially reserved for private institutions: Lothar Freiherr von Ritter, the former Bavarian envoy to Paris, conceived of an institution based in Munich meant to unify the internally riven nation. Alluding to the Académie Française, he chose the title Deutsche Akademie. Ultimately on 5 May 1925 the “Academy for the Academic Study and Fostering of Germanness / Deutsch Akademie” was officially established. As an independent association, the Deutsche Akademie assigned itself the mission of “cultivating all intellectual and cultural manifestations of Germanness and purposefully consolidating and advancing unofficial cultural relations of Germany abroad and Germans abroad to their homeland in the service of German patriotism.”

The first Thierfelder era

The chief target group at the start was German expatriates in the successor states of the earlier Danube Monarchy and the Tsardom. The first step towards international cultural policy was taken. In autumn of 1929 Georg Schreiber, member and Reichstag delegate of the Centre Party, proposed a motion to align cultural policy work abroad more to non-German target groups, thus initiating the era of language work. Schreiber suggested that the focus of the work be laid in the establishment of private language courses, an idea that primarily came from the initiative of founding member and Secretary-General Franz Thierfelder.

A year earlier, Thierfelder had begun investigating the status of German instruction overseas and that of the German language, the results of which he published in a series of essays. His conclusion was that the German language enjoyed great interest among the European peoples in spite of the lost war and would have a great future ahead if it were actively promoted. By aligning itself to teaching the German language, the Deutsche Akademie thus forged ahead into a cultural policy niche where it need not fear competition from the numerous other private cultural organizations. Hence, funding from the Foreign Office appeared a certainty. The cultural offensive was highly successful: only five years later they were able to open the twentieth lectureship abroad.

The next step came in September 1932: from now on the German language was also taught to foreigners living in Germany. A superior method of teaching was intended as the key to asserting German as the leading European language. The establishment of a new institution was contemplated solely for this purpose. The celebration in Germany of the hundredth anniversary of the death of Goethe that same year was the perfect occasion to launch the new institute. In agreement with the Goethe Society in Frankfurt, Thierfelder had managed to procure one third of the society donations in 1932 for the newly founded institute. In return, it would bear the name of the poet. The “Goethe-Institut for the Further Training of Foreign Teachers of German” was born, but remained an institution within the Deutsche Akademie.

The Nazis show a sudden interest

Only a year later the cultural policy endeavours were once again interrupted by the coming into power of the National Socialists, which resulted in a return to propagandist times. At first, nothing changed for the staff of the Deutsche Akademie and its management even hoped that a greater interest by the new powers in an impressive international image for the Reich would lead to considerable financial allocations for the yet chronically underfunded organization.

The Deutsche Akademie voluntarily “cleansed” itself of politically unpopular individuals, thus commencing its self-realignment. In 1937 Secretary-General Thierfelder retired after years of battling futilely against the increasing Nazification of the organization. Until the beginning of the Second World War, the Nazi party showed almost no interest in making the Deutsche Akademie an instrument for its own ends; allegedly Hitler saw no use in the Munich institution.

When the war broke out, the Munich staff thought it meant the end of cultural policy activities abroad. This was a false conclusion that the Foreign Office would immediately rectify. Maintaining cultural policy was all the more an urgent necessity to prevent the nation from again being portrayed as a barbarian, aggressive power, as it had during the First World War. The aim must be to intensify foreign cultural policy all the more. In the previous years, the Deutsche Akademie had set up the network for this.

Legitimatized by the claim to leadership

The academy budget suddenly rocketed from 550,000 to 3.7 million reichsmarks. Within one year, the number of overseas lectureships doubled to 120. Now, cultural policy served to secure the nation’s dominance in the occupied territories and was legitimatized by the German cultural claim to leadership.

Nonetheless, Nazification within the Deutsche Akademie was by far not as advanced as the staffing decisions would lead us to assume. The content of the language courses continued to rely on the political temperament of the instructors, even after the Deutsche Akademie was finally nationalized in late 1941 by decree of the Führer.

Four years later, the Third Reich was over and with it came the demise of the Deutsche Akademie. It would take a few years before former Secretary-General Thierfelder was again able to father a similar institution. Recommencing cultural work abroad under the name “Deutsche Akademie” met with strong objections. Yet, there was a name that was more innocuous: “Goethe-Institut.”