German Humanities in the Process of Internationalisation

"’Made in Germany’ – German Humanities in the Process of Internationalization." Thus the title of an international conference of the Institute for Advanced Study of the Humanities (Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut – KWI) in cooperation with the Goethe Institute that took place in Essen on February 12 and 13, 2008. The leading-edge scholars who had been invited to speak at this conference did not seek in any way to evade the critical phases in the history of the humanities in Germany. Quite the contrary.

From Universalism to Germanocentrism

At the beginning of the conference, the historian Ulrich Herbert and Georg Bollenbeck, a specialist in German area studies, presented an overview of the development of German humanities from the standpoints of the historical and cultural sciences. In their heyday from 1800 –1860, philosophical universalism and Humboldt’s ideal of education were predominant in German academic and intellectual life, earning German universities a high international reputation. But with the founding of the German Reich, the humanities were transformed into producers of legitimation for state policy. Philosophical and cultural universalism were caught up in the maelstrom of nationalism, morphing into a "German universalism" that co-opted foreign cultural elements for the purpose of demonstrating its superiority to them. Parallel to this development, the Jewish tradition in German culture was castigated as "un-German" and its eradication urged, which succeeded to a great extent during the Third Reich. The Jewish tradition survived in forced, mostly American exile; as was pointed out by the social scientist Michael Werz.

The Exiles’ Return in the Post-War Period

After 1945, many scholars in the humanities and social and cultural sciences belonging to the generation of Jewish exiles returned to Germany. Personalities such as Franz Neumann, Ernst Fraenkel, Hans Mayer, Ernst Bloch, Theodor W. Adorno, Herbert Marcuse and also Walter Benjamin, whose influence did not cease with his death, brought back the heartbeat of German humanities with their return. But the reputation of German humanities and cultural sciences in the post-war period was not well served by the tradition of "German" sociology, bound up as it was with names such as Helmut Schelsky’s. The better tradition of the humanities in Germany is to be found among its outsiders– Marxists, socialists and Jews – and is founded on the reintegration of currents that had previously been vilified as "unGerman."

Seen in this light, the extent to which an ex post facto opposition to the dictatorship took place after 1945, as Herbert claimed, is somewhat debatable, as if a retroactive Resistance had been created that people wished they had participated in between 1933 and 1945. Bollenbeck probably is closer to the truth when he states that post-war re-importations of the humanities to Germany were necessary; the reason being that without the returning exiles who had previously been driven out of the country, the oppositional posture of the humanities in the post-war period would never have turned out to be so very pro-Resistance. Apart from that, Jürgen Habermas’ words about his teacher Wolfgang Abendroth, representative of the few who had opposed the Third Reich while it existed, held true: Habermas said that he was a "partisan professor in a land of collaborators."

Under the Primacy of Added Value

Seen from this vantage point, is what was really going on here an "invention of tradition"? This self-critical question remained unasked. Other questions seemed more important. Until well into the 1990’s, universities were massively underfinanced, it was stated. It was inevitable that the quality of the humanities sank under the level of international standards, thus Herbert. The humanities were under pressure to serve as a source of added value, and to that effect – Herbert continued – this pressure had the positive effect of causing the humanities in Germany to catch up with international standards and thus to overcome Germany’s national self-referentiality.

But where exactly are Germany’s humanities, social and cultural sciences situated in the global context? Is the label "Made in Germany" a warning today, as it was for industrial goods in the 19th century, or is it practically synonymous with a guarantee of quality? Is a German or an international crisis in the humanities in fact taking place today at all? Is nationality a meaningful classification in the age of globalization? What is "German" at all about German humanities?

For starters, the conference participants were able to agree that their complaints were pretty high-level complaints. At the very least, with the possible exception of Switzerland, nowhere else in the world do the humanities enjoy such a high and profitable status as they do in Germany. Quantity therefore cannot be the problem.

Thomas Steinfeld, editor-in-chief of the literary and cultural section of the Süddeutsche Zeitung (a leading German daily newspaper) indirectly dropped a clue as to the true nature of the crisis of the humanities in his statement that he was relieved that, in contrast to the 60´s and 70´s, the humanities were no longer normative in their orientation. But if the sciences and scholarship today no longer feel a sense of obligation to critique and societal emancipation, but to the primacy of competitive competence instead, are they thereby less normative?

Intercultural Exchange: The View from Abroad

The range of perspectives offered from abroad also provided a certain amount of insight and clarity. It was for this purpose that the philosopher Kenichi Mishima from Tokyo, the sociologist Surendra Munshi from Calcutta, the American philosopher Susan Neiman and German scholars with long-term experience abroad such as the literary scholar Sandra Pott and the social scientist Michael Werz were invited to present statements at the conference.

Mishima and Munshi emphasized the continuing influence of the Germans on the humanities in Japan and India. In their view, Kant, Hegel, Marx and Weber were received in Japan through an intercultural transfer – admittedly on the basis of "productive misunderstandings." Mishima stressed that it is never the theorist in isolated, pure form who is received, if the basic conditions of the recipient country are entirely different from those in the theorist’s country of origin. Thus, Munshi stated: "It makes no sense to talk about import and export between different countries!"

But it is not the case that intercultural exchange must always turn out to be productive. Susan Neiman pointed out that although the venerable Humboldt University has served as a model for the establishment of universities in the U.S.A. - Columbia, Harvard and the University of Chicago are examples – today the American model of the university is being mixed up in Germany’s universities with the old traditions of feudal rulership by tenured full professors.

Made in Germany: "Humboldt" as an Export Hit

But the suggestions for solving the problem moved along well-trodden paths: programs aimed at promoting academic and research excellence, developing a culture of dialogue, promotion of English-language competence. Books for the Anglo-Saxon market should be produced in massive numbers: translated into English, lean on text, with few footnotes and composed in an essayistic style. But –incidentally - the internationalization of humanities-oriented products must not take place at the price of quality; after all, Humbolt University "still has a high market potential in the world."

"Humboldt" as an export hit? Reframed in this fashion, the emancipatory and universal standards of Humboldt’s educational ideals have been eradicated to begin with. "German humanities" is a provincially-minded choice of words; it would be more appropriate to speak of "the humanities in Germany." In 1995, the Superior Court of Stuttgart ruled that the warranty, "Made in Germany" violates competition regulations when the greater portion of a product does not consist of German raw materials or does not derive from German manufacture. A plausible objection along these lines might be made about "German humanities.

"What actually comes from you?" Hegel’s housekeeper is said to have put him this question at dinner once. His modest and simple, and for that very reason accurate, answer: "Nothing." His work consists of encounter and debate with the philosophies of Aristotle through Descartes, and on to Kant, Adam Smith and David Ricardo: raw materials from around the world. In Hegel’s thinking the aspect of German "manufacture", so to speak, consists solely of the dialectical sublation of the history of universal philosophy; a not-inconsiderable component. After all,science and scholarship are nothing if not in their very essence sublation; they resist and elude co-optation in the service of nations or for that matter co-optation of any kind, such as privatization through redefinition as commodities.

Self-Assertion or Humanistic Culture

Ultimately, a form of humanities such as this threatens to turn expansionistic - once again. A call such as Sandra Pott’s to unite and become more aggressive in order to carve out a better standing for German humanities in the international arena indeed found a protagonist at this conference as well – all-too-tellingly in the younger generation, among whom the competition for coveted university jobs is fiercest.

Compulsory self-assertion of "national" humanities as a consequence of the contemporary debasement of reason and the mind can be felt everywhere. The more the principle of competition becomes predominant, the stronger will the elbows of humanist scholars become - and those of the lobbyists of the cultural industry will be deployed as well, in the service of the national-economic logic of production-site location. The following point was made at the conference, too: Peter Strohschneider, chairman of the German Science and Humanities Council (Wissenschaftsrat), stated at the conclusion of his rhetorically brilliantly delivered summation that "decolonialization is taking place under the conditions of colonialistic rules of discourse."

"German" humanities never came up to par except when they discarded their elitist and narrow-mindedly aggressive posturing and when they saw themselves not as "German," but as universal and humanistic instead. Almost all of the conference participants were in agreement on at least this point.