In modern discourse about the history of science, it seems to be widely accepted that at the end of the nineteenth century, Germany was one of the leading countries in the production of science. In the past, historians of science tried to trace back a specific ‘German style’ of science that—in combination with other factors—determined this German dominance around 1900, especially in the life sciences. Considering the theoretical concept of ‘national styles’, it has to be kept in mind that around (...) 1900, contemporaries already proclaimed ‘national styles’ of science as representations of national identity. Thus, the question arises as to how far existing historiographical conceptions of national styles may include earlier claims and prejudices. Careful reconstructions of contemporary discourses on national styles and inquiries into the ‘stylisation’ of a dominant, successful ‘German style’ are necessary. One of the contemporary critics of a ‘German style’ of science was the physiologist Jacques Loeb (1859–1924), who emigrated to the USA in 1891. Loeb corresponded regularly with the physicist and philosopher Ernst Mach (1838–1916). Ernst Mach can be considered Loeb's intellectual father with whom he corresponded about strategic, philosophical, and epistemological questions. Using the Loeb–Mach correspondence, the aim of the paper is to reconstruct Loeb's conception of a ‘German style’ of science and its differences to an ‘American style’. Changes in his views are discussed as well as the roots of his views and some of their consequences. Finally, Loeb's ideas on national styles and his working profiles before and after his emigration are compared to historiographical analyses of ‘American’ or ‘German’ styles of science around 1900. (shrink)

Until recently, the development of the modern sciences has usually been described as a continuous unfolding of constantly expanding and differentiating research institutions on the one hand, and the accumulation of more and better knowledge on the other. The changes that have occurred both in scientific institutions and in the direction and content of research in the course of revolutions or comparable political changes pose significant challenges to such accounts. I would like to propose an interactive approach to this issue. (...) Instead of accepting a linear, deterministic model of scientific change as a result of political upheaval, I suggest that such political changes present an array of challenges to and possibilities for the interruption, redirection, reconstruction or effortful continuation of research. The central claim is that scientific development in times of political upheaval has proceeded in Germany primarily by means of increasing cooperation of scientists with the state, involving a process that I call the technologization of basic research. But this is not always a one-sided affair involving the subordination of science to practical politics or to ideology. Rather, I argue, what occurs is themobilization or reconstruction of physical, institutional, financial, cognitive and/or rhetorical resources. Such mobilizations can proceed in various directions: the state or agencies within it can mobilize scientists as resources in the interest of achieving certain political aims; scientists can convert themselves into such resources (or claim that they are doing so); or both things can happen at once. The approach is exemplified by examining continuities and changes in the situations of the sciences following the major turning points of 20th-century German history, symbolized by the dates 1918, 1933, 1945 and 1990. Considered in particular are: scientific changes in Germany following the Nazi takeover and creative innovations by émigré scientists working in different cultural settings; the massive transfer of scientific resources after Nazi Germany's defeat and attempts to carry on and reconstruct science in the two postwar German states; and the massive reorganization of scientific institutions in eastern Germany after unification. The examples come primarily from biology and experimental psychology, but physical sciences and particular branches of technology are considered as well. (shrink)

National Socialism brought about profound changes for the German academic system. Forced emigration not just sent outstanding scholars into exile, thus closing down promising research venues. In fact, it changed the entire climate of scientific inquiry by removing intellectual outsiders from the scene, whose absence usually precludes any success of innovative research. In most disciplines this led to a dominance of just a few academic ‘schools’ and paradigms, which severely harmed intra-discipline accountability and innovation. The academic bureaucracy worked more effectively (...) than has been assumed for a long time: practice-oriented research enjoyed massive state support, and huge research projects outside the universities flourished. At the same time the National Socialists looked ambivalently at the universities themselves. They savored the legitimizing functions of the arts and sciences, and yet they distrusted the professors as exponents of the bourgeois world of old. Contrary to the blooming sciences such as biology, chemistry, and physics, the arts and humanities had a hard time demonstrating their practical applicability. In order to prove their worth by means of giving advice to the political sphere, they formed interdisciplinary combines, which were massively funded by the ‘Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft’. The ‘Deutsche Wissenschaft’, which has been incorrectly marginalized in numerous accounts, served in part to provide a Weltanschauung justification for these networks. While the German academic community in 1945 tried to pick up the threads of the a-political self- understanding of the 1920s, in fact there were numerous continuities to academic life before and after 1945. Among them were the encompassing loss of international contacts, the strengthening of hierarchical structures, and the importance of feasibility criteria for the culture of innovation. The arts and humanities could not regain the lost territory of significance, which they had suffered during the Third Reich. It is mainly their development which showed an amazing persistence of national socialist patterns of view and of concepts of the enemy, which in turn as late as 1968 inspired in part the anti-bourgeois thrust of the critique of the academic world. (shrink)