25th Anniversary of the GHI Print

The German Historical Institute in Washington DC celebrated its 25th anniversary on Thursday, May 17, 2012 with more than 170 guests in attendance. After words of greeting from the German Ambassador and representatives of numerous historical organizations, the celebration featured a lecture by Professor David Blackbourn (Harvard University) on "Germany and the Birth of the Modern World, 1780-1820."

On the occasion of its anniversary, the German Historical Institute also hosted a conference (May 18-19) on the "second generation" of German émigré historians, who fled Nazi Germany as minors and subsequently became historians teaching European history in the United States (as well as Great Britain and Israel) - a group of scholars that played a key role in promoting the internationalization of the American university, helping a younger generation of German scholars create a democratic academic culture, and shaping German-American relations in the second half of the twentieth century.

  • For a report on the May 17 anniversary celebration and Professor Blackbourn's lecture, please click here
  • For a report on the "Second Generation" Conference, please click here
  • For the 120-page anniversary publication, "The German Historical Institute at 25," which includes an article on the history of the GHI and overviews of current research projects underway at the Institute, please click here

Founded in 1987, the German Historical Institute is a center for advanced study and research whose purpose is to provide a permanent basis for scholarly cooperation among historians from Germany and the United States. The Institute conducts, promotes, and supports research and American, German, and transnational history. In addition to this commitment to a broad research agenda, the Institute's four directors have, over the years, focused on different topics: exile studies and religious history, transatlantic political history, environmental history, and - currently - business history and the history of consumption. About twenty international conferences and six seminars for junior scholars per year bring together scholars from both sides of the Atlantic. In addition, the Institute publishes an academic journal and four book series; it also awards forty doctoral and postdoctoral fellowships per year. The international scholarly dialogue promoted by the GHI is part of the academic community's current effort to rethink nation-state centered historiography and to embed the histories of the United States and Germany in an international and transnational context.

The German Historical Institute is part of the Foundation German Humanities Institutes Abroad (DGIA), which is financed by Germany's Federal Ministry of Education and Research. An academic advisory board guarantees the Institute's scholarly independence. As one of the largest non-university-affiliated centers for historical research in the United States, the GHI has cooperated with more than one hundred North American universities during the past twenty-five years. Its work has been supported by many German and American foundations and academic institutions and by the Friends of the German Historical Institute.

RFW