German Historical Institute Washington DC
The German Historical Institute Washington DC is an institute of historical study based in Washington, D.C. It has been part of the Max Weber Stiftung: Deutsche Geisteswissenschaftliche Institute im Ausland since 2002. The director is Simone Lässig. History The development of a German Historical Institute in America began soon after the establishment of the German Historical Institute London. The German historians Erich Angermann (University of Cologne) and Günter Moltmann (University of Hamburg) and the American historians Gordon Craig (Stanford University) and Gerald Feldman (University of California at Berkeley), Wolfgang Mommsen (director of GHI London), Rudolf Vierhaus (Director of Max Planck Institute for History) and Gerhard A. Ritter (University of Munich) were part of the initial discussions to inaugurate a new GHI institute in the United States. They developed a proposal that the Minister for Research and Technology and the advisory board Wissenschaftsrat in Germany reviewed and which the Bundeskabinett under Helmut Kohl formally accepted. The GHI Washington DC opened in 1987 with Hermann-Josef Rupieper as director. Historian Hartmut Lehmann became the official founding director a year later and helped establish its academic independence and acceptance into American academia. He initiated conferences, research projects, publications, lecture series, and scholarship programs that became typical of the institute. Since 1991, GHI Washington DC has maintained relations with American scholars through the "Friends of the German Historical Institute." The Federal Ministry for Research and Technology financed the institution as the Stiftung Deutsches Historisches Institut in den Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika. The institute joined the Foundation German Historical Institutes Abroad with institutes in London and Warsaw in 1993 and the DGIA, Foundation German Humanities Institutes Abroad, in 2002. GHI Washington DC became part of Max Weber Stiftung in 2002 and has been funded by the federal government of Germany. The focus of GHI Washington DC's research and conference programs has reflected the interests of the institute's directors. Under the leadership of Detlef Junker (1994–1999), the GHI devoted itself to the history of the Cold War and international relations. Following the appointment of Christof Mauch as director (1999-2007), the GHI held conferences on "German History in Documents and Images" and "Competing Modernities," supported by the Max Kade Foundation and ZEIT Foundation Ebelin and Gerd Bucerius. Further conferences explored German-American relations and European-American relations and the history of African Americans in Germany. A significant theme in conferences under Mauch was environmental history. The Mauch era also saw the introduction of several public lectures, including the Bucerius Lectures, German Unification Symposia and Feldman Memorial Lectures. Under the direction of Hartmut Berghoff (2008–2015), the institute continued research on transatlantic studies, but focused more on economic history and consumerism. Since 2015, director Simone Lässig has brought her expertise into the institute's research focus. The institute has concentrated more on international, German, and Central European History in connection to Jewish history. The institute developed an interest in the history of the Americas as whole and the relations between the Pacific and Atlantic regions. In line with this broader approach, the GHI