Professor Dr. Constantin Goschler Prof. Dr. Goschler holds the chair for Contemporary History at Ruhr University Bochum. He has previously taught at the Friedrich-Schiller University in Jena, at the Charles University in Prague and at the Humboldt University in Berlin. Professor Goschler's main focus has been on the history and politics of restitution, redress and transitional justice for the victims of Nazi crimes. He is also interested in the history of science and the history of political ideas in the 19th and 20th centuries. He is the author of Schuld und Schulden: Die Politik Der Wiedergutmachung für NS-Verfolgte seit 1945.

Would you say there has been a process of Americanization in German Academia?

I'd say a process of Americanization has been at work, but it has had paradoxical effects. Instead of making German academia more like what it is in America, it is making it less like the American case. There has been a dramatic shift in the self-understanding in German academia. There has been increasing need to compete for funding through grant writing. Universities are putting more and more pressure on professors to raise their own funds. The matching funds principle has been discovered at German universities. So now research projects are often conceived with the express aim of trying to obtain funding. My sense is the situation is actually quite different in America, where scholars face less pressure to find funding and to make their projects accord with the parameters of money granting organizations.

What is the effect of the growing grant culture on German academia?

I think it is dramatically altering German academia. The quality of scholarship is perhaps of lesser importance today than in the past. The number of conferences and research collectives one participates in and the amount of grant money one can bring to a university is of increasing importance in determining the career prospects of German academics. In some ways, the culture of the natural sciences has influenced the history profession. Professors don't have as personal or involved a connection with their graduate students these days, I think, and they tend to interact with them more in the way a principle investigator may relate to the research students in his lab. I might be slightly overstating the phenomenon, but the trajectory is clear.

How are students affected?

This adaptation of structures from the natural sciences into the humanities and social sciences has many results. Constructing research clusters of researchers around a common theme is a new trend. The idea of one-mind-one-book is getting lost. These research clusters produce a different kind of scholarship. Edited volumes become more prevalent. Good monographs become perhaps less prevalent. I'd say there are two types of dissertations that come out of this kind of academic environment. One follows the model of individual struggle, of a researcher who has an idea and tries to work it through with the advice of his or her advisor, all the time with a sense of risk that it may not fully come together in the end. The other type is more akin to a computer operating system. In this model, it is as though an operating system, or a theme and methodology that belongs to a research group, is already embedded in the dissertation, and the writer produces the dissertation according to this code. In some ways, there is less risk in having students write in this mode. But even though there may be fewer "casualties" in this second mode, the kind of scholarship that is produced is certainly less original.

Isn't the notion of dissertation writers as individuals involved in personal struggle somewhat romantic?

It is a danger to reproduce a romantic ideal of the Humanities, I think. My argument is indebted somewhat to a romantic ideal, perhaps. But, I think the point should be that both ways of producing dissertations will continue, and both serve their own purpose. I don't think that individual searching and struggle will get completely lost. There will always be students who will engage in this way and will produce the best work. On the other hand, there will be more and more students who will write dissertations, especially because of the rise of the second model of research I mentioned, in which students adopt the "code" of a research group. I think it then becomes the responsibility of professors to make sure that junior professorships go to those who are grappling with new questions, and bringing originality to their work. But to be clear: I don't consider writing a dissertation as a kind of "survival of the fittest"! Rather it's our job to try to make sure that the right people will work in the right framework.

When were you at Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard?

I was there for the 1998-99 academic year, when I was completing my habilitation.

In what ways did that experience affect you?

It's certainly true that by being at Harvard one acquires social capital. For instance, when I'm invited to speak, even these days, the person introducing me will almost always mention Harvard. I'll give you an anecdote. During my time at Harvard, I was invited by a German ministry to give a lecture. They paid for a business class trip, and this was because I was introduced to them on Harvard letterhead!

But there's more to say about this. Having been at Harvard deeply changed my perspective. I used to be focused mostly on Germany, in terms of my research networks. But, at Harvard, I came in contact with many people from around the world. I've benefited from a network of colleagues and friends that now stretches across many countries. One also learns how to communicate with scholars in different academic cultures, particularly the American culture. This has been very beneficial. Harvard was a great place for building contacts.

Finally, I think that being at Harvard also helped build a sense of self-confidence. One feels that if one can give a lecture at Harvard and be respected for it, then one can speak anywhere. Harvard is a great place for building a sense of oneÕs own scholarly authority, since its founding myth Š one that is only enhanced by the reactions one gets in the United States and Germany when one "drops" the name Š is very much based on the notion of excellence.

Do you think historians play a different role in German public life than in American public life?

I'm wondering if we should first differentiate between historians of contemporary history and historians who focus on the more distant past. Your question touches upon contemporary historians, I think. Institutionally seen, contemporary history writing has merged as an endeavour in public education. The historian is involved in the question of how the Nazis could happen and how to prevent it from happening again. Think of Hans Mommsen. Whenever there would be an outbreak of neo-Nazi activity in Germany, he would be interviewed in the newspapers and on the television. If you look at the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung or the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, you notice that historians have regularly written as moral beacons for the society. This is very different from what one sees in America.

Yet, while historians had been the teachers and the guardians and upholders of moral sentiment in the FDR, this role has already begun to change in recent years, given the shifting relationship of younger generations to the past. Today, historians still play roles as public intellectuals in Germany, but they speak increasingly about things not necessarily related to the Nazis. So while historians once tended to see themselves as political-moral guardians in a post-fascist society, they now either tend to withdraw to a purely professional self-understanding or they have assumed different agendas as public intellectuals. Just think of Paul NolteÕs role as a fervent spokesman of "civic values."

Are there any differences in the teaching foci of German and American history departments?

As I understand it, the difference really arises from the American academic system being rather market driven, and the German system being associated more with the training of Gymnasium (high school) teachers. In the German system, high school teachers are trained through the universities in specified programs. This means that teaching a particular narrative of history, one that will be taught in the high schools, and one that follows a traditional narrative focused mostly on Europe, is in great demand. In the United States, what undergraduate students want to take seems to play a greater role in the way departments make decisions about course offerings. In recent years in Germany, things have been changing, and new kinds of courses, many of them not focused on Europe, are being offered. But these are still seen as additions to a "traditional" course of study.

What is your current research?

I am working on a history of Jews in Germany after 1945, focused on the 1970s and 1980s. This develops out of my past work on reparations and transitional justice after in the Federal Republic. I am also beginning a research project on the history of twin experiments in the United States and Germany. The project is really about how difference has come to be researched in the natural sciences, and how this has affected the ongoing nature-versus-nurture debate. I am specially interested in how far the nature-nurture-debate has influenced the self-understanding of modern societies on problems of natural and social equality and inequality, and twin experiments are probably the most important channel through which scientific ideas on nature and nurture are popularized.

Have you ever thought about returning to the United States of America as a guest professor?

I think spending time in the United States as a researching professor is always an interesting prospect. I don't know whether I would like to spend my whole life in the USA, but I would find a shorter stay to be a fascinating experience. Let's put it this way: I'll certainly consider offers that come my way!