‘Between Politics and Scholarship’: The First Decade of the Institut für Zeitgeschichte,1949–1958

Post-war to Establishment: Ritter's Concerns

When the new states of West and East Germany were created in May and October 1949, respectively, citizens in both territories were still clearing the rubble of their shattered cities. Historians, for their part, had already begun turning their minds to the problematic duty of writing about the Nazi period. For those in the East, the practice of history was driven by Marxist historiography. By contrast, West German historians continued to emulate the traditions of empiricism, a practice that necessitated a deep understanding of – and extensive access to – historical evidence. Yet, the advantage in military materiel that won the Allies the Second World War enabled its officials to enjoy a marked advantage in access to documentary material, after it. With the occupation of all German territory came the confiscation of evidence, used to indict Nazi leaders in West Germany and, gradually, to drive historical enquiry abroad. The seizure of this material, and the dearth of what remained, left the few West German historians who were eager to tackle the recent past bereft of critical evidence. For a profession that once prided itself on analysis of this evidence to show ‘how it actually happened’, contemporary historians in post-war West Germany found themselves ill-equipped. ¹⁶ Moreover, where evidence was available the task remained immense. West German historical narratives needed to both propel historical scholarship and to prove useful to citizens’ confrontation of the Nazi past, while avoiding apologetic undertones and moralizing overtones.

Those historians who remained in Germany during the war and were not wholly corrupted by Nazi ideology were amongst the earliest and loudest voices to be heard in the conflict's immediate aftermath. One such individual was Gerhard Ritter. ¹⁷ A controversial figure and avowed nationalist, Ritter became the first chairperson of the German Historians Association (Der Deutsche Historikerverband) in October 1948. From this position of considerable influence, Ritter made his thoughts and apprehensions known, stating ‘[n]ever before in German history has there been such an urgent need for objective, unbiased research and accounts of contemporary historical events as there is today’. ¹⁸ These words opened a memorandum that Ritter authored, one relating to the ‘planned new organization for study of the most recent period’. In this document, Ritter described his view of post-war Germany. His most urgent message centered around the dire need for German historians to begin examining, writing about, and confronting the Nazi past, for the benefit of both German contemporary historiography and public education. The mood, according to Ritter, was one in which a ‘long-pent up, immense torrent of bitterness and outrage has descended upon Germany … [and in which] many individuals who are unqualified, smart alecks, and opportunists [Unberufene, Neunmalkluge, und Konjunkturritter] are allowed to be heard’. Ritter stated further that

hysterical bluster is simply not the right pitch to strike, [and is] not one that convinces everyone, nor awakens sensible reason. It provokes opposition and mistrust. And every historical teaching – even those that are veritable and well-intentioned – written by foreigners or emigrants, is met by a stubborn prejudice that cannot be easily overcome. The consequence has been a rapid heightening of Germans' political consciousness. They have already, once again, heard too many exaggerations to listen seriously now when they are told the plain truth. Too many attempts, above all those hastily prepared, have been made to construe the entire German past, at least 200 years, as merely the pre-history of National Socialism … What is more: new myths about the Hitler period are coming into vogue. ¹⁹

Certain prominent political figures shared Ritter's view that historians needed to contribute to the reconstitution of German society. As early as October 1946, Rudolf Holzhausen – at the time a senior official who represented Bavaria and liaised with allied authorities in Berlin – wrote a memorandum plainly titled ‘Suggested Establishment of a “Research and Education Center for the History of the National Socialist Period”’. ²⁴ For Holzhausen, the new center's role was to be nothing less than to produce historical research designed to act as fundamental ‘education and teaching material to be distributed to schools, universities, libraries, the bureaucracy, and in every political, academic, economic, and cultural organization’ in Germany. One of the earliest official documents to convey this position, Holzhausen's memorandum introduces what is a core aspect of the IfZ's story: its establishment was, above all, an expression of political will. Historians such as Ritter may have been strident in arguing for the establishment of a German historical institute, but their few voices were only barely heard amongst a chorus of politicians calling for the same thing – and wielding the power to make it happen. In fact, throughout 1947 there was a series of pivotal meetings and exchanges between political leaders and departments at various levels of the west German zones of occupation. ²⁵ In November 1948, the Office of the Minister President in Bavaria considered it prudent to ask for a license from the American authorities that remained in charge of the state's administration to establish an historical research institute. The respondent, Charles Winning – who fittingly belonged to the victorious side – politely advised the requestor that approval was not necessary. ²⁶ While there would be no American objection to the proposal, that Germans felt compelled to ask for permission in the first place to establish a new public institute is suggestive of the caution exercised by West Germans in their initial approaches to the Nazi past, and the political character and urgency of such a task.

Competing Political and Scholarly Aims, 1949 to 1951

In May 1949, what ultimately became the Institute for Contemporary History was established. ²⁷ Its structure reflected its deep political roots: overseen by a Board of Trustees (Kuratorium) consisting of two federal government representatives, and one from each West German state that committed funds to the Institute, appointed directly by the Federal Minister of the Interior (Bundesminister des Innern) and individual state Minister Presidents (Ministerpräsidenten). Where the Board of Trustees decided the Institute's budget and research activities, it also appointed representatives to the Advisory Board (Beirat), which would be made up of ‘10 to 15 individuals with flawless political backgrounds’. ²⁸ One member of the Advisory Board, Hans Rothfels, was particularly influential in driving the Institute's research directions. ²⁹ The third tier of authority was the General-Secretary (later known as the Director), who ran the Institute, though only ‘in accordance with the decisions of the Board of Trustees and the guidelines of the Advisory Board’. ³⁰ Having created and organized the new Institute, however, its political overseers were not about to hand the reins over to historians. In fact, during the embryonic stage of its development, politicians and high-ranking bureaucrats were directly involved in setting out not only the Institute's tasks and purposes, but the very directions of its historical scholarship. One striking example of this occurred on March 1, 1950, at a meeting held in the new West German capital Bonn between leading political and academic figures, with the Institute as its only topic of discussion. Presided over by the Minister of the Interior Gustav Heinemann – who later became the President of West Germany in 1969 – the meeting was attended by 14 representatives, including state secretaries, political scientists, and Ritter as the sole historian. ³¹ From the meeting minutes, it becomes clear why there was a partial exclusion of historians from the founding discussions of what became West Germany's most respected institute for contemporary history. Simply put, the proposed center was initially not one strictly for historical research into the Nazi period, but research into the ‘most recent past’.

The very title of the Institute, to say nothing of its tasks and objectives, proved to be matters of dispute. For State Secretary Erich Wende, the questions of title and function were inextricably linked. Whether the new center should be designated the Institute for Research into National Socialism (Institut zur Erforschung des Nationalsozialismus) or the Institute for Most Recent German History (Institut für die neueste deutsche Geschichte), all depended on first establishing the thematic boundaries of its research. ³² A deliberate restriction of the Institute's scholarly purview, however, could exclude potentially rich sub-topics of critical value in explaining the Nazi period, such as the Weimar Republic. In State Secretary Hermann Brill's view, the collapse of Weimar was an essential focal point for the new Institute, in order to presently ‘avoid the mistakes made at that time’ with respect to the newly established West German democracy. ³³ Brill's concern here hints at the broader and generally agreed upon stance held and expressed by many in attendance. Namely, that confining the IfZ to the subject of National Socialism would reduce its effectiveness as an agent of public education and its ability to carry out its political mandate. These concerns, aired in early 1950, were not primarily that the tardy establishment of an Institute might lead to historical distortions, but that West German politicians and academics were losing the research race against their East German counterparts. Amidst the increasing tensions and pronounced divisions of the Cold War, as Brill highlighted, East Germans had rapidly developed their own centers of historical research. The ‘picture of history’ they were producing, according to Brill, was one in which ‘German communism alone and no other domestic German resistance groups had confronted Nazism’. Brill declared that ‘we should not, for a second longer, remain idle’, stressing that historical research on the Nazi period undertaken abroad continued to be ‘leaps and bounds ahead of us’. ³⁴ Moreover, the history that West Germans had produced up this point was denounced by Brill as ‘a flood of pornographic representations of the lowest form’. ³⁵ It was agreed that the IfZ would need to wield considerable scholarly authority, and in order to achieve this, ensure its Scholarly Advisory Board (wissenschaftlicher Beirat) was comprised of ‘representatives from all disciplines’ (emphasis in original) such as ‘legal studies’, ‘modern history … military history, legal science, economics, social science, humanities, archival science, and journalism’. ³⁶

For his part, Ritter had little to add to the discussion beyond what he set out in his earlier memorandum. The grievance of confiscated German documents was reiterated, along with the Institute's need to ‘create trust’ and to ‘confront the myth-making of today’. ³⁷ In this sense, none of what Ritter contributed (or at least what found its way into the minutes) stirred particular controversy. His scholarly view largely aligned with the political consensus expressed at the meeting table. Nonetheless, there was – in Gerhard Kroll's own words – a ‘profound difference’ of opinion between Kroll and Ritter over the ‘purpose and aims of the Institute’. Kroll, who was appointed as the inaugural Director of the Institute in February 1949, made the statement without elaboration, though it came at the onset of what became a pernicious disagreement, one that culminated in Ritter forcing Kroll's resignation in 1951. ³⁸ The dispute was both personal and professional, fueled by religious differences and their associated beliefs in how the Institute should be writing its history of the Nazi period. ³⁹ Notwithstanding this worsening conflict, in a number of important ways the March 1950 meeting is representative of the improvised construction of the IfZ and the primacy of its political activities over its scholarly ones. The Institute's first Director, Kroll, was not an historian, but an elected representative mindful of history's political utility; nor was the Institute he headed established initially as a center of historical enquiry, rather, for ‘research into National Socialism’. Moreover, it was not known or established whether this designation limited the Institute to the years between 1933 and 1945. The only matter firmly decided upon at this meeting was that the Institute, in whatever form it took, and whatever name it was given, would serve both political and scholarly purposes, and, indeed, that there would be considerable interaction between the two. What constituted ‘modern’, ‘most recent’ or ‘contemporary’ history was being actively defined and advanced only by how its practice could serve political ends.

Six months later, on September 11, 1950, the inaugural meeting of the Institute was held, which also signaled the date of its formal establishment. Known by this time as the German Institute for the History of the National Socialist Period (Deutsches Institut für die Geschichte der nationalsozialistischen Zeit), the move to a more historiographically focused title was a significant shift from the ambiguous and generalized titular suggestions up to this point. As reflected by the minutes of this meeting, it was still markedly uncertain what the IfZ's priorities should be. Tension remained between the scholarly and the political. For State Secretary Dieter Sattler, however, it was important that the IfZ ‘take[s] a politically neutral position’, in order for the ‘different ideological views of its scholars to be expressed’. ⁴⁰ A short time after this meeting, the IfZ issued a press release announcing its founding and setting out its objectives. Tellingly, though unsurprisingly, there are no direct references made to a theme that had dominated official meetings up to that point: the Institute as a center of public education about the recent past. According to the press release, the Institute's publications were to be ‘strictly scholarly’ in character, though ‘not merely of interest to experts, but also a wider circle of readers’. The call by Ritter and others to begin the process of earning a skeptical German public's trust is reflected in this initial announcement. ‘The Institute’, it declares, ‘is not a fraternity for German history, but will act to objectively and strictly investigate the truth … unapologetically’. ⁴¹ The ‘truth’, at least at this early stage and according to the press release, entailed detailed research into ‘the attitude of the German people’ and German resistance ‘in all its variations’ (emphasis in original). This carefully crafted document simultaneously underscored the guilt of Hitler and of ‘German politics’ generally, while reassuring ‘the people’ that intensive research into German resistance would be needed ‘to do historical justice to this movement’. The private and official talk amongst the Institute's members of an urgency in combating emerging historical distortions, including those emanating from East Germany, and repossessing seized documents, appears nowhere in the press release. Instead, the announcement seems to have been designed to serve a public need for both historical vindication and reassurance that this newly-formed, taxpayer-funded Institute would be – if at all possible – on their side.

The beginning of 1951, however, saw a continuing disagreement between key figures over political and scholarly ambitions. For Ludwig Bergsträsser, a representative of the newly-created West German Parliament (Bundestag) and head of the Institute's Advisory Council, there was no confusion. Setting out a work plan as the basis for discussion in January 1951, Bergsträsser stressed that while the new Institute had to strictly adhere to ‘scholarly methods’, its objective was not to examine ‘academic questions … [merely] because they are academically interesting’. ⁴² Instead, according to Bergsträsser, the Institute's task was quite specifically ‘to examine National Socialism in order to reveal its defects’, to show that ‘the dictatorial system is politically ruinous’, and that, consequently ‘the system of parliamentary democracy is the correct one’. ⁴³ Given this explicit aspiration, Bergsträsser contended that it was ‘not necessary to cover the extended pre-history of National Socialism … before 1920’. For Fritz Hartung, a respected historian specializing in legal studies, Bergsträsser's suggested course for the Institute evoked considerable worry. Responding directly to Bergsträsser in February 1951, Hartung highlighted what he saw as the weaknesses in this plan. ‘I take umbrage at the claim’, stated Hartung, ‘that the objective of the Institute is not a scholarly one’ and that its role was to serve ‘a political purpose by pointing out the mistakes and false methods’ of National Socialism. Hartung openly agreed that research should not be conducted for its own sake, but warned that limiting the Institute to the mundane task of highlighting Nazism's failures ‘would contradict the nature of scholarly research and discredit the expected results at home and abroad’. ⁴⁴ According to Hartung, Bergsträsser's intention for the IfZ to set about demonstrating that ‘parliamentary democracy’ is the ‘correct’ system was incompatible with scholarly research. In Hartung's view, moreover, Bergsträsser's suggested and self-imposed restriction to the period after 1920 would impede attempts to gain a fuller understanding of the Nazi movement. Such a temporal boundary would, according to Hartung, rule out any focus on antisemitism prior to this time, including ‘the environment from which Hitler emerged’ in Vienna. Hartung contended that Nazism and the weaknesses of German parliamentarism predated 1920, a demarcation that also precluded accounting for the aftermath of Germany's defeat in the First World War.

Although the disagreement between Bergsträsser and Hartung was ostensibly civil and restricted to details, it is emblematic of the broader, ongoing philosophical differences that existed and were aired between various members of the Institute in the early 1950s. The very title of the Institute remained a matter of considerable dispute well into 1952. It was only in May of that year, according to the minutes from a meeting between the Board of Trustees and the Advisory Council, that the final decision was made. For several months previously, the title had been the Institute for Contemporary History (German Institute for the History of the National Socialist Period). At the May 1952 meeting, it was decided that the full title would ‘gradually’ lose its parentheses and become simply Institut für Zeitgeschichte München. ⁴⁵ It was a decision that, in important ways, reflected the boundary-setting discussions that had taken place between its members over preceding years. The shift away from a strict focus on the ‘National Socialist period’ was self-explanatory from the perspective of the Institute's historians, who recognized that such a temporal limitation would, in all likelihood, lead to decontextualized accounts and hinder their ability to understand the phenomenon. The title change, however, rang certain political alarm bells. Hermann Mau, who became Director of the IfZ in 1951, was contacted by Brill, in July 1952. ⁴⁶ In a letter, Brill stated that he had constantly been ‘attacked’ from within his own party (the Social Democrats) as a result of the Institute. ‘I fear’, Brill wrote, that ‘the change in name to the colorless designation “Institute for Contemporary History” will serve to increase these attacks’. ⁴⁷ Ultimately, Brill declared that should the Institute's new name, which in his view sought to ‘distance itself from National Socialism’, also encourage former Nazi party members to join its ranks, he would resign from the Advisory Council. Within the context of the Institute's pre-history, though, such a position is easily explicable. The Institute was established with the primary task of explaining the Nazi period to a shattered nation confronted by, and coming to terms with, the ‘Third Reich’. For Brill, ‘Contemporary History’ lacked meaning, and as a title acted to obfuscate and potentially signify a dereliction of the Institute's original duty: to produce methodologically sound, politically useful scholarship on the Nazi period. The discussions around how this mandate should express itself in scholarly ways, and around the Institute's nomenclature took place internally, albeit amongst individuals with quite different priorities. It was ultimately external factors, however, that forced the Institute's hand. Events within West Germany, and the IfZ's response to them, betray the reactive tendencies of its members – political and scholarly. Consequently, Bergsträsser's idealistic vision of an historical institute promoting West German democracy, and Hartung's insistence that scholarly standards be maintained, were each met – though not perhaps in ways that either may have envisaged.

Burden and Opportunity: Gutachten and the Journal, 1952–1958

On May 11, 1951, legislation came into effect known as the ‘Law for the Regulation of the Legal Status of Persons falling under Article 131 of the Basic Law’. ⁴⁸ A complex enactment, it essentially forced West German bureaucracies to re-employ, or pay pensions to, experienced bureaucrats who had lost their positions as a result of postwar de-Nazification courts’ rulings that they were ‘compromised’ (belastet) individuals. ⁴⁹ Many, including some with ties to criminal Nazi organizations, sought to be reinstated or for their pensions to be honored. Contrasting sharply with this legislation, in September 1953 a law was introduced that enabled the victims of Nazi persecution to seek compensation from the West German state. This legislation was known as the ‘Amended Federal Law for Restitution to Victims of National Socialist Persecution’. A flurry of legal and administrative proceedings followed, with German citizens variously claiming that their circumstances fell under the jurisdiction of these regulations. The so-called ‘131ers’ attempted to de-emphasize their roles within the Nazi system, whereas its victims headed to Restitution Courts (Entschädigungsgerichte) to prove claims of persecution. Determining each claim rested on having knowledge of historical context, and German responsibility needed to be established even where persecution took place in areas under Nazi control – specifically, Romania, Slovakia, and Hungary – and was often committed by non-Germans. ⁵⁰ Resolving these claims in court required historical expertise, and compelled the involvement of the IfZ and its historians.

From as early as 1952 and increasing dramatically from 1953, official requests for information began to swamp the IfZ, driven by the new wave of civil proceedings under Article 131. Recorded meeting minutes from this period give the impression that the undertaking was greeted relatively warmly by the IfZ's political representatives, some of whom recognized the opportunity for public service and engagement. The historians, by contrast, expressed caution and concern that the new task would impair the pursuit of more ambitious research. Both camps recognized that as a government-sanctioned and -funded body, the Institute had little option but to accommodate this official need, whatever the cost to time and precious resources – or risk the withdrawal of political will and funding. ⁵¹ The requests for information differed markedly in their formulation, and depended entirely on the specific matter under investigation. Often queries necessitated the conduct of broad, original research, and a detailed, evidence-based historical narrative emerged from the investigation. The result was a Gutachten, or ‘expert report’. Wide-ranging subject matters, only vaguely explored by this stage of West German historiography engendered detailed Gutachten in response, covering several pages and drawing on the current state of historical knowledge. ⁵²

The Institute's preoccupation with constructing these reports represented both a burden and an opportunity for its historians. The weight of requests was felt particularly by one historian, Hans Buchheim, whose growing expertise in the SS saddled him with demand for his services. Determining an individual's role within Nazi criminal organizations – in large part, the very purpose of a ‘131er’ hearing – relied on an understanding of this intricate background. In meeting this important need, however, Buchheim had little time for other historical pursuits. The Institute's progress report for the second half of 1954 states that Buchheim had been ‘almost completely’ occupied by producing Gutachten, one of which alone took him three full months. ⁵³ ‘Practically every single request’, Buchheim wrote on April 12, 1955, ‘requires a very taxing rummage through the material’. Buchheim estimated that in the first quarter of 1955 alone, around 40 work days had been spent researching and writing Gutachten, and (correctly) predicted that demand would only increase. ⁵⁴ The situation had reached a point where, according to Buchheim, ‘requests [for Gutachten] sent to the Institute can no longer be met even with maximum work effort’. ⁵⁵ In Buchheim's view, and with the benefit of hindsight, the demands of Gutachten impeded more than his own research: they are the single reason why the Institute failed to produce any comprehensive, large-scale works in the 1950s. ⁵⁶

At the same time as historians such as Buchheim felt the strain and incapacitating effects of meeting requests for Gutachten, the 1950s heralded one significant development at the IfZ. The first issue of the Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, the Institute's quarterly journal, was published in 1953. Yet, even what appeared to be a strictly scholarly pursuit was viewed by some as a potential instrument for meeting political ends. Correspondence in May 1952 between Rothfels – the new journal's co-editor – and his former student Werner Conze reveals an acute awareness that scholarly activities could and should have political utility. Conze argued that if the quarterly journal ‘were to successfully become a platform from which every “hot-button issue” of our decade can be tackled in an impartial and sober manner, without any danger of German apologetics or self-inflicted injury, that would indirectly … be the only task of political worth that historians could fulfill today’. ⁵⁷ In his opening article of the new journal, published in January 1953, Rothfels set out what he viewed as the ‘task of contemporary history’. ⁵⁸ Although the article itself was influential and remains a much-cited piece, the ‘task’ Rothfels identified – which, presumably, must also be that of an Institute brandishing the name ‘contemporary history’ – was not one that expressly required political mindfulness. By no means was the new scholarly organ judged to be, in Rothfels's eyes, one that should tackle the ‘hot-button issues’ of the time, as Conze urged. Indeed, from the Institute's perspective, the quarterly journal was both welcomed as a positive development, and used as a reminder of how, hitherto, political priorities had tended to usurp scholarly ones. In the Institute's ‘work plan’ for 1953–4, its author noted that the IfZ had been established to ‘simultaneously’ undertake scholarly research and ‘political education’, and that the Institute's financial agreements with various German states emphasized that its official function was almost exclusively to produce scholarly research. ⁵⁹ These details notwithstanding, from the very beginning, and in an ever-increasing way, institutional meetings were dominated by the question of what could be achieved in a political sense. Within this context of disgruntlement, the newly established journal was described in the 1953–4 work plan as ‘the Institute's first real success’, and characterized as a ‘thoroughly academic pursuit’. ⁶⁰

While the journal alleviated some of the political and scholarly tensions that beset the Institute's early years, its rising academic stock also helped to increase commensurately the official demand for Gutachten. Where an average of 15 requests were received each month in 1955, by 1958 this figure had risen to 20. The end of the decade would record an average of 45 requests for Gutachten monthly. ⁶¹ For their part, the Board of Trustees and the Advisory Board appear to have been unconcerned by the possibility of Gutachten impeding the IfZ's progress and scholarly achievements at this time. At a joint meeting in July 1955, the political representatives of the Board of Trustees – Paul Egon Hübinger and Walter Strauß – spoke glowingly of the impression the Institute's flourishing work on Gutachten had made at ministerial levels. Hübinger, himself a prominent historian who in 1954 had embarked on a political career, recalled an experience at a conference attended by the Minister for Finance, and the Minister for Education and the Arts. ‘The ice began to melt’, recounted Hübinger, ‘as I named, off the top of my head, a few themes [of Gutachten] and [requesting] agencies’. ⁶² Strauß, a state secretary, emphasized that the Institute was obliged, as a public organization, to respond to requests from authorities. The responsibility of answering the ‘difficult questions’ posed by courts could not be sidestepped. ⁶³ At this meeting, Paul Kluke – the somewhat reluctant Director of the IfZ following Mau's untimely death in October 1952 – pointed out that even where it was determined that a request for information could not be met, as a result of an absence of evidence, such a determination itself expended time and resources. ⁶⁴ The meeting minutes suggest that the Kluke's overture met with little sympathy. The fact that the IfZ was approached at all for answers shows that, in Strauß's view, ‘from time to time, the Institute may be a court's or authority's last hope, since where else should one turn in Germany, even to receive a negative response’. ⁶⁵ Though Strauß indirectly acknowledged Kluke's concern that the Gutachten workload was excessive, it remained ‘an obligation’. ⁶⁶ For Hübinger, the reality of the Institute's role as seen through governmental eyes was even starker. It was, according to Hübinger, ‘simply the case that finance departments will evaluate the work of the Institute by its particular usefulness’. ⁶⁷ This exchange between Hübinger, Strauß and Kluke suggests how political pragmatism and reverence for the Institute's public role largely overrode concerns around resources. Indeed, at a political level, the obligation to produce Gutachten lent the Institute's representatives a means to justify the hefty public price tag attached to its ongoing operation. ⁶⁸

Although unforeseen by the Institute's original founders, the burden of Gutachten also brought with it some unanticipated benefits. For all its pessimistic undertones, the July 1955 meeting of the Advisory Council and Board of Trustees portended a favorable opportunity for the Institute's historians. At this meeting, Rothfels sought clarification as to whether the Institute retained the authority to utilize Gutachten for other purposes. Strauß's response – prior to reminding attendees that writing Gutachten was not optional – was that the expert reports ‘remained our property’, and that ‘it is up to us, insofar as we consider them to be publishable, to begin to do what we like’. ⁶⁹ The course of action was decided some three years later, in 1958, when the Institute published a volume of over 80 Gutachten, across 10 loosely-defined, heterogeneous categories covering more than 400 pages. ⁷⁰ Its publication coincided, perhaps intentionally, with a marked spike in requests for Gutachten in 1957, and was published at least partially to assuage this demand. While requests for Gutachten continued to be received, and grew in number, once the book was made available it was common for requesting agencies’ initial enquiries to be met with a short response and corresponding reference to the published Gutachten. In his introduction to this edition, written in September 1957, Kluke freely admitted that the book was intended as a reference work for anyone involved in restitution and Article 131 cases. Kluke also claimed in this introduction that responding to Gutachten was a challenge the Institute ‘gladly took on’ – while an accurate reflection of the view held by the Board of Trustees, it by no means aligned with the view of Institute historians, least of all Kluke himself. Nonetheless, Kluke also offers an honest assessment of the provisional state of Gutachten, freely admitting that the authors relied on the probity of their scholarship to ‘present authorities with the results of their interim research’ through adherence to ‘the most stringent critical standards’. Evidential deficiencies and limited resources could, Kluke conceded, lead to ‘fragmentary’ Gutachten, although this was a reality of contemporary history at the time. ‘It is not acceptable’, remarked Kluke, ‘to only make statements about the most recent past once all sources are accessible’. Historians should not shy away from initial attempts at locating answers to historical problems, even where the opening up of future sources of evidence leads to revision. Yet, Kluke's remarks here in 1957 sit in stark contrast to the feelings he had expressed at a high-level meeting in late 1954. On that occasion, Kluke moved that henceforth all Gutachten be prefaced by a declaration that implored the requesting agency – specifically, a court – not to reach a decision on the basis of the historians’ Gutachten. Remarkably, Kluke went so far as to advocate an open admission that the evidentiary bases of the Gutachten were limited, and that their contents could be ‘comprehensively amended or even invalidated on the basis of material presently unknown to the Institute’. ⁷¹ At the very least, the two views – expressed by Hübinger and Strauß on one hand, and Kluke on the other – represent both the bullishness and misgivings voiced by the Institute's historians in previous years over the task of Gutachten.

The origins and primordial structure of the Institute, in conjunction with the political and social imperatives of West Germany at the time, guaranteed that it would be seen by its executive body – made up of political representatives – in utilitarian terms. Nonetheless, a politician's opportunity was an historian's affliction. With little choice, the IfZ historians undertook this simultaneously pioneering and burdensome endeavor, one that resulted from a democratic society coming to terms with its criminal past. The historians recognized the importance of restitution and Article 131 cases, although they stressed that Gutachten were frequently speculative and inconclusive exercises. The specific questions put to historians required, ipso facto, specific answers, but often necessitated the meticulous sketching of a panoramic historical context extending over several pages. By the late 1950s, this expertise was well-honed, its results made publicly available, and demand from government agencies seeking historical expertise increased. ⁷² Ultimately, the position of the IfZ in 1950s West Germany as a government-funded, historical institute – sitting ‘between politics and scholarship’ – meant that, despite what was seen as a time-consuming obligation, constructing Gutachten strengthened the IfZ's claim to an ongoing political and social utility at a time when its scholarly ambitions remained somewhat unclear.

Conclusions

By 1956–1957, the IfZ's international reputation had grown. This is evidenced by the various public lectures held throughout West Germany on pressing historical issues, and the hosting of an international conference in the town of Tutzing in May 1956 – an event that featured representatives from nine countries. ⁷³ Still, tension between political and scholarly priorities remained and dominated a joint meeting of the Board of Trustee and the Advisory Board in April 1958, at which a central point of discussion was that year's work plan. ⁷⁴ In this document, Kluke maintains that there are no simple solutions, and that the Institute's ongoing role in the ‘national-political task of dissecting [Nazi] history’ would be most effectively fulfilled indirectly, through a ‘steady and sustained dissemination of reliable and scholarly rigorous knowledge’. ⁷⁵ For Bergsträsser, who seven years earlier had advocated that the Institute should act as a defender of West German democracy, it was ‘regrettable’ that the 1958 plan gave an impression of incompatibility between the scholarly and the political mission of the Institute. The latter must, according to Bergsträsser, continue to be pursued, though the Institute's suggested 1958 trajectory emphasized scholarly goals over political ones. Theodor Schieder – an influential historian with a controversial Nazi past – argued that the gulf between the Institute's two-pronged objectives should not be overstated. ⁷⁶ ‘The credibility of the Institute and its political influences’, Schieder stated, ‘are strengthened by its stand-alone scholarship’. Kluke, the author of the work plan and still Director of the Institute (until Helmut Krausnick took over at the end of 1958) sought to defend its contents. No one could accuse the IfZ historians of avoiding ‘hot button issues’, Kluke countered, while the work plan affirmed the Institute's political goals through deliberately steering the course of its research. Indeed, one such ‘hot’ issue was the Institute's planned publication of the autobiography of Rudolf Höss, the former Kommandant of Auschwitz, in 1958. Brill, for his part, was not pleased with the proposal to publish ‘the written contortions of a mass murderer’. ⁷⁷ Despite the controversy, the Höss autobiography was ultimately released, to substantial public and scholarly interest, and was prefaced by an introduction from Martin Broszat. ⁷⁸ To date, the work has sold over 138,000 copies. ⁷⁹

The concept of the IfZ as a government-funded body, mindful of its political responsibilities, although determined to pursue its own research agenda – and, where possible, to achieve both – is one that stretches back to its establishment. Bureaucratic support for changes to the West German constitution, and the concurrent (and competing) needs of its people to rehabilitate those who claimed to have been unfairly treated through the process of de-Nazification, to allow victims of Nazism to seek compensation, and to confront the Nazi past, each acted to drive the scholarly priorities of the IfZ through the writing of Gutachten and the shaping of new historical knowledge. It faced various obstacles – shortages of evidence and staff, as well as the unanticipated torrent of Gutachten – yet the IfZ had begun to position itself as a respected center of contemporary history by the end of the 1950s. This political-scholarly nexus defined almost every aspect of the Institute's activities, decisions, research, scholarship, and the very purpose of its existence. Its own history is characterized variously by action, reaction, and inaction – in the face of political and scholarly pressures. The conflict around the publication of the annotated version of Mein Kampf in 2016 and the protests that emerged echoed some of those surrounding the proposed publication of the Höss autobiography in the mid-1950s. Undoubtedly, the situation had changed by the 21st century, given the support that rained in for the publication of Mein Kampf to proceed as intended, together with the Institute's willingness to stand firm against political opposition and even legal threats. Nonetheless, the contemporary example reveals how the political dynamics of the Institute – rooted in its very foundations – still exist and find expression today.