“Historical Demography”/“Population History” in Germany, c. 1950-1980

The paper investigates the period between the collapse of the Third Reich and the break through of the Historical Social Science (Historische Sozialwissenschaft) in the Federal Republic of Germany in the 1970s. I suggest that this phase assigned a decisive transformation process, in which West German social historians strived for their reintegration in West European and North American historiographical discourse. Closely linked to this overall epistemic change, historiographical population research in West Germany sought to gain new ground. While the established “Population History” stood for the macroanalytical and to some extent “organic” traditions of German Sociology”, “demography” in general and particularly “Historical Demography” seemingly referred to the liberal-statistical “Western” conceptualization of social structure. In the early Federal Republic, however, historical population research was thoroughly burdened by its völkisch legacy. As it is shown in the present paper, this was one of the main reasons for its low acceptance in historiographical discourse. Even though, the 1950s and 1960s cannot be viewed as “blind spots” in the development of historical population research in Germany: On the contrary, historians such as Erich Keyser and especially Wolfgang Köllmann debated controversially, how “Population History” should change its methodological approaches. Not least, both of them sought to resume and partly to intensify scientific contacts to their West European colleagues. By accentuating the latter, the paper goes clearly beyond the present historical research on German “Population History”: The key question linked up with it is, to which degree transnational scientific cooperation of German, English, and French historians remodeled “Population History” and even created new ground for “Historical Demography” within German Historical Social Science.