THE DEFEAT OF THE GERMAN UNIVERSITIES 1933

The German universities still have difficulties when they approach their history from 1933 to 1945. Prevailing over attempts at a critical reexamination are interpretations which downplay the significance of, or even ignore or repress this history. In lofty commemorative volumes one can learn much about brilliant periods of science and scholarship, but only little or nothing about the darkest phase in the history of the German university. What lies at the root of this difficulty in dealing with its own past? The university would be shaken in its self-regard if it should turn out that institutions of higher learning were not simply subjugated through acts of coercion by National Socialism, but rather that in 1933 a process of "Selbst-Gleichschaltung" (K.D.Bracher) took place, that is, a process of voluntary cooperation with an assimilation into the National Socialist machinery of state and power. This self-regard would furthermore be shaken if it were to be shown that the universities held the ideological stirrup for National Socialism - that they could hold this stirrup because of certain scientific and political traditions, which they (still or once again) uphold today.