6 - The University of Strasbourg as a center of disciplinary change

Summary

Following the First World War, Marc Bloch was one of the first to be appointed to the reopened University of Strasbourg in repossessed Alsace. That university was reopened with high hopes that it could become both a model for educational reform in France and a showpiece for French culture. Both Alsatians and the world had to be convinced that France could do more with the University of Strasbourg than Germany had already done. It must become, in the words of the President of the Republic, “at the Eastern frontier, the intellectual beacon of France.” Once again Bloch was to be at the center of disciplinary change and development. During his years in Paris, he had witnessed the growth of Durkheimian sociology and Vidalian geography, and at Strasbourg he would be at the center of a disciplinary restructuring as efforts were made to overcome the relatively new disciplinary divisions. Not only did a number of the faculty work very actively at promoting interdisciplinary work but also the very structure of the university was designed to encourage innovative research and interdisciplinary exchange.

In mid-December 1918, a commission of seventeen prominent French scholars visited Strasbourg, just a few days after the closure of the Kaiser-Wilhelms-Universität Strassburg, to make recommendations on its imminent reopening as a French university. Gustave Lanson reported how they marveled at what the Germans had left behind.