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A Sociography of German Academics, 1863–1938

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Fritz Ringer
Fritz Ringer
Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh
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Extract

During the 1950s, a team of Göttingen sociologists led by Helmut Plessner undertook a systematic survey of all faculty who taught at German university-level institutions during one or more of eleven selected sample years between 1864 and 1953. Drawing upon university catalogues (Vorlesungsverzeichnisse), scholarly handbooks (Minerva, Kürschners, Poggendorfs), and a variety of encyclopedias, members of the Göttingen group collected biographical and career data for almost twenty-four thousand individuals, which they entered by hand (though much of it in code) on manuscript sheets that were preserved at the Max Planck Institut für Bildungsforschung in Berlin.

Type
Articles
Information
Central European History , Volume 25 , Issue 3 , September 1992 , pp. 251 - 280
Copyright
Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 1992

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References

1. Most of the statistical work was done by David Vampola, a doctoral student working in consultation with Fritz Ringer. Vampola was initially aided by a grant from the German Volkswagen Foundation, and by an advisory committee that included Christian von Ferber, Dietrich Goldschmidt (both members of the original Göttingen team), Detlef K. Müller, and others. Unfortunately, Vampola ran into difficulties and extended delays. In the fall of 1991, Ringer therefore turned to Philip Sidel of the Social Science Computer Research Center at the University of Pittsburgh, who helped to detect and remove most of the remaining anomalies in the data set. What is now called the VRS (Vampola-Ringer-Sidel) Reconstitution of the Göttingen Survey (or GERPROFS.VRS) can be obtained, together with relevant documentation, codes, and useful analytical programs, on a single high-density diskette, from Fritz Ringer, Department of History, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260. Use of the data may suggest occasional updates; the last of these took place in July 1992. I wish to thank David Vampola and Philip Sidel for their substantial contributions to this project.

2. von Ferber, Christian, Die Entwicklung des Lehrkörpers der deutschen Universitäten und Hochschulen (Göttingen, 1956).Google Scholar

3. The “variables” covered in individual records are: (A) Year of birth, (B) Province or state (Land) of birth, (C) Father's occupation, (D) Religious affiliation, (E) Year of doctorate, (F) Institution at which doctorate was obtained, (G) Year in which teaching status (Habilitation) was earned, (H) Institution at which teaching status was attained, (I) Year during which Associate Professorship (Extraordinariat, regularly budgeted) was obtained, (J) Institution at which that rank was first reached, (K) Year during which Full Professorship (Ordinariaf) was obtained, (L) Institution at which that rank was first reached, (M) Sample year at which the individual taught at a sampled institution, (N) Institution at which the individual then taught, (O) Subject (Fach) of courses the individual then offered, (P) Rank (Stellung) then held by the individual. Variables M–P are repeated for each sample year in which the individual taught at a sampled institution. The tables and discussion that follow primarily concern variables C, D, M, O, and P.

4. One might focus upon Full and Associate Professors who moved from one university to another between two sample years without a change of rank. Universities who gained many new faculty through such “lateral moves,” in proportion to the size of their faculty, presumably ranked high in the scale of academic standings. This could be empirically tested, and so could variations of standing in major academic fields. The religious affiliations of the twenty-four German universities, too, might be further investigated: five had both Protestant and Catholic theological faculties (Bonn, Breslau, Münster, Tübingen, and Strassburg); only three had exclusively Catholic theological faculties (Freiburg, München, Würzburg); the three youngest (Frankfurt, Hamburg, Köln) had no theological faculties at all, and the remaining thirteen, more than half, were clearly Protestant.

5. In what follows, I am using Ringer, Fritz, “The Inflow of Students”, chap. 7 of the forthcoming A History of the European Universities, vol. 3 (sponsored by the European Rectors' Conference), which in turn draws (conceptually and comparatively) upon my Education and Society in Modern Europe (Bloomington, 1979),Google Scholar and (for German student data) upon Titze, Hartmut, Das Hochschulstudium in Preussen und Deutschland 1820–1944 (Datenhandbuch zur deutschen Bildungsgeschichte, vol 1, part 1) (Göttingen, 1987), here esp. 27–30, 86–89.Google Scholar

6. Since available enrollment figures, from ibid., 87–89, are for universities only, the number of natural sciences faculty in Table 1 is reduced, for the calculations that follow, by those teaching that field at the technical institutes; for the others fields, the faculty in Table 1 are taken to be identical with university faculty.

7. Governance reform during the interwar period typically led to the establishment of such bodies as the “Full Faculty” and the “Wider Senate,” in which junior faculty participated, and of Faculty Executive Committees and “Narrower Senates,” in which they were modestly represented at best. A contestatory movement of junior faculty originated even before 1914. In addition to Ferber, Entwicklung des Lehrkörpers, see Eulenburg, Franz, Der akademische Nachwuchs (Leipzig, 1908),Google Scholar and Busch, Alexander, Die Geschichte des Privatdozenten (Stuttgart, 1959);Google Scholar Busch was apparently a member of the Göttingen group.

8. In addition to Ringer, “Inflow,” see Titze, Hochschulstudium, esp. 238–39, 272. Titze's data for 1890 actually pertains to male German students at Prussian universities; the 34 percent for the economic upper middle class and tradesmen actually covers all independents in industry, crafts, and commerce. Titze's data for 1932 (with 1931 not available) again are for German university students, and do not include students at the technical institutes. I believe more could be done to confront Titze's statistics for students with appropriately grouped data from the VRS sample, including by subject area; but I cannot here pursue these analytical opportunities.

9. Student data from ibid., 226–27 is for German students at Prussian universities in 1890 and 1911, and for German students at all German university-level institutions in 1931.

10. Breslauer, Bernhard, ed., Die Zurücksetzung der Juden an den Universitäten Deutschlands (Berlin, 1911).Google Scholar

11. In addition to the 1,460 regular faculty who were counted as “new” as of 1938 in Tables 3–6, an additional 80 individuals advanced from the status of auxiliary personnel (most often reached in 1931) to that of regular faculty in 1838, and just over 80 had taght (1) at German universities and technical institutes before, but not in, 1931, or (2) in institutions other than universities or technical institutions, or outside Germany, before 1938.