Drafting Interdisciplinarity. Forms of Thought and Knowledge Production in the Federal Republic of Germany (1955-1975)

Abstract

This article traces the history of interdisciplinarity as a contemporary form of thought and of producing knowledge in the Federal Republic of Germany from 1955 to 1975. It establishes that concepts of interdisciplinary research and teaching circulated in diverse fields of knowledge and modes of articulation, and evaluates the transformations that interdisciplinarity underwent along the way. After detailing the process by which the adjective “interdisciplinary” first came into usage in scientific publications in the late 1950s, this article discusses how interdisciplinary research and teaching began to feature in debates about university reforms and the founding of new universities in the 1960s. The article then draws on the examples of Bochum, Konstanz, and Bielefeld to illustrate how debates about disciplinary specialization and interdisciplinary connections unfolded in visual modes of expression such as diagrams or sketches. In a last step, the article examines how visual and textual reflections connected interdisciplinarity to the architecture of envisioned universities, and hence related this time-specific form of thought and knowledge production to the material environments of future research and teaching.