That’s “purely political”! – About the founding history of the “German Association for Studying Russia” before the First World War

Abstract

The paper analyses the establishment of the Deutsche Gesellschaft zum Studium Russlands (German Association for Studying Russia) in two contexts. First, the Association founded in 1913 is connected with the early stage of foreign cultural policy of Germany. The paper analyzes the German Foreign Office's motives for giving an unfavorable reception to the initiative and illustrates the various reasons for the German Government's general scepticism toward social initiatives in the area of Great Power politics. The German historian Fritz Fischer's thesis that the German Government only rejected the efforts to establish the Association in order to undermine a German-Russian understanding is questioned in the light of new research. Second, the foundation of the Association was ― to put it anachronistically ― an attempt to create a transnational association. The conflict between the leading German experts on Russia Otto Hoetzsch and Theodor Schiemann, during the early history of the Association points to the explosive political issues inherent in such endeavors. While Hoetzsch as a supporter of a German-Russian rapprochement advocated the integration of Russians into the Association, Schiemann, a staunch opponent of Russia, fought all attempts that would have advanced German-Russian relations. The analysis of several projects of the Association shows that from the very beginning Schiemann effectively managed to prevent the integration of Russians thus limiting the association's political scope and stalling the creation of what in transnational theory would be called a Grenzraum (frontier). This paper is supposed to inspire more comparative studies in the field of transnational association in order to identify a set of specific characteristics.