German Historical Institute Washington DC
The German Historical Institute Washington DC is an institute of historical study based in Washington, D.C. It has been part of the Max Weber Stiftung: Deutsche Geisteswissenschaftliche Institute im Ausland since 2002. The director is Simone Lässig. History The development of a German Historical Institute in America began soon after the establishment of the German Historical Institute London. The German historians Erich Angermann (University of Cologne) and Günter Moltmann (University of Hamburg) and the American historians Gordon Craig (Stanford University) and Gerald Feldman (University of California at Berkeley), Wolfgang Mommsen (director of GHI London), Rudolf Vierhaus (Director of Max Planck Institute for History) and Gerhard A. Ritter (University of Munich) were part of the initial discussions to inaugurate a new GHI institute in the United States. They developed a proposal that the Minister for Research and Technology and the advisory board Wissenschaftsrat in Germany reviewed and which the Bundeskabinett under Helmut Kohl formally accepted. The GHI Washington DC opened in 1987 with Hermann-Josef Rupieper as director. Historian Hartmut Lehmann became the official founding director a year later and helped establish its academic independence and acceptance into American academia. He initiated conferences, research projects, publications, lecture series, and scholarship programs that