German historical population research differed crucially from its Western European counterpart, as far as Historical Demography had been established in Germany as a historiographical subdiscipline in the 1970s. In contrary to English and French “Historical Demography”/Histoire démographique”, which emerged in the 1950s and 1960s, family reconstitution in Germany can be ...
(Show more)German historical population research differed crucially from its Western European counterpart, as far as Historical Demography had been established in Germany as a historiographical subdiscipline in the 1970s. In contrary to English and French “Historical Demography”/Histoire démographique”, which emerged in the 1950s and 1960s, family reconstitution in Germany can be already traced in practices of “Biology of Population” (Bevölkerungsbiologie): In the 1920s and 1930s, “Biology of Population” shaped essentially the racist scientific construction of the German national community (Volksgemeinschaft).
The proposed paper concentrates on the period between the collapse of the Third Reich and the break through of the Historical Social Science (Historische Sozialwissenschaft) in the Federal Republic of Germany in the 1970s. I suggest that this period assigned a decisive transformation process, in which Western German historians strived for their reintegration in Western European and North American historiographical discourse. Closely linked to this overall epistemic change, historiographical population research in West Germany sought to gain new ground: While the established “Population History” stood for the macroanalytical and to some extent “organic” traditions of “German Sociology”, “demography” in general and particularly “Historical Demography” seemingly refered to the liberal-statistical “Western” conceptualization of social structure.
In the early Federal Republic, however, historical population research was thoroughly burdened by its völkisch legacy. I argue that this was one of the main reasons for its low acceptance in historiographical discourse. Even though, the 1950s and 1960s cannot be viewed as “blind spots” in the development of historical population research in Germany: On the contrary, historians such as Erich Keyser and especially Wolfgang Köllmann debated controversially, how “Population History” should change its methodological approaches. Not least, they sought to resume and partly to intensify scientific contacts to their Western European collegues. By accentuating the latter, I go clearly beyond the present historical research on German “Population History”: The key question linked up with it is, to which degree transnational cooperations of German, English, and French historians remodeled “Population History” and even created new ground for “Historical Demography” within German Historical Social Science.
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