Tudomány és politika. Egy habilitációs eljárás háttere (Németország, 1938)
Academy and Politics. The Background of a Habilitation Process (Germany, 1938)

Summary/Abstract: For the past one and a half decades, in line with the process of a critical introspection of history and historiography in Germany, more and more attention has been paid to the study and assessment of those institutions and researchers, which and who were instru-mental in the development of South-East European studies in the country. At the confe-rences dedicated to the discovery and the reevaluation of the discipline’s past, the life and works of Fritz Valjavec, the emblematic figure of German Südostforschung, are often dis-cussed. Having roots in the Banat region, Fritz Valjavec (1909–1960), the historian study-ing the cultural relationship of Germans with South-East Europe, the emblematic member of the Südost-Institut in Munich and the founder of the institution’s periodical, the Südost-Forschungen, maintained lively connections with scholars in Hungary in the interwar pe-riod. These connections as well as their influence on Hungarian historiography in the in-terwar period were rediscovered in the literature (after the intensive discourses of the 1930s and 40s) in the past decade. Through the analysis of Valjavec’s habilitation process, the paper reveals those expectations a historian pursuing a career in the National Socialist atmosphere of German academic life had to meet. It covers the process in detail, starting with the screening of the candidate then describing the narrow-minded attacks against him and the intricate efforts to undermine the process as well as the measures taken by the Na-tional Socialist academic groups supporting Valjavec. The contradiction that surfaced during the examination of the vast opus submitted as the habilitation thesis (Der deutsche Kultureinfluss im nahen Südosten. Unter besonderer Berücksichtigung Ungarns) is espe-cially worthy of attention: while in his home country many criticized the work for the lack of political consciousness and power in its wording, in Hungary, it was seen as a “manife-station of cultural nationalism” and a scholarly justification for Germany’s aspirations for territorial expansion.

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