Patrick Bormann: Das ist ja "rein politisch"!

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 foreign cultural policy of Germany. The paper looks into the German Foreign Office’s motives for its unfavorable reception of the initiative and illustrates the various reasons for the German Government’s general skepticism of 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 society. 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 issue 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 beginning Schiemann effectively managed to prevent the integration of Russians thus limiting its 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.

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