ABSTRACT
As a distinct academic discipline, political science in Germany has a relatively short history. Although during the Weimar Republic (191933) there were precursory and tentative developments towards a theoretical foundation and even institutionalization, the discipline did not obtain ‘academic citizenship’ before the 1950s. In the Federal Republic (West Germany) the establishment of political science took about 20 years, from the foundation of new chairs for politics in 1948 until the spread of full study schemes to most universities in the 1960s. In the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), a directly comparable discipline did not emerge. Inclusion of, or even references to, political research and academic teaching in East Germany would require additional analysis beyond the scope of this article; general differences of societal structures and socio-political developments give rise to different patterns of topical and institutional organization of the academic field in the GDR.
