The Kaiser-Wilhelm-Society for the Promotion of the Sciences (KWG) was founded, after many years of debate, on 11 January 1911, and its first two research institutes (the KWI for Physical Chemistry and Electrical Chemistry, and the KWI for Chemistry) opened in October 1912. Though formally attached to the university, the KWIs were exclusively dedicated to research, and thus constituted a specific mode of interaction between science, the state, and the economy.