ABSTRACT
This chapter also attempts to revise slightly the conventional picture of German science policy and scientific institutions. Historians often describe the science policy of a given period as decisively influenced, if not dominated, by the economic, political, and ideological environment: imperial science policy under the Empire, democratic in the Weimar Republic, Nazi during the Third Reich, communist in the German Democratic Republic, and federal (and democratic) in the Federal German Republic. In fact, there is much more to this story.
