ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines how academic politics was played out in the Lamprecht methods debate or Methodenstreit, Eckhardt Kehr's attempt to shift historical studies from a primacy of foreign politics to a primacy of domestic politics, Scott Fisher's reinterpretation of the origins of World War I, and the Historikerstreit in the 1980s. "In 1978 Munich history students," Jurgen Kocka writes, "preferred to receive certificates without the seal of the institute of social and economic history because they feared the political image which 'social history' might have for many of those who decide about their professional future". The Holocaust, postwar Germany, and (re)unified Germany also influence academic politics within the German historical community. For Kehr, Germany's bid to create a navy equivalent to England's and Germany's bid for African colonies were created in order to foster a false nationalism that would distract the German people from their serious economic problems at home.
