Portrait of the Academy

Non-university research institution

Als außeruniversitäre Forschungseinrichtung schafft die Akademie den Rahmen für langfristige wissenschaftliche Projekte und trägt zur Entwicklung digitaler Forschungsmethoden bei. Der Schwerpunkt liegt auf der kultur- und geistesgeschichtlichen Grundlagenforschung. Die HAdW bietet den institutionellen Rahmen für langfristige Forschungsvorhaben im Akademienprogramm (interner Link): Hier entstehen kontinuierliche Beobachtungsreihen und Datensammlungen, werden umfangreiche Texteditionen und Lexika erarbeitet und der Öffentlichkeit zugänglich gemacht. Damit trägt die Akademie zur Bewahrung und Erschließung des kulturellen Erbes bei – und stellt Grundlagenwissen bereit, das Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftlern in Forschung und Lehre ebenso dient wie einer breiten Öffentlichkeit. Die wissenschaftliche Verantwortung für die einzelnen Projekte obliegt Kommissionen, die aus Akademiemitgliedern sowie internationalen Fachleuten zusammengesetzt sind. 

Gelehrtengemeinschaft

Die Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften fördert den wissenschaftlichen Austausch ihrer Mitglieder, trägt damit zur Entwicklung neuer Forschungsfragen bei und pflegt den Dialog mit dem wissenschaftlichen Nachwuchs. Dabei versteht sie sich als Brücke zwischen den Fachdisziplinen – und als verlässliche Partnerin für Politik und Öffentlichkeit, wenn es darum geht, wissenschaftlich fundierte Entscheidungsgrundlagen bereitzustellen.

Ihre Mitglieder engagieren sich ehrenamtlich und aus Überzeugung: für die Bewahrung und Erschließung des kulturellen Erbes, für fächerübergreifenden Wissenstransfer und für eine Wissenschaft, die gesellschaftliche Verantwortung ernst nimmt.

Junge Akademie | HAdW

Die Junge Akademie | HAdW ist eine Plattform für interdisziplinären und generationenübergreifenden Austausch. Sie fördert herausragende junge Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftler, macht exzellente Nachwuchsforschung in Baden-Württemberg sichtbar und verleiht ihr Anerkennung.

Durch die Vernetzung talentierter Forschender aus dem ganzen Land stärkt die Akademie den Wissenschaftsstandort Baden-Württemberg und schafft eine nachhaltige Bindung der Ausgezeichneten an die Region. Die Mitglieder der Jungen Akademie sind dabei über einen längeren Zeitraum aktiv in die Arbeit der Akademie eingebunden und wirken an deren Gestaltung mit.

Gründungsjahre (1909-1933)

After several failed attempts in the 19th century, the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities owes Academy of Sciences and Humanities existence to the patronage of the Lanz family, industrialists from Mannheim. In 1909, in memory of Heinrich Lanz (d. 1905), who ran Germany’s largest agricultural machinery factory, the family provided one million gold marks as endowment capital. The new academy’s organizational structure mirrored that of the other German academies (Berlin, Munich, Göttingen, Leipzig): two divisions—the Mathematical-Scientific Division and the Philosophical-Historical Division—each headed by a secretary, who took turns representing the academy as a whole.

According to the statutes of 1909, the “Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Heinrich Lanz Foundation” (as it was known until around 1925) was an “association of scholars dedicated to the promotion of science, its advancement through research, and the encouragement and support of scientific inquiry.” Each class comprised ten full members, who were required to reside in Heidelberg; associate members could come from the rest of Baden. Since 1920, the Academy has been headquartered in the former Grand Ducal Palace on Karlsplatz in Heidelberg.

The financial resources were insufficient for larger projects of its own. During the period of inflation, the foundation's capital was almost lost, without the Heidelberg Academy receiving regular government subsidies in return; it was only from 1928 onwards that it received support from the state of Baden in varying amounts. The first major undertakings were the "Recovery of the fossil finds from Mauer (Homo heidelbergensis)" (duration 1910-1944) and "The Babylonian-Assyrian Dictionary" (duration 1912-1925).

The Heidelberg Academy during the Nazi era (1933–1945)

The Heidelberg Academy responded to the challenge posed by Nazi ideology and its implementation by the state in much the same way as virtually all academic institutions in Germany. The guiding principle behind its actions was organizational survival—the preservation of the institution. To achieve this goal, virtually any Prize was Prize , above all the abandonment of legal rights, collegiality, and solidarity with persecuted members, as well as the surrender of academic standards in new elections. The opportunistic tactic of adapting as much as possible and often preemptively conforming to save a reputation that had become questionable led to culpable failure. Although the Academy did not conduct research projects typical of the Nazis, five National Socialists were elected in the 1934/35 elections, three of them to vacant seats in disciplines traditionally under the Academy’s purview (astronomy, geology, physiology). The “Nazi faction,” though a small minority among the 37 full members, immediately set about expelling the Jewish members from the Academy under the leadership of the physiologist Johann Daniel Achelis. Since those affected were initially unwilling to yield to the pressure and resign, the Mathematical and Natural Sciences Class came to a complete standstill between the summer semester of 1936 and the end of 1937—meetings were no longer held, and the 1937 annual session was also canceled. Within the “Cartel of German Academies of Sciences,” Heidelberg became a pioneer in pushing for a uniform Reich-wide solution regarding the expulsion of “non-Aryan” members, while the Reich Ministry of Education, Science, and Public Enlightenment (REM) reserved the right to make the decision in 1936. In February 1937, Otto Heinrich Erdmannsdörfer, secretary of the Mathematics and Natural Sciences Class, noted that in a survey, a minority of class members still advocated “for the retention of non-Aryans under all circumstances,” even though just a few months earlier the “Kampfblatt” of the Heidelberg group of the NSDStB, “Der Heidelberger Student,” had sharply attacked the Academy for its outdated understanding of science and demanded the “complete purge” of “Jews and friends of Jews.” In silent protest against the treatment of Jewish members, the botanist Ludwig Jost left the Heidelberg Academy in 1937. The Philosophy and History Section stayed completely out of these disputes and merely pointed to the necessity of achieving a uniform regulation across the Reich.

On November 15, 1938, a "quick letter" from the REM demanded that the Reich Citizenship Law of 1935 (Reich citizens are "citizens of German or related blood") be applied to regular and corresponding members. Those affected were to be encouraged to resign; if they refused, the ministry would revoke their membership. The order was repeated on February 1, 1939, and then also enforced in Heidelberg for "Jews, Mischlinge, and gentlemen married to Jewish women or Mischlinge of the first degree," albeit not without exceptions.

Das Ergebnis der erzwungenen Austritte oder Streichungen aus der Mitgliederliste war: Von 37 ordentlichen Mitgliedern (Stand 1. April 1933) wurden sieben aus der Akademie vertrieben (vier in der Mathematisch-naturwissenschaftlichen, drei in der Philosophisch-historischen Klasse), von 38 korrespondierenden/außerordentlichen Mitgliedern fünf (eines in der Mathematisch-naturwissenschaftlichen, vier in der Philosophisch-historischen Klasse).

In the elections held in the following years until the end of the war, supporters of the regime, critics of the regime, and those with little ideological exposure were elected. The statutes of 1939, which also introduced the Führer principle and made additional elections dependent on confirmation by the ministry, expanded the catchment area for full members beyond Heidelberg to southwestern Germany and now also included the universities and colleges of Freiburg, Karlsruhe, Darmstadt, and Frankfurt; after the conquest of Alsace, Strasbourg was added. Heads of research institutes and industrialists could also be elected.

The financial situation of the Heidelberg Academy remained precarious, so that only two new major projects could be launched in the Department of Philosophy and History: the edition of the works of Nicholas of Cusa (Cusanus) (1925–2015) and “Die Deutschen Inschriften” covering the period from approximately 500 to 1650 (ongoing since 1935, with preliminary work beginning in 1930)—a project Academy of Sciences and Humanities by nearly all German academies as well as the Austrian Academy of Sciences and Humanities .

The Heidelberg Academy after 1945

For the new beginning after May 8, 1945, two questions arose in particular: How would the Academy treat those members who had been forced out of the Academy as "non-Aryans" during the years of the Third Reich? And how would the Academy treat those members who could be accused of serious misconduct during the twelve years of Nazi rule, in particular active participation in the "purge" of the Academy? The first question was easy to answer. Members who had been expelled or had resigned were invited to rejoin the Academy as corresponding members. Most accepted this invitation, but not all. Apparently, not everyone felt that the Academy had struck the right tone in this delicate re-establishment of ties.

The Academy had a much harder time dealing with members who had been implicated in Nazi activities. It initially resorted to introducing a dormant membership, which could, but did not necessarily have to, lead to reactivation depending on the denazification proceedings and the decisions of the university. In 1950, the Academy decided to decide on the revocation of dormant memberships in accordance with the rules for new elections. In fact, the Mathematics and Natural Sciences Class rejected the re-election of incriminated members in some cases. On the other hand, however, heavily incriminated members were also re-elected. The Academy did not have the courage to make a clear break, or indeed to make a clear decision at all. In his history of the Heidelberg Academy, published in 1994, which contains an extensive analysis of this topic, historian Wennemuth described the Academy's handling of its past as "hesitant, half-hearted."

However, the past remained present for the Academy well beyond the immediate post-war years, namely in the form of the question of whether it should or even must examine the behavior of candidates of the relevant age during the years of the Third Reich when electing them. As far as can be ascertained, there has never been a fundamental debate on this issue within the Academy. Even in the case of individual admissions, the question of whether a candidate was directly or indirectly involved in the injustices of the Nazi dictatorship was apparently not raised. Even if one acknowledges that there were reasons for the Academy not to link the elections to a kind of second, belated denazification process, one must nevertheless make the critical observation that the Academy apparently saw no reason to fundamentally reflect on its own behavior in this matter and to state the reasons why it behaved as it did.

The Heidelberg Academy since the 1950s

From the 1950s onwards, the legal and financial status of the academy gradually consolidated. In 1958, it became the Baden-Württemberg State Academy, in 1966 a public corporation, and since 1971 its basic budget has been included in the state budget. Accordingly, the academy recruits scholars who are based in Baden-Württemberg. At the same time, the academy's research activities expanded.

This development received a decisive boost when the federal and state governments established the so-called Academies Program in the 1970s. The program was and is intended to promote long-term scientific projects, which had previously been the responsibility of the DFG. Both classes were now able to set up research positions for limited-term long-term research projects, which were financed by the Academies Program. Following a vote by the Science Council, purely scientific research projects were no longer included in the Academies Program from 2004 onwards. Since then, the Academies Program has focused on long-term projects in the humanities. In a second statement in 2009, the Science Council clarified its position and encouraged interdisciplinary cooperation between the humanities and natural sciences in Academies Program projects.

The Union of German Academies of Sciences and Humanities plays a decisive role in the distribution of program funds among the academies. It has existed under this name since 1996 as an association of the eight state-funded academies of sciences. The state academies had previously organized their cooperation in a working group dating back to the 1950s, which was restructured into the Conference of Academies in the 1970s and eventually led to the founding of the Union as a registered association. The Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities involved in these associations from the very beginning.

Since 2002, its activities have also included the promotion of young scholars through a special program in line with the Academy’s mission (WIN Program). The awards that the Academy presents in increasing numbers—beginning with the Academy Prize, established in 1984 by the Friends of the Academy—are also intended for young scholars. In 2009, the Academy celebrated its 100th anniversary with a ceremony attended by Baden-Württemberg’s Minister President Günther Öttinger and numerous other events.

• Udo Wennemuth, Wissenschaftsorganisation und Wissenschaftsförderung in Baden. Die Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften 1909-1949 (Heidelberg 1994).
• Udo Wennemuth, Die Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften im Dritten Reich, in: Acta historica Leopoldina Nr. 22 (1995), S. 113-132.
• Volker Sellin (Hg.), Das Europa der Akademien (Heidelberg 2010).
• Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften (Hg.), Die im Dritten Reich entrechteten und vertriebenen Mitglieder der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften (Heidelberg 2009).
• Volker Sellin/Sebastian Zwies (Hg.), Die Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften im Spiegel ihrer Antrittsreden 1944-2008 (Heidelberg 2009), mit einem Verzeichnis der ordentlichen Mitglieder 1909-2008.
• Volker Sellin/Eike Wolgast/Sebastian Zwies (Hg.), Die Forschungsvorhaben der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften (Heidelberg 2009).
• Ditte Bandini/Ulrich Kronauer (Hg.), Früchte vom Baum des Wissens. Eine Festschrift der wissenschaftlichen Mitarbeiter (Heidelberg 2009).
• Herbert von Bose, Die Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, in: Jörg Kreutz/Wilhelm Kreutz/Hermann Wiegand (Hg.), In omnibus veritas: 250 Jahre Kurpfälzische Akademie der Wissenschaften in Mannheim (1763-1806), Mannheim 2014, 221-231.
• Tonio Hölscher, Athene als Emblem der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, Athene 1-2021, 6-9.
• Uta Hüttig/Hans-Georg Kräusslich (Hg.), Die Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften im Spiegel ihrer Antrittsreden 2009-2023 (Heidelberg 2024), mit einem Verzeichnis der ordentlichen Mitglieder 2009-2023.
• Matthias Ohm, Die Medaillen der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, Athene 2-2024, Seite 35-37.
• Matthias Ohm, Academia in Nummis. Medaillen der Mannheimer und der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften", in: Numismatisches Nachrichtenblatt Heft 11/2024, S. 413–420.