The term ‘Ostforschung’ refers to a multidisciplinary field of research that emerged in German-speaking countries after the First World War. It examined the regions of Eastern Central and Eastern Europe from a German-centred perspective and regarded the peoples and states there not as equal subjects, but merely as objects of the German hegemony it proclaimed in this region.

The term was prominently used in the two-volume work *Deutsche Ostforschung: Results and Tasks since the First World War*.^[1] It was dedicated to Albert Brackmann (1871–1952), the director of the North-East German Research Association, and, at the height of Germany’s war of annihilation, presented an interim assessment of the work carried out to date.

After 1945, the Research Council of the Johann Gottfried Herder Institute in Marburg revived the tradition of the North-East German Research Association and, from 1952 onwards, published the *Zeitschrift für Ostforschung *.^[2] The renaming to *Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung* in 1994 marked a departure from the paradigm of *Ostforschung*.

The term came into use from the late 1950s onwards in the context of the East-West German confrontation. The GDR exploited the institutional and personnel continuities in Ostforschung as part of a campaign against the Federal Republic, which it branded as ‘revanchist’.^[3]

Today, the term ‘Ostforschung’ is hardly ever used as a self-description of a field of research. Instead, the reappraisal of its history has intensified significantly since the late 1990s.

There are translations of the term into other languages, such as ‘Badania wschodnie’ in Polish, ‘Research of the East’, ‘Research on the East’ and ‘Eastern Research’ in English, and ‘Recherche sur l’Est’ in French. However, due to its specifically German origins and connotations, the term is usually adopted as a German loanword.^[4]

As a counterpart to the German ‘Ostforschung’, the term ‘Westforschung’ is used in Polish academic circles,^[5] to denote Polish scholarship on the western territories of the Second Polish Republic after 1918, as well as the former German eastern territories referred to after 1945 as ‘regained territories’ (ziemie odzyskane). However, the term ‘Westforschung’ is not without its problems, as it was coined in analogy with the German term ‘Ostforschung’ and has no equivalent in Polish. In Polish, the term ‘Polish Western Thought’ (polska myśl zachodnia) is generally used instead. The use of the term ‘Westforschung’ thus already implies an emphasis on parallels with German ‘Ostforschung’, a point which has been criticised by Polish authors.^[6]

In contrast to ‘Eastern European History’, which was firmly established within universities from the outset and has its origins in the German Empire,^[7] German research into the East developed after the First World War and primarily outside the university system. By its own account, it saw itself as taking a stand against what was termed the ‘Versailles System’ and aimed to revise the post-war borders.^[8] From a German-centred perspective, the core aim was to emphasise ‘German’ factors in the historical process and to highlight these in contrast to Polish, Czechoslovak and other ‘elements’. The concept that initially prevailed in this regard was provided by the geographer Albrecht Penck (1858–1945) with his paradigm of the German ‘Volks- und Kulturboden’ (national and cultural soil). Penck distinguished between the‘Volksboden’, which he saw wherever ‘the German people settle’,^[9] and the ‘Kulturboden’, which, according to Penck, extended as far as traces of ‘German culture’ could be detected: ‘The German Kulturboden is the greatest achievement of the German people. […] The islands of German ‘Volksboden’, which lie far from its main Central European territory, are, just like the latter, accompanied by German ‘Kulturboden’.”^[10]

Following the National Socialists’ seizure of power, research into the East—in contrast to Eastern European history, for which the year 1933 marked a profound turning point—saw an expansion of its resources. Research into the biographies of Eastern European scholars and into institutions of the more recent past has made clear the extent to which many such scholars placed themselves at the service of the Nazi regime and supported the plunder of cultural artefacts as well as Germany’s war of annihilation in Eastern Europe.^[11]

Despite this undoubtedly heavy burden, there was a re-institutionalisation of Eastern European studies in the Federal Republic after 1945. Regardless of the role that German Eastern European studies had played in Nazi policy, the substantive link was provided by anti-communism, which could be linked to a ‘völkisch’ conception of the West or Europe. Göttingen^[12] and Marburg were the most important centres where researchers specialising in Eastern Europe were able to continue their work. It was not until the new Ostpolitik was introduced in the late 1960s, as a result of changing political premises, that a gradual shift away from the paradigm of Eastern European studies began.

The state of research into the history of German ‘Ostforschung’ has since broadened and improved considerably. It was not until 1988 that Michael Burleigh’s *Germany Turns Eastwards* – the first comprehensive account of the subject based on extensive archival research – was published,^[13] the 42nd German Historians’ Conference in Frankfurt am Main in 1998, with its controversial discussions, became the starting point for numerous new research projects.^[14] Biographical works on key figures in Ostforschung, as well as studies on institutional developments after 1945, are now available.^[15] As a result, a significantly broader and more reliable body of knowledge has now been achieved.

At the same time, there are still important aspects that remain to be addressed. For instance, there has as yet been no critical examination of the central role played by the Herder Institute in Marburg in the re-institutionalisation of Ostforschung after 1945.^[16] Furthermore, the interconnections and interactions between German Eastern European studies and the Polish ‘Western idea’ have so far only been explored to a limited extent. It is therefore to be hoped that research into this important topic will continue even after the high-profile controversies have subsided.

• Markus Krzoska: Research on the East. In: Ingo Haar, Michael Fahlbusch (eds.): Handbook of Ethnic Studies. Munich 2008, pp. 452–463.
• Hans-Christian Petersen: Population Economics – Eastern European Studies – Politics. A biographical study of Peter-Heinz Seraphim (1902–1979). Osnabrück 2007 (Individual Publications of the German Historical Institute in Warsaw 17).
• Hans-Christian Petersen, Jan Kusber: Eastern European Studies between Eastern European History and Ostforschung. In: Jürgen Elvert, Jürgen Nielsen-Sikora (eds.): Cultural Studies and National Socialism. Stuttgart 2008 (Historische Mitteilungen, Supplements 72), pp. 289–312.
• Jan M. Piskorski in association with Jörg Hackmann, Rudolf Jaworski (eds.): German Eastern Studies and Polish Western Studies at the Crossroads of Academia and Politics. A Comparative Study of Disciplines. Osnabrück, Poznań 2002 (German Research on the East and Polish Research on the West 1).
• Corinna Unger: Eastern Studies in West Germany. Research into Eastern Europe and the German Research Foundation 1945–1957. Stuttgart 2007 (Studies on the History of the German Research Foundation 1).

Hans-Christian Petersen: Research on Eastern Europe. In: Online Encyclopaedia on the Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe, 2012. URL: ome-lexikon.uni-oldenburg.de/p32793 (accessed 9 February 2021).