Halle as Innovative University? Novelty and Innovation as Historical and as Historiographical Categories
Project managers: Prof. Dr. Daniel Fulda; Prof. Dr. Andreas Pečar; Dr. Hanspeter Marti
Duration: Until 2020
Description of Project
The project, completed in 2020, examined the interpretive figure of the University of Halle as a site of scientific and university innovation. The aim was not to use 'innovation/novelty' unreflectively as a category in the history of science, but to keep in mind the difference between the guiding function of this category in modern, retrospective historiography of science on the one hand, and its orienting function (which is by no means self-evident, but always needs to be established first) in the historical practice of scholars, students and scientists, secular and ecclesiastical authorities as well as the public on the other.
As a result of the project, it can be stated:Claims of novelty, striving for innovation and Enlightenment programmes were quite generally in the German-speaking world around 1700 something that was new or, as far as the rather old talk of the new was concerned, something that received a new, modern foundation. They were not yet part of the normal mental equipment of scientific institutions, but were only just becoming part of it, and not uniformly in all places. In Halle, the formulation of such claims, such aspirations and such programmes took place particularly early. This is why the thesis of the avant-garde role of the Fridericiana can be substantiated. Claims to innovation, striving for innovation and enlightenment programmes are characteristic of the early phase of the University of Halle. It is no mere play on words to sum up that what was actually new about the newly founded University of Halle was the claim to innovation made by some of its protagonists. To be more precise, it can be said that the innovation achievement consisted first and foremost in the fact that some scholars of the Fridericiana had a concept of 'innovation' or formed it (without using this word) and undertook to carry it out.
Publication
- Daniel Fulda and Andreas Pečar (eds.): Innovationsuniversität Halle? Neuheit und Innovation als historische und als historiographische Kategorien. Berlin, Boston 2020 (= Hallesche Beiträge zur Europäischen Aufklärung, 63).