The Brandenburg-Prussian University Policy in the Early Phase of the University of Halle (1688–1740)

Project manager: Prof. Dr. Andreas Pečar

Researcher: Dr. Marianne Taatz-Jacobi

Duration of project: 01. Februar 2015 – 31. Januar 2018

The basic question of the research project is: what “university policy” has the Prussian government pursued in the newly founded University of Halle in the first fifty years of its existence? What agendas in terms of control can be identified for the different actors involved? Were these control agendas associated with an “impetus to change”? And if so, what beliefs fed this reformative impulse? One must also ask whether the actors in each individual fields of action who shaped Halle shared common views about university policies.

Should common control objectives be identified during the first decades of the institution after its foundation, it should be clarified by whom these goals were each formulated and how they belonged to a universally shared objective within the institution.

Should there have been no common control objectives, then it should be clarified which actors or groups prevailed with their objectives, at least in certain contexts at the expense of competing actors or groups, and why they were able to prevail in the competitive struggle of conflicting claims to validity. The government in Berlin certainly played a special role: was the University evaluated according to certain goals? If so, what goals were desirable for the government? In what way did the government also try to exercise its supervisory and steering function in the case of the University of Halle?

In addition to this control agenda, the possibilities and the limits of control will also be considered, by evaluating the spheres of influence.

In a further step, the relationship between formal communication among public officials, within the formal channels of communication and informal communication between the different actors who maintained relationships based on trust must also be determined accurately.

What role did formalized procedures and hierarchically organized institutions play? What effect did informal forms of control have on the control attempts of the actors, for example, for example the networks in which individual actors were interconnected and in which the interests of the Halle institution could also be addressed?

• Marianne Taatz-Jacobi and Andreas Pečar: Die Univer-sität Halle und der Berliner Hof (1691–1740). Eine höfisch-akademische Beziehungsgeschichte (Wissenschaftskulturen, Reihe III: Pallas Athene, 55), Stuttgart 2021.