Article ID: CBB656878229

How Western Science Corrupts Class Consciousness: East Germany’s Presence at IIASA (2021)

unapi

The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Laxenburg, Austria, was founded during the period of détente in 1972 to bring scientists from East and West together to research shared problems and thus to build a “bridge” between the two opposed systems. The underlying image of knowledge at the institute was in stark contrast to the intellectual culture established in East Germany. Contributing to our understanding of the history of Cold War knowledge transfer, this essay reconstructs East Germany’s ambivalent and complex role at IIASA. Even if participation was considered important for displaying East German science, the essay argues that East Germany’s contribution was caught up in the perception of the Western scholar as a class enemy. It illustrates this by examining the best-documented case: that of Harry Maier, a social scientist who spent two years at IIASA between 1978 and 1980 and then, in 1986, used a conference visit to escape from East Germany.

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Authors & Contributors
Aso, Michitake
Bowker, Geoffrey C.
Donig, Simon
Gross, Dominik
Guénel, Annick
Kölbl-Ebert, Martina
Journals
Acta Astronautica
Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte
Cold War History
Earth Sciences History: Journal of the History of the Earth Sciences Society
IEEE Annals of the History of Computing
Metascience: An International Review Journal for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Science
Publishers
Cornell University Press
University of Minnesota
Cambridge University Press
Harvard University Press
Oxford University Press
University of Alabama Press
Concepts
Cold War
Science and politics
Science and government
Diffusion of innovation; diffusion of knowledge; diffusion of technology
Cross-national interaction
Earth sciences
People
Bethe, Hans Albrecht
Huxley, Aldous
Rabinowitch, Eugene
Sagan, Carl
Tôn-Thất, Tùng
Whewell, William
Time Periods
20th century, late
20th century
21st century
19th century
Places
East Germany
United States
West Germany
Vietnam
Great Britain
India
Institutions
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
Stasi [Ministerium für Staatssicherheit]
Obukhov Institute of Atmospheric Physics
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