THE HISTORY OF GERMAN STUDIES IN THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF THE UK AND IRELAND

ABSTRACT This article offers the first ‘one‐stop shop’ history of German Studies in UK and, to an extent, Irish higher education. Current knowledge of the history of ‘Germanistik’ and of other language disciplines in Europe and internationally is too limited to allow a complete analytical, comparative intellectual history of the field. Helping lay a basis for such a goal, however, this article draws together material from very disparate, often imperfect primary and secondary sources, and also presents new analysis of previously untapped data, archives and individual recollections. The article describes the institutional foundations of German in universities, including the expansion of German in the ‘new’ universities in the late twentieth century, and its later decline. It then examines the history of the people in whose hands the teaching of German(istik) rested, the evolution and expansion of what has been taught and researched, and co‐ and extracurricular activities. The limits imposed by the sources available, both primary and secondary, mean that the range of themes, institutions and (above all) individuals discussed is inevitably incomplete, but it is nevertheless broadly representative. The references supplied to existing research literature for the history of German Studies in the UK context are, in intention at least, comprehensive. An indicative timeline of events in the history of German(ic) Studies in the UK, the first such overview, is presented in the Appendix.