This thesis studies the professoriate and the overall academic tradition at German universities in context of successive phases of change since 1933. It extends the analysis of the mandarin tradition developed by Fritz K. Ringer in his seminal work entitled The Decline of the German Mandarins. In this book Ringer argued that the German professors or mandarins wielded extraordinary socio-political and cultural influence for most of the nineteenth century. This "mandarin tradition" began to decline somewhere around 1890, following changes in Germany's society and polity that accompanied its rapid industrialisation and, in Ringer's view, finally ended with the advent of the National Socialists in 1933. However, this thesis argues that core elements of the mandarin tradition, identified by Ringer, survived the Nazi regime and some of their manifestations are, indeed, evident even in the present times. In part, this is because the tradition had deep social, cultural and institutional roots which influenced thinking about intellectual culture and university reform, including the latter's content and pace. But it is also because the context in which change in higher education spheres occurred - the political exigencies, the efficacy of implementation and the capacity to sustain reform - frequently created a set of circumstances which allowed for persistence of mentalities and codes of practice traditionally associated with the mandarin tradition.
Shrivastava, Anindya
Supervisors: Hahn, Hans
Year: 2004
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