Academics and Politics : Northern European Area Studies at Greifswald University, 1917–1991

Inspired by the need to increase general awareness of foreign sentiments and cultures the Prussian Parliament decided in 1917 to found Area Studies Institutes. In the University of Greifswald the reform saw the establishment of the Nordic Institute, an interdisciplinary institute that was to study Northern Europe in a wide variety of aspects and disciplines. Beholden to interdisciplinarity and implicitly political tasks, the Nordic Institute and its successor institutions remained an oddity in t