DFG-funded projects 1920 to 1945 – notes on a research information system, that is definitely not ‘current’? But of course, it is!

Abstract

The DFG celebrates its hundredth anniversary in 2020. DFG is Germany's largest funding organisation of basic research, especially at universities. The annual budget is currently 3.4 billion euros. When the organization was founded, the situation was tough. The founding name "Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen Wissenschaft" (may be translated as “hardship community of German Science”) reflects the state of distress/emergency that the German scientific world was facing at the time. After WWI the German science system was on the brink, international connections were cut off. Getting back on its feet after this initial situation was a challenge. The improvement progressed slowly and laboriously and not without success. But the Third Reich then led to an even worse collapse - not only financially, but above all morally, because much of what was researched and promoted at that time was criminal.

On the occasion of its anniversary, the DFG will open its archives and publish a RIS that will make more than 50,000 applications from the years 1920 to 1945 searchable. Each project informs about the name of the researcher, his or her institution and the title of the project. Further information relates to the funding instrument and the subject according to the subject classifications used at the time.

Owing to rather complex procedures, it was possible to assign identifiers from GND (Gemeinsame Normdatei / The Integrated Authority File) and WIKIDATA to a large number of the 13,000 scientists for whom data on funded (and non-funded) projects are available. This makes it possible to enrich the data pool considerably, as it also makes information accessible that is stored in external systems about these persons (but also about research institutions and sometimes even about some of the projects).

In this way, the adjective "current" will also gain importance for this system because only the identifier link makes it possible to connect and access up-to-date information on these historical entities at any time.

The presentation focuses on the essential features of the prepared archive data and the methods regarding the identifier topic.