Fulbright Program

Established in 1952, six years after the foundation of the international Fulbright program, the German American Fulbright program has so far facilitated the bilateral exchange of more than 30,000 German and American students, instructors, profes­sors, researchers, and professionals.

Fulbright’s correspondence with his friend Mike Fodor, reporting to him from Berlin, shows the senator’s special interest in divided, post-World War II Germany and thus also in the German Fulbright pro­gram. Although the initial impetus of the program was certainly connected with reeducation and/or reorientation, the pre­amble of the 1952 agreement stressed the “mutual understanding between the peo­ples of the United States of America and the Federal Republic of Germany by a wider exchange of knowledge and profes­sional talents through educational contact” (Tent 2003).

This binational balance is reflected both in the funding procedures (each side funds 50 percent of the program) and in the composition of the Fulbright board, on which both countries are equally repre­sented.

The impressive example of the pro­gram’s founder, J. William Fulbright, has resulted in the emergence of a number of strong personalities internationally who, embodying the program, have been able to help it along in their various national con­texts. The German Fulbright program has been favored by the long tenure of several well-informed officials, such as the Ger­mans Ulrich Littmann and Rainer Rohr and the American Carl G. Anthon. Beyond its outstanding leadership, the Fulbright program has generated a large number of personalities in both countries who have brought the intercultural academic knowl­edge gained in the course of their stay in the partner country to bear on a specific area of expertise, whether economics, poli­tics, or the natural sciences. However, the most important effect of the Fulbright pro­gram has been on the bilateral cooperation in the area of higher education.

Most notably, the Fulbright program has contributed decisively to the establish­ment of American studies as an indepen­dent field at German universities and thus helped to break the virtual monopoly En­glish philology had on the training of sec­ondary school teachers of English. The in­terdisciplinary interests of many Fulbright appointees at German universities have also extended to other areas and helped to inspire such areas as women’s studies and multicultural studies. In the United States, the German American Fulbright program contributed toward the study of Germany; the German Studies “movement,” al­though largely American in origin, was greatly assisted by special Fulbright ap­pointments.

Many of the most gifted junior schol­ars from Germany (“excellence” being a central selection criterion) decide to stay in the United States following the completion of their “Fulbright experience.” They have become some of the most productive fac­ulty members at American research univer­sities, and at the same time, they remain academic ambassadors for Germany in their adopted country. Indeed, junior scholars have been the most consistent focus of the German Fulbright exchange, and participation in the program was often the promising beginning of a later univer­sity career both in the United States and Germany. The Fulbright program has thus been stimulating innovative research in both countries and in many different areas.

Given Germany’s previous location at the ideological dividing line between “East” and “West,” it is not surprising that the German Fulbright program has always had a strategic position in European Amer­ican academic relations. The “Berlin Week,” established in the mid-1950s for participants throughout Germany, has gradually developed into an all-European forum for American Fulbrighters in Eu­rope and a correspondingly interesting venue for creative dialogue and exchange.

A separate Fulbright program with the German Democratic Republic (GDR) had

been established just prior to the disassem­bly of the Berlin Wall in 1989. It reflected the GDR's interest in improving its rela­tionship with the United States on all lev­els, especially in view of the fact that sup­port by Mikhail Gorbachev’s USSR had become uncertain. However, the program was set up as an intergovernmental agree­ment and did not use the model of the bi­national commission that characterized the program in West Germany and other West­ern countries.

Beyond its traditional clientele of stu­dents and professors (the former making up the heart of the German program to the United States, the latter of the American program to Germany), the German Amer­ican Fulbright program also serves assistant language teachers in secondary schools and at the college level, administrators in inter­national education, education experts, and journalists. Added to these professional ex­changes is a focus on German universities of applied sciences, the Fachhochschulen, which represent an important and growing segment of German higher education. To­gether with its active alumni association, the German Fulbright program thus con­tinues to be the key institution in the rela­tionship between Germany and the United States in the area of higher and professional education and an important player in the relationship between the two countries at large.

Walter Grunzweig

See also German Students at American Universities; U.S.-German Intellectual Exchange

References and Further Reading

Fulbright at the Start of a New Millennium.

Bonn: Fulbright Kommission, 1998.

Littmann, Ulrich. Gute Partner—Schwierige Partner: Anmerkungen zur akademischen Mobilitdt zwischen Deutschland und den Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika (1923-1993). Bonn: Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, 1996.

Tent, James F. “The Beginning of the German-American Fulbright Program 1952.” The First Class of Fulbrighters. Berlin: Fulbright Kommission, 2003.