The Production and Dissemination of Energy Knowledge in the Federal Republic of Germany and the GDR 1949-1989/90

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Rüdiger Graf
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History ; History of Science
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 551688848

This project compares the genesis and dissemination of a unified "energy knowledge" in both East and West Germany. It argues that, as a result of the massive increase of energy needs during the "Great Acceleration" during the second half of the 20th century, energy became a primary category of economic and political action, as well as national social identity. In contrast to specific knowledge about coal, oil, or nuclear power, a unified energy knowledge emphasized the substitutability of these sources and brought into question their efficiencies in terms of the "rational" usage of energy for the generation of heat, light, and movement. The German-German comparison demarcates the political elements of energy knowledge by comparing how this field was created and disseminated in both a planned economy system with a state-controlled public sphere and a liberal economic order. Indeed, the two German states suffered from similar energy input issues in their lack of oil in the face of ist growing importance, their abundance of coal (albeit only lignite in the GDR), and in their difficulties in expanding nuclear energy. At the same time, however, their shortages and abundances were entangled in the politics of the Cold War: the shortages that plagued the GDR until ist fall in 1989 were enmeshed with the Eastern Bloc, while in the Federal Republic, the abundance and competition of cheaper energy sources moved with the rhythms of capitalist exchange. In terms of theory, this project is a history of knowledge that emphasizes the social, economic, and political contexts of knowledge production and how that knowledge changes in the process of ist communication. Analytically, it focuses on energy knowledge production in the GDR's state energy institute compared to economic research institutes and companies in the Federal Republic. This project, therefore, fundamentally asks to what extent different forms of institutional and political knowledge production influenced the role of energy sources, the design of energy balances and forecasts, and the proposals for energy interventions, and if, despite political differences, a similar understanding of energy and ist importance in modern society emerged. At the same time, this project also traces the communication of energy knowledge to the body politic through various media and communication contexts, by examining magazines for energy supply practitioners, school books, popular literature, advertising, and educational materials. In doing so, the project seeks to determine how the public was asked to understand energy sources, how their everyday behaviors were presented as energy consumption, and how different political infrastructures thereby attempted to modify their everyday behaviors. This comparative study therefore promises systematic conclusions for the history of energy and politics as a whole.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants