Eckert Dossiers 2/2021
Georg Eckert, the ‘founding father’ of the Institute for International Textbook Research that today bears his name, helped shape the textbook-related research scene, the educational landscape and the international cultural policy of the early Federal Republic of Germany.
An international conference in Braunschweig, held in October 2012 to mark the hundredth anniversary of Eckert’s birth, brought together new thematic and research approaches to this towering figure; its proceedings were published in German as Georg Eckert. Grenzgänger zwischen Wissenschaft und Politik. A series of this book’s chapters by Matthias Bode, Corine Defrance/Ulrich Pfeil, Eckhardt Fuchs, Steffen Sammler and Thomas Strobel are dedicated to Georg Eckert’s work in the field of international education policy, in the course of which he was a founder member of the German Commission for UNESCO and eventually became its president. In highlighting the textbook discussions with France and Poland of which Eckert was a prime mover, these contributions to research on Eckert and his field illuminate the key significance of international textbook revision efforts to the process of reconciliation and mutual understanding among nations in Western Europe and to dialogue that crossed the Cold War’s lines of battle. Looking to Asia, this section of the book further points to Eckert’s ambitious and geographically far-reaching endeavours, as well as casting light on the difficulties encountered by his work in relation to domestic and foreign policy tensions between European and Asian empires and to the nation states newly emerging from colonial rule.
