49th Deutscher Historikertag to be held in Mainz in 2012

Announcement of the official program with more than 130 events

16.05.2012

In 2012 and for the first time, Mainz will be playing host to the Deutscher Historikertag (The German Historians Conference), the largest humanities conference in Europe. This large-scale conference, organized by the German Association of Historians together with the German Association of History Teachers, will be taking place from September 25-28, 2012 at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU). Kurt Beck, Minister-President of Rhineland-Palatinate, will serve as the official patron of the Historikertag in Mainz. The highlights of the conference include the opening reception at the Mainz Electoral Palace with a ceremonial address by the President of the German Federal Constitutional Court, Professor Andreas Vosskuhle, and an evening soirée with an awards ceremony that will be held in the lounge of the Coface Arena, the home to German premier league soccer team, FSV Mainz 05.

"Not only the university, but also the city of Mainz and the state of Rhineland-Palatinate were absolutely delighted when the host for the 49th Deutscher Historikertag was announced," noted Professor Andreas Rödder, head of the organizational committee. "I have no doubt that this positive atmosphere in Mainz will be felt by all the conference participants once they arrive."

The organizational committee, based in the Department of History at JGU, recently announced the program for the Historikertag in Mainz, which will comprise more than 130 events. Around 3,500 visitors are expected to attend. Participants will be able to choose from 66 specialist panels with some 400 presenters from Germany and other countries, a poster exhibit with dissertation projects, a program specially developed for school students, and over 30 fringe cultural events as well as 20 additional events sponsored by other associations, organizations, and working groups.

The panels, which will be covering all historical epochs and sub-disciplines, deal with the overarching conference theme of “Resources – Conflicts.” Specific topics include everything from the system of inheritance within Roman families through energy use in the Middle Ages and the human being as capital in the Early Modern period to the stock exchange and trash in modern times. Indeed, the term 'resources' is not restricted to natural resources, but it is rather employed in its wider sense as referring to material and non-material resources such as money, power, knowledge, technology, and even the means of salvation. Key topics include the significance of competition for resources in the context of historical structural change as well as the (ever-changing) ways of dealing with resources and regulating conflicts. Professor Rödder emphasizes that "the panels will doubtlessly prompt discussions about current issues within the discipline, but these are not only interesting from the historical perspective as they touch on fundamental problems of our own times. This is exactly the appeal of history and why it is so very important."

France is the partner country for this year's Historikertag in Mainz. There is an especially strong French presence in Mainz, thanks not only to the close friendship with Burgundy and Dijon, but also to the neighborly relationship between France and Rhineland-Palatinate as a whole. Franco-German history has also been awarded a special status within the academic program of the conference and numerous contributions from historians based in France have been included. Similarly, other Mainz-based organizations and initiatives that promote Franco-German cooperation and cultural exchange will also be represented at the conference.

While academics working in the humanities are the primary target audience for the Historikertag, anyone interested in attending the relevant events is also welcome.