I just learned that the University of Bristol plans to discontinue medieval studies at the German Department and that with Dr. Anne Simon one of the leading medievalists in the UK, who is a highly esteemed speaker in German conferences and an excellent contributor to medievalist journals, will be lost to the research at Bristol.
Though I am sure that this decision will be a disaster not only for Bristol’s German department and its Medieval Studies but also for the UK’s German medievalism as a whole with its very high reputation, I am not writing to you in my capacity as Professor of Medieval German Literature (University of Cologne) but rather as member of the German National Academy (Leopoldina) and above all as former representative of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG – German Research Foundation). During my years as vice-president of the DFG, it has been a recurring experience that it was much to the detriment of the research success of leading universities to close off small, apparently marginal subjects. This was especially visible in the “Exzellenzinitiative”, the research framework exercise crucial for government grants: excellence in research relies heavily on functioning networks across disciplines which can only be achieved if a sufficient breadth and depth of subjects is maintained. Any interdisciplinary research is ultimately dependent on research intensive “marginal” subjects. And the universities – apart from decidedly technical universities – which disinvested in pre-modern studies certainly ran into serious problems in the overall ranking exercise.
Therefore the German universities are now quite anxious to preserve the so called “small disciplines”. Being normally markedly research oriented and involved in international research networks, they are especially relevant for all initiatives of cooperative research.
I urge you to seek a review of this short-sighted and unjust decision and consider it from the perspective of future prosperous research.