Cooperation, Competition, Complexity: West Germany, East Germany and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Elke Seefried
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History ; History of Science
• Term: from 2017 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 316001474

The project examines the tensions between cooperation and competition inside the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), which was established in Laxenburg, near Vienna, in 1972. This was the first major research institute to work across the political blocs, founded as a non-governmental institute. Members of the IIASA were originally from the scientific organisations of twelve countries from both sides of the 'Iron Curtain' - among them, the USA, the USSR, the German Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic. Faced with global interconnections perceived as highly complex, the IIASA was to address the shared problems of the 'advanced' industrial societies. It carried out studies in the fields of systems analysis and cybernetics, along with applied projects with a direct policy impact in various spheres of planning, among them waste management, energy and resources and information technology. Thus scientists from both camps of the Cold War divide cooperated and also competed in one organisation. Further, under the interdisciplinary umbrella of "Systems Analysis", different disciplines and specialist cultures were thrown together and worked in tandem. Following up on this observation, the project aims to track the interactive dynamic of cooperation and competition at IIASA. It concentrates on the East/West German dimension. Interactions between representatives of the two Germanys were bound up with the explicit rivalry between the two political systems. The project analyses the self-perceptions, lines of demarcation, working patterns and cooperative or competitive practices of West and East German scientists at the IIASA and what went on between them. It throws light on the epistemic effects of the cooperation/competition dynamic and the role of complexity as a key concept. The study goes on to ask how far mutual perceptions and efforts at collaboration were characterised by an asymmetry of power. Interactions between politics and science within the Cold War system come into view as well, with an analysis of how the expertise generated was used in the Federal Republic and the GDR.

• DFG Programme: Research Units
• Subproject of: FOR 2553: Cooperation and Competition in the Sciences