Closing Conference “Über MIDA hinaus”, 01.–03. July 2026

Abstract

After twelve years, the DFG long-term project “Mod­ern India in Ger­man Archives” (MIDA) will come to an end in Octo­ber 2026. At our clos­ing con­fer­ence, enti­tled “Über MIDA hin­aus”, we will look back on the achieve­ments of the past twelve years, whilst also look­ing ahead to the future. MIDA set itself the task of mak­ing the rich­ness of hold­ings in Ger­man archives on the his­to­ry of mod­ern India vis­i­ble and sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly trace­able for the peri­od from 1706 – the start of the Dan­ish-Halle Mis­sion – to 1989 – the end of the Ger­man two-state sys­tem. This endeav­our was under­pinned by the con­vic­tion that the schol­ar­ly poten­tial lying dor­mant in these col­lec­tions far exceeds the cur­rent state of research.

Above all, how­ev­er, the con­fer­ence aims to look to the future and explore the fur­ther poten­tial that Ger­man archives offer for research­ing the his­to­ry of Ger­man-Indi­an rela­tions. In our view, it is cru­cial for long-term projects such as MIDA that they leave behind a lega­cy that con­tin­ues to have an impact and yields results upon which future research can build. Through book reviews and research pan­els, the con­fer­ence aims to explore this poten­tial whilst also putting the results of MIDA to good use as a start­ing point for fur­ther research.

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Report

The con­fer­ence began on 1 July with a screen­ing of The Sound of Friend­ship: Warm Wave­lengths in a Cold, Cold War at the Lumière cin­e­ma in Göt­tin­gen. In this doc­u­men­tary, direc­tor and long-stand­ing MIDA staff mem­ber Anan­di­ta Baj­pai traces the his­to­ry of the lis­ten­ers’ clubs of Radio Berlin Inter­na­tion­al in India, the GDR’s state-run radio sta­tion. In the dis­cus­sion that fol­lowed, Lalit Vachani and Josefin Graef dis­cussed var­i­ous aspects of the film with the audi­ence, rang­ing from the post-1989 his­to­ry of Radio Berlin Inter­na­tion­al to the spe­cial role of doc­u­men­tary film in his­tor­i­cal research.

The sec­ond day of the con­fer­ence began with an intro­duc­tion by Ravi Ahu­ja to MIDA’s work over the past 12 years and a review of the objec­tives achieved. Ahu­ja par­tic­u­lar­ly empha­sised the role of such projects in times of shift­ing polit­i­cal cir­cum­stances in both India and Ger­many. Clau­dia Althaus from the Ger­man Research Foun­da­tion high­light­ed the excel­lent coop­er­a­tion with­in the project, par­tic­u­lar­ly over its long duration.

The first part of the con­fer­ence involved a dis­cus­sion of four recent pub­li­ca­tions pro­duced as part of the MIDA project. The pan­els, mod­er­at­ed by Jür­gen Nagel, each addressed prac­ti­cal research issues as well as sub­stan­tive debates aris­ing from the publications.

Tobias Delfs’ mono­graph Kolo­niale Natur­forschung und Südasien takes the archives of the botan­i­cal gar­den in Kolkata as its start­ing point to trace the involve­ment of Ger­man botanists in the pro­duc­tion of impe­r­i­al knowl­edge with­in the British Empire dur­ing the first half of the 18th cen­tu­ry. Mar­tin Krieger’s com­men­tary empha­sised the par­tic­u­lar spa­tial and entan­gled dimen­sion of the research approach, which is already hint­ed at by the use of ‘und’ rather than ‘in’ in the title.

Michael Mann’s book Sol­daten­leben exam­ines the role of Euro­pean sol­diers in the colo­nial wars of the sec­ond half of the 18th cen­tu­ry in Asia and Africa. The use of Ger­man-lan­guage sources helps to fill gaps in research, which still relies heav­i­ly on sources of Eng­lish and Dutch ori­gin. In his com­men­tary, Mar­i­an Füs­sel high­light­ed the sig­nif­i­cance of such an approach for mil­i­tary his­to­ry, a dis­ci­pline that is par­tic­u­lar­ly sub­ject to his­tor­i­cal trends but which, pre­cise­ly through a socio-his­tor­i­cal lens, can pro­vide impor­tant impe­tus for research.

Heike Liebaus and Tobias Delfs’ anthol­o­gy Ben­jamin Schultze’s Dia­logue Book on Madras. A Crit­i­cal Approach to a Cul­tur­al-His­tor­i­cal Mis­sion­ary Source rep­re­sents a dis­tinc­tive type of pub­li­ca­tion with­in the MIDA frame­work. The anthol­o­gy was based on a clear­ly defined and explic­it the­mat­ic brief for the con­trib­u­tors, invit­ing them to present their diverse per­spec­tives on the dia­logue book by the mis­sion­ary Ben­jamin Schultze. Dis­cus­sant Amal Shahid opened the dis­cus­sion with her con­tri­bu­tion on how one might suc­ceed in doing jus­tice to the crit­i­cal poten­tial of such a mul­ti-per­spec­ti­val approach.

In her pub­lished doc­tor­al the­sis, Voca­tion­al Train­ing in the Indi­an Steel and Engi­neer­ing Indus­tries: His­to­ries of Indo-Ger­man Co-oper­a­tion, c.1950–1989, Jose­fine Hoff­mann exam­ines Ger­man-Indi­an co-oper­a­tion in the field of voca­tion­al train­ing. In his com­men­tary, Roland Wit­tje referred to the broad­er con­text of Ger­man-Indi­an polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic co-oper­a­tion fol­low­ing inde­pen­dence, to the under­stand­ing of which the the­sis makes an impor­tant contribution.

The first pan­el, mod­er­at­ed by Mar­tin-Christof Füch­sle and focus­ing on Ger­man nat­u­ral­ists in British India, addressed var­i­ous aspects of the his­to­ry of entan­gle­ments relat­ing to the activ­i­ties of Ger­man-speak­ing mis­sion­ar­ies and forestry sci­en­tists in South Asia. In her con­tri­bu­tion, Anne-Char­lott Trepp exam­ined the sig­nif­i­cance of draw­ing as a method­olog­i­cal tech­nique for record­ing knowl­edge and the role of local actors in this process. Steven Rein­hardt high­light­ed the con­nec­tion between the Dan­ish-Halle mis­sion­ar­ies and the Stras­bourg nat­u­ral­ist Jean/Johann Her­mann, and dis­cussed the rec­i­p­ro­cal exchange of arte­facts between Halle, Stras­bourg and South India. Thomas Ruh­land turned his atten­tion to the Mora­vian Mis­sion and dis­cussed its inte­gra­tion into Indo-Euro­pean nat­ur­al his­to­ry trans­fer net­works, as well as its eco­nom­ic dynam­ics. Anna Sail­er dis­cussed the role of Ger­man forestry offi­cials in the late 19th cen­tu­ry in the for­est man­age­ment of the British Empire, exam­in­ing the appli­ca­tion of forestry con­cepts in India and Java from a com­par­a­tive per­spec­tive. The ensu­ing dis­cus­sion cen­tred on the pos­si­bil­i­ties and lim­i­ta­tions of approach­es to the his­to­ry of entan­gle­ments through the use of Ger­man-lan­guage source mate­ri­als and the inte­gra­tion of local actors and con­texts into his­tor­i­cal narratives.

Unlike the first pan­el, the sec­ond research pan­el on aspects of the his­to­ry of the Rourkela steel­works – built with West Ger­man assis­tance – addressed a much more nar­row­ly defined top­ic. As the pan­el mod­er­a­tor, Nina Kleinöder opened the dis­cus­sion by high­light­ing the poten­tial of approach­es based on cor­po­rate his­to­ry to enrich our under­stand­ing of colo­nial and post-colo­nial process­es. In his con­tri­bu­tion, Karl Müller-Bahlke out­lined the role of inte­grat­ed steel­works in Indi­an devel­op­ment pol­i­cy fol­low­ing inde­pen­dence and placed this with­in a broad­er con­text of the rela­tion­ship between the steel indus­try and state sov­er­eign­ty. Draw­ing on long-term ethno­graph­ic stud­ies, Chris­t­ian Strüm­pel high­light­ed the com­plex process­es of class and iden­ti­ty for­ma­tion in Rourkela. In his con­tri­bu­tion, Mirko Schwag­mann addressed the high-pro­file rival­ry between the Rourkela project and the Sovi­et-backed con­struc­tion of the steel­works in Bhi­lai, focus­ing in par­tic­u­lar on the prepa­ra­tion of the Ger­man assem­bly and oper­a­tions teams. Jose­fine Hoff­mann out­lined the spe­cif­ic his­to­ry of the (ulti­mate­ly failed) ‘Rourkela Mas­ter School’ as a site of con­flict between Indi­an and West Ger­man stake­hold­ers over the pri­or­i­ties of devel­op­ment pol­i­cy. The panel’s strong the­mat­ic focus enabled an in-depth dis­cus­sion in the ensu­ing debate on issues relat­ing to the inter­na­tion­al con­text of the Indi­an devel­op­ment pro­gramme, includ­ing its impli­ca­tions for envi­ron­men­tal and cli­mate policy.

Mar­tin Christof-Füch­sle and Jannes Thode pro­vid­ed an overview of what are per­haps the most impor­tant find­ings of the MIDA long-term pro­gramme, from the per­spec­tive of the research still to be car­ried out. In addi­tion to the data­base, the Archival Reflex­i­con and the the­mat­ic resources were also pre­sent­ed. Tobias Gradl then explained the prac­ti­cal aspects of long-term dig­i­tal archiv­ing to the con­fer­ence par­tic­i­pants. The sup­pos­ed­ly tech­ni­cal details of this have far-reach­ing con­se­quences for researchers’ access beyond the end of a fund­ing peri­od and are there­fore a cen­tral part of his­tor­i­cal research today.

In the clos­ing pan­el, enti­tled ‘Beyond MIDA’, the pan­el­lists, mod­er­at­ed by Ravi Ahu­ja, revis­it­ed sev­er­al aspects of the pre­vi­ous days’ dis­cus­sions. Anan­di­ta Baj­pai, Razak Khan, Ste­fan Lüder, Bai­jayan­ti Roy, San­dra Maß and Nina Kleinöder referred to points of dis­cus­sion that remained open with­in the MIDA project itself, whilst also draw­ing on their own research expe­ri­ences. Top­ics of dis­cus­sion includ­ed the mean­ing and poten­tial of the con­cept of ‘etan­gle­ment’, the impend­ing loss of archival hold­ings, and the ques­tion of how to incor­po­rate the strengths of var­i­ous his­tor­i­cal dis­ci­plines – such as busi­ness, mil­i­tary or envi­ron­men­tal his­to­ry – into the field of Ger­man-Indi­an his­to­ri­og­ra­phy. The ques­tion of the pre­cise mean­ing of ‘Ger­man’ and ‘Indi­an’ – which has accom­pa­nied the MIDA pro­gramme from the out­set – was also raised once again in this con­text. Whilst source mate­ri­als and his­tor­i­cal entan­gle­ments are gen­er­al­ly dif­fi­cult to cat­e­gorise with­in nation­al frame­works, this is par­tic­u­lar­ly true for such a long peri­od of study, span­ning from the ear­ly 18th to the late 20th cen­tu­ry. Whilst these nation­al ambi­gu­i­ties were dealt with prag­mat­i­cal­ly with­in the frame­work of the long-term project, they nev­er­the­less serve as a prime exam­ple of the numer­ous method­olog­i­cal and the­o­ret­i­cal deci­sions that must be made time and again in the course of such a research project, and for which there is usu­al­ly no sim­ple answer.

With this in mind, Heike Liebau and Michael Mann were ulti­mate­ly able to draw a pos­i­tive con­clu­sion regard­ing the project as a whole, whilst also high­light­ing the fur­ther work and sub­se­quent research that will stem from what has been achieved so far. The pub­li­ca­tions pro­duced as part of the pro­gramme and the online research por­tal form the basis for this.