Historical Dimensions of Internationalization: the role of the german cultural diplomacy in the transnational academic mobility (1919–1945)

Abstract

Internationalization is considered a fundamental process to improve the quality of higher education and scientific research. It is considered also as a result of contemporary globalization and its demands. One of the main aspects of the internationalization, the transnational mobility of students and researchers, is pursued and emphasized by the different policies and actors which promote it. This article analyzes internationalization as a historical dynamic that in the first decades of the 20th century was associated with the cultural diplomacy policies of the European countries and the United States. In this sense, it intends to show how it was articulated with the intense nationalism of the period and with the effort to change power correlations through the conquest of niches of cultural sympathy. The analysis focuses on the cultural diplomacy of Germany during the Weimar Republic and the Nazi regime, the country that was the protagonist of the two world wars. In Germany, the encouragement of the exchange of researchers and scholars assumed specific meanings, related to the international isolation after the Treaty of Versailles and with the ambition to obtain cultural and political hegemony. The strategies to achieve these goals varied according to the political context. The article shows details some initiatives directed to the Latin American countries, mainly to Brazil.