In 1984, the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft founded a new institute for social sciences in Cologne, the Max-Planck-Institut fur Gesellschaftsforschung, run by Renate Mayntz. The new institute was the outcome of an unsuccessful experiment led by the MPG 14 years earlier. In 1970, the MPG began to work on a project in Starnberg that explored living conditions in a scientific-technical world. The project was run by Carl Friedrich von Weizsacker and Jurgen Habermas. The institute mainly dealt with explosive political topics. It was known for its left-wing tendencies, for talking politics and being polarizing. When Weizsacker’s research came to a standstill in 1980, an outcry went through the left wing and an alternative part of the Federal Republic of Germany. The nomination of the renowned head of the London School of Economics, Ralf Dahrendorf, failed and the resignation of Jurgen Habermas in 1981 sealed the end of the Starnberg enterprise. The reputation of the MPG and its president Reimar Lust suffered, and the traditional society was put under pressure to act. The end of the Starnberg institute was not meant to turn into the end of social sciences within the MPG. A new and successful institute had to be established without repeating the mistakes made in Starnberg. In this book, Ariane Leendertz throws light on the discussions and decisions made by the MPG that led to the closure of the Starnberg institute and the founding of the new institute in Cologne. Debates that took place within the MPG are put into a broader context of the social-political climate and developments in the social sciences and sociology in the 1970s and early 1980s. In the years ‘after the boom’ the Federal Republic of Germany changed fast and profoundly and caused a new trend in social sciences and to a series in crisis discourse. This also had an effect on the founding programme of the MPI for social sciences.
