"War is obviously rooted less (...) in the minds of individuals than in the orders and disorders of communities. Its causes are not only private but political, despite the respective war profiteers. They arise from habits, prejudices, social orders and forms of rule. That is why we need research into these connections. We need peace research."
Gustav Heinemann, Speech on the 30th Anniversary of the Beginning of the Second World War
The year is 1971. The world is divided into two blocs. The East and the West are hostile to each other. Their political and ideological power struggle manifests itself above all in a huge arsenal of nuclear weapons, which was commonly referred to during the Cold War as the "balance of terror". These were the contemporary historical conditions under which the IFSH was founded. It was the then Federal President Gustav Heinemann himself who, when he took office in 1969, spoke out in favour of strengthening peace research as an academic discipline. In his inaugural speech, he called for the institutionalisation of the fledgling discipline in order to further advance it. In the Anglo-American world, peace research institutes had already been founded in the 1950s. In 1970, the German Council of Science and Humanities called for "increased support for peace-related research". The scientific examination of security policy issues would, it was hoped, help make the political debate more objective and point to possible solutions. Above all, however, it was Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, professor of philosophy at the University of Hamburg, who was instrumental in promoting the establishment of a peace research institute in Hamburg. On 11 June 1971, the Senate of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg made his wish a reality, and the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg, IFSH for short, was founded. The Institute’s first seat was a villa high on a hill overlooking the Elbe river in the Blankenese neighbourhood of Hamburg. The building had a history: in 1962, the villa served as Helmut Schmidt’s official residence during the North German flood disaster when Schmidt was Hamburg's Senator of the Interior.
The foundation in 1971: Hamburg peace research institute ventures a completely new approach
The IFSH was not the only peace research institute founded in Germany in the early 1970s. But the IFSH dared to build a new bridge, one between peace research and the military. A peace research institute headed by a senior officer - there had never been anything like it before. In Wolf Graf von Baudissin, the Institute found its director, one who had co-founded the Bundeswehr in the 1950s and who, through his concept of "Innere Führung", has had a decisive influence to this day.
Research at the IFSH should be practice-oriented, the general demanded: "The purpose of research is not the elimination of conflicts, that would be illusionary, but their objectification, which at the same time means humanisation, and above all their resolution with a minimum of the use of force. For this goal, it is necessary to develop models, strategies, structures and procedures".
The founding team was small, initially consisting of only half a dozen academics. Despite this, however, the IFSH quickly became known beyond the Hamburg city limits.
1984: Egon Bahr becomes new Institute director
Baudissin, a Bundeswehr general, was succeeded by a seasoned and prominent political personality. Egon Bahr, former minister and an advocate of détente policy and rapprochement between East and West Germany, took over the directorship of the Institute in 1984. Bahr had been a member of the so-called Palme Commission, which, under the chairmanship of Swedish Prime Minister Olaf Palme, sought solutions for greater security in Europe in the early 1980s. The concept of "common security" emerged. It emphasised the interdependencies and joint responsibility of states and promoted the idea that security should be approached in a mutual rather than an antagonistic way. In the years that followed, IFSH researchers were significantly involved in the development of this concept, which ultimately became the core principle of the CSCE and, later, the OSCE.
The 1990s: war casualties in the heart of Europe once again
Even after the turning point in world politics at the end of the 1980s, the fundamental questions of European security remained the central field of research at the IFSH. Ethnic conflicts broke out in south-eastern Europe. For the first time since the Second World War, there were war casualties in the heart of Europe. Research on Russia and Eastern Europe became an important focus of the Institute's work in the 1990s. In 2000, the Centre for OSCE Research, or CORE for short, was established in the presence of the then Federal President Johannes Rau. The CORE research centre is unique the world over; it provides scholarly support to and evaluates the work of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation (OSCE) in Europe.
The 2000s: awakening and reorientation
The year 2002 was an important milestone in the history of the Institute. The IFSH became one of the first institutes in Germany to introduce a postgraduate Master's programme in peace research and security policy. Since then, around 25 young university graduates per year complete the yearlong Master's programme, which is distinguished by its international student body and the interdisciplinary nature of the courses on offer.
The IFSH and academia: first postgraduate course in peace research and security policy nationwide
In 2003, the Centre for European Peace and Security Studies (ZEUS) and the Interdisciplinary Working Group on Arms Control and Risk Technologies (IFAR²) were founded.
The September 11 attacks in 2001 also raised awareness of two new, non-military security threats and risks: global terrorism and religious extremism. In the years that followed, the consequences of climate change and the social and economic changes resulting from globalisation were added to the list. These have since become an integral part of the IFSH research agenda as well.
In addition, the IFSH began to work more closely with the University of Hamburg in the 2000s – and it moved closer as well. In 2007, after 36 years, the IFSH left its idyllic Falkenstein villa above the banks of the Elbe in Blankenese and moved to Schlump, only a few minutes' walk from the lively and vibrant university campus.
50 years on, many issues have remained relevant
A lot has happened at the IFSH over the past five decades. But while many things have changed, others have not. Rearmament and the arms race remain threats to security in Europe and worldwide. The United States and the former Soviet Union – the protagonists of past arms races – are now but two of several actors. The "balance of terror" has become an "imbalance of terror". Around the world, weapons are again being rearmed. Even more states are now in possession of nuclear weapons than before. More money is being spent worldwide on armaments today than during the Cold War. Compounding this is rapid technological progress, in the field of artificial intelligence and robotics for example, which harbours peace and security policy risks as well.
This is where the work of the interdisciplinary research area Arms Control and New Technologies comes in. In 2019, the Institute succeeded in winning the contract from the Federal Foreign Office for a major project lasting several years. This project will make Hamburg one of the most important scientific centres of excellence in arms control and emerging technologies in Europe.
New research foci added
Another research area deals specifically with security both in Europe and on its external borders. The research area European Peace and Security Orders investigates the state of the European peace project, how the OSCE can stabilise crisis regions and how international police missions work in conflict and post-conflict states.
In addition to security policy issues in the narrower sense, domestic challenges and social upheaval have increasingly become the focus of peace research in recent years. Anti-liberal and extremist movements, fuelled by hatred and incitement on the internet, are endangering social cohesion in Western democracies. The research area Social Peace and Internal Security examines these new problems.
Climate change and its effects on crises and conflicts worldwide are now also the subject of various research projects at the IFSH. IFSH scholars analyse, among other things, the connection between security and global environmental changes within the framework of the Cluster of Excellence Climate, Climatic Change and Society (CliCCS) at the University of Hamburg.
How does peace work?
The Institute's great strength and unique selling point is its interdisciplinarity. Researchers from different disciplines examine a topic or a question from different perspectives. This happens not only within but also between the individual research areas. In our new work programme Doing Peace!, we explore a question that is fundamental across all subject areas: how does peace actually work? In co-operation with local cultural and educational institutions, we will conduct an on-the-ground investigation – in schools, city districts and citizen participation in state politics – into the social conditions necessary for peaceful coexistence and how conflicts can be resolved constructively.
The constitutional conditions for peace are diverse and complex. Recognising and understanding them is a basic prerequisite for peace, both in the neighbourhood down the block and in crisis regions around the world.