About us

As a member of the Leibniz Association, the Herder Institute is committed to promoting equal opportunities and implementing the research-oriented equality standards of the German Research Foundation.

The path taken so far was first recognized in 2010 with the award of the Total E-Quality rating. This success was confirmed in 2013 with the renewed award of the rating, which has already been repeated four times.

Since 1996, TOTAL E-QUALITY Deutschland e. V. has pursued the goal of "establishing and sustainably anchoring equal opportunities. This goal is achieved when the talents, potential, and skills of both genders are equally recognized, included, and promoted. [...] One focus here is on promoting women in management positions. In addition to the compatibility of work and family life, the association is concerned with equal opportunities in recruitment and development, the promotion of partnership-based behavior in the workplace, and the consideration of equal opportunities in corporate principles. [...]

The association awards the TOTAL E-QUALITY rating annually for exemplary actions in the area of equal opportunity human resources management. It certifies a successful and sustainable commitment to equal opportunities for women and men in the workplace." (https://www.total-e-quality.de/, accessed on 09/19/2025).

Examples of previously implemented measures

The Herder Institute

• has made an agreement with the State of Hesse to promote equal opportunities in the implementation of the Framework Agreement Implementation Agreement for promotion of research on equality of women and men in the joint research funding (AvGlei)
• applies the research oriented gender equality standards of the DFG
• has a gender concept with timeline, responsible and controlling system, which is updated annually and updated
• selects every four years, an equality officer who is actively involved in the Institute’s policy
• shall, during the award of scholarships and professional development to gender balance
• support the school children holiday care of its employees financially
• offers at events such as conferences and seminars on request childcare
• respect to family-friendly session times
• supports its employees in individual solutions for reconciling work and family life. It is a modern concept of the family based on the addition of child care includes the care of unmarried partners and partners and family members.
• cooperates with the Dual Career Service of the University of Marburg
• has a parent-child room for employees and users as well as for child care at events

Contact

Equal Opportunities Officer

Nicole Lis
nicole.lis@herder-institut.de
+49 6421 184-160
 

Vice Equal Opportunities Officer
Tamara Peil
tamara.peil@herder-institut.de
+49 6421 184-106

Representative in the Herder Institutes board
Dr. Jürgen Warmbrunn
juergen.warmbrunn@herder-institut.de
+49 6421 184-150

In April 1950, the Johann Gottfried Herder Research Council founded the Johann Gottfried Herder Institute. Its purpose was to support the Research Council by providing scientific materials, conducting its own research, and publishing publications and resources for research into what were then known as the “countries and peoples of Eastern Central Europe.” As early as 1951, the Herder Institute established a research library and created an image archive, a map collection, and a document collection from holdings of various origins. Since 1952, it has also maintained a press collection with its own clippings archive

The members of the Research Council were a group of humanities and social science scholars whose biographical roots and academic careers were in areas east of the Oder-Neisse line. The Historical Commissions for former German regions and settlement areas in Eastern Europe were also associated with the Council.

The university town of Marburg was chosen as the institute's location, partly because the Berlin State Library's holdings had been relocated there due to the war. In 1952, the institute found a new home on what is now Gisonenweg, initially in the so-called Hensel Villa, the former residence of mathematician Kurt Hensel, who died in 1941. Shortly thereafter, the institute expanded into the neighboring Behring Villa, an early work and residence of the physician and first Nobel Prize winner for physiology or medicine, Emil von Behring. In the early 1970s, a functional new building was erected between the two buildings, giving the institute its striking appearance today. A modern extension was also added, significantly increasing the institute's storage capacity.

„Eastern studies“

In terms of both personnel and content, the founding generation was still strongly rooted in the tradition of German research on Eastern Europe during the interwar period and National Socialism, which was shaped by German folk culture and general ethnic ideas. Some of the institute's staff and research council members had belonged to the scientific and administrative apparatus of the Third Reich before 1945 and had been involved to varying degrees in political and ideological issues and National Socialist ethnic group policy. The first presidents of the Research Council, Hermann Aubin, Eugen Lemberg, Günther Grundmann, and Kurt Dülfer, as well as the directors of the institute in its early years, Werner Essen, Erich Keyser, and Hellmuth Weiss, represent this early period

Important collections of the Herder Institute, which are now of great significance for research into Eastern European studies in the Weimar Republic and the Nazi era, came to the Herder Institute as a result of these personal connections and the resulting collection mandate. Numerous materials originated from the centers of German Eastern studies before 1945, such as the Berlin-Dahlem publishing office.

Reorientation

The generational change in German research on Eastern Europe and the shift in the overall political climate in West Germany since the late 1960s also had an impact on the work of the Herder Institute. Scientific relations, especially with Polish experts, were continuously expanded and numerous contacts with Eastern European partners were deepened. Hans Lemberg, an Eastern European historian from Marburg, provided important impetus, which increasingly oriented the institute's work toward a multi-perspective history of Eastern European interdependence. At the beginning of 1977, the institute was included in the joint research funding program of the federal and state governments in accordance with Article 91b of the German Basic Law (“Blue List”) and has been a member of the Leibniz Association—which emerged from the Blue List—since 1997. The separation from the Research Council at the beginning of 1994 brought about a fundamental change in the institute's self-image and the development of its further activities. Since then, in addition to research, the institute's infrastructure mandate has been actively developed and its profile significantly expanded in light of the digital transformation. Since 2006, close cooperation with Justus Liebig University Giessen and the Giessen Center for Eastern Europe (GiZo) has also been of great importance for the activities of the Herder Institute, leading to the opening of its own branch office in Giessen in 2018.