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“Maintaining a Common Culture” – The German Research Foundation and the Austrian-German Scientific Aid in the Interbellum. After the end of the Great War, private as well as public research funding in Austria was anaemic and slow to develop. Whereas the German state-funded Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) was established as early as 1920, first steps in that direction were only taken in Austria in the late 1920s. In 1929, the Osterreichisch-deutsche Wissenschaftshilfe (ODW) was founded under the auspices of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the DFG. Although prima facie on an equal footing, the new research funding organisation was in fact highly dependent on its German cooperation partner. The article explores for the first time ODW's position within the German and Austrian science and foreign policies, which aimed to promote the idea of unification of both states within the German Reich. A quantitative analysis of the subsidies policy in the first five years of existence shows that the ODW gave financial aid primarily to conservative research fields‘ affecting the intellectual balance of power in the First Austrian Republic. Policy continuities and discontinuities of the organisation in the course of the national-socialist rise to power in Germany after 1933 are examined in the second part of the article. The article thus both increases our knowledge about the most important German research funding organisation DFG‘ and identifies some of the fundamental structural features of Austrian science policy in the interwar years.

The focus of this essay is on substitute materials, particularly the research on substitute metals. The two periods of autarky in Germany were of primary influence on this field. Engineers and construction engineers proved most important in this context despite inter-institutional cooperation between the disciplines of metals research, materials testing, and technical mechanics. Engineers had to solve construction problems respecting the materials used and to analyse components in terms of economic efficiency. However, the research on substitute metals not only meant the substitution of one substance for another. It also implied economizing and recycling scarce materials. These activities required tacit knowledge. Engineers succeeded to some degree but the German war economy paid a high price for it. Each technical system demanded a case-specific approach. Typically a loss of effectiveness, reliability and durability of the products containing substitutes had to be taken into account.

After the end of the Great War, private as well as public research funding in Austria was anaemic and slow to develop. Whereas the German state-funded Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) was established as early as 1920, first steps in that direction were only taken in Austria in the late 1920s. In 1929, the Osterreichisch-deutsche Wissenschaftshilfe (ODW) was founded under the auspices of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the DFG. Although prima facie on an equal footing, the new research funding organisation was in fact highly dependent on its German cooperation partner. The article explores for the first time ODW's position within the German and Austrian science and foreign policies, which aimed to promote the idea of unification of both states within the German Reich. A quantitative analysis of the subsidies policy in the first five years of existence shows that the ODW gave financial aid primarily to conservative research fields, affecting the intellectual balance of power in the First Austrian Republic. Policy continuities and discontinuities of the organisation in the course of the national-socialist rise to power in Germany after 1933 are examined in the second part of the article. The article thus both increases our knowledge about the most important German research funding organisation DFG, and identifies some of the fundamental structural features of Austrian science policy in the interwar years.