A Brief History of the German-American Fulbright Program, 1952-2002
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A Brief History of the German-American Fulbright Program, 1952-2002 James F. Tent
A Brief History of the German-American Fulbright Program, 1952-2002
James F. Tent
University of Alabama at Birmingham
Headquartered in Berlin since 1998, the German-
American Fulbright Program has developed into one of the
most active and influential of the binational educational
exchange programs operating under the Fulbright umbrella.
Every year it sends hundreds of German students, scholars,
and educators to the United States and hosts an equally large
and distinguished group of American students, scholars, and
educators at Germany’s institutions of higher learning. The
prominence of the German-American Fulbright Program in the
world of scholarly exchange is intimately tied to modern
The original Fulbright Agreement
German history.
Following World War II, when the United States joined in occupying a defeated Germany,
officials in its Office of Military Government (OMGUS) discovered that most German citizens had
been isolated from the rest of the world for at least half a generation. Starting with the notion of
“re-education” of a former enemy, followed by a gentler “re-orientation” concept a few years later,
OMGUS and U.S. State Department officials conceived a foreign policy program for sending
Germans, especially civic leaders open to democratic ideals and possessing leadership potential,
to the United States at public expense to witness democracy in action. This exchange program
was launched in 1947, and within six years nearly 10,000 young Germans “experienced” the
United States, many of them attending universities there. Upon returning to Germany, many went
on to build prominent careers in the public and private sectors.
At virtually the same time, a freshman senator from
Arkansas, J. William Fulbright, initiated a new program in the
United States intended to bring Americans out of their own
brand of cultural isolation and to connect students and
scholars worldwide on a basis of equality. A Rhodes Scholar
worried that so few Americans had studied abroad or
experienced foreign cultures, Fulbright, who was profoundly
moved by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
conceived of an imaginative new use of the obscure War
Senator Fulbright
Surplus Property Act of 1944. His idea was to use a portion of
the monetary credits derived from war surplus overseas to send young scholars abroad with the
German-American Fulbright Commission 1 of 6A Brief History of the German-American Fulbright Program, 1952-2002 James F. Tent
twin goals of advancing knowledge and furthering mutual understanding. A convincing advocate
and skilled political strategist, Fulbright won over the initially hesitant Congress, Treasury, and
State Department, and on August 1, 1946 President Truman signed off on the P.L. 584
Amendment. Using State Department infrastructure for support, the program set up an
independent Board of Foreign Scholarships (renamed the J. William Fulbright Foreign
Scholarship Board in 1991) so that participating nations could select qualified scholars and
educators to visit the U.S. while the BFS would choose young scholars to send abroad.
Known as the Fulbright Act, the
program was destined in Germany’s case to
overtake the exchange program in the
American Zone, elevating the underlying
purpose of the exchange from postwar re-
orientation to genuine partnership. The
Fulbright Exchange Program began operation
in 1948, first targeting former Allied nations that
were recovering most rapidly from the war. The
Adenauer and McCloy signing the Fulbright Agreement
possibility of creating a German Fulbright in 1952
Program was first addressed in 1949 after the establishment of the Federal Republic of
Germany. Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and U.S. High Commissioner John J. McCloy entered
into lengthy negotiations, but because the Federal Republic had not yet attained full sovereignty
and because of funding intricacies and legal issues delays ensued. The United States signed the
(Fulbright) Executive Agreement with the Federal Republic on July 18, 1952, and the binational
Fulbright Commission came into existence.
Beginning with the academic year 1953-54,
approximately 200 American graduate students, twenty
teachers, and a handful of senior scholars arrived in Germany,
while a comparable group of German students, teachers, and
senior scholars traveled to the United States. From its
inception, the program was a great success, as evidenced by
top: The first German grantees
bottom: 1953 American grantees the summary reports submitted by participants at the
buying eel on the Rhine
conclusion of their year-long programs.. On both sides, the
participants found their Weltanschauung and their
understanding of people (as distinct from nations)
immeasurably widened, just as Senator Fulbright had so
fervently wished.
Given its robust economy and the availability of war
German-American Fulbright Commission 2 of 6A Brief History of the German-American Fulbright Program, 1952-2002 James F. Tent
surplus funds, the United States had unilaterally funded the
worldwide Fulbright Exchange, including the program with the
Federal Republic. However, as the original war surplus
sources declined, the U.S. Congress passed new legislation
in 1961: the Fulbright-Hays Act. This act widened the scope
of the program to include binational cost-sharing. The
following year, as a token of gratitude and an indication of its
economic recovery, Germany entered into a cost-sharing
Fulbright agreement, the first nation to do so. The German
government has paid approximately half of all expenditures
connected to the Fulbright exchange ever since. This critically
President Kennedy and Senator
important development in the worldwide Fulbright concept Fulbright at the 15th Anniversary of
the Fulbright Program in 1961
helps explain the program’s vitality over five decades.
Germany’s pioneering cost-sharing plan guaranteed that the Program would become a genuinely
reciprocal process, and it fulfilled one of Senator Fulbright’s earliest goals of sharing and equal
responsibility. Soon, other participating nations followed the Federal Republic’s example.
Germany’s Program was also helped by the expertise of several long-serving and skillful persons
such as American Carl G. Anthon and German Ulrich Littmann, to name only two dedicated
officials.
From the outset, the German-American Fulbright Commission instituted certain rules for
the selection of participants from the Federal Republic and later a reunited Germany. First, it
created a highly visible, merit-based competition to select outstanding candidates in all of the
recognized scholarly and scientific fields. The preamble to the 1952 Agreement echoed the
original Fulbright concept of 1946, specifically seeking participants with the ability to “promote
further mutual understanding between the peoples of the United States of America and the
Federal Republic of Germany by a wider exchange of knowledge and professional talents through
educational contacts.”
From the start, the Commission in Bonn had five American and five German members,
each group exercising equal responsibility and selecting its membership by its own national
process. On the German side, the Fulbright Commission typically selected representatives from
the Ministry of Education, the German University Presidents Conference, the German Academic
Exchange Service, one alternating, representative university, and later a university student
organization, preferably a Fulbright returnee. The rigorous selection process allowed German
Fulbright participants to rebuild their nation’s reputation for academic excellence. Equally
important, they became unofficial ambassadors for peace.
Other indications of the high national priority assigned to the Fulbright program in
Germany abounded. With the implementation of the 1962 agreement, Germany’s Minister of
German-American Fulbright Commission 3 of 6A Brief History of the German-American Fulbright Program, 1952-2002 James F. Tent
Foreign Affairs became an ex-officio honorary co-chairperson of the Commission and was entitled
to perform the same functions as the U.S. Secretary of State, such as budget approval and
authorization of the Annual Program Plan. Germany’s Federal Government covered most of the
costs for German participants, although individual states and other local German institutions also
supported the national enterprise.
Given Berlin’s special status in the context of the Cold
War, the Fulbright Commission noticed early on that American
participants who studied and researched in Berlin eagerly
reported a unique atmosphere there. In 1954, the Fulbright
Program instituted a “Berlin Week” for all Fulbright
participants, a gathering that attracted national attention. For
example, in March 1986, Federal President Richard von
Weizäcker addressed the Berlin attendees in person, praising
the program’s commitment to a binational partnership that
carried worldwide implications. Thus, in Germany the
Fulbright-Kommission has probably achieved a higher
visibility in governmental circles than has its American
counterpart, in part because Germany’s senior political
leadership views cultural relations as a “third pillar” of foreign
Fulbright postage stamp issued 1996
policy. Another Federal President, Karl Carstens, noted in
1978 the enduring legacy bequeathed by Senator Fulbright, commenting that “those among us
who are familiar with the general discussion of [German] cultural foreign policy will perceive…that
the work of the Fulbright-Kommission is based on a concept of cultural politics that is closely tied
to the terms of ‘an expanded definition of culture’ from which our current cultural foreign relations
are formed.” His definition encompasses no less than “the entire range of living reality; extends
from literature to technology, from issues of social policies to problems of environmental
protection; it includes the past and present with a view towards future challenges.”
The German-American Fulbright Program has created a sizable body of influential
German citizens highly knowledgeable about the United States and a comparable body of
American citizens with great knowledge of Germany. One spin-off of these developments is that
each country in the binational program has helped to develop a large and respectable
historiographical literature about the other, and that American Studies, once a rarity in Germany,
is now commonplace in university curricula. This is in marked contrast to pre-1945 developments
when mutual ignorance of their opposite nations, even in centers of higher learning, was the
norm. The German-American Fulbright Program has engendered many other positive
developments great and small; the illustrious career of German Fulbright participant Gerhard
Casper serves as one example. A legal scholar, he built his career in the United States, capping it
German-American Fulbright Commission 4 of 6A Brief History of the German-American Fulbright Program, 1952-2002 James F. Tent
with a distinguished presidency at Stanford University from 1992 to 2000. Thousands of other
German Fulbright participants have helped broaden international contacts too, among them a
young Germanist who taught public school in New Jersey in the late 1950s. One of his pupils, this
author, became so enamored of German culture that he pursued a career in German history. He,
like countless other German and American citizens, is, through the “multiplier principle” also a
beneficiary of the “Fulbright experience.”
Following German reunification in 1990,
the German-American Fulbright Program
extended its operations to institutions of higher
learning in the eastern states of the former
GDR. Since then hundreds of exceptional
students, educators, lecturers, and scholars
from those once culturally isolated regions have
traveled to the United States while American
participants have studied and experienced life
Fulbrighters left their mark on Berlin
in cities such as Dresden, Leipzig, and
Rostock. They, too, have become full partners in the “Fulbright experience” and will undoubtedly
have a major impact on society and on the integration of those parts of Germany that were
isolated for so long.
In 1996 when the worldwide Fulbright Program celebrated its fiftieth anniversary, its
leadership estimated that a quarter of a million participants had gone through the Fulbright
programs (now over 300,000) and had organized into a
worldwide fraternity of men and women who share the
program’s enduring goals of advancing knowledge and
promoting international cooperation. On that occasion, they
quoted former German Fulbright staff and board member Karl
C. Roeloffs, who reminded the Americans that it is
“impossible to conceive of the American government being
able to succeed without its ability to draw on the United
States’ unique system of higher education. American colleges
and universities with their commitment to access, intellectual
rigor, creativity and excellence, served as models for
advancing learning elsewhere and in the process developed a
global market for educational change.” The German-American
Fulbright Program, one of the largest in the world, has made
Colin Powell speaking at the
a comparable impact on society, and it shares Senator celebration of the 50th Anniversary
of the German-American Fulbright
Fulbright’s enduring goal. He said it best: “…We must seek Program
German-American Fulbright Commission 5 of 6A Brief History of the German-American Fulbright Program, 1952-2002 James F. Tent through education to develop empathy, that rare and wonderful ability to perceive the world as others see it” Decent behavior, he observed, stems from perceiving others as individual human beings; barbarism can result from perceiving an adversary abstractly, as the embodiment of some evil design. As recent tragic events have shown, the need for international tolerance, understanding, and cooperation remains as great now as it was after World War II, when a freshman senator from Arkansas initiated the program that bears his name. - James Tent is a professor for German history at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. German-American Fulbright Commission 6 of 6
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