Special issue  

In diesem Editorial begründen wir die intellektuelle Agenda, die dem Themenheft «German Theory» zugrunde liegt. Um diese mit anglophonen, aber auch anderen (frankophonen, lusophonen) Theoriediskussionen ins Gespräch zu bringen, möchten wir aus der deutschsprachigen Geistesgeschichte entstandene Denkstile bewusster, autonomer, aber auch dialogischer in den Blick nehmen, in internationale Theoriedebatten einbringen, und so für eine Pluralität von Denkstilen werben.

Scientific freedom involves three aspects: Freedom as power and privilege, freedom as a right of defence, and freedom as autonomy for self-regulation. But how to decide in science when science itself has marked all scientific criteria as contingent? At this point, the article proposes to acknowledge the decision-making challenges in science, to engage in theory-theoretical dialogues and thus to preserve autonomy.

The cultural memory of Aleida and Jan Assmann has received little recognition in international geography. However, by focusing on the concerns of a geographical study of places of memory, it is possible to develop a spatially oriented conception of cultural memory spaces based on the assumption that places of memory cannot be a storage, but only an anchor for memories.

In (Anthropo-)Geography, especially in the Anthropocene, the question of what constitutes the human is of utmost interest. In the process, this human is often strangely assumed to be self-evident, almost (self-)explanatory. In the sense of a German Theory, we want to encourage to pose these question on the human anew with Helmuth Plessner and to point out new possible answers. Otherwise these questions are in danger of withering away into a Minimal Anthropology.

This paper aims to contribute to discussions on the development of language-based schools of thought in geography and how these are mobilized and de- and recontextualized when they travel beyond their origins. Against this backdrop, we study why, how and with what consequences German geographical knowledge traveled to Argentina in the 1940s following the employment of the four German geography professors Wilhelm Rohmeder, Gustav Fochler-Hauke, Fritz Machatschek and Willi Czajka in Tucumán.