Berghof Foundation: 50 years of conflict transformation

Interview
“
Climate
change
will
become
the new
focus of
peace
research
Professor
Dieter
Senghaas
Honorary Chair
Board of Trustees
Berghof
Foundation
The Berghof Foundation was founded in a spirit of
optimism, as the article on the previous page shows.
Why was the establishment of government-funded
peace and conflict research so important at that time?
In retrospect, I suppose we might describe
it as initial euphoria. But the background to the
various initiatives promoting peace research was
very different: the East-West conflict, which came
to a head in the 1950s and 1960s. The ideological
conflict with all its consequences divided the
world, especially Europe and Germany. The danger
of nuclear war was particularly acute in Europe.
This was the backdrop to governmental and nongovernmental
initiatives to promote peace research,
especially in former West Germany.
Looking back at the last 50 years, what have we
achieved in peace and conflict research since then
and what has the Berghof Foundation contributed?
Government funding of peace and conflict
research began in the early 1970s. The establishment
of two government-funded institutions — the Peace
Research Institute Frankfurt and the Institute for
Peace Research and Security Policy at the University
of Hamburg — and the gradual integration of peace
research into various disciplines at universities were of
particular importance. This welcome development led
to a thematic expansion of peace research over time.
In addition to armament dynamics, the focus
of the research moved to issues such as aggression
and violence, including the central question of how
peace can be achieved and successfully shaped
within society at a local level and in the regional and
international context. The founding of the Berghof
Foundation also had an important impact on this
development. As a private organisation, it was able
to promote initiatives to broaden the thematic scope
of research.
At that time, the organisation focused
particularly on promoting peace education projects
in universities, schools and peace movements. One
milestone reached as a result of this support was the
Institute for Peace Education in Tübingen, which is
still active both regionally and beyond.
You are one of the few people to have been involved
with the Berghof Foundation from the start. What is
your experience of the organisation today and how
does it differ from back then?
In the first decades of its existence,
the Berghof Foundation handed out grants for
projects which were generally carried out by
external partners. These efforts contributed
significantly to the development of research and
practical peace activities in Germany. Today, the
Berghof Foundation focuses primarily on its own
international activities, mainly in cooperation with
experts and potential funders beyond its
own borders.
Looking to the future, the world is once again facing
major challenges. How should they be addressed by
peace and conflict research? And what kind of role
do you envisage for organisations such as the
Berghof Foundation?
While the analysis of armament dynamics
at the international and national level was once one
of the main challenges that led to the emergence of
peace research, it is foreseeable that the obviously
dramatic increase in climate change — albeit with
different levels of intensity in different parts of
the world — will become the new focus of peace
research. Here, the Berghof Foundation must
succeed in what it failed to do in the first decades of
its activities, namely to build on the expertise of the
natural sciences. This had always been the aim of
Professor Georg Zundel, the founder of the Berghof
Foundation, since the early 1970s. However, social
science contributions to solving scientific problems
were still relatively unknown in the natural sciences
at the time, which is why, with very few exceptions,
no bridges were built between the two disciplines.
Successful efforts in this direction, entirely in the
spirit of the organisation’s founder, are long overdue
and the conditions are more favourable today. I very
much hope that these efforts will be successful. That
is also my wish for the Berghof Foundation on the
occasion of its 50th anniversary.
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