ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Scientific Atheism breaking down twice: Continuities and discontinuities of a marginal East German science

• In Event: How Sciences End 2

English Abstract

Studies on religion and atheism in communist ruled academia have had a turbulent history that has been studied more extensively since a few years. After a first development mainly in Ukraine up to 1937, they spread under the name scientific atheism across the Soviet Union and in several Eastern European countries from the 1950s onwards, in very diverse national contexts. The East German case offers an example of two dismantlings that have been experienced by the same generation of researchers, under very different circumstances. In 1968 professor Olof Klohr had his university chair in scientific atheism closed down. Yet the position he conserved allowed for further research out of sight before scientific atheism had a come-back in 1972. In 1989-1990 on the contrary, some thirty scholars have been affected by the peaceful revolution, and tried to recycle their expert knowledge in politics or Church, fight dismissal from university, promote their work and shape the story of their former discipline – and not unsuccessfully, even though the union with Western Germany made continuity much more difficult than for their Russian and some Czechoslovakian colleagues. Based on extensive archival research and interviews linked to my PhD (Sorbonne University, 2021) and to complete my recent book, Scientific Atheism in East Germany (1963-1990): How to Turn a Hare into a Lion (Routledge, 2025), the case study addresses a series of more general questions on “how sciences end”, such as hidden continuities, internal and external reasons for the “end”, the content and appropriateness of this term.

Author

• Eva Guigo-Patzelt, Associate member of CéSor (Centre d’études en sciences sociales du religieux, EHESS/CNRS), Paris