Mellan akademi och kulturpolitik Lektorat i svenska språket vid tyska universitet 1906–1945

Sammanfattning: The aim of this thesis is to analyze the establishment and development of lectureships in the Swedish language in German universities during the first half of the 20th century. Building on earlier research about the role of language teaching abroad for public diplomacy, the study sees the lecturer as a part of both the the academic and political fields in Germany and Sweden. The establishment of and changes in the system of lectureships in Swedish 1906–1945 are explained through an analysis of the actors involved and of the assets allowing the actors to control both the establishment of lectureships and the appointment of lecturers in Germany.During the Weimar Republic a number of actors were involved in the establishment of the lectureships. They included academics with a scholarly interest in Scandinavian languages and old Norse,, the German state, which worked to promote the study of foreign countries and interna­tional academic mobility as a way of breaking German isolation after World War I, and the Swedish organization for the preservation of Swedishness abroad for which the teaching of Swed­ish abroad was a way of increasing the academic status of the language. After the National Social­ist takeover in 1933 the NSDAP and the Swedish foreign ministry also took an interest in the Swedish lectureships in Germany for propaganda purposes.The dissertation shows how a system for the appointment of Swedish lecturers to Germany was established through interaction between the actors. Central in this process were the control over economic assets, a social network which made recommendations of lecturers possible, and the control over communication between both the lecturers and universites and between the German and Swedish states. The study also shows that the uneven distribution of assets between German and Swedish actors resulted in an inferior position for the German state and organizations in relationship to their Swedish counterparts.