German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) history

As of 1 January 1931, the Academic Exchange Service, the German Academic Foreign Office of the Association of German Universities and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation merged to form the “Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst e.V.” (German Academic Exchange Service).

By the end of 1938, American authorities closed down the office on suspicions of espionage.

In the final years of the war, most of the work at the DAAD concentrated on coordinating the supervision of foreign students on behalf of the Academic Foreign Offices (Akas). In autumn 1944, this also included enlisting foreign students for work assignments and organising “volunteer associations”.

In 1960, the DAAD awarded scholarships to 1,305 foreign and 189 German applicants.

A works council was established at the DAAD in 1965.

The integration of pedagogical academies (teacher education colleges), which had begun in 1968, was finally concluded.

With regard to higher education policy, the DAAD was chiefly concerned with the admission restrictions at German universities and the effects of the “numerus clausus” on foreign student applicants in 1970.

The first DAAD Lektor sent to the Soviet Union in the 1986/87 academic year was Doctor Peter Hiller, who later headed the Moscow regional office.

Only 3,200 people continued receiving funding, down from approximately 11,000 scholarship recipients in 1990/91.

Doctor Stefan Hormuth, president of the University of Giessen since 1997 was chosen to succeed Prof.

The General Assembly also elected Doctor Joybrato Mukherjee, an English Studies professor and president of the University of Giessen since 2009, as the new vice president of the DAAD.

On 19 June, thirty state and government leaders of the European Union signed the Bologna Declaration, which would pave the way toward creating a uniform European higher education area by the year 2010.

The DAAD has been trying to counteract this with various programs since 2015.

Digital modules play a central role in advanced training, including in the Inter-national Deans ‘Course (IDC), which is celebrating its tenth anniversary in 2017.