The four subprojects, designed to work together closely, focus on the role the Federal Chancellery played with regard to personnel continuities and fractures: How and to what degree did the office steer the personnel policy of individual ministries and how was its own personnel policy handled? Insights will be sought, moreover, into how political styles and administrative cultures changed and what significance these changes had for the democratic development of the German Federal governmental system. The timespan in question stretches from 1949 through to the Social Democratic-Liberal era (1969 to 1982), with the individual subprojects setting different years as the end of the period.

The research groups are supported by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media and are composed of four doctoral/postdoc researchers. While the subprojects at the Center for Contemporary History in Potsdam will delve into the politics of memory and the past, as well as the public relations work of the Federal Chancellery and Office of Information, the IfZ subprojects will look into the office’s personnel development and policy as well as the understanding of democracy and politics held by its leading officials.