Science and Regional Culture. Folklore knowledge in the state reorganisation process, Baden-Württemberg 1952 - 1977

The project investigates the place, function and dynamics of folkloristic knowledge in the (post-war) society of the German Southwest. Focusing on transfer processes between academia, the state and the public, the project's studies ask how, after the founding of the new state, stocks of knowledge about the initially poorly contoured subject were retrieved, modified and newly generated. Which milieus participate in the ethnographic-folkloristic formation of the new space? How are old knowledge formats adapted to the changed spatial-political requirements and new ones developed in order to perpetuate social and cultural differentiations and at the same time advance (symbolic) homogenisation via the narrative of national culture? Thus, the study examines the relationship of the knowledge of national and regional cultural customers to state and society in complex social constellations of the 20th century. The focus is on the interactions between state integration and professional innovation in Baden-Württemberg from two complementary perspectives: on the state description of the state and on new initiatives to integrate milieus that were less close to the state, through which an encounter between traditional fields and innovative paradigms was made possible.