Hedwig Hintze Prize for the Advancement of Women

Department of History and Cultural Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin – Hedwig Hintze Prize for the Advancement of Women

Awarded by the Women’s Representative

Application and Award Procedure

The Hedwig Hintze Prize for the Advancement of Women (Hedwig-Hintze-Frauenförderpreis) is awarded annually by the Department of History and Cultural Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin for an outstanding dissertation by a young woman scholar within the Department. The prize is €1,000.

Hedwig Hintze, née Guggenheimer (1884–1942) was a gifted historian and committed commentator on current affairs, who publicly stood up for international understanding between Europe’s democracies, for humanism and human rights on the basis of the principles of 1789. She was one of the small number of women intellectuals who occupied positions of academic responsibility in the Weimar Republic and were able to make their voices heard in public debates.

Through her doctoral thesis, written under the supervision of Friedrich Meinecke and submitted to Berlin University in 1923, and her postdoctoral thesis on “Staatseinheit und Föderalismus im alten Frankreich und in der Revolution”, published in 1928, Hedwig Hintze established herself as a recognized specialist in French history. Until 1933 she taught as an assistant lecturer at Berlin University. She also worked as an editor for the Historische Zeitschrift, in charge of news and notices relating to the epoch of the French Revolution. She had begun working in journalism straight after the First World War, publishing her first essays and articles on French regionalism and making important French research known in Germany through reviews and translations. She took an active part in the debates over Franco-German relations and called for reconciliation with France on the basis of the principles of 1789.

Her wealthy background was a major factor in Hedwig Hintze’s academic career. It not only enabled her to complete a comprehensive education but also encouraged her intellectual independence – as did her marriage in 1912 to her history professor Otto Hintze, 23 years her senior, in a union described as a working marriage.

Her espousal of the socialist ideas of the French Revolution was one of the reasons why Hedwig Hintze was ousted in 1933 from the world of academia and erased from the German public eye. After 1933 she worked for a time in France before moving to the Netherlands in 1939. In 1940 she was offered an appointment at the New School for Social Research in New York, but was refused permission to emigrate. Persecuted on account of her Jewish origins and living in very difficult conditions, the historian was obliged to remain in the Netherlands, where she died in 1942. German historiography continued to banish her from the collective memory right up to the 1990s.

The previous prize winners

Current application deadline for 2018

18 December 2017

Who can apply?

All women PhD graduates in the Department of History and Cultural Studies who completed their doctoral thesis between 1 April 2016 and 31 March 2017 and whose work was awarded “summa cum laude” are eligible to apply for the departmental Hedwig Hintze Prize for the Advancement of Women.

How to apply

Please submit the following documentation:

1. All expert appraisals

2. Your CV

3. An informal covering letter

4. Your doctoral thesis (a printed and an electronic copy)

Right of nomination

Candidates can be nominated by any academic member of the Department, normally by the supervisor of their thesis. Candidates can also apply in their own name.

Selection procedure

All post-doctoral members of the IFGD may assess applications. If necessary, the opinion of post-doctoral specialists within the Department may also be consulted.

Award of the prize

The Hedwig Hintze Prize for the Advancement of Women is always awarded at the Department of History and Cultural Studies’ party at the end of the winter semester.

Please send your application to:

Freie Universität Berlin

Department of History and Cultural Studies

Women’s Representative

Fabeckstr. 23-25

14195 Berlin

frauengeschkult@fu-berlin.de