What’s it like to be a philosopher in Germany

This is our seventh installment of The Cocoon Goes Global, a series of posts on what's it like to be a philosopher in different countries outside of the Anglophone west. This is a guest post by Gen Eickers, postdoc at the University of Education Ludwigsburg (Germany).

I am not sure I know what it’s like to be a philosopher in Germany – I am quite young and just finished my Ph.D., I am trans, I do not have an academic family background – all of this makes me somewhat unrepresentative of philosophers here, but, at the same time, this very fact tells us something about the system and tells us something about what it is like to be a philosopher in Germany. A lot of people think of Germany as some kind of philosophers’ nation. At least, this is a comment I have frequently encountered at philosophy conferences and also from non-philosophers at private gatherings. Being a philosopher in Germany is thought of as stepping into big shoes, it seems. However, thinking of Germany as a kind of philosopher’s nation is true only if we think of philosophy as the discipline of white cis men, since the figures that have earned that reputation fall under that label. Philosophy in Germany is still dominated by white cis men and their advantages in accessing the field remain immense. Referring to Germany as a philosophers’ nation plays into this narrative of philosophy as the discipline of white cis men. This is a narrative I resist. For what I know, like all things in Germany, being a philosopher here requires patience, access to know-how that’s not explicitly formulated anywhere, and a lot of paperwork. The access to the know-how is, I think, what makes being an academic philosopher in Germany so difficult for some of us.

Let me try to explain the procedure first. The first step in order to become a professor is the doctoral thesis. Most people here take on jobs in academia before starting to work on their dissertation. A lot work on their dissertation while having a job contract at a university as academic staff. That is why a lot of philosophers here need 5-7 years to finish their doctoral studies. For philosophers, a German-wide rule is that the doctoral dissertation needs to be published. Typically, you need to publish within two years, and as long as the dissertation is not published, you are not eligible to call yourself a “Dr” - publishing one’s dissertation is key to being able to carry the title. Among the hierarchical structure this rule carries and permeates, this practice has also led publishing houses to charge people for publishing their dissertation. Typically, the amount one has to pay is between 800-2000€. The classist and elitist underpinnings of this practice aside, being charged to publish one’s own work downplays the value and amount of work one has put into a dissertation.

With the doctoral degree, you can apply for lectureships or postdocs at universities. The salary is not overwhelming, but you can certainly survive well if your position is full-time and if you do not have to commute. It’s pretty normal for philosophers in Germany to not get a full position and to commute, however. There are very few tenured jobs in academic philosophy in Germany – this is due to the system that requires a “Professor” title in addition to the “Dr” title in order to be tenured. For people who want to become a professor in Germany, publishing papers, teaching, and researching is not enough. Being a professor in Germany means being legally permitted to carry the title “Prof.”. In order to achieve that, philosophers here have to write a habilitation. While some universities have opened up to the option of a cumulative habilitation (i.e., publishing several papers about a specific topic), it is still common practice to have to write another dissertation, one that is supposed to be more impactful and substantive than the first. The habilitation gets evaluated by a committee and typically one has to go through a kind of defense as well.

The value of the habilitation is subject to disagreement. While some still consider it the most important piece of work in the life of a German academic philosopher, others treat it more pragmatically: a necessity to play within the system. Anyone who has successfully passed the habilitation is allowed to teach and conduct research independently at German universities - and to hold the title of “private lecturer”. Practically, the habilitation is the prerequisite to be appointed to a chair as a professor. Legally, since 2002, there is also the option of becoming a “junior professor” right after the Ph.D., but this is not a tenured position. Requiring a habilitation for a tenured position may not seem overly demanding (having two books, including the dissertation, is an achievement met by many scholars prior to tenure at prestigious institutions elsewhere), but it forms a rigid template, making tenured professorships less accessible to individuals whose research patterns are different, e.g., preferring articles or writing for non-academic audiences.  Elsewhere it is easy to name individuals who became famous for articles or for a single book, and promotion depends more on impact and recommendations from professional peers, rather than an evaluation committee. This puts promotion decisions into the hands of small groups in ways that may slow down progress on biases in the field.

Even with a habilitation there is no guarantee of a tenured job. Becoming a professor also means being appointed by a university, in addition to the habilitation. Instead of a job interview, there is a trial lecture before an appointment committee. If the favorite candidate is found on the vacant position, they receive a "call.” That is, one doesn’t just move through a tenure track at a single university; one typically competes for vacancies elsewhere. Those who aim at becoming a professor in Germany need to be patient: often, this aim cannot be reached before one’s early 40s. Before the appointment, there is rarely financial security and frequent changes of location or commuting to the workplace are commonplace. In addition, a first-time appointment of someone as a professor (as an appointment of a civil servant) is possible only when the person in question is not older than 50.

There are no official numbers or stats about the gender ratio among philosophy professorships in Germany. The ratio of professorships in general, independent of discipline, in Germany in 2017 was as follows: 36.126 men and 11.442 women (the statistics do not track trans and non-binary or otherwise genderqueer identities unfortunately, as is so often the case). There have been estimates that philosophy is among the fields that are still to a large part – i.e., around 70-80% – dominated by white cis men when looking at who is a professor and especially at who is a chair of philosophy in Germany. The problem does not start at the level of professorships, obviously. It is still common to teach students everything about “the most important German philosophers”, Kant and Hegel, without applying these theories and/or contextualizing them – that spans from introduction to philosophy classes to philosophy of mind and practical philosophy classes. By the end of their studies, students may also have read Schopenhauer, Leibniz, Schelling, Nietzsche, and Freud (in addition to Ancient Philosophy); again, without contextualization. Contemporary philosophers are add-ons but often not considered necessary. This contributes hugely to the cis-male narrative in philosophy in Germany and to the erasure of voices of marginalized people in philosophy. If you don’t want to contribute to this narrative, you almost inevitably have to teach papers written in English. But a lot of students do not understand English well enough to be able to read philosophy papers in English. Some of the people who study philosophy here have no interest in pursuing an academic career or any kind of life for which they might need English language skills. However, if you want your syllabus to represent marginalized voices in philosophy, philosophy written in German is unfortunately not the best place to look.

A lot of academic philosophers in Germany are forced to leave academia at a point where it seems impossible to think of or adapt to a career outside of academia (in general, professional career paths in Germany are not very flexible and most professions require a long and specific courses of training). In recent years, some efforts have been made to incorporate the tenure-track system into academia in Germany – i.e., professorships have been created that offer a contract that is first restricted to six years but up for being turned into tenure after. However, this model has also been criticized: academics at an earlier Postdoc stage do not benefit from this model as it focuses mainly on professorships and not on creating jobs for Postdocs or Lecturers. Furthermore, neither the tenure track model nor a more Postdoc focused model under discussion necessarily aim at increasing the total number of available jobs in academic philosophy. The structures are in a constant state of limbo, ever changing, which makes things even more inaccessible and unpredictable. One of the changes that has happened over the last 15 years was that more financial means were introduced to fund Ph.D.s. But this has led to there being more philosophers with a Ph.D. than needed to fill the jobs available at universities in Germany. Thus, for years, an increasing number of temporary young researchers have faced a barely increasing number of full-time professorships.

Some details that further complicate being a philosopher in Germany is, for one, the so called “Wissenschaftszeitgesetz” (roughly translated: research time law), and also the fact that one cannot survive on teaching here. It’s possible to take up teaching jobs, but those jobs do not provide a fixed salary; they are paid hourly. Plus, not many philosophy departments need external lecturers because everyone working for a department already has a certain amount of hours a week to teach, by contract. The aforementioned law restricts the time an academic can spend working at universities (i.e., being appointed a job at a university) to 12 years maximum, before habilitation. There are a few loopholes to the law, e.g. when you are working in a project rather than being directly appointed by a university, things are a bit different. Nevertheless, this law presents a massive restriction to academics in Germany and further fuels the competitive pressure among academics in their Postdoc phase.

These details provide a general sense of the steps one needs to advance through as an academic philosopher in Germany. Like any system, there is controversy, and one can find lists of pros and cons, but relatively little attention has been focused on the extent to which the system introduces structural obstacles to overcoming biases. Germany’s philosophical past is, I have suggested, itself an obstacle, and progressing into a more inclusive field would benefit from a more lateral or bottom-up approach to the promotion process.

Comments

[German-speaking philosopher]

Thank you for this post that entails very important information and critique. I studied and worked in the German-speaking context as well (Austria and Germany), hence I know the context too. I believe you should contextualize the depiction of the focus of teaching at German universities. The universities I know do not concentrate only on the "the most important German philosophers”, but integrate the so-called analytic tradition (e.g. Muenster,Konstanz, HU Berlin, FU Berlin, Vienna, Graz). Moreover, there are universities which focus on the so-called analytic tradition only (e.g. Bochum II, Salzburg). Analytic philosophy in Germany has an independent organization (https://www.gap-im-netz.de/en/): their board only consists of distinguished German professors. This shows that analytic philosophy is very well embedded in the German context. I would argue that German-speaking universities focus on the male-dominated European-American tradition (and I completely agree with your critique of that). Hence, they lack real diversity (as so many departments in the European-American context do). It is also pretty common to teach in English and I have encountered no student who would not be willing to read or write in English. Some of my students at a German-speaking university even asked me, if they could write their seminar papers in English.

[a philosopher]

The whole thing sounds very paternalistic to me, as if one is still a student needing supervision until their habilitation. I'm not often one to defend the free market, but I must say that I find myself glad I'm mostly working within the US system where the only (semi) formal requirement is the PhD and after that schools and departments set their own procedures and compete for talent. There are many downsides to the fact that (humanities) research and universities in the US are funded mostly by tuition dollars and donors, but the tight structural restrictions of more regulated systems in Europe strike me as worse. It's interesting to hear your perspective and thoughts on how this stifles change and protects bias. (I assume my libertarian and conservative colleagues are rolling their eyes now.)

[MKG]

I'd like to add some information/a different perspective. (I'm a German graduate student.)

1) It seems to me that most of the PhD students in philosophy in Germany are not employed (as lecturers) at a university but have a scholarship from a foundation or a non-research job.

2) Many universities in Germany allow the graduates to use the title "Dr. des." after the dissertation has been defended but not yet been published.

3) The PhD thesis can be published digitally and free of charge to fulfill the publication requirement (although this means less reputation). If one wants to publish it via a publishing house, there are also grants which can help with that (e.g. VG WORT).

4) There are tenured jobs below the rank of "Full Professor", but they are rare.

5) The habilitation requirement has become less important in recent years and universities usually require only a qualification that is "equivalent to a habilitation", which does not even mean a large amount of publications.

6) A clarification: The "Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz" does not restrict the time one can work as a lecturer to "12 years maximum, before habilitation", but six years before the PhD and six years after the PhD. The timeframe is extended if one has a child/children (and also for other reasons).

Furthermore, I second the post by "German-speaking philosopher". I have the same impression.

[Yan]

Hi! I´m Yan from Argentina, and I found your interesting blog about Germany education about Philosophy, and I´m Impressioned, ´cause I´m student of Philosophy and I was thinking to finish my grade and come to Germany to work like professor, but I saw is very difficult, ´cause as you say, you need to have a doctorate to teach... And I think, If you need to study so many for a professor job, and maybe you won´t have It, is very distressing! And your ages pass very fast! I´m disappointed. With that, I don´t want to say that you only need a grade to teach, but think about this:
Grade + Master + Post-grade + Doctorated... How many years and time Is that? And If your are foreign more difficult too! I`m sad.

[German curious]

How does hiring at the W3 level work?