Technologische Innovation und transnationale Netzwerke: Europa zwischen den Weltkriegen

Abstract

Technological Innovation and Transnational Networks: Europe between the Wars

The article sketches the historiography on the transfer of knowledge with a focus on the Interwar period. It stresses the need to analyse the cultural element of the exchange of knowledge beyond a history of innovation and transfer in the narrower sense. Three interrelated developments, which in part determine each other, are treated with particular attention. First, the general growth of international exchange and its altered forms through advances in institutionalisation. Second this process was directly interlinked with the emergence of new channels and fora of communication. Third, one can observe a multilayered ‹politicisation› of expertise, which was closely linked with the First World War and in particular with the rise of authoritarian and totalitarian regimes in the 1920s and 1930s. The articles assembled in this issue are particularly qualified to analyse these problems as each of them covers at least two countries and all of them are transnational in scope.