100 Years of DAAD - 100 Years of Change by Exchange

The German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) is celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2025. Since 1925, the DAAD has supported around three million students and academics from Germany, Europe and around the world. As an organisation for academic exchange, the DAAD is using its anniversary year to highlight the importance of international scientific cooperation in times of geopolitical crises and upheaval. The highlight of the anniversary year will be a ceremony on 6 May at the Humboldt Forum in Berlin. The anniversary will be accompanied by numerous events and activities in Germany and abroad, including the issue of a special postage stamp by the Federal Ministry of Finance.

Flags in front of the DAAD headquarters in Bonn© DAAD/Pankau

“For us in Germany, a functioning academic cooperation area is essential. International academic exchange strengthens our innovative power and secures the conditions for our prosperity, for example by attracting international specialists. International scientific cooperation is also crucial if we are to meet the enormous challenges of the 21st century and shape the coming decades successfully and peacefully on this one planet we all share,” Mukherjee stressed.

DAAD history – a stroke of luck, inspiration and warning

The history of the DAAD as mirror of the times is a stroke of luck, an inspiration and a warning at the same time. “In this anniversary year, we look back on the great liberal awakening in the Weimar Republic, the ‘Gleichschaltung’ and moral bankruptcy under Nazi rule, the rebuilding of international academic relations after the Second World War, and the DAAD’s enormous contribution to Germany’s foreign cultural and academic policy. The all-German history of the DAAD began with the support of scholarship holders from the GDR at the time of reunification. Over the past 35 years, the DAAD has developed into a key player in Germany’s science diplomacy and, as the National Agency for Erasmus+, into an organisation with a strong European focus,” said the DAAD President.

From Heidelberg to Berlin

The history of the DAAD began in the early 1920s with a vision: Carl Joachim Friedrich, a student from Heidelberg, acquired the first 13 scholarships for young German academics to go to the USA. His aim was to overcome Germany’s academic isolation through international exchange. The first scholarship holders travelled to the USA in 1924. On 13 January 1925, the “Akademischer Austauschdienst”, the forerunner of the DAAD, was founded in Heidelberg. In the same year, the (D)AAD moved to Berlin, where it was housed in the former City Palace. Following Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, the DAAD embraced Nazi ideology and actively promoted its own “Gleichschaltung”; it was dissolved in 1945.

Re-established in Bonn in 1950

The DAAD was re-established in Bonn in 1950 on the initiative of the British military administration and has been committed to the peaceful, cross-border promotion of academic cooperation ever since. Today, as the world’s largest academic exchange organisation, the DAAD supports around 150,000 students and academics each year with scholarships and projects. Its global network comprises almost 60 offices and around 400 teaching and research posts at universities on all continents. Since the launch of the Erasmus programme in 1987, the DAAD has also been the national agency for Erasmus+ university cooperation.

Commuters between the continents

The co-founder of the DAAD, Friedrich emigrated to the USA in the 1920s and became one of the most respected political scientists of his time at Harvard University. After the end of the Second World War, he contributed to the reestablishment of democracy in Germany, the development of the Marshall Plan and the drafting of the Basic Law. From the 1950s, he taught alternately at the universities of Heidelberg and Harvard. Friedrich died in 1984.

Special postage stamp and activities in the anniversary year

As a special tribute to international academic exchange, the Federal Ministry of Finance is issuing a special stamp to mark the DAAD’s anniversary. The stamp, which costs 1.25 euros, can be used to send standard letters anywhere in the world.

The DAAD is planning a wide range of activities for the anniversary year: an anniversary website offers insights into the history of the organisation, and participation formats are also planned for DAAD member universities as well as for current and former scholarship holders. Numerous DAAD events in Germany and abroad will address the anniversary in 2025, including meetings of DAAD scholarship holders at the universities of Heidelberg, Bonn and the FU Berlin, as well as large alumni reunions in Paris and New York. The highlight of the celebrations will be a ceremony with German and international guests at the Humboldt Forum in Berlin on 6 May.

Those interested can follow all the year’s activities via the anniversary website and the anniversary Instagram channel (@100YearsDAAD). The website also features stories from past and present scholarship holders that show how academic exchange shapes individual careers while contributing to social change.