The study sketches the socio-historical conditions of the emergence of a strata of critical intellectuals in the late nineteenth century, as well as their institutional support agencies, giving rise to the first major "workshop" of the social sciences (1900). A dismantling after the revolutionary break of 1918–1919 follows, with the emigration of a whole generation of scholars, producing the intellectual stalemate of the interwar years. The catastrophe of WWII including Nazification leads up to the transition years followed by hard core Stalinism, outlawing Western type social studies and replacing them by mandatory Marxism. A new start is observable only after 1963. All formerly restricted social sciences achieve a degree of professional standing before 1989, when the regime transition opens the door to full-scale Westernization (124).