History

After the hyper-nationalism of the First World War, the League of Nations promoted international textbook revision. The detrimental role of textbooks in shaping views of the enemy had become sufficiently clear. After the Second World War, UNESCO picked up the thread and the historian Georg Eckert from Braunschweig gave new impetus to these efforts. He made a major effort to contribute to reconciliation and peace education by organizing bi- and multilateral textbook conferences with Germany's neighbors and especially with her previous enemies until his death in 1974. In 1975, the Georg Eckert Institute as it is today was developed on the basis of a new law passed by the state of Lower Saxony.

Important steps on the long path to international understanding include the 1951 'Franco-German Agreement on Controversial Issues in European History' (Franco-German Textbook Commission) and the 1975 'Recommendations for History and Geography Textbooks in the Federal Republic of Germany and the People's Republic of Poland.' (German-Polish Textbook Commission). The latter generated a long and sometimes embittered controversy. In 1985, German and Israeli scholars agreed on the 'German-Israeli Textbook Recommendations' (Israeli-Palestinian Textbook Project) 

In 1985, the Georg Eckert Institute was awarded the UNESCO Prize for Peace Education.