The Institute

Außenansicht des ITHF im Gebäude der katholischen Akademie in Hamburg.
Exte­ri­or view of the ITHF in the buil­ding of the Catho­lic Aca­de­my (Katho­li­sche Aka­de­mie) in Hamburg.

The Insti­tu­te for Theo­lo­gy and Peace (ithf) is the aca­de­mic rese­arch arm of the Catho­lic Church ope­ra­ted by the Catho­lic Mili­ta­ry Cha­p­lai­ning (Katho­li­sche Mili­tär­seel­sor­ge). The goal of the insti­tu­te is to exami­ne and dis­cuss ques­ti­ons of and the spe­ci­fic dan­gers to peace. Our inter­di­sci­pli­na­ry rese­arch pro­jects deal with cur­rent pro­blems in poli­tics and mili­ta­ry prac­ti­ce, as wel­las in adja­cent disci­pli­nes (i.e. poli­ti­cal sci­ence and inter­na­tio­nal law). Our rese­arch has a Chris­ti­an value-orientated foun­da­ti­on and its roots in the Chris­ti­an peace ethics tra­di­ti­on. This Catho­lic tra­di­ti­on is cen­tral to the scope of acti­vi­ties of ithf. In the past few years, peace thin­king in Islam has also beco­me more inten­se­ly researched.

Sin­ce the foun­ding of the insti­tu­te in 1978, the coll­ec­tion, trans­la­ti­on and docu­men­ta­ti­on of signi­fi­cant theo­lo­gi­cal and phi­lo­so­phi­cal peace lite­ra­tu­re has con­ti­nu­al­ly play­ed an important part in the work of ithf. The com­pre­hen­si­ve libra­ry is tes­tim­o­ny to this; it is com­pri­sed of more than 190,000 titles of mono­graphs, mul­ti­vo­lu­me works, seri­als, essays, and jour­nals. Of note is the deve­lo­p­ment of the­ma­ti­cal­ly ori­en­ta­ted artic­les sum­ma­ri­sing sel­ec­ted jour­nals and antho­lo­gies which are also rese­archa­ble in the Online-Catalogue of Theo­lo­gy and Peace.

The ithf rese­ar­chers teach at various part­ne­red uni­ver­si­ties and, by intro­du­cing their rese­arch results to the wider aca­de­mic deba­te, are publi­cal­ly con­tri­bu­ting to the peace and secu­ri­ty discourse.