The institutional and intellectual transition of German academe from the Third Reich to the Federal Republic required a measure of self-denazification and intellectual realignment which combined a deliberate ‘politics of the past’ with the safeguards of professorial status. Against the background of the re-established civil service culture in postwar Germany this ‘moratorium of the mandarins’ can be seen as a social and intellectual process which required a re-evaluation of academic style and substance within the bounds of professorial collegiality. This process was exemplified in cases from history, theology and physics at the University of Göttingen.