Soon after, he received a grant from the German Research Foundation which enabled him to work for three years in Rome, where he edited the medieval chronicle at Saba Malaspina.
In 1987 he worked as a visiting scholar at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, 1991/92 at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research at Bielefeld University and followed invitations to the US, Japan and China.
August Nitschke was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit on October 17, 1986, for his services to historical research at home and abroad, especially for the organization of the International Congress of Historians in Stuttgart together with Eberhard Jäckel in 1980.
[4] Nitschke's early works were from the era of the investiture controversy, Staufer Sicily, and source studies of the 13th century.
With two radio colleges on the methodology of historical research and on the culture of the turn of the century (1900) Nitschke reached a broad public.
The observation and description of human behavior beyond intentions, justifications and so-called worldviews should make historical processes measurable in a certain way.