[1] Founded in 1984 by Jan Philipp Reemtsma,[2] it currently employs about 50 people with roughly 50% working in the research fields of sociology and history.

[5] In addition to Reemtsma, Helmut Dahmer, Ernest Mandel, Margarete Mitscherlich-Nielsen, Jakob Moneta, and Alice Schwarzer formed the first advisory board.

In retrospect, the historian Hans-Ulrich Thamer said that the presentation had brought about a "change in consciousness" in Germany; it had "destroyed the legend of the clean Wehrmacht".

[16] The HIS also provided contributions to the controversies surrounding the 1968 movement and left-wing terrorist groups, in particular through the work of Wolfgang Kraushaar.

[5][6] From 2013 to 2015, the scientific work was organised into three research groups: "Crisis and Transformation of Empires", "Postwar Periods" and "Future Production".

[29] Die Tageszeitung wrote in 2009 on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of its founding that HIS had "developed into one of the most influential intellectual centres in the Federal Republic of Germany".

[30] The Neue Zürcher Zeitung made a similar assessment, stating that HIS was "among the institutes in Germany working in the fields of history and sociology, the one with the greatest public impact and the critical social developments".

[31] The Deutschlandfunk radio station pointed out the scientific achievements: the HIS had "made a name for itself above all with research on violence in the 20th century".

[32] The Deutsche Welle radio station stated that the HIS had an "excellent reputation", many of its researchers "teach at universities in Germany and abroad and some hold visiting professorships.

"[7] In 2012, the Hamburger Abendblatt also wrote that the HIS is now "accepted as an independent voice in the scientific community", after being critically eyed by universities in its early years.