THE future of a unique British centre for historical research in Germany is in doubt following a shock decision to close the internationally renowned Max Planck Institute for History at Gottingen, where the centre is to be based.

The fledgling British Centre for Historical Research in Germany, validated by the University of Wales at Bangor, is to form part of an international historical research community at the Gottingen institute. It is the first British initiative of this kind in Europe.

The Mission Historique Francaise en Allemagne, funded by the French foreign ministry, is already there, and the institute is a magnet for international scholars.

Project director Joseph Canning, of the University of Wales at Bangor, said: "We are absolutely relying on the survival of the institute in Gottingen for the British Centre for Historical Research in Germany."

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No other university or institute could offer the British centre the expertise in the whole spectrum of medieval, early modern and modern history, he said.

The centre aims to employ a director and research fellows on long-term research projects on German and European history, and eventually to offer MAs and PhDs at Gottingen.

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It has already taken up offices at Gottingen and held an inaugural conference in September and is due to begin operating next year.

The Gottingen institute is one of four institutes earmarked for closure by the Max Planck Society, the German government's main research arm, which has a total of 73 institutes.

The other three are the Max Planck institutes for biology in Tubingen, behavioural psychology in Seewiesen near Munich and aeronautics in Lindau.

The society said its decision was not motivated by "a lack of academic quality or because the research lacked future perspective", but by the belief that the research could be continued elsewhere.

The Max Planck Society has an annual budget of DM1.7 billion (Pounds 680 million) which is to rise by 5 per cent this year.

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But since German reunification it has adopted a policy of redirecting funds from western to eastern Germany. Last week it announced it was setting up an institute for climate research in Jena, Thuringia.

A final decision on the closures is to be taken in March but, following pleas from historians throughout Europe and protests from top German politicians, the society has promised to find ways of saving the MPI for History.

Lyndal Roper, from Royal Holloway College, London, a specialist in the early modern period, said: "I think this decision was based on money and made by people who don't know about history. It is tragic."

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She said the institute had pioneered anthropological history - the history of ordinary people's lives - and its Historical Anthropology journal was the only one publishing this kind of research.

But Dr Canning said he was more optimistic for the future of both the institute and the British centre following a meeting withHarmut Lehmann, director of the Gottingen institute, late last week.

"There is no panic. But the level of international support has to be maintained. If anything, this crisis has emphasised the institute's international importance."

Historians campaigning for the institute can take heart from gaining the support of Rita Suessmuth, president of the Bundestag, She said this week that she believed the "death bell has not yet rung" for the Gottingen institute.

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"Together the closure can be prevented; the train has not yet left the station," she said.