Historian Helmut Goetz was member of the German Historical Institute in Rome in 1956 and later from 1960 until 1985. He was charged of the critical edition of Vatican Diplomatic Dispatches (Nuntiaturberichte). In 1993 he published his research on Italian scholars who refused to swear allegiance to the fascist regime in 1931 (Der freie Geist und seine Widersacher: Die Eidverweigerer an den Italianischen Universitäten im Jahre 1931). As a federalist activist, he founded in 1963, with other friends, the review "Lotta federalista per gli Stati Uniti d'Europa".