Use definite article or not in conjunction with a German institution's name which contains a strongly declined article?

Picture some German university's arthistory department, and its official title would be "Kunsthistorisches Institut". "Kunsthistorisch" is an adjective, and "kunsthistorisches" is its nominative case. Moreover, "kunsthistorisches" is the strong declension case which is used without a definite article.

Now when I'd like to refer to said department's bibliography rules in an English text, I would have to use the definite article "the", which would be at odds with the strong declension in the institution's German name.

Still, what would be the correct alternative,

• "...the bibliography rules of the 'Kunsthistorisches Institut'..." or
• "...the bibliography rules of 'Kunsthistorisches Institut'...",

or would I even have to adapt to the appropriate German declension case (genitive or dative)? (My instinct makes me shudder.)

Solution 1:

In English, names headed by institute nearly always take "the"; hence my hometown has "the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts", "the Haenicke Institute for Global Education", etc.

Now, that's not a general rule for all nouns — for example, names headed by academy, college, and university can go either way — but German Institut is so close to English institute (and is likely to be pronounced simply as "institute" by English-speakers) that I think it sounds very odd without "the".

That said, since in your case the German name is very transparent (not very namelike), and it's not a top-level organization but is rather just a department of a larger one, I would suggest translating the name, and writing "the Art History Institute" (unless this department is already known in English under its German name, in which case you should look at existing usage to see whether it has "the").