What One's Bedroom is a Sign of...

In today's "experience society" the way one lives at home is a major area for the aesthetic staging of one's own person. The furnishing of the bedroom has long since been included in this process of "impression management." Thus even the most intimate area tells tales: "Tell me what your sleeping room is like, and I will tell you who your are." But the fashioning of the individual's lifestyle in the bedroom is channeled by what is on offer and its agents - home magazines, furniture stores, advertising, etc. How this conveying of life styles occurs has been investigated in a study financed in part by the German Research Association(DFG). The results reveal what the bedroom is a sign of.

Authors: Thomas Jung, Stefan Müller-Doohm

The Liberal Stance on Drugs: Prohibition vs. Liberalization

How will Germany deal with drugs in the future? The positions of different lobby groups range from the legalization of hard drugs on the one hand to more drastic means of reducing the consumption of drugs on the other. The author of this article argues for a pragmatic approach without the strictures of rigid ideology, for the goal of any drug policy is prevention, especially among young people.

Author: Rüdiger Meyenberg

On Present-Day Russian Cultural Philosophy

After seventy years of pseudo-philosophical Marxism-Leninism, Russian philosophy has come back to life again in the open. Traditionally marked by the heritage of Byzantine religion and Greek philosophy (Plato), it was emancipated from religious thinking only at the end of the 19th century and is still interwoven with religion and literature. Nowadays Russian philosophers discuss problems such as history and ethics (Brodsky), non-binary truth value (Levin), the relation of landscape to the manner of thinking (Podoroga), and theory of consciousness (Mamardashwill and Pjatigorsky). Ryklin's terrorologics, Groy's ecophilosophy and Smirnov's psychohistory of culture are all reactions to Postmodernism, especially to Lacan and Derrida.

Author: Rainer Grübel

A School for Children with Mentally Abnormal Development

Based on unusually complete original source material, the pre-history and founding (in 1886) of the "Hilfschule" in Cologne is described. This leads into an analysis of the way children were chosen for this special school and some related socio-economic factors (such as parent's occupations, lower-class residential areas).

Author: Ulrich Schröder

Regenerative Raw Materials and Electrochemistry

In non-aequeous media, electrons can be transferred directly to sugar molecules by means of the negative electrode in electrolysis. This fact is exploited as the initial step in a new pathway towards the generation of modified sugars, e.g. alkyl- and acylglycoside derivatives. The latter form an important class of fine or special chemicals which are usable as raw materials both in medicine and pharmaceuticals, and in petrochemistry and pigment chemistry and the plastics industry.

Author: Carl H. Hamann

A New Chance in Life Through Occupational Rehabilitation?

Occupational rehabilitation is part of a differentiated social and political system of support for those physically or mentally disabled by accident or illness and those who are threatened by such a condition. In an empirical study carried out in public institutions for occupational rehabilitation, training for a new job has been shown to have remarkably different significance in individual life histories.

Authors: Gerd Vonderach, Vera Herrmann, Eileen Beyer