(from "More pleasure than burden?"^[1])

I am reluctantly embarking on the task of writing about the founding phase of Carl von Ossietzky University. It began almost forty years ago. Memory is thinning out and focussing on situations beyond which the founding events should be examined more broadly. If I nevertheless set myself the task, it should not sound like a cheap late justification. I must try to describe, at least in broad outline, the tasks actually performed by the founding committee and subsequently during the rectorate period up to 1979.

The spectacular history of the naming, the dispute over the Radical Decree in the civil service, the outward appearance of bearded university founders and the revolutionary dangers they supposedly posed, as well as their lamented unprofessionalism - all these points of friction combined to create a mixture that cast the founding of the university in a bad light. Even in the struggle with state governments, which rejected and reinvented the university's expansion goals - study places, new buildings, degree programmes - there was also solidarity in the city and region, but the external perception that the founding committee and founding rectorate had to constantly nag the authorities was stronger.

A negative stereotype of the founding period and its protagonists emerged and became entrenched. The "sensible" university only seemed to develop in the subsequent presidency, a perception that could only benefit the new university management, but led to the perpetuation of the perception of a "red and chaotic" founding phase.

The founders themselves were caught up in their perceived drive to create a "reform university" against a largely hostile outside world. In the early years, we ourselves were too little concerned with external impact and did too little to influence the public, explaining ourselves too little to them. The question remains, however, whether a stronger explanation of the reform goals would have met with a positive response in view of a phalanx of prejudices against this university foundation.

Looking back, I can say that when I and my deputy left the university management, there was a functioning university with 4,905 enrolled students (as of June 1979) and, in addition to the teaching degree programmes covering the entire range of subjects, there were eight new Diplom degree programmes and three Diplom postgraduate programmes. The single-phase teacher training programme (ELAB) was a model experiment appreciated by experts. The planning and financing of the new buildings in the central area on Uhlhornsweg, which were completed in 1980 and cost 107.6 million Deutschmarks, were awaiting realisation. The development work of the founding decade was not in vain.

When we started work after the founding committee was constituted on 26 March 1971, we had no idea that the founding phase would last until spring 1974. We were a team of fifteen, six of whom came from the then Oldenburg department of the University of Teacher Education Lower Saxony (PHN), two were members of the Oldenburg University of Applied Sciences and seven were academics and students from outside the university. It must have been almost revolutionary that the founding committee was made up of three thirds of the members: one third each of university lecturers, academic staff and students. This parity existed until the Federal Constitutional Court's ruling on higher education on 29 May 1973, after which the founding committee was made up of ten university lecturers, five academic staff, five students and two other members of staff. The founding committee held 47 two- or three-day meetings until it was dissolved in March 1974.

For me, it was a surprise to be appointed to the founding committee by the then Minister of Education, Prof Dr Peter von Oertzen, as one of the two professors at the University of Education. After all, I was not one of my colleagues at Oldenburg University who had been fighting for years to establish a university, such as Hermann Helmers, Hans-Dietrich Raapke or Wolfgang Schulenberg. I had only come to Oldenburg in April 1970 as a thirty-year-old, the Benjamin of the college, to the chair of Geography. I didn't have much experience in the discourse on necessary university reforms, like members of the Federal Assistants' Conference or the constituted student bodies, who were able to contribute their knowledge to the founding process. I had not been an active part of the student movement
, but I had learnt in the maelstrom of the actions and demonstrations of those days. As a young university lecturer in 1969, I was confronted with the fierce resistance against the emergency laws in my first semester as a lecturer in Berlin. The lecture theatre was locked with chains and we were forced to discuss this topic. This experience was also instructive. Perhaps my person promised to bring a breath of fresh air to Oldenburg from the politically high-paced Berlin. I was certainly sensitised and open to the necessity of founding a university as a reform alternative to the traditional university.

So I see myself - perhaps still somewhat lost - among colleagues who were familiar with each other from reform discussions or the Oldenburg years of the struggle for the university, in a smart suit and still without a beard at the constituent meeting of the founding committee in Hanover on 17 February 1971. My appearance then changed in the direction of the image that could serve the image of the "revolutionary" in the external perception, if one wanted to have a simple cliché.

The interested public, not just the educated middle-class circles and conservative politicians who were already opposed to the founding process, found it difficult to understand that, despite the professorial minority, informed planning and decisions could come about due to the one-third parity. However, I do not remember any important discussions and decisions being made on the basis of status boundaries. Most of the substantive decisions on degree programme planning, the organisational structure of academia and services as well as research priorities were made with different majorities across the status groups of a university.

The most important advantage of the equal participation of young academics and students in the founding process was that they brought reform initiatives and subject-specific priorities into the discussion that were often at odds with the academic mainstream but had innovative potential for shaping the university's future profile. For example, the focus on environmental science topics in the social, economic and natural sciences was ahead of its time.

But what did the founding committee have to achieve and how could it fulfil the full range of tasks? In an initial planning phase from March to September 1971, it developed the rough structure of the future university and a suitable work organisation. In practical terms, the first five months were spent recruiting staff, in particular the full-time planners and the first non-academic employees, as well as electing numerous members of the commission, but also dealing with simple tasks such as the purchase of office equipment. The chancellor of the Lower Saxony University of Education (PHN), who was actually responsible for the administration of the two new organisations, was based in Hanover and was only sporadically in Oldenburg without much involvement. The administrative work fell to the three board members of the founding committee and our small office.

The second phase of work until the summer of 1972 was decisive in terms of content and organisation. Now it was a matter of implementing the reform elements that were considered essential. On the one hand, possible degree programmes were aligned in the planning commissions according to their relation to social fields of practice. At the same time, developing new demands from subject-specific research and university didactic innovations had to be incorporated into the curricula. The second consequence of this was to find a model for studies and the university organisation that could cope with the financial possibilities and yet open up reforms in research and teaching.
The planned integration of the new university nucleus with the College of Education and the regional universities of applied sciences to form a comprehensive university, the model of "single-phase teacher training" and the idea of project studies, principles of university structure and co-determination, which would later become the basis of the university charter, as well as new admission options for students without A-levels. These were all challenges for which the founding committee had to find realisable structures.

In the third phase, the formulated course content had to be translated into degree programme plans with associated examination and study regulations, work that was then completed by individual study commissions. Parallel to the content planning, work was carried out on the design of the necessary infrastructure:

• In the Building Committee, these were the planning steps "Building stock survey and needs assessment" in comparison with target numbers of study places, a "Requirements programme for fast-track building measures", the "Application for the second university framework plan" and the "Planning of the General Development and Disposal Centre"(AVZ).
• The Library and Information System (BIS) sub-committee first drew up an inventory of the library facilities in Oldenburg and then developed guiding principles for the structure of the future BIS. At the time, the BIS itself was a completely new organisational model compared to traditional university libraries.
• In the Social Services sub-committee, which was to be much more than just a service facility for students, work focussed on analysing the social situation of students and taking stock of social facilities and future needs.

According to my research, as of 31 December 1971, 134 members had been elected to the structural commission, the five planning commissions, four sub-commissions and ten appointment commissions, all of which had begun their work. This ramified "planning machinery" was faced with the board of the founding committee and its fifteen members (twenty members from June 1973) - all of whom worked on a voluntary basis. In addition, there was a full-time government inspector, five typists and two scientific assistants as well as four planners.

It was therefore a very small planning team that had to organise the construction of the university. What larger organisation would be able to set up a large-scale operation with such a modest planning capacity?

The most time-consuming work involved establishing a base of academic staff. The teaching staff of the Oldenburg department of the PHN comprised 87 academic positions, 48 of which were mid-level positions. From 1973 onwards, there were enormous growth rates. In this year alone, 108 new positions were created in the academic area, followed by a further 166 until 1979. The number of positions in the service area grew even more strongly in order to create a tolerable infrastructure.

The ten appointment committees must have had to deal with almost ninety procedures in the founding committee period from 1972 to spring 1974 alone. Assuming that at the University of Oldenburg, as at any other university, academics try to assert their professional and university policy interests, it is clear that there could be fierce disputes in the committee and the founding committee when appointments were made. Nevertheless, for the vast majority of academic appointments, I would say that the procedures led to the selection of qualified academics, with a few exceptions where appointment lists from the first few years were not convincing. The composition of the committees with several external academics, the participation of experienced colleagues from the Oldenburg department of the PHN and the pluralistic composition of each committee in terms of university policy created a filter that usually led to appropriate decisions.

However, it was inevitable that two different worlds would often meet when external professors were elected to planning or appointment committees. The founding of the reform university in Oldenburg aimed to set itself apart from the standard of traditional universities. This concerned design imperatives and the organisation of research and teaching. These included: the participation of all status groups in decisions on the content and forms of teaching academic work, university didactic innovations in the sense of research-based learning and its organisation in project studies, and the orientation of research and teaching towards socially relevant problems.

For the 1971 financial year, 21 scientific posts were authorised. As a result, the first academic appointments were able to take up their duties in mid-1972. There was great joy, as it was clear that the foundation was gaining momentum. However, the new appointees were not as happy to start work. This was because they could not participate in the founding process with full vigour, but first had to fight for material resources in the form of space, equipment and clerical services. A letter from the Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs, which was also responsible for the university sector at the time, replied to a newly appointed university lecturer in 1972: "1. university lecturers will have a room at their disposal after the completion of the Aufbau- und Verfügungszentrum [October 1975!!! the author] ... Unfortunately, temporary accommodation will have to be provided for the time being. 2. word processing capacity is still very limited in 1973. I consider the use of research assistants to write difficult scientific texts to be permissible. 3. at most, small travelling typewriters can be procured from title group 71 for professors ..."

So much for the dry language of the ministerial bureaucracy. We could sympathise with the shock this unfriendly reception caused the newly appointed professors. We could not help because we could not distribute budget funds.

While the critical public from the outside began to demand (top) academic performance from the university foundation as early as the mid-1970s, the local university lecturers and members of the mid-level faculty were busy planning degree programmes and research focuses - without the necessary material support. The natural scientists were particularly affected, as they were only able to move into their first laboratories in the Aufbau- und Verfügungszentrum at the end of 1975, after they had been allowed to plan them together with the construction planner.

But at least things seemed to be looking up in the first founding year of 1971, as 96 new posts for teaching and research and 53 posts for non-scientific staff were promised at the seventh meeting of the founding committee on 8/9 July 1971. The cold shower followed five months later: on 8 December 1971, the Nordwest-Zeitung ran the headline: "University of Oldenburg will not be built in 1972". In fact, the cabinet had decided the day before in Hanover to "postpone" the construction of the universities in Oldenburg and Osnabrück. The government had obviously come to the realisation that a university foundation could not be built solely with initial investment, but could only be operated with considerable annual follow-up costs.

It is understandable that we members of the founding committee were very dejected and that some of us briefly considered resigning from the founding committee. In addition, the tough struggle for a law faculty was lost on 5 October 1971 when the state government decided in favour of the Hanover location. As we know, the promised compensation in the form of a Department of Dentistry could not be realised either. In the hope of establishing a medical faculty, the founding committee had set up a "Medical Planning Commission" from the outset, which included representatives from the Oldenburg clinics as well as external doctors from university hospitals. Efforts to establish a medical training centre therefore date back to 1971.

The low blow from Hanover caused consternation locally, even in the Nordwest-Zeitung, which was extremely critical of the founding of the university at the time. It spoke of a "scandal". However, the danger that the university foundation could still fail was not perceived as a catastrophe everywhere in Oldenburg and the region. After all, the "Society of Friends of a University in Oldenburg", or "Förderkreis" for short, had been in existence since 17 December 1965 and, together with the "North-West German University Society Wilhelmshaven", had presented the plan for a "North-West University" with natural sciences and medicine in Wilhelmshaven and humanities in Oldenburg in June 1969. The College of Education did not seem to the "Förderkreis" to be an adequate starting point for the development of a "full-scale university". Under its Chair at the time, the EWE Board of Management, there was sharp public polemic against the work of the founding committee, which made it difficult for the committee to fight for the progress of the university's development.

However, it was in this situation that resistance from within became apparent for the first time, leading to a mobilisation in favour of university expansion in the form of public protest. On 15 December 1971, a rally took place in the city centre with more than 2,000 Oldenburg residents from the university and the city. The rally was organised by an "Action Committee for a Reform University Oldenburg". Even the West German Rectors' Conference joined in with a clear protest: it "resolutely opposes the Lower Saxony cabinet's decision to cut all funding for the state's universities for at least 1972 ... The two universities currently being established, which are supposed to make an important contribution to the infrastructure of the traditionally disadvantaged north-west German region, are particularly affected."

The atmosphere at the rally was heated. This was also ensured by snappy slogans such as "Entrepreneurs need idiots from north-west German educational steppes", a slogan that hung on the back wall of the auditorium. In addition to Lord Mayor Hans Fleischer and representatives of the founding committee, the then SPD MP Joist Grolle also spoke at the rally: "The state government may decide what it wants, but it will no longer be able to kill the reality of the university in the minds and hearts of the people of this city and this region."

The founding committee believed that the best way to overcome the stagnation of the university's development was to integrate the PH department into the university as quickly as possible: "Integration by the winter semester of 1972" was therefore the resolution passed at that meeting, with the aim of forcing the decisive formal establishment of the university. The future showed that this strategy was ultimately successful.

However, at the beginning of 1972, after unsuccessful interventions, the founding committee had to accept that the start of the new university courses planned for the winter semester of 1972/73 would be postponed until the winter semester of 1973/74.

Nevertheless, during this time - without any professional PR resources, as one would say today - we endeavoured to do public relations work. The publication "Reformuniversität Oldenburg - ein Modell wird zur Alternative" (Reform University Oldenburg - a model becomes an alternative) published by the founding committee is a lasting testimony to this. The product, which also has an appealing layout, describes in detail the segments of the material, personnel and didactic planning work based on reform goals and the regional backlog in tertiary education.

Just as the Oldenburg department of the PH Niedersachsen was ultimately the foundation whose integration into the emerging university decisively stabilised the founding process, it was the "One-phase, integrated teacher training pilot project" (ELAB) that ushered in a positive turnaround in university development. The constructive effect of the ELAB was threefold: firstly, the reform model was almost revolutionary because teachers were no longer to be trained separately according to school type, but together according to school level. It was not only compulsory for all teachers to have specialised knowledge, but also educational, social and didactic qualifications. Secondly, the training was to be organised appropriately in project studies. Above all, however, the single-phase nature of the degree programme ensured that the practical school qualification was integrated into the five-year training course in three stages and thus the traineeship that follows the first examination in the traditional degree programme.

The pilot programme was a helpful support for the state government in implementing the orientation level (5th/6th school year) and starting to establish comprehensive schools. The university benefited because the ELAB included the entire range of school subjects. This meant that specialised training had to be offered for future teachers up to the upper secondary school level. It was therefore a logical step to set up corresponding degree programmes in parallel to the teacher training course.

We were delighted when the Lower Saxony Minister of Education and Cultural Affairs submitted a proposal for a federal grant to the Federal Minister of Education and Science in mid-June 1972. With the federal funds of over 2.3 million Deutschmarks and the state of Lower Saxony's own contribution, over 3 million Deutschmarks were available for the realisation of the pilot project at
for the years 1972 to 1975.

Another favourable factor of the university foundation was added: on 20 April 1972, the "Oldenburg University Society" was founded and the private lecturer Dr Hans-Arnold Simon, Director of the Children's Hospital, already known from our Medical Planning Commission, was elected as the first Chair. He stood for sober, objective co-operation between representatives of public life and the scientists and students involved in the founding process. His friendly, balanced style of communication meant that the aforementioned front of rejection towards the university was less united and some of the members of the "Förderkreis" became involved in the university society from then on.

On 1 October 1972, the Oldenburg university colleague and SPD member of parliament, Joist Grolle, was appointed State Secretary in the Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs. As he was responsible for university matters, the founding committee now had a contact person who was in favour of the establishment of the university. Whether this was largely due to Grolle or to the state's improving financial situation, at its 25th meeting in October, the founding committee was informed that 108 new posts were expected to be created in the 1973 financial year. At the 27th meeting in December 1972, a further 145 posts were announced for 1974. Never again in its history has the University of Oldenburg been able to achieve such high growth rates.

A calmer planning phase seemed to be on the cards. However, new disputes were on the horizon, this time also concerning co-operation in the founding committee.

Since the spring of 1972, the founding committee had been debating how to achieve the goal of a comprehensive university: a step-by-step model with the inclusion of the PH department first, followed by the integration of the universities of applied sciences through the establishment of engineering degree programmes, or the integration of the PH department and universities of applied sciences in one go. The engineering sciences were close to the hearts of the Hanover representatives. In this respect, they favoured integration from a single source. The "Integration Committee" of the founding committee, on the other hand, had voted by a majority in favour of the perspective of initially securing the integration of the PH department as the core of the new university. In contrast, the Osnabrück founding committee had always focussed on prioritising the integration of the University of Applied Sciences there.

At the turn of the year 1972 to 1973, the founding committee received the so-called integration decree, which described the modalities of the merger of the PH department and the university. The intention to integrate would have involved elections to the first collegiate bodies and the start of university studies in the winter semester of 1973/74. However, this "integration letter" was not considered to be legally sound, whereupon the Ministry submitted a "preliminary draft of a bill on the establishment of the universities of Oldenburg and Osnabrück" to the 32nd meeting of the founding committee on 3 May 1973. This was discussed intensively by the founding committee, with the result that the Minister of Culture presented a revised draft law in September 1973. This "Act on the Organisation of the Universities of Oldenburg and Osnabrück" was passed in the state parliament by a narrow majority of the SPD parliamentary group against unanimous opposition from the CDU parliamentary group and came into force on 5 December 1973. This laid the legal foundations for the founding of the university!

For another reason, however, a consensual conclusion to the deliberations on the Integration Act was in danger. On 29 May 1973, the Federal Constitutional Court declared the parity regulation of the "Vorschaltgesetz für ein Niedersächsisches Gesamthochschulgesetz" from 1971 to be unconstitutional. This decision affected a core element of the founding of the university: one-third parity (five professors, five academic staff, five students). The question of whether or not the founding committee should continue to work under the changed parity and the fact that university lecturers could not be outvoted in matters of research and teaching determined the committee's debates for five sessions from then on. It was a question of the long-standing self-image of collegial co-operation between all members. While the Osnabrück founding committee members decided to resign, we Oldenburg members chose a more realistic path: the new parity regulation was accepted in July with seven votes in favour, three against and three abstentions. Looking back, when I ask myself whether the one-third parity practised until the summer of 1973 was beneficial or detrimental to the founding of the university, I would tend to favour the former. In the founding years, the representatives of all status groups had a solid foundation of common reform ideas and the will to implement them. They knew what they were talking about and what they were deciding. That's why the student members were also able to have a say in the planning process on an equal footing and often with their own innovative suggestions.

It was a student member, Hans Henning Adler, who on 6 June 1972 submitted the proposal to the founding committee's structural commission to name our reform university after the 1935/36 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Carl von Ossietzky. On 25 October 1972, the founding committee proposed the name "University of Oldenburg" in the text of a first draft of the university charter. The first public mention of the name proposal on 16 February 1973 by Rüdiger Meyenberg was the starting signal for the "name dispute" that lasted for many years. The public debate was triggered by a
comment by "Theobald" in the Nordwest-Zeitung newspaper on 29 December 1972, which certainly did not do justice to the serious nature of the naming request and was only the prelude to the competition in the same newspaper on 30 April 1973 to have the population vote on various name suggestions. The result is well known: Carl von Ossietzky ranked only fourth behind "no name", Count Anton Günther and Karl Jaspers.

So the never-ending story of the name Carl von Ossietzky began rather innocuously. In the founding committee, the naming was just one topic among many that had its time before it became public. Although it gradually became known to the public through the actions of the Nordwest-Zeitung, it only became more explosive when the university charter of the University of Oldenburg was "provisionally" approved by the Ministry on 1 February 1975, without the naming after Carl von Ossietzky laid down in §1. It was known that Minister of Education von Oertzen was fundamentally opposed to naming universities. So the issue remained in limbo "for the time being".

I don't want to go into the whole ordeal that the naming had to go through until my resignation as founding rector in autumn 1979. Much has been written about it. And in Rainer Rheude's 2009 work "Kalter Krieg um Ossietzky" (Oldenburg 2008), which illuminates all facets, all relevant stages and positions are described in detail. Just this much:

The first "Ossietzky Days", which we organised in Oldenburg on 4 and 5 May 1978, were held in the context of the restrictions on academic freedom imposed by the Radical Decree of 1972. On this occasion, the Ossietzky memorial with the symbol of the barbed wire knot was unveiled on Ammerländer Heerstraße, and the League for Human Rights awarded the Carl von Ossietzky medals at the university to Willi Bleicher, the legendary former head of the North Württemberg-North Baden bargaining district of IG Metall, and to the Federal Constitutional Court judge Helmut Simon. Their impressive contributions and the presence of, among others, the former First Mayor of Berlin, Pastor Heinrich Albertz, and Heinz Oskar Vetter, Chair of the German Trade Union Confederation, made us feel strengthened in our resolve not to let up in our determination to name and resist occupational bans.

I myself remember Willi Bleicher, an inmate of the Buchenwald concentration camp, who saved the life of a young boy in a hiding place there, for the simple clarity and wisdom of his words. A picture of him hung in my study at the university, much to the astonishment of the young students, to whom I was often able to explain the meaning of the name. The university fulfilled its academic obligation by publishing a critical edition of Ossietzky's texts in 1994.

The end of the founding committee

In August 1973, the founding committee met in an enlarged size - forced by the change in parity: 22 members, three additional professors from the PHN department
Oldenburg and four from among the newly appointed professors. Two non-academic staff members were added in an advisory capacity. Ten more meetings were held with this composition. Unfortunately, however, I found that the almost familial familiarity of the smaller founding committee had been lost. It is true that all members were determined to be able to open the university at least for the 1974 summer semester. And the essential cornerstones of the founding process - personnel planning, university didactic concept, organisational law, organisation of the service areas - had been negotiated and agreed.

Nevertheless, controversial and sometimes irreconcilable positions emerged as planning and decisions became more and more concrete. The main areas of controversy were the numerous appointment procedures for the posts from the 1973 financial year and the allocation of posts for the 1974 financial year, where competing professional interests intersected with divergent university policy interests. The curricular planning of the new degree programmes provided further fuel for the fire. The discouraging conclusion that the Chair, Hans Peter Riesche, had already expressed in the founding committee at the beginning of March 1973 was also to prove true: "Law - already dead a year ago, Medicine - will not exist, Technology - down the drain."

Was it a dose of resignation or the more prominent factionalisation in the founding committee - or both? At the meeting on 5 December 1973, Hans Peter Riesche was re-elected to the board as a research assistant, as was the student representative Rüdiger Meyenberg. I faced a colleague from among the newly appointed members, Dieter Schuller, as a further candidate and was narrowly re-elected. The simultaneous election of an "interim rector", who was to serve until the founding rector took office, was narrowly won by Wolfgang Sprockhoff from the PHN department against Irene Pieper-Seier as a newly appointed candidate. The representatives of the University of Teacher Education had thus prevailed among the university lecturers, even though they did not make up the majority of the founding committee. Hans Peter Riesche took the election results, especially the election of Sprockhoff, as an opportunity to step down as Chair. As a result, Jürgen Weißbach was elected Chair from the group of academic staff for the remainder of the founding committee's term of office.

The elections were a foretaste of the future political groupings and, for me personally, the prospect of having to run against an opposing candidate in the rector election on 18 April 1974. That's exactly what happened. For the first time, there was a fiercely fought short election campaign in which I represented the positions of a development perspective realistically orientated towards external conditions. This was not as popular as promises made by the opposing candidate, who promised all members of the university a new world of the university beyond traditional standards. The university showed a sense of reality and elected me with a large majority.

When I look back on my time on the founding committee, I come to the conclusion that it was exciting and probably unique in this personnel constellation. It brought concrete work with good results. And despite all the (excessive) demands, it was a time when we were also cheerful: for example, when we toasted with our red jenever at the weekend after the many external members of committees had left us, or when we mingled with the people at the many small parties that the students of the PHN department knew how to organise excellently.

The Council and University Senate were constituted on 1 April 1974. We were lucky when the first university management took office on
1 May 1974. A "team" had come together that understood and trusted each other. Alongside myself and the first deputy rector, the German scholar Wolfgang Promies, Jürgen Lüthje had been the university's chancellor since December 1973. He rendered invaluable services to the new foundation over the many years of his work. When I appointed Gerhard Harms as Head of Press and Public Relations on 1 October 1974, another member of staff joined our team who, in addition to his original duties, soon became irreplaceable as a communicator in various political and professional circles at the University. Meinhard Tebben and later Johannes Buchrucker, as assistants to the Rectorate, supported our work with prudence. When Friedrich W. Busch took office as the new Deputy Rector in 1976, his committed and hands-on working style was a further enrichment for us all.

The long ping-pong game over the approval of the examination regulations was a perennial issue from the start of my studies for two and a half years, which I had to admit I was reluctant to devote myself to. In my opinion, they should only lay down minimum rules for examination procedures and the academic knowledge to be acquired and leave room for experimentation in the organisation of studies. However, many of my new colleagues saw them as a vehicle for perpetuating the canon of innovative elements of the Oldenburg reform model in one package: not only essential curricular building blocks, but also the binding nature of project studies as a form of study, social relevance and interdisciplinarity, new forms of performance assessment and the right of students to vote on examination committees.

I have been a supporter of project studies and have myself been involved in a project as part of my professional expertise. I also shared the intention to partially replace selective examinations with course certificates. However, the dispute with the Ministry took on the characteristics of a religious war. The persistence of the reformers on our side was countered by the Ministry. As a result, no more examination regulations were approved until the change of government, and the child had fallen into the well because the new conservative government in office since February saw no reason to allow the university any innovative room for manoeuvre.

The dispute over examination regulations escalated. Provisional examination regulations, which the ministry imposed on the university at the end of April, led to the university taking legal action against the octroi at the Oldenburg Administrative Court. With admirable patience and perseverance, Chancellor Lüthje mediated between the faculty councils, the University Senate and the Ministry. He succeeded in bringing all parties, including the representatives of the Ministry, to a compromise. As a result, the university degrees and examination regulations were made legally secure at the last minute before a court-imposed deadline in mid-September 1977. The university could have received stronger reform components in the degree programmes if it had been more willing to compromise with the old state government.

It must be the nightmare of every business start-up when the tap for investment funds is turned on and off. This makes it impossible to plan for a sustainable future. This is what happened to the young university, however, and the overall trend was downwards.

At first, the expansion had begun with hope: On 10 October 1975, the General Availability Centre on Uhlhornsweg was finally put into operation - primarily as a first home for the natural sciences.

By 1 December 1975, the Data Centre was operational with 18 posts. The library was given 10 million Deutschmarks (to be spent by 1977) to build up a basic stock of books. According to the 1975 plan, 53 library positions were available for this purpose. In February 1976, the psychology degree programme was approved. And since the beginning of 1975, the Botanical Garden had been part of the university, a place for research and teaching, but which I - like many others - could use for relaxation from the nearby Margaretenstraße. We also seemed to be able to relax because, following an inspection in December 1975, the German Council of Science and Humanities stated that the new building measures for the natural sciences and sport in Wechloy should be "unconditionally included in the framework plan and realised as quickly as possible". The same applied as a recommendation for the planned central area on Uhlhornsweg. The target figure for the expansion was 9,300 study places. Construction of the central library was to begin in autumn 1976. Then, however, the university was hit with one blow after another. I would just like to briefly list facts and key extracts from documents, but report on one event in more detail:

• The CDU minority government under Prime Minister Albrecht, which took office unexpectedly on 7 February 1976, missed the deadline for admission of the new building measures to the 6th framework plan on 1 March.
• On 30 March, I reported to the Minister of Science in a detailed statement: "I hope that the new state government will also agree to the expansion concept recommended by the German Council of Science and Humanities. It is well known that there is currently a concentration of study places in the south of Lower Saxony compared to the undersupplied northern regions, specifically a ratio of 5:1 in favour of southern Lower Saxony ... The shortfall in the natural sciences will have a particularly critical effect ... The training situation ... is already very critical today, as 400 natural science study places are already facing 780 students ... Until the completion of new buildings in 1980, around 2,500 students would have to make do with the few available study places."
• Our UNI-INFO headline on 25 March: "The catastrophe is here". The news is the reaction to the result of a meeting in the Ministry that the expansion target of 9,300 to 5,800 study places is to be lowered
• A Commission of the Senate is working under the title "Aufbaustopp? On the structural significance of the university expansion in Oldenburg for the north-west region". In particular, the important "pacemaker function" of the university in a structurally weak region is discussed.
• This is followed by the impressive one-off event in the history of the young university: the "bicycle demonstration" from Oldenburg to Hanover from 13 to 16 June 1976. I quote from an earlier report of mine: "In June 1976 (13-16 June), a line of bicycles ... made its way through small towns and villages in Lower Saxony on its way to Hanover. The weight of this process is symbolised when settlements seem to shrink in the face of the 4-kilometre-long chain of demonstrators that extends far beyond the town signs. It is a manifestation of the strength and weakness, power and powerlessness of the University of Oldenburg. In any case, it is an original response to the state government's request to reduce the university's expansion targets from the originally planned 12,000 study places to 5,800." It was a logistical tour de force, about which a police officer accompanying the column told me that it takes almost six weeks to move a battalion of the German army. The university staff managed it in a fortnight: accommodation for a thousand people in churches, schools and tents, shuttle catering from the Oldenburg canteen, mobile bicycle repair vans and press centre, route planning with the authorities, provision of toilet vans, Detlev Rossmann's mobile evening cinema etc. In Hanover, there was an impressive final rally on the Klagesmarkt.
• The demonstration had an effect: on 1 October, the ministry announced the 6th framework plan after all: 161.3 million Deutschmarks are to be made available by 1980 for the construction of a library, sports facilities and central workshop, but no canteen. The reduced number of 5,800 study places remains.
• After the CDU and FDP coalition was formed, the university management was informed in a meeting on 7 June 1977 that the target number of study places would be raised to 6,800.
• Almost in the same breath, Minister Pestel announces that he is endeavouring to concentrate the subject of physics in Osnabrück.
• In May 1978, the ministry in Hanover decides that physics can remain in Oldenburg. In return, the University of Osnabrück is offered the prospect of establishing a law faculty. Osnabrück had not applied for such a department, but Oldenburg had repeatedly done so. This is because all the institutions for training trainee lawyers are available here.
• At the beginning of 1979, work is to begin on the expansion of the university library and a canteen.
• In April 1979, the state government announces its intention to reduce the number of places for science students in Oldenburg from 3,500 to 1,200. Lower Saxony already had too many university places in this area compared to the national average, so a further increase was not justifiable. The Ministry suggests whether a "swap" in favour of a Law department could be considered for the natural science places that would be lost. The university rejects this because it would mean giving up the natural sciences as the "core" of a further expansion in the direction of medicine/pharmacy.
• In an interview with the "Oldenburger Bürger" (9/1979), Minister Pestel states: "Of course it was great nonsense from the outset to found two universities. Osnabrück is 40 kilometres from Münster and just as far from Bielefeld".
• Once again, the university goes to Hanover to protest: on 8 May 1979, 1,900 members of the university travel to Hanover on a special train to demonstrate against the expansion cuts and the associated discrimination against the north-west region. In addition to us rectors of universities and universities of applied sciences from the north-west, Lord Mayor Fleischer and Lord City Director Wandscher and the chairmen of the SPD and FDP (!) parliamentary groups spoke. On the same day, large adverts financed by donations appeared in the "Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung" and the "Nordwest-Zeitung" under the slogan "Training and work for Oldenburg and East Frisia too".
• At the Chancellor's suggestion, I submitted a compromise proposal from the university to the Minister at the beginning of June: the planned first and second phases of the natural sciences building should be completed. In return, the university would initially forego the new buildings for the humanities and administration. Also through the mediation of Gerhard Wachsmann, Chair of the University Society, in November 1979, State Secretary Möller indicated to the state parliament that the compromise proposal would be largely accepted.

This announcement came at a time when Hans-Dietrich Raapke had been appointed to take over the President's duties in my place following the resignation of myself and my deputy. He, too, experienced what the university was used to: in mid-January 1980, it was once again a question of reducing the expansion targets.

These constant changes to the expansion targets required enormous commitment from our tightly resourced building department, headed by Alexander Kleinloh, but also from the academics who wanted to use the new facilities. Urban planning concepts had to be constantly adapted and new room programmes written. The academic appointments were actually expected to devote themselves to research. Instead, a large part of their working time was wasted on re-planning.

However, I did have one memorable experience - partly because, as a geographer, I found the challenge exciting. As is well known, a north-east-south-west orientated water network has developed from the glacial meltwater system, which is also followed by the typical North German hedgerow landscape. The task of the "Wechloy urban planning competition" was to carefully integrate a massive development into the planned building site with its landscape conservation character. The prize-winning design by the Lange und Partner consortium surprised with a striking trick: by rotating the mentally familiar north-south fixation of plan drawings by 45°, the building lines and individual sections of the spread-out building masses fitted almost congruently into the landscape.

Unfortunately, it was not until 1983 that the natural sciences were able to find their way into Wechloy.

In the wake of the political upheaval caused by acts of terrorism in the early 1970s, the "Extremist Decree" was passed by the federal and state governments during the term of office of Chancellor Willy Brandt. From then on, civil servants, including all new recruits and members of universities who were alleged to have acted in a politically extreme manner, had to be checked for compliance with the constitution. It was not a pleasant task for a university management that was confronted with thick files from the Office for the Protection of the Constitution and was sometimes forced to attend hearings. There was soon talk of the "practice of banning professions", which had to be resisted by all means.

At the University of Oldenburg, which as a reform university had a broad majority of liberal-conservative to social democratic orientations, individual members or applicants were either orthodox communists (DKP, MSB-Spartacus) or radically undogmatic leftists (e.g. the so-called K-groups). The university committees and the university management made a point of living with this ideological and academic breadth as long as individuals did not explicitly act in an anti-constitutional manner through their behaviour. However, due to its liberal understanding of constitutional principles, the university repeatedly came under suspicion in the public eye of aligning itself with the political opinions of those concerned. It was therefore always necessary to emphasise that standing up for the freedom of those with different views was not to be equated with accepting their ideological positions.

The state government in Hanover showed no understanding for this tolerant attitude of the University of Oldenburg. So during my time in office, the university management was involved in a whole series of such review procedures. By the end of the 1970s, i.e. the end of my term of office as founding rector, at least five academic assistants and one member of staff were affected, in addition to seventeen teaching graduates from our university.

I would like to describe one case from the majority of the proceedings in more detail, not only but also because the university felt compelled to take particularly elaborate action and because it was a question of my office as rector being called into question. In May 1977, I was asked by the Ministry to initiate preliminary investigations against an academic assistant who belonged to the Communist League of West Germany (KBW) and was a candidate for the Bundestag on suspicion of a serious official offence. The university's position was the opposite: Political expressions of opinion and activities as a member of a party admitted to elections must be permissible for a civil servant if the unconstitutionality of this party has not been established by a prohibition order of the Federal Constitutional Court.

In the case in question, following this view had dramatic consequences. At the meeting of the Council on 20 May 1977, the members of the "Left List" withdrew from it. For them, the decision to defend themselves against the threat of dismissal by all legal means possible was a renunciation of the political fight against the occupational bans. Instead, by participating in the investigation proceedings, the university was making itself a henchman of the radicals' decision. The "Left List" demanded that the resignation of the rector should also be used as a means. The broad majority of the Council, however, saw such a step as a restriction of the university's autonomy and a surrender to state intervention. I did not resign out of conviction.

Nevertheless, this process of splitting the previously unified line of defence against the Radical Decree affected me personally. This was also because I was forced to resort to the last legal remedy available to me as a civil servant against my superior, the minister: remonstration.

The personal hearing must have been a special legal treat for the senior ministerial civil servants - because it was new territory for all of them: from the minister to the head of department level to the specialist advisor, Chancellor Jürgen Lüthje and I sat opposite a whole squad. As a lawyer, the Chancellor could only advise me - during the breaks in the negotiations that I had requested - only I was allowed to speak.

The remonstration did not result in the minister giving in. However, the preliminary investigation to be carried out by the chancellor and myself was refused by the assistant concerned and could not be concluded with a vote in his favour. The initiation of disciplinary proceedings by the Ministry had thus become unavoidable. At least it was possible to ensure that the civil servant was not dismissed, but only suspended with half his salary.

The story had a curious ending when I happened to meet the same person thirty years later near Hamburg. On a walk together, I reminded him, who in the meantime - no longer averse to the capitalist system - was working in a senior management position in a large Hamburg company, of his earlier disbarment. Looking back, the whole process was an exciting interlude for him. It almost cost me my position and the university its ability to act temporarily. So I can only assume that his "martyr role", which he gained through his uncooperative behaviour, was more important to him at the time than the welfare of the university, which had campaigned for him with great vigour.

The new Lower Saxony Higher Education Act (NHG) came into force in October 1978. I remember sitting with the Minister for Science and Art, Eduard Pestel, shortly beforehand at an event organised by the Oldenburgische Landschaft. He took my arm in a fatherly manner and said something like: "I know that the law hurts you, but it will come. If there's anyone who can convey the new situation to the university despite all the difficulties, it's you. You have a very secure position at your university." Again from my memory, I replied: "Mr Pestel, in this case you will have made a mistake. In recent years, under your government, we have supported many a compromise that you have forced upon us. I stood up for this at the university. For me, the new Higher Education Act is the end of the line. Like the members of the university, I will see it as an unfriendly means of undermining university reforms. I can't imagine running for university director again under these circumstances." - And so it came to autumn 1979.

What was so detrimental to the further development of reforms through the new NHG? On the one hand, the ministry was able to intervene more directly in the university's room for manoeuvre. Examination and study regulations were standardised, proof of performance was removed as a subject-specific requirement from the context of interdisciplinary project work and assigned to "normal" exercise and seminar courses - a weakening of the value of project studies. Secondly, and this was even more decisive for the future organisational structure of the university, the opportunities for co-determination for academic staff, students and employees in technical and administrative services (MTV) were significantly restricted. The curtailment of co-determination meant that at the lower organisational level of Institutes, the introduction of which was the subject of controversial debate at the university, the participation of these status groups would be excluded. It became apparent that the four departments had grown to such an extent that it was worth considering introducing a more differentiated organisational level below the departments. Institutes also promised the possibility of closer cooperation with non-scientific staff. However, the counter-argument that the interdisciplinary co-operation, which was a core element of project studies, would suffer as a result of the Institutes could not be dismissed out of hand. The exclusion of co-determination for everyone except university lecturers meant that
the idea of setting up Institutes had been dead for some time. Not even the division of the departments - with the exception of the Department of Mathematics and Natural Sciences - was successful during my time in office.

The participation of members of the service sectors in academic decision-making processes with voting rights was indeed a fundamental issue that was on everyone's mind throughout the entire founding decade. I remember how, during the election campaign for my candidature as founding rector, my opponent argued that there was a prospect of all university members being "equal", in other words, equal in co-determination and also in terms of salary, if the collective bargaining law could/would be changed. I thought that was a dream. Nevertheless, my position on this was clear: every individual involved in scientific work - the chemistry professor, the students, the glassblower making the apparatus or the chemical-technical assistant - brings their specific aptitude to the table as a prerequisite, without which the success of the required work is called into question. To avoid being categorised as a reformist from today's perspective: When it came to decisions on research, teaching and study, the law had stipulated since 1975 that the group of university lecturers could not be outvoted. So it was all about promoting team building through motivation. And that means breaking up the traditional one-way dependency relationship between full professor and staff. Specifically, we at the university have utilised the possibilities of the Staff Representation Act as far as possible. It was customary for university management and the Staff Council to meet at regular intervals. Regular afternoon "tea parties" with the university's AStA were also a matter of course. This made sense because despite often differing interests and experiences with the student body, which was politically inhomogeneous enough in itself, consensus was possible on important issues of university policy positioning. It's fair to say today that when a high-ranking state visitor was due to visit and dared to enter a heated plenary session - respect for that! - it was not uncommon for a student "security service" to ensure that the event ran smoothly.

When I left Oldenburg on business, it was sometimes a little balm to be able to immerse myself in a friendlier world of perception. The debate about the name had a completely different tone outside Oldenburg and its region. Whether at meetings of the West German Rectors' Conference (WRK) or at the European Rectors' Meeting in Dubrovnik immediately after taking office in 1974 or on other occasions, I was met with interest in the founding of the university everywhere. This was based neither on the university's existing academic reputation - where would it come from when research was just beginning? - nor on me as the youngest German rector colleague, who was hardly known at the time. It was fuelled by a lack of understanding as to how it could be possible that the Nobel Peace Prize winner from the Nazi dictatorship should not be the patron saint of our university. In many conversations, I was encouraged to persevere with the naming. Ultimately, it was a gift - a marketing success - to make the Carl von Ossietzky University known at home and abroad through the name dispute.

But the university was also appreciated institutionally when its representatives were able to demonstrate expertise and professionalism in issues relevant to higher education policy. For example, I was elected by my rector colleagues in Lower Saxony as one of two state members of the University Senate of the West German Rectors' Conference (WRK). There was a reason for this: the subject of academic reform had gained in importance in the mid-seventies. And none other than the reform universities had so much expertise in this area. I was therefore also elected to represent the universities in Lower Saxony on the "Standing Commission for Academic Reform" set up by the Conference of Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs in 1978 - an academic appointment that I continued to fulfil for the Federal State of Bremen after I left office until 1983.

Otherwise, however, we were met with vehement criticism and scepticism from academic subject and professional organisations, who considered our reform model in research and teaching to be unsustainable.

The concept of the "single-stage, single-phase apprenticeship programme" (ELAB), developed by the founding committee and subsequently put into practice when the university opened in 1974 despite massive criticism from conservative education politicians and association officials as well as material bottlenecks, quickly became a trademark of the young university. The internationally acclaimed model programme, which was praised three times by experts, was brought to a standstill in 1980 by order of the state government. As my deputy Friedrich W. Busch later said, not without sarcasm: "Because what cannot be, must not be!", the exciting reform attempt had to be cancelled. But Oldenburg remained an innovative place for teacher training with the Centre for Pedagogical Professional Practice (ZpB). Not only through the ELAB, but also in the humanities areas of research, teaching and study, it could be shown how deliberately set priorities have later developed into important profile building blocks since the planning in the founding committee. The following milestones, for example, could be summarised in keywords: Further education with the contact centre for continuing education; popular and recreational sports; psychoacoustics; family sociology; urban and regional sociology and spatial sciences; theoretical and socio-critical foundations of the social sciences.

However, I would ask for your understanding if I take the successful rise of the natural sciences as an example. This was the most important expansion of the range of subjects. And it was in this area that the scepticism of the scientific community and politicians who were eyeing us was greatest. The research spectrum that emerged was unconventional and on the fringes of the standard repertoires of traditional institutes. The interest in new social challenges - above all the sustainable use of resources - broke new ground.

Ecology: The "Habitat Haarenniederung" project was launched in the summer semester of 1974 with the aim of investigating the ecological conditions in a landscape conservation area into which the university would develop with its central location on Uhlhornsweg. The positions of the important professorships, which came together to form an interdisciplinary collaboration, had been dedicated by the founding committee and could be appointed accordingly at an early stage: Dieter Schuller (1972/73: Analytical Chemistry), Thomas Höpner (1973: Biochemistry, specialising in Enzymology), Wolfgang Krumbein (1973: Geomicrobiology). The project gave rise to key areas of work for further development: Biochemistry and biochemical analysis, sedimentology and aquatic ecology as well as analytical chemistry. The latter branch under Dieter Schuller became independent as the Department of Environmental Chemistry. The other departments shifted their interest to researching the ecological relationships between mudflats and the coast. It was, as it were, a migration from fresh to salt water. The final point in the development of expanding interdisciplinary marine and coastal research was the founding of the "Institute of Chemistry and Biology of the Marine Environment" (ICBM) in July 1987. The driving forces behind this were Wolfgang Krumbein and Thomas Höpner, although a number of other scientists have since joined the research cluster.

Renewable energies: Joachim Luther's academic appointment in 1973 to the position of Experimental Physics, specialising in physical measurement methods, provided a fortunate impetus for the development of this research direction. In honour of his achievements in this research sector, he himself was appointed Director of the "Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems" (ISE) in Freiburg, which was founded in 1981, in 1993.

Together with Wolfgang Schmidt, who came to Oldenburg in 1975, an area of work entitled "Physics of Renewable Energy Sources" was established. As early as the mid-1970s, when the topic of "renewable energies" was still a wallflower, research was carried out into the fundamentals of possible utilisation of solar energy, wind and biomass. The planning of an energy laboratory was tackled as a concrete model example. The "Energy House", which was put into operation in Wechloy in 1981, is a self-supporting energy laboratory built into earth walls, whose energy output is generated by a combination of insulation, solar absorbers and wind power. Wolfgang Schmidt was in particular a promoter of wind energy research and thus a pioneer of the "Centre for Wind Energy Research - ForWind", which was founded in 2003. And in 2007, on the occasion of the founding of the "EWE Research Centre for Energy Technology", UNI-INFO states: "When the University of Oldenburg set the first visible sign of its research into renewable energies with the establishment of the 'Energy Laboratory' ... at the beginning of the 1980s, hardly anyone would have thought it possible that 25 years later Germany's fourth largest energy supplier, EWE AG, would set up a research centre for this purpose. Back then, few were convinced that renewable energy sources would play a significant role in the foreseeable future. Things are different today."

Acoustics: This field of work began during the time of the founding committee. At that time, Volker Mellert was appointed from Göttingen to Oldenburg on the initiative of Fritz Bader, later Head of the Central Technical Workshops, and Ulrich Radek, planner of the Founding Committee for Natural Sciences. When he took up his work at the start of teaching, it began with "Investigations into the propagation of sound from stationary and mobile noise sources to determine protective measures and improve models for noise prediction". In the second half of the seventies, August Schick joined the working group as a psychologist who dealt with the problems of psychoacoustic assessment of sound signals. This paved the way for the DFG Research Training Group "Psychoacoustics" from 1992 to 2001, initiated by Mellert and Schick, who were joined in 1993 by Birger Kollmeier, also from Göttingen, to whom we now owe the world-renowned "Centre for Hearing Research".

Renewable raw materials: The possibilities of utilising renewable raw materials - i.e. biomass - to generate energy was an area of research to which Peter Köll, working in Oldenburg from 1975, and Jürgen Metzger, who joined in 1977, devoted themselves. Köll was already a well-known "sugar chemist" when, in the wake of the first oil crisis, the utilisation of renewable raw materials became an important research topic for the first time. Specifically, they worked on the decomposition of wood and its liquefaction for the purpose of energy utilisation (fuel). Both were awarded the prestigious Océ van der Grinden Prize for their work in 1982.

Andrä Wolter and Wolf-Dieter Scholz's 1979 study ("The University in the Mirror of Public Opinion - A Local Case Study on the Image of the University in the Oldenburg Population") showed that 55 per cent of all respondents thought that the "university in general ... is viewed rather positively" and that 53 per cent of respondents were of the opinion "that Oldenburg would be worse off without the university". Not bad, this testimony from the people, which was obviously better than the published reputation of the university.