^{2009, in Lecture Theatre 1 at the University of Oldenburg}

August 2022

Contents

First of all: I have spent almost my entire working life with Einstürzende Neubauten[1] :

- No sooner had I become an employee of the North Rhine-Westphalian-Westphalia to help set up the North Rhine-Westphalia ‘Kollegschule’ pilot scheme, when this scheme was scuppered by the then state government of North Rhine-Westphalia – due to a veto by the co-governing FDP – in its most crucial element, namely the merger of the upper secondary school and vocational school. We academics protested against this, but to no avail.

- No sooner had I been appointed to a professorship at the University of Oldenburg in 1975 and committed myself to playing an active part in setting up the pilot scheme for single-phase teacher training than this pilot scheme was scrapped by the newly elected CDU state government in 1976.

- No sooner had I, as the then Dean of Faculty 1 in 1989, utilised my long-standing contacts with Lothar Klingberg (Potsdam) and Edgar Rausch (Leipzig) to establish a cooperation agreement with the Clara Zetkin University of Education in Leipzig, the GDR was dissolved and, shortly afterwards, the Leipzig University of Education was also wound up.

- No sooner had we, following the discontinuation of the ‘single-phase’ pilot scheme at the University of Oldenburg, had we switched teaching operations to the (still reasonably sensible) two-phase examination regulations, the Bachelor’s/Master’s model was introduced as part of the Bologna Process, and everything we had built up was thrown into disarray once again.[2]

That’s life: and for me, this has meant that, over time, I’ve got used to not putting too much heart and soul into the organisational structure of my own workplace and to focusing more on finding meaning in my own work, even under adverse conditions. My colleague from Oldenburg, Astrid Kaiser, remarked 20 years ago that this was an apolitical stance. I would therefore like to clarify my position: I still consider the debate over the correct organisational form of teacher training to be indispensable, and I remain a staunch advocate of the concept of single-phase teacher training, which incorporates early practical placements. But for me, the failure of large-scale projects is no reason to sulk or even to scale back my efforts. Particularly in adverse circumstances, it is all the more important in day-to-day teaching for university lecturers to act as role models, to show students in concrete terms how to teach well, and to support them in developing a humane approach to teaching. This is what I have strived to do in my courses. More on this in section 6!

Text history: The first version of this text was written in 2006 at the request of my long-retired Oldenburg colleague Bernhard Möller for a collection of essays containing autobiographical texts by Oldenburg educational scientists.[3] This earlier version has now been expanded to four times its original length and supplemented with numerous photographs and drawings. Hence the new subtitle: ‘An autobiographical account’.

Intentions: This text is not intended as a contribution to establishing a position within educational science, let alone to the development of theory. I have attempted to do that elsewhere.[4] Despite its subtitle, the text is not an autobiography, but rather something of a report on 58 years of professional activity to date, initially at Ocholt Primary School (in the Oldenburg region), then at the Free University of Berlin and the Westphalian Wilhelms University in Münster, and from 1975 to the present day at the University of Oldenburg. The text also contains some rather personal background information on my professional career, which I am publishing here for the first time. It would have no place in a textbook!

Reliability of memory: I am writing this report from memory. I have only occasionally consulted old records and documents to check dates and names. Errors may arise when proceeding in this way. As a former history student, I am aware of this from analyses of oral history. I ask for your understanding.

Photos and scans: I have incorporated many drawings, photos, extracts from guest books and so on into the text to bring the descriptions to life. If anyone recognises themselves, I would ask them retrospectively for what is nowadays known in the publishing industry as a model release.

A touch of narcissism: A certain degree of self-centredness is almost inevitable in a personal account of this kind. One is particularly keen to write about people who are well-known within one’s own discipline, and then basks in the fact of having had dealings with them. The many small, pleasant and sometimes irritating experiences on the fringes of a long professional life are then overlooked, partly because I have often long since forgotten them. I ask for your understanding! Nevertheless, when this text was finished, I was astonished – indeed, I was downright startled – at just how vast the number of kind and cooperative people was, and still is, with whom I have worked over the course of 57 years in my profession.[5]

Oldenburg,

1 August 2022

1. Family home

1.1 Birth and Flight

I was born on 2 October 1941 in Lauenburg, Pomerania, the fourth of six children. I am the twin of my brother Meinert Meyer, born ten minutes after him. Our mother explained to us how to tell us apart: Meinert’s face tapers slightly at the top (like the point of the capital letter M), whilst Hilbert’s face is straight across (like the capital letter H).

My parents were from the region of Oldenburg (my father from Wilhelmshaven, my mother from Delmenhorst). So, rather by chance, I was born in the far north-east of what was then Germany. It was only 35 years ago, when I first read a biography of the Polish-Jewish educator Janusz Korczak and looked on a map to see where Treblinka[6] was, that I realised with horror just how close to the extermination camps we had lived back then. My mother told us that she had heard from her brother-in-law Georg-Heinz (a theology student; at the time a soldier near Minsk, missing in Russia since 1944) that ‘terrible things are happening in the East’. But her brother-in-law hadn’t given her any further details.

2. Childhood and school

2.1 Twins

As I mentioned at the outset, I have an identical twin brother, Meinert Meyer (1941–2018), who – what a coincidence – also became a professor of school pedagogy and, after holding his first professorship in Halle (Saale), taught at the Department of Educational Science at the University of Hamburg.

^{1943 – Mother Erna, Berend, Dierk and the twins}

When we were still children, being twins rather bothered us. Meinert liked to point out that he was 10 minutes older than me. I then told him something about Jacob and Esau (or at least intended to tell him). Our teachers – with one or two exceptions – couldn’t tell us apart. That’s why, at secondary school, we only ever received different grades in those subjects where written work was assessed. We were in the same class right up until our Abitur. We went on every school trip and every holiday together. We had to share many birthday presents, which I felt was unfair compared to my older siblings, who didn’t have to share. That’s why we were both glad when, after our Abitur, we could finally go our separate ways.

Similarity: As children, we twins looked extremely alike. Our mother never had any problems – not even when the nurses in Lauenburg swapped our name tags two days after we were born to test whether she would notice. But my father sometimes had trouble telling us apart when we were a little further away. He’d then call out, “Meinert/Hilbert, come here!”

Mix-ups: Once we’d gone our separate ways and then bumped into each other again professionally fifteen years later, we really enjoyed our twin status. In 1975, my brother took over my job at Herwig Blankertz’s ‘Wissenschaftliche Begleitung Kollegschule’ in Münster – for years afterwards, we kept meeting people who hadn’t noticed the change in personnel. Whenever my brother was approached by a colleague who mistook him for me, he used to say: “I don’t know you. But I know your problem.” And vice versa: when my close friend Jürgen Lüthje, then President of the University of Hamburg and formerly Chancellor of the University of Oldenburg, met my brother Meinert on the Intercity, he asked: “Is it you – or is it you?”

In Banff and Canada at the same time? In December 1979, I had to step in at short notice for the Vice-Chancellor of our university, Friedel Busch, and had the pleasure of joining Detlef Spindler, Uli Steinbrink and Klaus Winter, to undertake a business trip to the Rocky Mountains, to the Canadian spa town of Banff, where the Norwegian Per Dalin was organising an international conference on teacher training. My sole task was to give a 15-minute talk on the Oldenburg single-phase teacher training programme. The decision was made at such short notice that I could no longer cancel my next lecture (on the topic of ‘Pupil-centred lesson planning’). So my brother stepped in, put on my clothes and marched into the Oldenburg lecture theatre without revealing his identity, even though, as he told me afterwards, he would have loved to have inserted the comment here and there in the lecture text I’d prepared: ‘My brother is wrong here!’ Apart from my youngest sister, who was studying in Oldenburg at the time, and four or five students who knew I had a twin brother, nobody noticed the ruse. My brother had actually intended to reveal the truth at the end of the session. But he didn’t get round to it, because after 90 minutes all the students left the lecture theatre so abruptly that he was unable to carry out his plan. Even years later, I was still being asked whether it was really true that I’d sent a stand-in to that session. A week later, a female student came up to me and said that I’d struck her as rather odd right from the start and she’d wondered whether I’d been having marital problems. There was a student sitting in the lecture who was a member of the far-right NPD. He liked to ask questions and was a bit of a nuisance. We hadn’t warned my brother about this risk. So, to the surprise of the other students, he answered his question – which came up in that session too – in a very measured manner.

Hamburg: Conversely, I stood in for my brother when he was Dean at the University of Hamburg in 1996 and had to organise the graduation ceremony for teacher training students. I was on a research semester and had a flexible schedule. So, before the event began, my brother hid behind the scenes; I opened the ceremony with a speech about the expectations of the teaching profession, and at a pre-arranged signal, my brother joined me and we concluded the presentation as a dialogue.

We do not feel that being twins has left us with a lack of self-confidence.[14] The opposite seems more likely to us. We were simply very much alike, even if there were the odd competitive little game right up to the end; however, it was not Meinert who suffered from this, but at most his wife Christel, because – having grown up as an only child – she found these little games very exhausting.

In 2017, my brother was diagnosed with a brain tumour and died from it at the end of 2018.

2.2 Childhood and youth

3. First degree and teaching career

3.1 Bethel Church University

From the summer semester of 1961 until the winter semester of 1961/62, I studied at the Bethel Church University near Bielefeld – a very small institution with just 200 students – where I took the Graecum examination, which was assessed by a state commission. The opportunity to study at Bethel was offered by our father, and three of us children took it up. He justified these additional costs, given his meagre salary, as follows: “At the grammar school in Westerstede, you didn’t learn what hard work really is. But once you’ve completed the Graecum in Bethel under Professor Krämer, you’ll know for the first time what proper work is.” Our father was right, by the way! The professor put us through our paces – albeit in a kind manner – because he was determined to get us students to the same level of achievement in 11 months as the classical grammar school in Bielefeld took eight years to reach. That’s why, as our final preliminary written exam at university, we had to pass the grammar school’s Abitur written exam. My grade for the Graecum was ‘satisfactory’.

The year in Bethel broadened my horizons, partly because we students were expected to help out at the hospitals in Bethel at weekends to take some of the strain off the deacons working there. Since then, I have had no reservations whatsoever about interacting with people with epilepsy or those suffering from schizophrenia. And the language skills I acquired through the Graecum help me to deal with the many educational terms of Greek origin.

Bielefeld University of Education: At the same time, I was enrolled as an auditor at the Bielefeld University of Education. My fellow students in Bethel found it strange that I was learning Greek in order to become a primary school teacher. When I once let it slip and said I could imagine teaching at a university of education later on, they laughed at me. That’s how I learnt that ‘professor’ isn’t a career aspiration you can just blurt out, though I never gave up on the idea that it would be an attractive job.

3.2 Oldenburg College of Education

From the summer semester of 1962 to the summer semester of 1964, I studied for five terms at the University of Education in Oldenburg. In Oldenburg, I had two semesters of my minor subject at the Bielefeld University of Education recognised for credit, though I was not exempted from any examination components. Consequently, I only made use of one of the recognised semesters.

Main subject and minor subjects: I had chosen German as my main subject. My four minor subjects were History, Mathematics, Protestant Religious Education and English. I’d chosen German because I was a fan of Brecht. Unfortunately, for my lecturer, Prof. Hans Lüschen, serious literature – and that was the only kind covered – ended with Hugo von Hofmannsthal. I didn’t realise that Lüschen counted himself among the Stefan George Circle – I’d never even heard of this circle before. The four minor subjects each had to be covered by two credits, i.e. four hours per week over four semesters – better than nothing!

Teaching began in 1962 in the former ‘Teachers’ Training College’ on Peterstraße, built in 1846 – which, incidentally, had a very beautiful wood-panelled lecture theatre that has been preserved to this day. After two semesters, we all moved into the newly completed building on Ammerländer Heerstraße – today the oldest part of the university on Ammerländer Heerstraße.

Rural teaching placement: The so-called rural school placement, which I undertook during the summer semester holidays of 1962 with my fellow student Reinhard Riedel – who had only recently arrived in Oldenburg as a late repatriate from East Prussia – had a particularly significant influence on my professional development. We were assigned to the two-class primary school in Arle, East Frisia. Our mentor was Ellen Riggert. She was the head teacher.

^{The school building in Arle – behind the three windows in the attic was the workshop, where the two of us students were accommodated free of charge for six weeks.}

We joined the upper class comprising classes 5 to 8, which was taught by Ellen. This meant that we had to attend form-based lessons every day and so learnt from the very beginning what ‘internal differentiation’ is.

In her lessons, Ellen championed and put into practice progressive educational ideas that she had learnt about during her studies at the University of Education in Hanover. I was impressed by the ‘country children’s’ methodological skills. For example, in religious education lessons, they were able to identify different layers of meaning within a parable or a miracle story – and for the most part in East Frisian Low German (which I could only partially understand with my knowledge of Oldenburg Low German). Ellen drummed it into us: “As a teacher, you must learn to leave your weapons in your locker.” Unfortunately, she later abandoned this principle when she became a primary school headteacher in Oldenburg.

- Farewell to the rural teaching placement with Ellen Riggert

Every afternoon (!) during our teaching placement, we had to turn up at the teacher’s house and usually stayed there for three hours. First, we were served a cup of tea (in true East Frisian style, with sugar cubes and cream). Afterwards, every lesson taught that morning was thoroughly reviewed, then the lessons for the following day were discussed. Ellen would regularly write in her lesson logs: “Teacher disrupts the lesson!” And she was almost always right. We were simply still too clumsy and hadn’t yet realised just how independent these East Frisian country children already were and how many learning techniques they had already mastered.

City school placement: After the winter semester of 1962/63, it was my turn for the city school placement. So I plucked up all my courage and asked my fellow student Christa Konukiewitz if we wanted to do the placement together. I’d known her since the first week of the 1962 semester, because we’d happened to be assigned to the same group for the so-called ‘Thursday placement’, during which we spent one morning a week at school. I wasn’t at all sure whether Christa would say yes – but she did.

- In the photo, Christa is teaching our pupils the hand signals for singing a scale.

The placement took place in Class 2b at Haarentor Primary School (Oldenburg), right next to the teacher training college. Our mentor, Gudrun Heise, was absolutely brilliant, just like Ellen Riggert had been during our rural school placement. She showed us just how challenging it is to design an appropriate curriculum for spelling and arithmetic in primary school. Ever since then, I’ve taken the view that teaching reading, writing and arithmetic is didactically more demanding than any advanced course in the upper secondary school.

At the same time as the placement, I had to sit my first subject examinations in my minor subjects, English and History, due to the semesters that had been credited to me. It was a struggle, but it worked out, partly because Christa was kind enough to take on some of the work that I was actually supposed to do myself. Our supervisor and examiner for the municipal school placement was the music education specialist Ulrich Günther. Christa was awarded a ‘good’ grade, whilst I received a ‘satisfactory’ grade.

Evangelical Student Community (ESG): Christa and I were active in the student community. Apart from the AStA and the SHB, there were no other student organisations at the time in which one could get involved. Getting involved in the ESG was a natural choice for us, as Christa is a pastor’s daughter and I, too, come from a Protestant family. We were both – though not at the same time – student representatives for the ESG – a role that didn’t involve too much work. The ESG organised retreats at the Ahlhorn log cabin, but also had close co-operation with the Reformed Evangelical Church of East Frisia and – of course – organised a ‘kohlfahrt’ in winter. The newly appointed first Oldenburg student chaplain, Peter Wagner from Detmold, made a strong impression on us; we have remained friends with him ever since. He was clearly on the left – both politically and theologically. He told us about Dorothee Sölle and explained why he was a pacifist.

Excursion to the FDJ in East Berlin: I vividly recall that in 1963 – shortly after the Berlin Wall was built – the then AStA of the Oldenburg University of Education accepted an invitation from the FDJ university group at Humboldt University in East Berlin/GDR.[17] My future wife and I were able to go along. Werner Loch and Hans-Jochen Gamm, who at the time held the two professorships in General Pedagogy at our university, were also there. Hans-Jochen Gamm gave a courageous lecture on education policy.[18] We visited the polytechnic training programme at an electrical engineering company and discussed matters with the teachers. At Humboldt University on Unter den Linden, we discussed educational issues with a relatively large group of professors of education. One professor went so far as to claim that, given the hostile attitude of the capitalist states towards the GDR, ‘education in hatred’ was necessary. One evening we went to the cabaret ‘Die Distel’ and witnessed Wolf Biermann’s last or penultimate public performance in the GDR. We spoke to important people and – what a coincidence – the then GDR Foreign Minister Bolz also dropped in to see us, apparently by chance.[19]

The teaching staff at the PH: In the 1960s in Oldenburg, we had committed and dynamic lecturers, many of whom had made a name for themselves nationwide just a few years later, for example Werner Loch (later at the University of Erlangen, then the University of Kiel), Hans-Jochen Gamm (later at the University of Darmstadt), Erwin Schwartz, founder of the nationwide Working Group on Primary Education (later at the University of Frankfurt), the art education specialist Reinhard Pfennig, the music education specialist Ulrich Günther, the craft education specialist Hartmut Sellin, the biology education specialist Ernst Kelle and the aforementioned Heinrich Besuden.

4. PhD studies and work on the secondary school pilot scheme

4.1 Just in time – Studies at the Free University of Berlin (West)

From the summer semester of 1967 to the winter semester of 1968/69, I studied at the Free University of Berlin and began my doctoral studies, with Educational Science as my main subject and with minors in Philosophy and History.[29] I had been invited by Herwig Blankertz to pursue my doctoral studies. It was a time when that antiquated rule – that one was not permitted to ask for a supervisor oneself – had just been abandoned: ‘… beneath the academic gowns, the mustiness of a thousand years.’[30]

5th marriage - four children - golden wedding anniversary

The private sphere is public. - That was a principle of the 1968 generation, which I don't consider to be entirely correct, but in some respects. That's why, in the middle of this autobiographical report, I'll explain why you can't work full steam ahead for decades as a university lecturer if your family circumstances aren't right.

Christa Konukiewitz, a pastor's daughter from Delmenhorst, and I met in April 1962 in the first week of term at the Oldenburg University of Teacher Education because we happened to be in the same work placement group (see above). After a cautious process of getting to know each other, we were married on 27 December 1969 in Delmenhorst by my father-in-law Fritz Konukiewitz, pastor at the town church. I have never regretted it! Christa was and is the greatest stroke of luck in my life. And she patiently kept my back free and thus made a significant contribution to me being able to invest a lot of time in my professional work.

Unlike me, Christa had a decent salary at the time of our wedding and she owned a Citroen "duck". In October 1970, we moved to Roxeler Straße 13 (now Sebastianstraße) in Nienberge with our newborn first son Onno in the back seat - the first flat of our own just outside the city of Münster!

^{Photos: New Year's Eve 1972 on Langeoog}

Four children: We have four children, none of whom have become teachers. My wife's ancestors come from East Frisia. So we thought that, in view of the boring surname Meyer, the children could have somewhat rarer first names. Hence the East Frisian names Onno, Gesa, Tiedo and Tale. When the eldest, Onno, was in the 5th grade in Oldenburg, he had to draw the family in English class: "This is Meyer fämeli":

Buying a house: in 1979, when it was clear that we wanted to stay in Oldenburg, we bought a semi-detached house in the Haarenesch neighbourhood. We paid off the loans for 38 years, but have never regretted the purchase. In the meantime, our son Tiedo and his family have moved into the upper flat. So we are a multi-generational house (including grandchildren, cat and sheepdog).

^{The drawing (1994) is by daughter Gesa}

After the family phase, my wife wanted to return to teaching in 1985, but this was not possible because there was extreme teacher unemployment at the time. For 18 years, she therefore worked as an organist and choirmaster in the Bloherfelde/Oldenburg parish. She was involved in the ecumenical peace movement and founded the Oldenburg Ecumenical Centre, of which she was Chair for many years. She was a councillor for the SPD in the Oldenburg city parliament for 10 years. And she has a speciality: she bakes very tasty pizzas with the character of a mound. That's why we've invited an entire seminar to our house for pizza every semester for 30 years. I did the maths at the retirement party in 2009: It was a total of 2200 portions!

Denmark: Every year, we went to the village of Klitmöller in Jutland/Denmark with all our children, my parents-in-law, my twin brother's family, my mother, my sister Dörte and Waltraud and Friedhelm Zubke, who had already become our friends during our PH studies, and spent 4 weeks on holiday there - action-oriented, i.e. with big scavenger hunts.This included big scavenger hunts, Punch and Judy shows (in a children's hut hammered together out of flotsam and jetsam), mushroom picking, lots of swimming and long walks on the beach. Just lying on the beach and dozing off was not our thing. We always came with several families and often rented four or five holiday homes at the same time. We regularly met our Bielefeld colleague Theodor Schulze and his wife Dorothee there. This year (2022) will be the 46th time we have travelled to this village, now with our daughter, our son-in-law, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren, our second son, his partner and two grandchildren, and then my younger sister, my sister-in-law and my godchild. Together we have spent three and a half years of our lives in Klitmöller, and unfortunately we still don't speak Danish.

^{Meinert Meyer: "View of Denmark's blossom"}

Brother Meinert always took oil paint and brushes with him and painted a lot. He once painted a paraphrase of Karl Friedrich Schinkel's famous painting "Blick in Griechenlands Blüthe" (1825), which hangs on our wall in Oldenburg: Schinkel's Greek temple in front, but with a Danish post box, an old brick church from Klitmöller's neighbouring village of Nors (near Klitmöller) on the left and our bathing lake Nors-Sö, also just "around the corner".

Building ship models: I developed a hobby in Klitmöller: I collected scraps of wood from the beach, which were still being thrown overboard in huge numbers off the coast in the 70s and 80s, and used them to build ships for the children, and later also for the grandchildren. Of course, that only worked if I took my toolbox with me on holiday: a rescue cruiser for my daughter Gesa in 1978 and a harbour tug for my grandson Lüko in 2020 - in each case big enough to use the Playmobil figures for playing. The ships float because they are made of wood. But their centre of gravity is so high that they usually tip over very quickly.

Golden wedding anniversary: On 27 December 2019, we celebrated our golden wedding anniversary in the "Krömerei" in Westerstede with 75 relatives and 15 friends in the "closest family circle".

Now we are getting old together, as the photo from 2020 (taken in our garden in Kastanienallee in Oldenburg) shows, and the first age-related ailments are making themselves felt.

6. University lecturer at Carl von Ossietzky University

6.1 A professorship in Oldenburg – what more could you want!?

The very first professorship I applied for was the one I got straight away. [44] It was a full[45] professorship in school pedagogy (at the time H4, then C4 and later W3) at the newly founded Carl von Ossietzky University, which was not yet allowed to be called that at the time, because the FDP had pushed through a clause in the coalition agreement with the SPD stipulating that the name of the Nobel Peace Prize laureate – who was not a communist but stood for a broad alliance with all left-wing forces – was not to be chosen. It was Gerhard Schröder who, immediately after taking office as Minister-President of Lower Saxony in 1981, enacted a law allowing universities to choose their own names.

The Oldenburg University of Education, where I had studied, was integrated into the new university. And so it came to pass that I ended up in my father’s former post (see above, point 1.3) and that I found myself working alongside a number of colleagues, some of whom I had attended seminars with 11 years earlier, and two of whom had even examined me.[46] Unlike at the University of Bremen, where there had been fierce disputes for decades between the staff of the old teacher training college and the newly appointed staff of the university, the integration of the teacher training college in Oldenburg went surprisingly smoothly. We lecturers did not organise ourselves into two blocs – ‘old teacher training college’ and ‘new university’ – but rather along the lines of shared higher education policy factions, ranging from SPD and DGB representatives (among whom I counted myself) through the undogmatic Left (in particular supporters of the Frankfurt School of Sociology, with whom I worked extensively and happily over the following years) to Marxists aligned with Stamokap. There was no CDU-affiliated group of university lecturers at the University of Oldenburg in 1975, though there were reportedly two lecturers in the natural sciences who were CDU members. Initially once a week, and later much less frequently, we met in these groups at 8.00 pm to discuss the situation.

Appointments Committee: As I received, on the quiet, a Leitz ring binder containing all the confidential documents relating to my appointment process from a member of the Appointments Committee twenty years later, I am well placed to reconstruct how the selection decision was reached and what the balance of power within the committee was. The Chair was my lovely colleague Ilse Mayer-Kulenkampff (1916–2008), a social education worker[47]who did not wish to cause anyone any harm and therefore regarded the fierce disputes between the university lecturers’ factions as something of a nuisance. Other committee members included: the philosopher Rudolf Lengert, the psychologist August Schick and the sociologist Gerd Vonderach, as well as the commission’s secret puppet-master, Hans-Dietrich Raapke, holder of the professorship for General Pedagogy, who, like my doctoral supervisor, had obtained his doctorate under Erich Weniger. Representatives of the mid-level academic staff were Gustav Denzer (who, like me, came from Lauenburg in Pomerania) and Friedhelm Zubke (with whom I had completed my teacher training college studies). The student representatives were Gudrun Patel (a member of the MSB – Marxist Student Union Spartakus) and Hans-Joachim Schwebe.

‘Audition’: I still remember my application presentation in the summer semester of 1974 very clearly. I was very nervous. I had chosen my field of work at the time as my topic (the establishment of an integrated upper secondary school as a continuation of the comprehensive lower secondary school) and had developed a proposal on how a ‘Kollegschule’ could be set up in Oldenburg. In the discussion that followed, Gerd Vonderach – who wanted to see another candidate, namely Johannes Beck, in first place rather than me – asked: “You mentioned Niklas Luhmann in your presentation. Could you explain again what you meant by that?” My reply: “You’ve caught me out on my weakest point. I haven’t yet delved thoroughly into Luhmann’s systems theory!” Half a year later, Herbert Hasler (a former assistant to Erwin Schwartz and at that time a university lecturer in Oldenburg) came up to me and said: “I was at your lecture. At the point where Gerd put you on the spot, I said to myself: ‘He’s exactly the right person for us, if he can admit so openly that there’s something he doesn’t know.’”

ELAB Commitment: At the time, every applicant for university teaching posts in Oldenburg was asked whether they were prepared to participate in setting up the ELAB project-based teacher training programme (see below). Naturally, everyone answered this question with ‘Yes’, because otherwise they would have had no chance of securing a place on the shortlist. My former fellow student and then assistant to the rector, Meinard Tebben, had already informed me of this beforehand, so I was able to prepare thoroughly for this question.

Competitors: Those who had applied for the post were Christine Möller (later at the University of Siegen), Johannes Beck (later at the University of Bremen), Hans-Dieter Haller (a colleague of Karl-Heinz Flechsig at the University of Göttingen), Karl Frey (Kiel), Hans Glück (later at the University of Cologne) and Kurt-Ingo Flessau (later at TU Dortmund).

My ‘most formidable’ rival was my Swiss colleague Karl Frey (1917–2011). At that time, in 1974, he was already Director of the Institute of Educational Sciences in Kiel (IPN). With his habilitation (which I lacked) and a highly remunerated post in Kiel, he was, on paper, far superior to all the other applicants. Had he been on the shortlist, the then SPD Minister for Education, Jost Grolle (previously a history didactics lecturer at the Oldenburg University of Education), would probably have had to give him preference, even if Johannes Beck or I had been in first and second place and he had only been in third. However, the committee decided not to include him on the list at all, as they were convinced that he merely wanted to ‘cash in’ on his reputation in Oldenburg – that is, use it to secure a higher salary in Kiel during retention negotiations.[48]

Thus Johannes Beck (1938–2013), who shortly afterwards was appointed to a professorship at the University of Bremen, became the second young academic considered for first place. He belonged to the ‘non-dogmatic Left’ and was therefore further to the left than I was. The two students voted against me because I was too close to the conservative camp. The mid-level academic staff and the majority of university lecturers voted for me because they considered my profile suitable and trusted the assessment of Herwig Blankertz, which had been obtained both verbally and in writing. He then went on to write one of the two expert reports, a copy of which he slipped to me in confidence, adding the phrase: “… with mixed feelings”.

Shortlist of three: Hans-Dietrich Raapke originally favoured someone else for first place. When he saw that a majority in the committee was emerging in my favour, he changed his mind. Thus, a shortlist of three was drawn up: first place: Meyer; second place: Beck; third place: Glück.

Appointment offered and accepted: In the autumn of 1974, I received an unassuming letter from the Minister for Education and Cultural Affairs, Joist Grolle. It consisted of just two sentences: “I am offering you the H4 professorship in School Pedagogy at the University of Oldenburg. Please establish contact with my adviser, Mr Kronshage.” Naturally, I accepted the appointment, even though it was hard for me to say goodbye to the Research Support Unit for Teacher Training Colleges in Münster. But returning to my home town of Oldenburg held an irresistible appeal for my wife and me.

No reason to get carried away: The fact that I was offered the very first post I applied for was largely due to the fact that, in the 1970s, as part of the Brandt–Scheel higher education and educational reform, a good 30 new universities and higher education institutions were established in the Federal Republic of Germany in one fell swoop. Most of them – as in Oldenburg – had evolved from teacher training colleges (PHs). Almost all of these new universities offered teacher training degree programmes. Consequently, young researchers in the field of education who were eligible to apply in the early 1970s had very good prospects, even if they had not yet obtained their habilitation. By 1978, the situation had already become significantly more difficult, and from 1980 onwards, almost all posts becoming vacant in schools of educational science were abolished without replacement.

6.2 Taking up the post and chair endowment

On 1 February 1975, I took up my new post at Carl von Ossietzky University and held it until my retirement on 1 October 2009. Even after that, I continued to work on the basis of my retirement rights.

At first, I had nowhere to work at all. The large AVZ building on Uhlhornsweg was still under construction. Consequently, for the first 12 months I was given temporary accommodation in Faculty 2, specifically in the office shared by Meinhard Tebben (art education specialist and, at the time, assistant to the Vice-Chancellor) and Prince Rudolf zur Lippe (Professor of Aesthetics in the Subject of Visual Communication).

Off to Berlin to join Humboldt University? In 1991, on the initiative of my colleague Dietrich Benner, I was asked to apply for the professorship in School Pedagogy at Humboldt University in Berlin. The head of the relevant department under the Senator for Science indicated that I had a good chance of success. I hesitated briefly as to whether I should accept this interesting offer, but in the end I decided to stay in Oldenburg. In Berlin, I would presumably have ended up in charge of practical school studies again sooner or later, and would then have had to invest a great deal of energy in organising the Institute, which, following reunification, was to undergo radical staff cuts and a restructuring of its working methods. I told myself that, given my area of expertise, it would be wiser to stay in Oldenburg, to teach and write books. The deciding factor, however, was my wife Christa, who declared: “You’re welcome to go to Berlin – but I and the children are staying here!” That settled the matter, even though I still wonder to this day whether it was a somewhat selfish decision.

Workload: I enjoyed working hard right up until my retirement. And even since then, that hasn’t fundamentally changed. To this day (2022), I simply carry on as if I hadn’t retired yet. But I do enjoy the freedom to decide for myself what I do and where I turn down any of the requests that are still trickling in (lectures, visiting professorships, doctoral supervision). Until my retirement, ‘a lot’ meant that I worked right through the week until Sunday evening and started afresh early on Monday mornings. However, from 1990 onwards , once the children had left home, I took a midday nap practically every day – 30 minutes, never longer.

Workaholic? Some of my acquaintances claim I’m a workaholic. I disagree, because I don’t feel addicted, because my work benefits others, and because I don’t hide my ‘illness’. As Karl Marx has already analysed, self-determined work serves the purpose of self-realisation. And Theodor Adorno once remarked somewhere that professors do not need holidays because they can organise their work autonomously.[55] I tend to agree with that. Work can be very satisfying. There is also plenty of scope for manoeuvre in the profession of university lecturer, but if one abuses it, this very quickly leads to social isolation within the School.

6.6 Supervision of work placements

From the very start of my teaching career, that is, from 1975 to 2009, I offered a preparatory seminar for internships every semester, initially for the practical phases of the ELAB, then for the first General School Placement (ASP) under the old teacher training regulations, and subsequently within the Bachelor’s degree programme. This involved supervising the students during the semester breaks and then holding a joint evaluation seminar afterwards. Initially, four hours of my teaching load were set aside for this; following the switch to the BA/MA degree system, this was reduced to just two hours per week – in my view, a mistake and a major source of frustration. It is hardly surprising, then, that – purely due to time constraints – on-site supervision and the evaluation of the internships are carried out in a slapdash manner.

- Practical Teaching Half-Year at the ELAB: From 1975 to 1985, supervision as part of the ELAB pilot scheme primarily involved supporting the so-called ‘Practical Teaching Half-Year’, which culminated in the combined First and Second Examinations. There, we lecturers had roles similar to those held today by subject leaders at teacher training colleges. We travelled far and wide, as the students’ locations ranged from Emden and Leer via Oldenburg and Nordenham to Delmenhorst, and from Verden to Cuxhaven. I would then set off in the morning, often at 6 am, to arrive at the schools in time for lessons to begin. These numerous classroom visits had a significant influence on my ‘Guide to Lesson Preparation’ (see below, section 8), which was drawn up at that time.

- General school placement in the two-phase teacher training programme and in the BA/MA degree programmes: From 1973 onwards – in parallel with the phasing out of the ELAB pilot scheme – the ‘normal’ degree programme, culminating in the state First Teacher Qualification Examination, was reintroduced. I was responsible within our department for organising the General School Placement (ASP) included in this programme, and I always enjoyed doing so. However, there was a chronic shortage of teaching hours, which only came to an end with the introduction of the Bachelor’s-Master’s degree programme, because from that point onwards, capacity at our university was calculated down to the last detail for the first time, so that, even whilst the semester was still in progress, additional staff were recruited at our Institute when enrolment figures were too high – albeit in exploitatively low-paid posts.[56]

7. Co-operations

A professorship in school pedagogy offers a wide range of opportunities for co-operation with other university departments, with schools in the region and with organisations beyond the region. I have done this from the very beginning with great pleasure and to my personal benefit.

7.1 Centre for Pedagogical Professional Practice

Working with the Centre for Pedagogical Professional Practice and its director, Detlef Spindler, has always been particularly important and rewarding for me. He possesses excellent social and communication skills and has consistently demonstrated an ability to bring together colleagues from a wide variety of backgrounds to work productively together.

Another member of the ZpB was the geography education specialist Wolfgang Schranke, who organised the PÄDAGOGISCHE WOCHE (PW) every autumn at the university, which offered a wide range of professional development opportunities in school pedagogy and was attended by several thousand lecturers each year. I took part on several occasions, giving lectures and running workshops.

Hansjürgen Otto also worked at the ZpB; I already knew him casually from my time studying at the Free University of Berlin. He was a reliable ally to the students and advised them on conflicts that arose at their teaching practice schools.

The next photo on the page shows the teacher Sabine Nolte (currently Chair of the Osnabrück District Staff Council) on the podium at the PW event with pupils: “School ’88 – totally rubbish?”

Pädagogische Woche 1998: “School – totally rubbish?” (left: Sabine Nolte)

7.2 School Reform Unit

From 1992 to 2006, I held the position of Academic Director of the Centre for School Reform (AS) at the Centre for Pedagogical Professional Practice at the University of Oldenburg – an institution of the Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs, established to support school development in the region and to test evaluation models. To this end, the then SPD Minister for Education, Rolf Wernstedt, allocated teaching hours to the ZpB – initially equivalent to four teaching posts, and later two. There was an advisory board, initially chaired by Otto Menzel, the Osnabrück department head, and later by RSD Ernst Wille (Oldenburg) and RSD Klaus Kapell (Wildeshausen). We organised regular closed-door meetings together with the advisory board, at which we not only prepared the work plan for the coming year but also discussed a topical issue relating to teaching development.

Schortens: The AS’s activities included, amongst other things, the establishment of learning workshops, participation in in-school teacher training (SchiLF) and the Schortens headteachers’ conferences, which often attracted more than 350 participants and for which we invited experts renowned both nationally and internationally: Heinz Rosenbusch and Stephan Huber, Annemarie von der Groeben and Susanne Thurn from the Laborschule, Jürgen Baumert, Klaus-Jürgen Tillman, Hans-Günter Rolff, Peter Posch from Klagenfurt and Michael Schratz from Innsbruck, Pertti Kansanen from Helsinki and Mats Ekholm from Sweden, and the neuroscientist Gerhard Roth from Bremen. Comment from Ha-Gü Rolff, Dortmund: “We envy you for what you have built up in SCHORTENS!”

I have enjoyed working with Ina Ulrich, Christel Wopp, Wilm Renneberg, Alida Baumann, Franz Wester and many other seconded lecturers. In doing so, I never saw my role as head of the AS as one of dictating the guidelines. What was more important was that the seconded teachers were able to contribute their strengths and develop them further:

Closed-door meeting with the AS at the Historical and Ecological Education Centre in Papenburg

7.3 Research workshop on ‘Teacher Training’

In 1994, I ran a short seminar entitled ‘Future Workshop: School’. The outcome was that the students (including Carola Junghans, Andreas Feindt, Bettina Kappelhoff and Anne Eckermann) proposed the establishment of a university school[64] and a research workshop on teacher training. Wolfgang Fichten, Alexandra Obolenski and I, as lecturers, joined forces with this initiative and founded the Research Workshop on Schools and Teacher Training – a joint venture between Department 1 and the Centre for Didactics (formerly ZpB) at the university.

The driving force and head of the research workshop was Wolfgang Fichten (pictured here at a closed-door meeting of the Northern Network for School-Based Research). The main task of the Research Workshop was to serve as the ‘base station’ for the trials launched at the same time to establish our model of team-based research.

Northern Network for School-Based Research: From the Research Workshop, we also organised the Northern Network , which still exists today under the name Northern Network for Practice-Based Research.

8. Publications

8.1 Collaboration with Cornelsen Publishers

University lecturers have the right to combine their academic work at the university with the publication of research findings. I have made full use of this right. In purely quantitative terms, however, my list of publications is significantly shorter than that of several of my colleagues in Oldenburg. I have concentrated on textbooks and study guides, each of which had – and continues to have – a broad readership. A complete list of my publications, updated to 2022, can be found on this website. The total print run of the monographs published in particular by Cornelsen Verlag Berlin now (in 2022) stands at just under 1.4 million copies. Given the current total of 880,000 lecturers in the Federal Republic of Germany, that is quite a substantial figure, which occasionally causes some surprise.[75] These high figures are also thanks to Horst Linder, the director of Cornelsen-Scriptor Verlag Berlin, who has worked tirelessly to promote the distribution of my books.

9 Sixtieth birthday (2001) and retirement (2009)

Detlef Spindler, then head of the Centre for Professional Practice, is a week younger than me. We therefore decided to celebrate our 120th birthday together on 19 October 2001. Karsten Friedrichs drew the appropriate cartoon for the invitation:

Alexandra Obolenski, Andreas Feindt, Ulrike Heinrichs, Ulf Gebken and Carola Junghans were responsible for the superb organisation of the event:

Retirement ceremony 2009: On 20 June 2009, my retirement ceremony took place in the old auditorium of the university, where I had heard lectures as a student in 1963/64, organised and designed by Sylvia Jahnke-Klein, Carola Junghans, Andreas Feindt, Volker Wendt, Ulrike Heinrichs and many other nice people.

The university's AStA had politely asked me beforehand if they could drop a banner denouncing the dean's faculty policy from the balcony of the auditorium during the celebration. I happily agreed and said: "Great! This will take me back to the turbulent beginnings of my doctoral studies at the FU Berlin on the day of my retirement!"

I still meet colleagues today who tell me how brilliantly these five organised the ceremony: They wanted to transfer my principle of action-orientation of teaching to a university celebration - and they really succeeded! As in every one of my lectures, there was a large FAHRPLAN, this time on the topic of "Teacher training in 6 acts":

The FAHRPLAN of the retirement ceremony set up on the stage of the auditorium

The individual stages:

- Astrid Kaiser, then the Institute Director, opened the event; and the Vice President, Mrs Ahrens, gave a welcoming address.

- The Dean of our School, sociologist Bernhard Kittel, gave a short speech in which he explained that I had had a good time between 1975 and 2009. Today the work has become much more demanding! Klaus-Jürgen Tillmann, who led a discussion about teaching quality on the podium after this opening, strongly disagreed with this - which made me happy!

- Assistants' choir: A production of the 35 student assistants and research assistants who currently work for me or have done so in the past, who commented lovingly and ironically on the conditions in my office (especially the midday nap on the rubber mat under the desk).

- Carola's husband Michael Greiner staged a stomp with all 300 guests, during which the following sounds were intoned by all guests in four-four time: tapping on the desk top at the seat - loudly folding up the claddings they had brought with them (as Hilbert always used them) - banging two stones together (as each examinee received as a gift) - hitting honey jars with spoons (they were under the seat; the reason: Hilbert kept giving away his brother-in-law Wolfgang's honey) - and an ostinato, struck by Luise with Hilbert's singing bowl.

- After the speeches and presentations, my wife Christa made the necessary comments on such a male academic career from a feminist point of view.

- At the end, the auxiliary choir sang a rewritten version of Peter Fox's "Haus am See", which all the guests were asked to sing along to. The chorus after each verse:

"And at the end of your labour in to the hedgehog house/

Chestnut avenue, Christa and pipe smoke/

You have shown us so much appreciation/

oh Hilbert, your trust has made us strong/

We have learnt from your person/

a biographical curriculum!"

Singing along was a success, as the photo from the university press office shows:

Front row from left: Andreas Feindt, Carola Junghans, Sylvia Jahnke Klein, Wolfgang Konukiewitz (my brother-in-law), Gisela Blankertz (my doctoral mother), Christa and Hilbert Meyer

I was particularly pleased with the choir of assistants because I have enjoyed working with them all my professional life:

Choir of assistants - in the front row: Rabia Schadel, Friederike Güffens, Reina Freese, Gesche Willerich and Ines Hartog

Conclusion:

I have been very lucky in my professional and academic career, despite the aforementioned Einstürzende Neubauten. I am wholeheartedly grateful to all those who have allowed me to do so and who have supported me in my professional and academic development. Some things did not work out. From today's perspective, I lack a stable empirical research practice of my own. On the other hand, I suspect that I would never have written my textbooks if I had first had to establish their empirical basis myself.

When writing this report for the first time in 2006 and even more so when revising it in 2022, I realised three points about my professional and academic career:

(1) I realised how strongly the esteem in which I was held by my doctoral supervisor Herwig shaped my university teaching behaviour. He demanded a lot, but gave me confidence and made it clear that I would succeed.

(2) I realised how much influence my twin status had on my personal development and later also on my academic work.

(3) I realised that German fascism and the misery of the Second World War had a greater influence on my academic career than I was aware of at the age of 20 or 30.

Carola Junghans, with whom I co-authored the new edition of the two volumes "Teaching Methods", writes in the theory volume (on p. 82) that challenging learning processes consist of the constructive processing of crises in the personal development process. I said to her: "I can't remember any such crises in my own career." Carola replied: "You just didn't notice them!"

Addendum:

On 20 May 2020, I was appointed Dr. honoris causa at Abo Academi University in Turku (Finland) for my contribution to the Scandinavian didactics discourse, triggered by many years of collaboration with Michael Uljens, Faculty of Education and Health Science at the external location in Vaasa.

From left to right: Dr h.c. HM, Dr h.c. Jan Masschelein from the University of Leuven (Belgium); Michael Uljens (host of Hilbert), Siv Björklund (host of Jim), the Rector of the Vaasa branch Lisbeth Fagerström, Ms Ann-Katrin Svensson and Dr h.c. Jim Cummins from the University of Toronto. Jim Cummins from the University of Toronto (Canada).

The ceremony was still conducted according to medieval rites: a good 90 doctoral candidates and 13 honorary doctorates from five Schools were assembled, which were combined from two years ago due to the corona pandemic. We had to come forward one by one, receive our doctoral hat, sword and degree certificate from the dean and then make a deep bow to the rector - it took two and a half hours, during which only Latin was spoken. Afterwards, the newly graduated students processed together through the city to Turku Cathedral, the oldest church in Finland. An ecumenical service was held there in Swedish, in which the city's rabbi gave the sermon and the Protestant pastor as well as the Catholic and Russian Orthodox priests performed the liturgy. The university choir provided the music. Incidentally, the word "doctorate" comes from this rite: in the Middle Ages, all those who had passed the viva voce went from their School to the Rector once a year to receive their doctoral degree and hat. By the way: the School of Theology in Turku does not hand out swords! That's a good thing! I had to hand in my sword straight away: My nine-year-old grandson Theo Kasper begged me so hard that I couldn't resist giving him the sword.

Graduation of all doctoral candidates and doctores honoris causa at Turku Cathedral on 20 May 2022