Obituary

0n December 1st, 2001, Professor Dr. Kurt Gerhard Fischer deceased at his last place of residence in Southern Italy. Between 1962 and 1986, first as a lecturer and later as Professor of Didactics of Social Sciences at the Justus-Liebig-University in Gießen, Fischer trained future teachers in the subject of social studies. He was one of the leading and most influential scientists of this subject in the Federal Republic of Germany. By his works, Fischer essentially contributed to political education to be provided with a scientific foundation in democracy. His work “Der politische Unterricht (Political Education)”, written with two co-authors and published in 1960, is considered the first fundamental work on the scientific theory of political education in Germany and has gained great recognition. As the author of textbooks and co-author of curricula he had much influence on the practice of teaching the emerging subject of social studies which in many federal states was introduced as late as in the 1960s. Being the Deputy Federal Chairman of the Deutsche Vereinigung für Politische Bildung (German Association of Political Education), he organized the first federal scientific congress on political education in Gießen in 1982. However, Fischer´s work was neither restricted to political education at school nor to the Federal Republic of Germany. In addition to his most influential writings on the didactics of social science there were works on adult education and the history of education. Among others, Fischer was considered one of the most renowned experts of Adalbert Stifter´s paedagogy, which resulted in becoming a member of the Adalbert-Stifter-Academy of the Austrian Federal State of Upper Austria and being awarded the Honorary Cross for Sciences and Arts of the Republic of Austria. Also, Fischer felt closely connected to Italy; he published writings of Italian educationalist in the German language and wrote two literary works about Italy´s South. One of his most important scientific writings, “Einführung in die Politische Bildung (Introduction to Political Education)”, published for the first time in 1970, was also translated into the Italian language.
Born in Leipzig in 1928 and having moved to the West in 1948 after having been banned from further studies at Leipzig for political reasons, the “German question” remained to be one of the topics of his life. At the same time, as early as in the 1970s, he committed himself to questions of inter-cultural learning and in the 1980s, by an extended, internationally comparative research project, to the situation of political education in Western Europe and prospects of its Europeanization. However, Fischer´s main topic, which is found in many aspects of his scientific work, was educating towards democracy and commitment to a kind of education which does everything possible to fight the return of barbarism.


Wolfgang Sander