Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Faculty of Humanities and Social Science - History of Education

(Case Studies within a BMBF Collaborative Project, Link to Project Website)

Case Study: The Myth of Scientific Neutrality. The School Educational Film in the Cold War. (Supervison: Kerrin Klinger) 

Project Description

This case study investigates the question to witch extent educational films for science lessons conveyed political and pedagogical images by the teaching of subject knowledge. The study is thus dedicated to the myths of the neutrality of the natural sciences and the ideology-free teaching of the natural sciences.

Within the framework of polytechnic education and against the background of the Cold War, the focus on the technical and natural sciences was particularly promoted. The sustained good reputation of science education in the GDR seems to go hand in hand with a fading out of its ideological orientation, such as the use of physics lessons for military education and political propaganda.

The production of educational films in the GDR was systematic and increasingly interlinked with the production of other teaching and learning materials in which subject cultures were represented in a didactically standardized way. The educational films were not only part of a specific audiovisual culture and store of intentionally shaped knowledge content and communication practices, but were also integrated into processes of change in the history of media and technology.

The analysis will not only consider discursive reference systems, but also audiovisual reference systems. The filmically updated content and visualization forms as well as the contemporary modes of reception in the specifics of the scientific educational film will be examined.

Selected Publications:

• Degler, W., Juen, A., Klinger, K. and Markert, M. (2019). Staging nature in 20th centuries’ teacher education and class rooms. In: Paedagogica Historica: International Journal of the History of Education (in print). 
• Klinger, K., Markert, M. (2018). Der Apfel als bildungshistorisches Meta-Exempel: Zum Umgang mit Naturdingen im Unterricht im langen 19. Jahrhundert. In: DGGTB (Hg.): Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology, Vol. 21, S. 29-59.  

• Klinger, K. (2016). Functional bodies. On Scientific Educational Film During the Cold War. In: medienimpulse-online, bmb, Kerrin Klinger Functional bodies 4/2016 - Macht, Souveränität, Herrschaft (27.12.2016 http://www.medienimpulse.at/articles/view/1005), S. 1/9.

• Klinger, K. (2016). Distanzieren. Eine Ansammlung von DDR-Schullehrfilmen. In: Sammlungsdidaktik. Laborberichte Band 7. Forster, Babett; Klinger, Kerrin; Markert, Michael (Hrsg.), S. 27-38, Weimar.

Case Study: "Education for all." Self and foreign images in the production and circulation of a central myth in transnational context (Supervision: Marcelo Caruso, Jane Weiß, and Sónia Vaz Borges)

Project Description

The GDR maintained a programme of wide-ranging educational cooperation. On the basis of their analysis, the project asks, on the one hand, how the GDR educational myths were not only constructed in (national) self, but how the confrontation with the (culturally) other took on their specific form. On the other hand, it will problematize the myth of universal and counter-privileged access to education, which is central to the memory of the GDR. What happened in the context of educational cooperation between the GDR and other countries with regard to this idea of broad educational opportunities under the slogan of "education for all"? What confirming or questioning retroactive effects and interactions did the creation and circulation of such images have on the survival of this idea and its practices? The project deals with these questions in a transnational-comparative and contrastive way using three cases: GDR-Mozambique, GDR-Nicaragua and GDR-Finland. The material is based on archive sources, published eyewitness reports and own eyewitness interviews (see von Plato 2008). The evaluation will be source-critical and contextualizing; the comparisons will focus on exchange and interlocking, and thus transfer processes. 

  Project Financing

The case studies are funded within the BMBF Collaborative Project "Educational Myths - A Dictatorship and its Afterlife. Picture(world)s about Practices and Effects of Education, Upbringing and School of the GDR".

Project Head

Marcelo Caruso, Sabine Reh

Project Team

Research Assistant: Kerrin Klinger, Jane Weiß, and Sónia Vaz Borges