Bruno Gentner

Bruno Gentner (born September 27, 1920 ) was a German history methodologist at the Pädagogische Hochschule Potsdam , who worked from the 1960s to the 1980s.

Gentner lost an arm as a result of military service as an infantry lieutenant in World War II and studied to become a history teacher. He received his doctorate from the Humboldt University in Berlin in 1955 with the topic “Development of history teaching and history methodology in the general schools of Prussia 1800–1848” and worked as an assistant to Walter Strauss , who was suspected of anti-Marxist revisionism . In 1961, Gentner completed his habilitation in Potsdam through self-employment in history lessons, a subject of reform pedagogy . In the dispute between an orientation towards the prevailing ideology (leadership role of the SED, internationalism , anti-imperialism) as the goal and the psychological possibilities of children, he advocated the priority of the former, something which Minister of Education Margot Honecker also attached importance to. As a practitioner, he attached importance to the students' independence and clarity of the lessons, not least through audio-visual teaching aids. In the 1960s and 1970s was one of the leading history methodologists in the GDR.

Fonts

• The principle of independent activity in history lessons , Berlin 1961
• Current problems of thinking and cognitive work in history lessons: (a contribution to the discussion) , Berlin 1967
• with Reinhold Kruppa (ed.): Methodology of history lessons , people and knowledge, Berlin 1975 a. ö. Table of contents

literature

• Wendelin Szalai: Changes in the GDR historical methodology in the 1970s. Memories of a participant , in: Reform - Experience - Innovation. Biographical experiences in the region , ed. v. Wolfgang Hasberg , Manfred Seidenfuß, LIT, Berlin 2015, pp. 191–209
• Rudolf Bonna: The narrative in the historical methodology of the Soviet Zone and GDR , Bochum 1996 (= Diss. Dortmund 1995)

Single receipts

1. ^ Rudolf Bonna: The narrative in the historical methodology of the Soviet occupation zone and GDR . Bochum 1996.
2. ^ Hans-Georg Wolf: History within the framework of the social sciences. In: History in the GDR: historical development, theoretical discussion and history didactics. A. Fischer, G. Heydemann, 1988, p. 219 , accessed on July 15, 2018 .