Franz-Wilhelm Heimer

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Franz-Wilhelm Heimer

Franz-Wilhelm Heimer (born April 12, 1930 in Dortmund ) is a German social scientist who is particularly concerned with Africa.

Life

Franz-Wilhelm Heimer grew up as the eldest son of an elementary school teacher in the Rhineland, first in Brühl and then in Frechen . During World War II he attended in Cologne , the high school in the Spiesergasse (later renamed Albertus-Magnus-Gymnasium ), after the war, then the Friedrich-Wilhelm Gymnasium . As a high school student he joined the Bund New Germany . In the 1950s he studied Romance and English , philosophy and pedagogy with a view to teaching at secondary schools at the University of Cologne . In 1955 he went to Paris for a year on a grant from the French government to prepare for a state paper on the linguistic peculiarities of French youth movements . At the same time, he worked there as European Secretary at the World Secretariat of International Catholic Student Youth , where he met the Brazilian lawyer Maria de Lourdes Oliveira Santos, whom he married in 1958. In the same year he passed his first state examination; He then completed a two-year legal traineeship in Cologne , took his second state examination in 1960 and started teaching in North Rhine-Westphalia .

After a few months as Studienassessor in Duisburg he went early 1961 as a DAAD - Lecturer of Brazil , to the university independent of Philosophy and Natural Sciences Faculty in Sao Jose do Rio Preto in São Paulo state . As an assistant at the chair for German language and literature, he participated in the development of the faculty, which was only founded in 1957 and which worked under the simplest conditions. In addition, he was involved in the socio-political movement Ação Popular and organized local literacy and adult education initiatives , the concept and method of which were based on the Brazilian pedagogue Paulo Freire .

After the military coup in April 1964, Heimer was imprisoned for weeks along with other socially or politically committed lecturers and students of the faculty. He then moved to the Goethe-Institut due to the “professional ban” imposed by the military on São José do Rio Prêto and became head of its lectureship in Belo Horizonte . In view of the threat posed by ongoing political proceedings, however, he returned to Germany with the family in 1965 - after the birth of his fourth child - left school and was employed as a research assistant at the Arnold Bergstraesser Institute for Cultural Studies Research in Freiburg im Breisgau ( ABI), which is affiliated with the University of Freiburg .

Since then, his field of work has been the development problems of the Third World in the broadest sense . At first he was particularly concerned with the relationship between education and development and temporarily took over the coordination of the relevant department in the ABI. His regional focus was initially Latin America and especially Brazil. In addition to various studies, together with Johannes Augel he translated the book "Revolution for Peace" by the Brazilian bishop and liberation theologian Dom Hélder Câmara . Very soon, however, his focus switched to sub- Saharan Africa, in a first phase Central Africa ( Rwanda , Burundi , Congo (Brazzaville) and Congo (Kinshasa) ), in a second phase Angola and Mozambique . In this context he founded and headed the Working Group Portuguese-Speaking Africa (APSA) in the 1970s, an informal German-speaking forum in which numerous non-German (especially African) specialists take part; In 1980, in Bad Homburg, he organized the first international conference on the entirety of the Portuguese-speaking countries in Africa, which took place after their decolonization.

In parallel to his research, Heimer studied political science , sociology and education at the University of Freiburg ; in these subjects he received his doctorate in 1979 with a dissertation (written by Dieter Oberndörfer ) on the decolonization conflict in Angola, a country in which he had repeatedly carried out research stays from 1967 to 1974. His analysis of the topic takes place here against the background of an effort to grasp the emergence and structure of cohesive overall societies in the territories that were arbitrarily delimited by the colonial powers. This question, but especially that of the post-colonial development of these societies, has been a constant in Heimer's work ever since.

Immediately after graduation, he took teaching positions in political and educational science at the universities of Frankfurt and Freiburg , but was already the end of 1980 - initially funded by the DAAD - Professor of Development Sociology at the ISCTE - Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, the Lisbon School of Social and Business Sciences and Technology. There he played a key role in the development of what is now Portugal's most important university focus for African studies, from the establishment of a research center in 1981, which he headed for a long time, to the establishment of postgraduate courses from 1990 to the establishment of a central library for African studies - initially headed by him from 2003. In addition, he campaigned in general for the development of African studies in Portugal, not least for their international networking. For example in AEGIS, the European network for African studies, of which Heimer was a board member for several years.

Heimer has been married to the Angola Portuguese and Africanist Elisete Marques da Silva for a second time since 1984 and lives in Lisbon in Belém .

His work, combined with various stays in several countries in Latin America and around twenty countries in Africa, focus - beyond his retirement in 2000 - above all on the political sociology of the five Portuguese-speaking countries (besides Angola especially Mozambique, but also Guinea-Bissau , the Cape Verde and Sao Tome and Principe ). He takes a consistently interdisciplinary - social science approach and draws on approaches not only from political science and sociology, but also from historical science , social anthropology and social psychology as well as economics . From this work he developed a special interest in the field of political culture and questions of social identity .

Heimer retired in 2000 because he had reached the age limit in Portugal, but was in charge of a number of doctoral and MA candidates until 2016. His retirement as a professor did not affect his research. When the CEA dissolved in 2014 or merged into a newly founded Centro de Estudos Internacionais (Center for International Studies), whose interests cover all continents, Heimer joined this new institution as an investigador (researcher).

Fonts (selection)

  • (with Theodor Hanf, André Benoit, Patrick V. Dias) Opportunities for professional training in Burundi, Congo-Brazzaville, Congo-Kinshasa and Rwanda, 5 vols., Freiburg i.Br .: Arnold-Bergstraesser-Institut, 1968
  • (with Maria de Lourdes Heimer and Mara Ramos) Recent studies on Brazilian politics 1960–1967. Freiburg: Mühlhans, 1968
  • (with Patrick V. Dias, Theodor Hanf, William M. Rideout) Les étudiants universitaires congolais: Une enquête sur leurs attitudes socio-politiques, Düsseldorf: Bertelsmann Universitätsverlag, 1971
  • (Ed.) Social Change in Angola. Munich: Weltforum Verlag, 1973
  • The decolonization conflict in Angola. Munich: Weltforum Verlag, 1979
  • (with Elisete Marques da Silva) Political development and situation of the Catholic Church in post-colonial Angola. Freiburg: Arnold Bergstraesser Institute, 1983.
  • Educação e sociedade nas áreas rurais de Angola: Resultados de um inquérito, vol. 1, Apresentação do inquérito. Estatísticas descritivas, relatório de investigação, Missão de Inquéritos Agrícolas de Angola, Luanda, 1972.
  • Educação e sociedade nas áreas rurais de Angola: Resultados de um inquérito, vol. 2, Análise do universo agrícola, Serviços de Planeamento e Integração Económica de Angola, Luanda, 1974.
  • (with André Benoit): Education, research and documentation in the service of the Latin American trade union movement, 3 volumes, Freiburg; Arnold Bergstraesser Institute, 1976 (Spanish version: La formación, investigación y documentación al servicio del movimiento de los trabajadores, 3 vol., Ibidem, 1976.)
  • The political and social development in Mozambique as a framework for the Catholic Church. Freiburg: Arnold Bergstraesser Institute, 1984.
  • (with Elisete Marques da Silva) Vundiça: Change and continuity in the reproduction and incorporation of a rural segment of society in Mozambique. In: P. Meyns (org.), Agricultural Societies in Portuguese-speaking Africa, Saarbrücken & Fort Lauderdale: Breitenbach, 1988, pp. 128–154.
  • Statehood and social identity in Portuguese-speaking Africa. In: M. Kuder (ed.), Civilization, Language and Literature of the African States Portuguese Language, special issue 2 of the DASP booklet, 1988, pp. 9–40.
  • (with Jorge Vala-Salvador and José Manuel Leite Viegas) Padrões de cultura política em Portugal: Atitudes face à democracia. In: Análise Social, 25 (1-2) 105-106, 1990, pp. 31-56.
  • German science migrants in Portugal. In: E. Demm (ed.), German Brain Drain, European higher education systems and higher education reform, Bonn: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, 2002, pp. 155–164.
  • (with Paulo de Carvalho & Víctor Kajibanga) Angola. In: D. Teferra & P. ​​Altbach (Eds.), African Higher Education: An International Reference Handbook, Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2003, pp. 162-175.
  • “Dinâmicas políticas dos países africanos de língua portuguesa”, scientific communication, VIII. Congresso Luso-Afro-Brasileiro em Ciências Sociais, Centro de Estudos Sociais da Universidade de Coimbra, 2004 here (PDF file; 204 kB)
  • (with Elisete Marques da Silva & Gabriel Mithá Ribeiro) Social representations, values ​​and attitudes towards politics in Angola and Mozambique. In: P. Molt & H. Dickow (eds.) Cultures and Conflicts in Comparison / Comparing Cultures and Conflicts, Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2006, pp. 492-512.
  • (with Cristina Udelsmann Rodrigues & Carlos Manuel Lopes) Angola Country Report. In: Bertelsmann Stiftung (ed.), Transformation Index 2012: Political Management in International Comparison, Gütersloh: Verlag Bertelsmann Stiftung , 2012, 49 pp. (See also http://www.bti-project.org/country-reports/ esa / ago / )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See http://www.iycs-jeci.org ; not to be confused with the German Catholic Student Youth (KSJ) , which is a member of this international umbrella organization.
  2. ↑ Today Instituto de Biociências, Letras e Ciências Exatas of the Universidade Estadual Paulista ; see http://www.ibilce.unesp.br/
  3. ↑ See for example archive link ( Memento from January 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ See website of ISCTE-IUL (pt)
  5. ↑ See website Centro de Estudos Africanos (en / pt)
  6. ↑ In recognition of this, Portuguese colleagues dedicated the volume by Clara Carvalho & João de Pina Cabral (eds.): A persistência da história: passado e contemporaneidade em África, Lisbon: Imprensa de Ciências Sociais, 2004. See the review by David Birmingham in http://www.lusotopie.sciencespobordeaux.fr/2006_1_p_187.pdf
  7. ↑ http://aegis-eu.org/
personal data
SURNAME Heimer, Franz-Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German social scientist and Africa expert
DATE OF BIRTH April 12, 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH Dortmund