Gerhard Schneider (historian)

Gerhard Schneider (born September 5, 1943 in Buchen (Odenwald) ) is a German historian and history teacher . He has shaped the discipline of history didactics from its constitutional phase in the early 1970s until his retirement in 2008 as a professor in Hanover and Freiburg, as editor and author of numerous standard works on questions of history didactics and history teaching and as chairman of the conference for history didactics and designed. In addition to his historical didactic work, he has also repeatedly published specialist studies on questions of the mentality and cultural history of the First World War and, in particular, on the history of the city of Hanover and the history of Lower Saxony.

Life and Scientific Work

Education

Growing up in the small town of Adelsheim in northern Baden , Schneider attended elementary school there from 1949 to 1953. In 1953 he moved to the secondary school in Buchen, where he passed the Abitur in 1962. After completing his military service, he studied history, French and political science at the University of Heidelberg from 1964 to 1969. He spent an academic year (1966/67) at the University of Caen. After the 1st state examination for teaching at grammar schools (1969), he did a doctoral degree in Heidelberg with Professor Dr. Peter Classen . In the same year he received a position as a scientific assistant in the subject of history at the Rhineland-Palatinate University of Education, Dept. Landau. In 1972 he received his doctorate from Peter Classen with a thesis on western France in the late 9th century. In 1980 Schneider was appointed professor for history and its didactics in the educational science department of the University of Hanover. Before that he had held a university lectureship at the Lower Saxony University of Education, Hanover Department, from 1975.

Scientific work

His assistantship falls in the early phase of the just developing history didactics, which would become Schneider's field of activity for the next decades. Schneider took part in the first major history didactics conference in Göttingen in October 1973 and gave a short presentation there. In Göttingen, younger representatives (Ursula Becher, Klaus Bergmann , Werner Boldt, Annette Kuhn , Ulrich Mayer , Hans Müller, Hans-Jürgen Pandel , Gerhard Schneider and others) came up with the plan to compete with the established journal “ Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Studium ”to found a reform magazine for the discipline of history didactics, which is in the process of being developed. Joachim Radkau and Schneider succeeded in getting Schwann-Verlag Düsseldorf interested in this project. In 1976 the first issues of the journal “Geschichtsdidaktik” appeared under the editorship of Klaus Bergmann, Werner Boldt, Annette Kuhn, Jörn Rüsen and Gerhard Schneider. A series of publications entitled “Studies and Materials” soon followed.

At the opening of the discipline of history didactics beyond history lessons into the everyday world, Schneider was working on museum didactics ("Learning History in the Museum", together with Annette Kuhn 1978), on history in advertising (1982/83), on trivial and popular science literature on NS and World War (1979), on war memorials as historical sources (1979) involved. Schneider published the first volume "Women in History" (1979, 3rd edition 1984) together with Annette Kuhn. From 1977 to 2004 Schneider was involved in various functions (scientific advisory board, central jury, co-founder of the regional jury Saxony-Anhalt 1990) in the “German History Schoolchildren's Competition for the Federal President's Prize”. Parallel to the journal “Geschichtsdidaktik” gradually appeared the very successful “Handbuch der Geschichtsdidaktik” published by Bergmann, Kuhn, Rüsen and Schneider (initially 2 volumes 1979, from 3rd edition in one volume, 5th edition 1997), also the manual published by Schneider with Klaus Bergmann “Society-State-History Lessons. Contributions to a history of history didactics and history teaching from 1500 to 1980 ”(1982) and the“ Handbook Media in History Teaching ”(1985, 2nd edition 1986) published by Hans-Jürgen Pandel and Gerhard Schneider. Several historical reading books have also been published by authors from the journal “Geschichtsdidaktik”: Klaus Bergmann / Gerhard Schneider: Against the War, 2 vols., 1982; Hans-Dieter Schmid / Gerhard Schneider / Wilhelm Sommer: Jews under the swastika, 2 vols., 1983; Klaus Bergmann / Gerhard Schneider: “1945. A Reading Book ”(1985). In 1980 Schneider was appointed to a professorship for history and its didactics in the Faculty of Education at the University of Hanover.

When the magazine “Geschichtsdidaktik” was sold to Friedrich-Verlag in 1987 and then appeared in a new guise as a primarily practice-oriented magazine under the title “Learn History”, Schneider was no longer among the editors. His history didactic activities continued. From 1985 to 1989 he was the federal chairman of the Conference for History Didactics, the scientific association of history didactics in Germany. During this time he tried to intensify the contacts with his specialist colleagues in the GDR, which he had already initiated more than ten years earlier during his numerous stays at the central archive of the GDR office in Merseburg and - especially with Karlheinz Jackstel (Halle) - intensified since then would have. In fact, he succeeded in winning Horst Diere (University of Halle), a leading history methodologist of the GDR, as a speaker for the annual conference of the Conference on History Didactics in Ludwigsburg at the beginning of October 1989, i.e. at the beginning of the period of change .

During this time, Schneider also took part in the conferences of the colloquia on the cult of the dead of the war, led and inspired by Reinhart Koselleck , which resulted in extensive documentation on the war memorials in Hanover at the suggestion of Koselleck Schneider.

In 1994 Schneider received two appointments: for the new professorship for history didactics at the Humboldt University in Berlin and for a professorship for history and its didactics at the University of Education in Freiburg . Schneider chose Freiburg.

Schneider's history didactic activities were spurred on again after Hans-Jürgen Pandel (University of Halle) succeeded in 1996/97 in getting the Wochenschau-Verlag (then Schwalbach, now Frankfurt am Main) interested in history-didactic publications. Pandel reactivated his old colleagues and friends Klaus Bergmann, Ulrich Mayer and G. Schneider; together they founded several series of publications, handbooks, monographs, and anthologies on history didactics for the Wochenschau-Verlag and they themselves presented numerous publications on modern history didactics; Including in 1999 the handbook of media in history teaching newly designed by Pandel and Schneider, the handbook on methods in history teaching published by Schneider in 2004 together with Ulrich Mayer and Hans-Jürgen Pandel, and the dictionary on history didactics published in 2006, edited by Mayer, Pandel, Schneider and Bernd Schönemann . In 1999 Schneider also presented the very successful volume "Successful Entrances".

In addition to his historical didactic work, Schneider has always published specialist studies, especially on the history of the city of Hanover and the history of Lower Saxony, increasingly since his retirement in 2008. Since 1989, he has published more than 20 articles in the Lower Saxony Yearbook for Regional History, in the Hanover History Papers and in various anthologies, as well as some monographs, most recently a study of the approximately 40 visits by Kaiser Wilhelm I and Wilhelm II in Hanover (2016 ) and an extensive work on "Hindenburg in Hannover 1919-1925" (2019). It is also noteworthy that Schneider referred to two almost completely forgotten mass actions in World War I in several articles and in a monograph: the establishment of so-called hero groves since the end of 1914 and the nailing of so-called war symbols since 1915 in numerous German communities; in his extensive monograph “In iron time. War symbols in the First World War ”(2013), Schneider proves the existence of more than 1000 such nailing objects in German cities, villages, hamlets, manors, etc.

Fonts (selection)

History didactics

• as editor: The source in history class. Contributions from theory and practice. Auer, Donauwörth 1975.
• as editor (with K. Bergmann, A. Kuhn, J. Rüsen): Handbuch der Geschichtsdidaktik, 2nd volume Schwann, Düsseldorf 1979 (2nd edition 1980; 3rd completely revised and supplemented edition in one volume 1985; 4th unchanged edition 1992; 5th revised edition 1997)
• as editor (with K. Bergmann): Society - State - History Lessons. Contributions to a history of history didactics and history teaching from 1500-1980. Schwann, Düsseldorf 1982.
• as editor (with H.-J. Pandel): Media in history lessons . Wochenschau-Verlag, Schwalbach / Ts. 1999 (7th edition 2017)
• as editor (with U. Mayer, H.-J. Pandel): Methods in history lessons . Wochenschau-Verlag, Schwalbach / Ts. 2004 (5th edition 2016)
• as editor (with U. Mayer, H.-J. Pandel, B. Schönemann): Dictionary of History Didactics. Wochenschau-Verlag, Schwalbach / Ts. 2006 (3rd edition 2014)
• Successful entries. Requirement for successful history lessons. Wochenschau-Verlag, Schwalbach / Ts. 1999 (8th edition 2018)
• Transfer. An attempt at applying and maintaining historical knowledge. Wochenschau-Verlag, Schwalbach / Ts. 2009

Specialist science

• "... not fallen for nothing"? War memorials and the cult of the dead in Hanover. Hahn, Hanover 1991.
• Political festivals in Hanover (1866-1918). Part I: The workers' festivals. Hahn, Hanover 1995.
• In iron time. War symbols in the First World War. bd edition, Schwalbach / Ts. 2013.
• Imperial visits. Wilhelm I and Wilhelm II in Hanover 1868-1914. A documentation. Wehrhahn, Hanover 2016.
• Hindenburg in Hanover. 1919-1925. Wehrhan, Hanover 2019.

literature

Christian Heuer / Christine Pflüger (eds.): History and its didactics: a broad field ... teaching, science, everyday world. Wochenschau-Verlag, Schwalbach / Ts. 2009

Thomas Sandkühler (Ed.): Thinking about historical learning. Conversations with history didacticians born between 1928 and 1947. Wallstein-Verlag, Göttingen 2014, pp. 435–474.

Web links

• Literature by and about Gerhard Schneider in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ Gerhard Schneider: Archbishop Fulco of Reims (882-900) and the Franconian Empire. Arbeo, Munich 1973.
2. ^ Gerhard Schneider: Afterword. How the magazine GeschICHTSDIDAKTIK came about - memories of a participant . In: Ursula AJ Becher, Klaus Bergmann (Ed.): History - benefit or disadvantage for life. Schwann-Verlag, Düsseldorf 1986, p. 157-165 .
3. ^ Gerhard Schneider: Heldenhaine as a visualization of the national community in war . In: Gerhard Schneider (Ed.): The visual dimension of the historical . Wochenschau-Verlag, 2002, p. 49-71 .