Hans Wermes

Hans Wermes 1968

Hans Wermes (born March 10, 1926 in Brunndöbra , Vogtland , † January 10, 2010 in Eibau ) was a German historian and history teacher .

Life and work

Hans Wermes was born on March 10, 1926 in Brunndöbra / Vogtland as the son of a family of teachers. Between 1932 and 1935 he attended elementary school in Zwickau , between 1935 and 1940 the Waldorf school in Dresden and then until 1944 the municipal secondary school in Radeberg , where he passed his Abitur.

After his brief military service, Wermes initially worked as a new teacher between 1946 and 1948 . He passed his two state examinations in 1955 and 1958 as a specialist history teacher in the upper school in Leipzig . Between 1951 and 1955 he worked at the Institute for Continuing Education and from 1956 worked for five years as a research assistant in the Department for Methodology of History Teaching at the Institute for Pedagogy of the Philosophical Faculty of the Karl Marx University in Leipzig.

Wermes received his doctorate in 1961. His dissertation dealt with the topic “On the history of the inclusion of local history material in German history lessons”. Between 1961 and 1963 he worked as a senior scientific assistant at the same institute, whereupon he worked as a lecturer for methodology of history teaching until 1969. His habilitation thesis, which he was able to successfully complete in 1965, was entitled "The development of skills for independent knowledge acquisition in history lessons, examined using the example of the textbook text". In 1970, Wermes was finally appointed full professor and now made a significant contribution to the development of the Marxist-Leninist methodology of teaching history .

During his activity as a professor, which lasted until his retirement in 1991, he was instrumental in establishing the methodology of teaching history as a science.

Wermes died on January 10, 2010 at the age of 83.

Research priorities

• Developing students' skills in history classes
• Development of a socialist historical awareness among schoolchildren

Offices

• 1961–1969: Head of the Department of History Teaching Methods at the Institute for Pedagogy of the Philosophical Faculty of the Karl Marx University in Leipzig
• 1969–1991: Head of the Department of History Teaching Methods in the History Section of the Karl Marx University in Leipzig
• 1965–1980: Chairman of the History Teaching Commission of the GDR Historical Society
• Corresponding member of the scientific council at the Ministry for Popular Education of the GDR
• Member of the Central Expert Commission on Methodology of History Education at the Ministry of Higher and Technical Education and the Ministry of Popular Education

Fonts (selection)

Monographs

• The development of skills for independent knowledge acquisition in history lessons, examined using the example of the textbook . Leipzig 1965.
• Methodology of teaching history . Suhl 1970.
• Teaching history - learning to think historically . Leipzig, 1994.

Editorships

• with Helmut Faust and Horst Wenge : To develop students' intellectual abilities in class. Leipzig 1968.
• Conscious activity of students in history lessons . Berlin, 1976.
• To develop the dialectical-materialistic thinking of the students . People and Knowledge, Berlin 1976.

literature

• Hans Wermes. In: Lothar Mertens : Lexicon of the GDR historians. Biographies and bibliographies on the historians in the GDR. Saur, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-598-11673-X , pp. 633f.
• Marko Demantowsky : The historical methodology in the SBZ and GDR. Its conceptual, institutional and personal constitution as an academic discipline 1945–1970. Schulz-Kirchner, Idstein 2003, ISBN 3-8248-0370-4 ( writings on historical didactics 15), (also: Dortmund, Univ., Diss., 2003).
• Wolfgang Ruge : Hans Wermes 60 years. In: Journal of History . 34, 1986, 3, pp. 248f.

Web links

• Biography of the University of Leipzig (PDF; 6 kB)