Helmar Frank

Helmar Frank (2004)

Helmar Gunter Frank (born February 19, 1933 in Waiblingen ; † December 15, 2013 in Paderborn ) was a German mathematician and cyberneticist .

Life

From 1953 to 1959, Helmar Frank headed a working group on rhetoric at the TH Stuttgart. Frank was in 1959 with the dissertation topic basic problems of information aesthetics and the first application to the mime pure Dr. phil. PhD at the University of Stuttgart . He then taught mathematics and physics at high schools in northern Württemberg. From 1961 to 1963 Frank was a research associate in the cybernetics research group for learning machines at the Technical University of Karlsruhe . In 1963, at the age of 30, he was the youngest professor in Germany to hold the chair for information science (later for cybernetics ) at the Berlin University of Education , where he set up the institute for cybernetics . During this time he defined, among other things, the concept of the conspicuousness of events.

In 1969 the Ministry of Culture of North Rhine-Westphalia decided that the research and development center for objectified teaching and learning processes ( FEoLL ), which was initiated together with the computer pioneer Heinz Nixdorf , should be located in Paderborn. In addition to Frank, Miloš Lánský and Walter Schöler were also institute directors of the FEoLL. This led to the foundation of the University of Paderborn in 1972 , to which Frank moved as a professor for cybernetic education and where he continued to teach as an emeritus until 2006 . In 2017, the estate of the Institute for Cybernetics went to the Chair for Media Theories at Humboldt University in Berlin.

Frank was honorary and permanent visiting professor at the universities of Berlin ( Technical University Berlin ), Guangzhou , Nitra , Prague , Rosario and Hermannstadt (Sibiu) . Until 2007 Frank was the editor of the journal “Basic Studies from Cybernetics and Humanities” (grkg Human Cybernetics) .

Main areas of activity

• Theoretical educational cybernetics
• Information psychology
• Erlangen School of Information Psychology
• Short storage capacity
• Media didactics
• Cybernetic interlinguistics

Esperanto activism

Frank was a co-founder and long-time president of the International Academy of Sciences (AIS) San Marino.

At the end of the 1970s he led an international experiment to investigate the propaedeutic value of Esperanto . He proposed that by learning a model (in this case the planned language Esperanto) the actual learning material (in this case the foreign language English) could be learned more easily and the investment time for learning the model could be made up. The fact that his theories were ignored and did not lead to a change in the language teaching, he justified with dead silence, which was partly due to the mental illness of the opponent. The Esperantist Frank described this language orientation lesson from the 3rd grade as a superior alternative to other forms of foreign language teaching. Foreign language lessons from the first year of school (or earlier), on the other hand, are politically and linguistically incorrect and would inevitably end in a “cultural catastrophe” as a blatant or disguised attempt to “eradicate the inner-European linguistic wealth”.

Fonts

• Helmar Frank u. a .: Cybernetics - bridge between the sciences . Umschau Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1962 (2nd edition).
• Helmar Frank: Cybernetic Basics of Education . Agis-Verlag, Baden-Baden 1962.
• Brigitte Frank-Böhringer (Ed.): Rhetorical communication . (Developed from the Rhetoric Working Group from 1953 to 1959). Schnell Verlag, Quickborn 1963.
• Cybernetic analyzes of subjective facts. Schnell Verlag, Quickborn 1964.
• Helmar G. Frank / Brigitte S. Meder: Introduction to cybernetic pedagogy . dtv, Munich 1971.
• Frank, Helmar: Propedeŭtika valoro de Esperanto. In: Juan Régulo (ed.): Serta gratulatoria in honorem Juan Régulo. La Laguna: Universidad de La Laguna. 1987

literature

• Klaus Weltner: The scientific importance of Helmar Frank. In: Volker Peckhaus , Ed .: In memoriam Helmar Frank. Paderborn University Speeches, ed. by Peter Freese 133 (2014), pp. 15-27

Web links

• Literature by and about Helmar Frank in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Forpasis Helmar Frank , Esperanto , accessed on 19 December 2013
2. ^ Outstanding scientist , Neue Westfälische, 21./22. December 2013
3. ↑ How the FEoLL came to Paderborn, Westfalen-Blatt, March 18, 1988
4. ^ Society for Cybernetics , accessed on January 2, 2014.
5. ↑ Missing Link: Cybernetics strikes back: The estate of the Institute for Cybernetics , heise.de, 4/2018
6. ↑ Helmar G. Frank: Europe like this - or better ?: Impetus for diagnosis and therapy , Institut f. Cybernetics, 1999 ( Memento of the original from March 7, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 698 kB) ISBN 3-929853-10-8 
7. ↑ Nolte, Antonius Language orientation lessons based on the Paderborn model and its effects on foreign language teaching in secondary level I in Linguistics and Didactics , 11 (1980) 43-44, pp. 252-256
8. ↑ Helmar Frank: The Paderborn experiment on language orientation teaching and the educational policy recommendations resulting from it.