Klaus Kufeld

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Klaus Kufeld at the Erlanger Poetenfest 2017

Nikolaus Theophil "Klaus" Kufeld (* 1951 in Griesbach im Rottal ) is a German author, essayist and philosopher. He is the founding director of the Ernst Bloch Center in Ludwigshafen am Rhein and from 1997 to 2018 managing director of the Bloch Foundation.

Live and act

Klaus Kufeld studied educational science and sociology at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich and at the University of Regensburg between 1971 and 1976, with the minor subjects psychology, political science and economics, graduating as a qualified pedagogue (Univ.). In 2009 he received his doctorate. phil. with Julian Nida-Rümelin at the Geschwister-Scholl-Institute for Political Science at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich on the utopia of travel .

Klaus Kufeld's professional career began in 1977 in educational counseling. Under the sponsorship of the Institute for Urban Studies (Cologne) he worked as an educational advisor at the Office for Extracurricular Education in Regensburg from 1977 to 1980 as part of a model project of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research , then from 1980 to 1983 as head of the “Advice Center for Further Education for the Unemployed “In Ludwigshafen am Rhein . From 1984 to 1989 he was responsible for municipal migration work in Ludwigshafen and was election supervisor and managing director of the first elected foreigners advisory board in Rhineland-Palatinate. In 1990 he became the founding director of the cultural office of the city of Ludwigshafen (with the city museum) and initiated the first cultural summer in Rhineland-Palatinate.

Since 1994, Kufeld has dedicated himself to the legacy of the philosopher Ernst Bloch . For the city of Ludwigshafen am Rhein, he brought the estate of Ernst and Karola Bloch and the scientific estate of Ernst Bloch von Tübingen in Bloch's native town. He founded the Ernst Bloch Center in 1997 and has been its director and managing director of the Bloch Foundation ever since. There he manages concrete utopian projects with international symposia, author readings (e.g. György Konrád, Durs Grünbein, Robert Menasse, Juli Zeh, Marcel Beyer), exhibitions (e.g. Günter Grass, Luis Murschetz, Alfred Hrdlicka, Stefan Moses) and discussions (e.g. Julian Nida-Rümelin, Peter Sloterdijk, Oskar Negt, Alfred Grosser, Heiner Geißler, Sahra Wagenknecht). He has been responsible for awarding the Ernst Bloch Prize since 1991 (to Leszek Kolakowski, Jürgen Moltmann, Pierre Bourdieu, Eric. J. Hobsbawm, Navid Kermani, Dan Diner, Carolin Emcke, Seyla Benhabib, Avishai Margalit, most recently to Axel, among others Honneth) and for the award of the William Dieterle Film Prize (to Andreas Dresen, Fatih Akin, most recently to Klaus Stanjek, among others). For the Bloch Foundation, he initiated the format “The Future Speech” (Volker Braun, Sascha Lobo, Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker).

Freelance work

In 1980, Klaus Kufeld worked under a contract for work at the German Institute for Urban Studies for further training advice. Between 1993 and 1995 he worked as a freelance cultural advisor to the cities of Leipzig (for cultural department head Dr. Georg Girardet on cultural development planning) as well as Dresden and Chemnitz, each on behalf of the Berlin Foundation for Cultural Further Education and Cultural Advice and within the framework of the “Cultural Development East” program. From 2002 to 2006, Kufeld was a member of the selection committee of the German National Academic Foundation and hosted the Ernst Bloch Center. In 2003, Kufeld became a member of the Free Academy of the Arts Rhein-Neckar, where he is chairman of the cultural research and communication department. Klaus Kufeld was a co-founder of the Ludwigshafen am Rhein Community Foundation in 2004 , was its managing director until 2007 and board member from 2008 to 2012. Between 2008 and 2010, Klaus Kufeld was commissioned by the Rhineland-Palatinate Ministry of Education, Science, Youth and Culture to be the President of the Forum Culture of the trinational German-French-Swiss Upper Rhine Conference.

Teaching assignments

  • 1975 Research assistant for empirical social research at the Institute for Sociology at the University of Regensburg
  • Lecturer at the University of Regensburg (1978 to 1980)
  • Lecturer at the University of Applied Sciences in Mannheim (1982 to 1987)
  • Lecturer at the Hamburg University of Economics and Politics (2001)
  • Lecturer at Ludwigshafen University (2006, "Studium Generale" / Philosophy)
  • Lecture tours in China between 2002 and 2012 at Beijing Normal University and universities in Shanghai, X'ian, Chengdu and Wuhan

Publications (selection)

Klaus Kufeld has been the editor and co-editor of numerous books on political, philosophical and cultural topics and writes scientific essays. He has been publishing monographs himself since 2005. His travel books for Edition Splitter, Suhrkamp and Fink form a "trilogy of travel". He is a freelancer for the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the " Rheinpfalz " and Welt am Sonntag.

Monographs

  • The singing of the swans. About death and happiness , with a foreword by Anita Natmeßnig, Edition Splitter, Vienna 2015
  • We are we. Munich, Bavaria and the rest of the world , Corso Verlag, Hamburg 2011
  • The journey as utopia. Ethical and political aspects of the travel motif , Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Munich 2010 (dissertation)
  • The culinary eros. Stories about the soul of eating and cooking , with an afterword by Michael Daxner, Edition Splitter, Vienna 2009
  • To travel. Views and insights , Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007
  • The invention of travel. Attempt against the misunderstanding of the foreign , Edition Splitter, Vienna 2005

Editor or co-editor (selection)

  • In the discourse space of utopia. A selection from 20 years of the Ernst Bloch Center , with photos by Bernhard Kunz, Ludwigshafen 2018
  • Bloch-Almanach , episode 34/2017, Aisthesis Verlag, Bielefeld 2017
  • Bloch-Almanach , episode 33/2015, Talheimer Verlag, Mössingen-Talheim 2015 (together with Frank Degler)
  • Arcadia and jungle camp. Living in harmony or fighting with nature? , together with Robert Pfaller, Verlag Karl Alber, Munich / Freiburg 2014
  • The present of utopia. Criticism of time and turning point , together with Julian Nida-Rümelin, Verlag Karl Alber, Munich / Freiburg 2011
  •  Bloch-Almanach , episode 28/2009, Talheimer Verlag, Mössingen-Talheim 2009
  •  Europe - Change through Culture , Verlag Karl Alber, Freiburg / Munich 2008
  •  Europe - myth and home. Identity from culture and history (s) , Verlag Karl Alber, Freiburg / Munich 2006
  •  Profile through knowledge. Educational ideal and regional strategy , Verlag Karl Alber, Freiburg / Munich 2005
  •  We build the cities together. The citizens' region as a utopia? , Verlag Karl Alber, Freiburg / Munich 2004
  •  Utopias today? Future scenarios for the arts and society , together with Volker Hörner, with drawings by Alfred Hrdlicka from the cycle “The Great French Revolution”, Edition Braus at Wachter Verlag, Heidelberg 2002
  • Stefan Moses photographs Ernst Bloch , Quantum Books, Ostfildern 2001
  •  Ernst Bloch: In love with success. Aphorisms and wisdoms , selected by Karlheinz Weigand, introduction by Klaus Kufeld, Insel Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2000
  •  Who, if not we? Images of school children against violence and racism , by Silvia Izi, edited by Klaus Kufeld, Kulturbüro der Stadt Ludwigshafen, Universitätsdruckerei and Verlag H. Schmidt, Mainz 1996 (nominated for the Gustav Heinemann Peace Prize 1997)

Web links

Commons : Klaus Kufeld  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Kufeld, Klaus
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kufeld, Theophil Nikolaus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German author, essayist and cultural manager
DATE OF BIRTH 1951
PLACE OF BIRTH Griesbach im Rottal