AECEF NEWSLETTER 2/1996

by Heinrich Rothert
European Journal of Engineering Education, Vol. 20, No. 2, 1995

Summary : The fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 led to the collapse of the communistic regimes in the Soviet-dominated Eastern and Central European countries. The so-called "East" Germany, the German Democratic Republic (GDR), which in West German terminology means "Central" or "Middle" Germany, became part of the German Federal Republic on 3 October 1990. In the treaty on the establishment of German unity, the German Science Council (Wissenschaftsrat) was given the task by the Federal Government and by those of the States (Lńnder) to undertake a survey of publicly financed facilities for science and research in the former GDR and make proposals for necessary renewal. The author was a member of two of the working groups of the German Science Council, in charge of producing an expert opinion on the future structure of engineering education in the five new Lńnder and Berlin (East). Having known the situation in the GDR long before the Wall came down, the author describes briefly the training of civil engineers and architects before and after German unification. Not every step in the legal procedure in the new five Lńnder can be documented here, and it is also not intended to discuss scientific research in the GDR in great detail. All the data produced in the following tables are taken from the reports of the German Science Council [1,2]. For a better understanding of German school and university training, see [3]. When statements by "insiders" are cited, colleagues in the GDR, well known to the author before 1990, are meant.

1. Description of the Situation Before Reunification

When the GDR was founded in 1949, there was only one famous institution of higher education that produced civil engineers and architects: the Technische Hochschule, Dresden/Saxony, which became a fully fledged School of Engineering and Science in 1961. It was founded in 1828 as a Technical Training Institute and became a Technical Academy as early as 1890.

In addition, a small number of civil engineers and architects were trained at the Academy for Architecture and Building (HAB) in Weimar, which had developed from the bauhaus movement. It was founded in 1860 as the Grand Duchy Art School, and continued under Henry wan de Welde as a School for Arts and Crafts, but the few years when it was a State Building Academy (Bauhaus) under Walter Gropius (1919-25) were responsible for determining the character of this training institution in the most enduring way. Under the GDR the traditions of the Bauhaus quickly became submerged by the strengthening of civil engineering, materials and process technology, city planning as well as mathematics and information science, and apart from the training of architects one could say that this tradition was completely replaced.

Between 1945 and 1968 training in the GDR had an "ideological stamp" based on the Soviet model. The change in the economic planning and directive system, characterized as "the scientific and technical revolution" in the official language of the Party, was to lead to a strengthening of the "technical intelligentsia" within the state.

Further specialized academies were already founded in the 1950s, in order to increase the number of qualified engineers and in addition to the reconstruction necessary after the War, the goal was to enable the development of the GDR in accordance with the political directives currently valid. The separation of the "Faculty for Transportation Sciences" from the School of Engineering and Science, Dresden meant that an independent Academy for Transport was established there in 1952. Independent academies of this kind, which had several hundred scientific staff, closely followed the Soviet line in order to cope more efficiently with catastrophic transport conditions. The Engineering Academy (HS) in Leipzig dates from 1954, and it became a full School of Engineering and Science in 1977.

In 1967 the seventh Party Congress of the SED (United Socialist Party) decided that the number of engineers and natural scientists working in industry should be more than trebled in the period up to 1980, in order to "master" this technical and scientific revolution. The transformation into engineering colleges (IHS) of the engineering academies that already existed took place during this phase between 1968 and 1983. Insiders described this period as "institutional". Training institutions of this kind were established for civil engineering in Cottbus and Wismar in 1969. In addition to the expectation that there would be an increasing need for engineers, the newly founded institutions were to contribute towards distinguishing between two "profiles": training oriented towards research and development tasks, and another type of training that was to be oriented towards the demands of the direct production process. With their training that was close to practical application the engineering academies and colleges represented an intermediate stage between the traditional specialist schools and colleges of engineering, on the one had, and the universities of engineering, on the other.

Despite their basic training profile, which was defined differently, and despite the differences in their facilities and size, these engineering academies developed into "academic" institutions. In this phase between 1983 and 1989, which insiders described as "scientific", these engineering academies, in fact, hardly differed from fully fledged universities, so that as a consequence the "Friedrich List" Academy for Transport in Dresden, the Academy for Architecture and Civil Engineering Weimar, the Technical Academy Cottbus the Technical Academy Wismar and the Technical Academy Leipzig existed alongside the Technical University in Dresden. The most obvious reason why these institutions could be considered as on the same level as the technical universities resulted from their being granted the right to award the "Doctorate A" (dissertation, PhD) and the "Doctorate B", which one can roughly compare with the Habilitation (second doctorate) in Western Germany.

As a result of the high level of specialization in technical academies, there was a large amount of division of labour with a comparatively narrow subject spectrum. Because training was oriented towards clearly defined employment fields, teaching in Cottbus, for example, was directed mainly towards the large panel technique, and in Wismar mainly towards normal construction with prefabricated parts; apart from this, classical training was only found in construction science, but not in hydraulic engineering and transportation.

Fortunately, the "de-scientized" training of engineers through the introduction of "Study Reform 2000", which was still being predicted by insiders in 1988, only had a (negative) effect in 1989. The scientific standards in the two German states would have rapidly developed in different directions of this "reform" had become fully effective.

The institutions of higher education for engineers shown in Table I existed before reunification.

In the GDR a far smaller proportion of young people born in one year were permitted to study at an institution of higher education than was the case in the Federal Republic before reunification. In 1989 the proportion in the GDR was 13%, while in Western Germany it was 26%. This imbalance was by no means as large with engineers; it amounted to 2,6% compared with 3,6%. While roughly 7200 engineers graduated from the academies and universities in the GDR with a diploma in 1988 (not including those leaving the schools of engineering), in Western Germany 11 100 engineers graduated from university with a diploma, and 24 100 from the academies of engineering.

TABLE I. Universities and colleges of technology in the GDR, graduates in engineering, computer science and architecture: 1985 (7657), 1988 (7197), and 1989 (7465)

The structural differences in the training of engineers are particularly easy to see in the comparison between engineering graduates in 1988 given in Table II.

TABLE II. West-East ratio of graduates in engineering, computer science and architecture in 1988

*Only German students.

When these numbers of graduates are compared, the west-east ratio was 100:21. The figure for civil engineeringĺs was much more favourable, with a ratio of 100:38. For architects the ratio was 100:4, and just as unfavourable as for geodesy, with a ratio of 100:5.

The ratio between scientific personnel can be found in Table III, but some reservations must be made here. For the engineering sciences, including information technology, the west-east ratio was 100:37. This means that the ratio between staff and students was almost twice as good in the GDR.

TABLE III. Academic personnel in engineering, computer science and architecture

2. At the Time of Reunification

After the opening up of the Wall in 1989, and certainly after the unification of the two states and the formation of the five new Lńnder in October 1990, all the schools of engineering pursued the goal of continuing complementary university-level courses of study. By broadening the range of subjects offered and turning away from an orientation towards application typical of the former engineering academies, by the winter semester of 1990-91 almost all the schools of engineering had restructured their courses of study along the lines of the framework examination and study regulations in Western Germany. In addition to the removal of the study areas on Marxism-Leninism, which accounted for approximately 20% of the total course of study, the focus was directed towards strengthening university teaching and research for a large number of newly planned areas of training. All the academies admitted that their continued development into efficient and competitive university-level training institutions would, in addition to the formal restructuring of training and reorganization of the administrative organs of the universities, also make it necessary for the content of the subjects to become more uniform, both with regard to the subjects offered and to the strengthening of basic training in mathematics and the natural sciences.

At this point I do not want to go into further detail about university research, but I want to point out that research which was, above all, industrially financed had only been supported by the combines ("kombinat" industrial complex) since the 1980s. This financing by third parties (Drittmittelfinanzierung) was provided for in the economic plans of the industrial combines and "spent according to the output target" (plansollmń▀ig verausgabt) Again, these methods of financing meant that the relationship between university research and practical application was to the detriment of basic research in engineering science. Experimental research, especially in the field of basic research, was concentrated at the Building Academy which, in addition, also carried out tests on materials and undertook other tasks on behalf of the state. Since the major part of the research and development work was carried out in the combines and the Building Academy, it is not surprising that the basic facilities within civil engineering were judged by the German Science Council (Wissenschaftsrat) as ranging between "requiring additional equipment" and being "weak". These deficits in basic facilities also applied to computer technology and university libraries.

It cannot be denied that science and the universities in the old Federal Republic of Germany and in the former GDR had two different starting points as far as social and educational policy were concerned. While art and science, research and teaching are free in Western Germany, ž l of the East German regulations on the appointment of senior staff to universities of 6 November 1968, which were valid 18 September 1990, states that:

Above all, in the 1980s until reunification, it was almost exclusively newly appointed university teachers of this kind who had been chosen in a special selection process consisting of several "cadre sieves" (Kadersiebe) and from the point of view of Marxist-Leninist bias. Starting with admission to the "upper school", via admission to the course of study, the choice of subject to be studied, the possibility of becoming a research assistant, right up to appointment as a university professor and taking up honorary academic functions, the professors were increasingly seen as a "negative selection", as reliable insiders have stated. For purely demographic reasons, more and more pre-war professors, or their post-war colleagues trained in their tradition, gradually retired. During the past decade it became almost impossible to have a career within a university without party membership. This statement about negative selection first and foremost concerns professors in the humanities. It is to be understood statistically and, first, it does not apply to every university and every professor and, second, it does not apply to all those concerned in the same way. Among the engineers and natural scientists there were, fortunately, sufficient numbers of highly qualified colleagues who were not particularly involved politically.

It was clear that after reunification it would not be possible to follow the rules of the democratic game overnight. The first elections to honorary academic positions (dean, president, etc.) took place in Dresden in February 1990, still within the old communistic structures. Even in the free elections possible after 3 October 1990, the superiority in numbers of the teaching staff dominated by this historically developed "negative selection" at many universities meant that genuine self-renewal from inside would not be possible, since after 1970 the universities had to abide by a regulation requiring that:

Freedom of teaching and research was not tolerated until reunification, nor were European academic traditions nurtured. In view of these facts, it became clear that after reunification a fundamental renewal of university training could actually only be achieved at many universities by founding new universities or by refounding the old ones. It was, above all, the large majority of civil engineers who mainly formed the notable exceptions. The quality of their teaching and research was outstanding. there were certainly some black sheep, of course. But every colleague in the West should beware of judging too quickly, since there were certainly outstanding professors who are unequalled in the West as far as their qualifications and civil courage are concerned. At any rate, I have got to know such colleagues who stood firm and had excellent human qualities, people who did not exist, one would have thought. They lived and worked despite all the constraints placed on them, and despite being bullied, and followed the motto of the University of Hannover "Vitam impendere vero" (dedicate life to truth), as the Roman poet Decimus Juvenal (60-140) wrote.

3. After Reunification

In Article 38, ž l of the treaty on the establishment of German unity the German Science Council (Wissenschaftsrat) was given the task by the Federal Government and the Lńnder of ░undertaking a survey of publicly financed facilities for science and research. This survey is to serve the "necessary renewal" of these facilities, since in a unified Germany science and research also form an important basis for the state and society░.

On the basis of this legal requirement the German Science Council had to produce an expert opinion on the future structure of the university system in the new Lńnder, if possible within a year, and thus essentially lay down the basis for finance by the Federal Government. Working groups had to be set up in every field of science. They consisted of members from the German Science Council, representatives of the Federal Government and the Lńnder, and other experts.

In my function as one of these experts I was a member of the working groups on engineering sciences at the universities in the new Lńnder. In the final report of one of the committees in which I participated it was stated that:

The following institutions were surveyed by the working groups of the German Science Council:

Colleges of engineering of the West German type did not exist before reunification. The result of the evaluation worked out by the two committees of the German Science Council of which I was a member can be found in Table IV. This refers to the actual situation at the time when the report was prepared. The courses of study arranged according to Lńnder and universities were included in Table V as a recommendation for the future. For architecture and civil engineering, it was recommended that the schools of engineering in Wismar, Cottbus and Leipzig, and the Academy for Transport in Dresden should be dissolved and that they should be replaced by colleges of engineering which would be new foundations. In future, the university-level training of architects and civil engineers should take place only at the University of Technology in Dresden and at the Academy for Architecture and Civil Engineering in Weimar, as well as at the newly founded University of Technology in Cottbus. In addition, the training of civil engineers is also planned within the framework of a Faculty of Technology at the University of Rostock.

TABLE IV. Professors, admitted students and graduates in engineering, computer sciences and architecture in the new Lńnder before German reunification

TABLE V. Recommended cities and areas of instruction concerning engineering, architecture and computer sciences in the five new Lńnder and Berlin (East) after German reunification

The locations of the colleges of engineering to be newly founded as recommended by the German Science Council are arranged according to Land in Table VI. The figures in Table VII are to be understood as orientation values for the number of student places at colleges of engineering. In future, architecture, civil engineering and economic engineering, in combination with civil engineering, are to be provided at the locations shown in Fig. l.

TABLE VI. Cities where colleges of engineering were recommended to be established
in the new Lńnder and Berlin (East) after German reunification

*Courses in civil engineering.

TABLE VII. Recommended number of FH students for each new Land and Berlin (East)
after German reunification

Fig. 1. Cities in the five new Lńnder and Berlin where architecture, civil engineering and business administration in civil engineering are being taught in 1994. Source: Thiele

4. After the New Lńnder Had Been Founded

After the five new Lńnder had been founded in 1991 they developed different university laws, which were passed by the individual parliaments of the Lńnder during the course of 1993. They create the legal framework for the existence and development of the university scene specific to each individual Land. The evaluation undertaken in 1991 by the German Science Council was centralized, but developments in all five new Lńnder took a different course. With regard to the employment of new personnel in the higher education field, in particular, the Lńnder followed very different paths. In the area of conflict involving the removal of the totalitarian structures and their representatives, on the one hand, and the uninterrupted continuation of the training of young scientists, on the other, the Lńnder had to walk a tightrope between a radical new start and tolerable continuity. What was worth retaining had to be integrated into new structures, and at the same time the employment of new personnel had to be guaranteed.

The Land of Saxony bore the main brunt of academic training in the former GDR, with 19 universities and academies, 70 specialist schools and schools of engineering, ten institutes with branches of the former Academy of Sciences, three institutes each of the former Building Academy and the Academy of Agricultural Science, and 58 research facilities for which the State Ministry for Science and Employment had been responsible.

In the GDR the population of Saxony accounted for 32% of the total, and in 1988 57% of all graduates in the technical sciences from the higher education system were trained there. While the Land of Saxony was the location of roughly 50% of the colleges and universities in the GDR, there was not a single university within the borders of the present Land of Brandenburg, if one omits the College of Civil Engineering in Cottbus, the founding of which is said to have taken place in 1989 (there is no documentation confirming this yet). This meant that the renewal of colleges and universities in Saxony certainly posed the greatest problems since, for example, the number of posts for scientific personnel was to be reduced from more than 30 000 to approximately 12 000.

In addition, the Land parliament decided that from 3 October 1991 no GDR professors were allowed to be elected to a voluntary academic position or participate in a committee to appoint new professors. At the same time some of the professors were granted the right to work as "professors under the new law" on a temporary basis, a transitional from which gives them the same rights as professors appointed in accordance with the West German University Framework Law. Continuity in teaching was thus guaranteed by appointments to academic posts. The renewal was intended to start from scratch so that a new appointment was prescribed for every professorship. This means, for example, that in the Faculty of Civil and Hydraulic Engineering and Forestry at the Technical University in Dresden, where courses of study leading to a diploma in civil engineering, architecture, hydraulic engineering, water resources, landscape architecture and geodesy/cartography are represented by independent teaching areas, an architect colleague and myself from the old Lńnder together with two "retired professors under the new law" were nominated by the minister in Saxony to form the first appointment committee. In a shortened procedure two colleagues from the old faculty were thus appointed. Subsequently, this appointment committee dissolved itself, and a second committee was formed, and again it consisted of the two professors from the West and the two newly appointed colleagues from Dresden. Once again in a shortened procedure the names of a total of ten scientists were put forward to the minister for appointment to professorships of grades C3 and C4. These people come from the ranks of the "politically guiltless" teaching staff who had obtained their Habilitation degree (dissertation B). The remaining 13 professorships provided for in the list of posts available for civil engineering and those for architects are currently to be filled by means of traditional advertisement and appointment procedures.

Without going into further detail about the renewal in the new Lńnder, it must be stated that the professors of the newly founded Technical University in Cottbus were all appointed according to traditional appointment procedures, while at the Academy for Architecture and Civil Engineering in Weimar so far only former professors of the Academy for Architecture and Civil Engineering have been successful as a result of honorary procedures and procedures enabling those concerned to move from one post to another. Here, however, the first traditional appointment procedures are also under way.

In Mecklenburg/Vorpommern a three-stage procedure was used which consisted of one of each of the following procedures: an honorary procedure, a proposal to be qualified as a professor regarding Western standards, and a procedure involving the possible reappointment of the current holder of the post. For the new Faculty of Technology to be established in Rostock six civil engineering colleagues from the former Technical Academy in Wismar were given new posts, and the other six are currently being sought in a proper advertisement and appointment procedure.

Fig. 2. German cities with universities and/or colleges of civil engineering in 1994

In conclusion, Fig. 2 shows where it is possible to be trained as a civil engineer in Germany.

References

• [1] Empfehlungen des Wissenschaftsrats zu Ingenieurwissenschaften an den Universitńten und Technischen Hochschulen der neun Lńnder. Drs. 325/91.

• [2] Empfehlungen des Wissenschaftsrats zur Errichtung von Fachhochschulen in den neuen Lńndern. Drs. 326/91.

• [3] ROTHERT, H. (1990) Recruitment of civil engineering students in Germany: shortage or overflow?, European Journal of Engineering Education, 15, pp. 325-337.

• [4] THEILE, R. (1993) Probleme der Ingenieurausbildung in den neuen Bundeslńndern-Situation, Engpńsse, WŘnsche. Kontaktgesprńch zwischen Wissenschaft und Wirtschaft (Fa. Liebherr), Buchen, Austria.

This paper was originally published in the European Journal of Engineering Education, Vol. 20, No. 2, 1995. Its reproduction in the AECEF Newsletter was kindly approved by the author and by Professor Jean Michel, the editor of EJEE.

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