Carl Heinrich Becker
Carl Heinrich Becker ( born April 12, 1876 in Amsterdam, † February 10, 1933 in Berlin) was a German orientalist and politician. 1921 and 1925 to 1930 he was Prussian minister of education (independent). He is regarded as the founders of modern, contemporary relevance of Oriental and at the same time as a major university reformer of the Weimar Republic.
Life
Becker came from an old Hessian merchant and academic family and studied from 1895 Arabic and religious studies in Lausanne and Heidelberg, where he became a member of the compound Rupertia. He eventually went to the Friedrich- Wilhelms- University of Berlin and received his doctorate in 1899, Dr. phil.
After research trips to the Middle East and completion of his habilitation thesis contributions to the history of Egypt under Islam (1902 ), he was appointed in 1908 to the newly created chair of history and culture of the Middle East at the Hamburg Colonial Institute ( a predecessor institution of the University of Hamburg). There he distinguished himself in the following years - including through the establishment of the journal Islam - as a pioneer of modern Oriental Studies that linked language and religious studies, historical and sociological aspects. At the same time he participated in the founding of the university plans of Hamburg's cultural Senator Werner von Melle.
Becker's reputation as an orientalist and committed high school reformers contributed significantly to the fact that he was appointed to operate the Ministerial Director in the Prussian Ministry of Culture, Friedrich Schmidt -Ott, 1913 at the Rheinische Friedrich- Wilhelms-Universität and 1916 at the University of Berlin. In the same year he was speaker in the Prussian Ministry of Culture, for which he initially wrote a memorandum on the future development of international studies in the Prussian universities. In it, he sat down - right in the First World War - for a better understanding of the culture of other countries to avoid future conflicts one.
After the November Revolution Becker was the new Minister of Culture Konrad Haenisch (SPD), appointed in April 1919 to the Under Secretary and coined in the aftermath of the Prussian university policy decisively. 1921, for a few months cabinet minister Adam Steger Forest, Becker remained active even then as Secretary of State under the Minister Otto Boelitz ( DVP ), before finally in 1925 under Prime Minister Otto Braun (SPD ) was re-appointed Minister of Culture and this office then without interruption until held in 1930. As a non-party ministers Becker became increasingly falling assailed by the various parliamentary groups and finally stepped back disappointed. His successor Adolf Grimme sat Beckers reform policy but essentially to the coming to power of the Nazis continued.
Becker himself took after the resignation of the minister his teaching at the University of Berlin on again. In 1931 he was appointed third vice president of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society for the Advancement of Science. In 1931, he also headed an international commission for review of the education system in China. The final report contained concrete measures to improve, of which the former Kuomintang government transposed some.
His son was the later educational researcher and co-founder of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, Hellmut Becker.
Hochschulreformerisches work
" Heart of all academic reform " by Becker's view was a comprehensive democratization of the university constitution, particularly through the extensive equality Extraordinarien and lecturer with the previously determined solely professors and a moderate participation of students at the university self-management. The latter he regarded as an important step for the training of responsible citizens and created, therefore, together with Otto Benecke, the first chairman of the founded in 1919 German Student Union, the legal basis of today's student administration ( Regulation on the formation of student bodies of 18 September 1920).
In addition to the organizational Becker endeavored to reach an educational reform of the universities, which should comprehend his view, not only as a "researcher " and " vocational schools " but also as " citizenship schools ". In particular, he sought even then complained disciplinary specialization through a strengthening of the " synthetic science " sociology, contemporary history, political science, including those supported by his studies abroad to compensate and also showed ideas for a " humanistic " foundation course for all students open-minded about. The same goal of a unified education system sprang also the realized under his leadership academization of elementary school teacher training through the academies, founded in 1925.
Large proportion had Becker also at the foundation of the German Academy of policy in 1920 and the German poet Academy 1926. Since 1927, he also served as President of the newly formed Abraham Lincoln Foundation, which lobbied for a strengthening of democratic forces at the German universities.
Honors
Becker was buried at Forest Cemetery in Berlin- Dahlem Dahlem. The tomb is one of the graves honor the State of Berlin.
In 1992, the then- Dietrich Shepherd Lane in Berlin -Steglitz was renamed after many years of discussion within the Borough Assembly in Carl -Heinrich -Becker -Weg.
Writings
- Christian polemic and Islamic dogma education. Journal of Assyriology and Near Eastern Archaeology 26 (1912 ), pp. 175-195 (online).
- Thoughts on higher education reform. Quelle & Meyer, Leipzig 1919.
- Culture Political tasks of the empire. Quelle & Meyer, Leipzig 1919.
- Islamic studies. From the Muslim world becoming and being. 2 vols source and Meyer, Leipzig 1924/1932.
- On the essence of the German university. Source and Meyer, Leipzig 1925.
- The Pedagogical Academy in the structure of our national education system. Quelle & Meyer, Leipzig 1926.
- Islam. In: Egypt and the Sudan. Handbook for travelers, Karl Baedeker, Leipzig 1928, p LXXXIII -CI
- The problem of education in the cultural crisis of the present. Quelle & Meyer, Leipzig 1930.
- With Marian Falski, Paul Langevin and Richard Henry Tawney: The Reorganization of Education in China. Report by the League of Nations Mission of Educational Experts. International Institute of Intellectual Co -operation, Paris 1932.
- International Science and National Education. Selected Writings ( = studies and documentation to the German educational history. Vol. 64). Edited by Guido Müller. Böhlau, Cologne 1997, ISBN 3-412-18296-6.