Klaus Mollenhauer: His Book and Biography

• In Event: Roundtable Session 6
  In Roundtable Session: Culture and Upbringing: Introducing a 20th-Century Classic to Theory and Practice

Abstract

The first presentation is by the translator (Norm Friesen, PhD), and it will introduce the book, with its its unusual structure and mode of exposition; it will also survey Klaus Mollenhauer’s (1928-1998) biography, with his early political activism, and his later return to human science tradition. Each of the book’s six chapters addresses a particular existential question and an associated keyword or theme. These questions and keywords range from “Why do we want (to be with) children?” (keyword: upbringing) to “How can I work with others (and myself) through problems of identity?” (keyword: identity). Mollenhauer explores these and other questions and themes not in terms of abstract theory and principles, but through discussion of concrete examples from the worlds of (auto)biography, visual art, and history. Thus, in asking about the foundations of intergenerational relations (why do we want [to be with] children?), he begins by examining Kafka’s “Letter to His Father;” and in considering the question of identity, he undertakes a genealogy of its gradual problematization via the of the self-portrait, as rendered from Dürer to van Gogh.

The opening and overarching theme of "upbringing" –like "identity" and the others that follow— indicates the breadth of the book’s scope. Characteristic of the way education and pedagogy are defined as disciplines in Germany, Mollenhauer's purvue includes the realms of school, family and society. These are all implied in the German terms for pedagogy (Pädagogik), education and upbringing (Erziehung), and in particular, in the challenging term Bildung or "formation." Mollenhauer once characterized Bildung simply as the “way of the self,” and he explained his own responsibility as a pedagogue and educationist as "helping people, above all youth, to find the path of their Bildung," to help them become themselves in the world. In framing educational questions in this way, Mollenhauer also rejected the specialized language of both sociology and psychology and turns instead –like David Hansen and Charles Taylor after him-- to the field of philosophical anthropology, the study of the basic, shared circumstances of "being human."

Finally, Mollenhauer’s interests in existential and anthropological dimensions of education will be discussed in the light of his childhood at the war’s end, and his subsequent work as an activist and scholar. Forced into military service at puberty, Mollenhauer was taken prisoner by the British, and through these experiences, seems to have cultivated a keen empathy for the young and disenfranchised. Early in his career, he developed a politically-engaged theory and pedagogy that focused particularly on those marginalized. Mollenhauer also put this theory into practice, effectively liberating youth from imprisonment and abuse during the conformist Adenauer era in Germany. Mollenhauer also infamously defended the right of such escaped youth to steal to feed themselves, saying: "When pedagogical and legal norms are in contradiction, pedagogical norms have priority." In this light, Forgotten Connections represents an attempt to reconcile his early interest in emancipation with a recognition of the value of more traditional views of education.

Author

• Norm Friesen, Boise State University