Who is Niko Lamprecht, head of the historical past lecturers’ affiliation? | EUROtoday

Niko Lamprecht would not mince his phrases in terms of defending historical past educating. The chairman of the Federal Association of History Teachers (VGD) has shut connections to the regional associations and intervenes when low-cost Sunday speeches are used to defy historical past classes.

In Berlin, the federal affiliation has needed to intervene significantly usually lately. Because the protest of a state affiliation solely has the backing of the federal affiliation. Lamprecht’s explanations are essential as a result of they argue carefully and chorus from crude polemics.

This was additionally the case with the protest letter to Berlin’s Education Senator Katharina Günther-Wünsch (CDU). Their authorities deliberate to abolish the duty to check GDR historical past in higher secondary faculties in Berlin, of all locations.

In the meantime, she gave in in discussions with the regional affiliation and rejected her authentic plans. Both the Nazi period and the second German dictatorship within the GDR and overcoming the German-German division stay obligatory for highschool college students.

The 62-year-old Lamprecht has been on the head of the federal affiliation since 2023. In September final yr, the historical past lecturers confirmed him as federal chairman. In addition to historical past, he additionally teaches politics and economics in addition to music. He is aware of the issue of a mixed topic within the social sciences (historical past, geography, politics) like in Berlin and elsewhere. If historical past lecturers are lacking, historical past is taught otherwise or is shortened.

“History is a highly topical topic and will remain so,” he says. This makes him all of the extra resolute towards the exhaustion of historical past as a faculty topic and the dissolution of chronology into problem-historical subjects.

In his view, the thematic orientation have to be mixed with the chronological overview. He is aware of that it’s changing into harder to learn authentic sources in historical past courses, however he fights for it as a result of an increasing number of is being claimed and fewer is being confirmed. This is completed by esoterics and left-wing radicals, and the AfD can be lively in falsifying historical past.

After working at various kinds of faculties in Hesse – from the Vogelsberg-Landgymnasium to the Wiesbaden Niemöllerschule and the Hansenberg boarding college for presented kids, Lamprecht now heads the Klarenthaler Oberstufemnasium Carl-von-Ossietzky-Schule. He is the daddy of three grownup kids and lives within the Rheingau, “in the most beautiful area in Germany,” as he says.