In memory of
Prof Dr Jürgen Zimmer

Jürgen Zimmer was an ex­tra­or­dinary per­so­nality with a very eventful biography.

After stu­dying psy­chology, he in­itially worked as a re­search as­sistant at the Max Planck In­stitute for Human De­ve­lo­pment in the 1960s with the leading pro­fessors Hellmut Becker and Shaul B. Ro­binsohn. Tog­ether with them, he de­ve­loped theories of cur­ri­culum de­ve­lo­pment for edu­ca­tional in­sti­tu­tions that un­derstood edu­cation as creative and pro­ductive learning for solving real life issues. In­stead of un­der­standing edu­cation solely as the re­pro­ductive ac­qui­sition of know­ledge available in the adult, aca­de­mi­cally edu­cated ge­ne­ration, he fo­cussed on the in­no­vative power of the next ge­ne­ration. A pa­radigm shift in edu­ca­tional re­search! In this view, children and young people, as well as their parents and neigh­bours, became the sub­jects of their own edu­ca­tional bio­gra­phies – not ob­jects to whom the 'right' know­ledge had to be im­parted by aca­de­mi­cally re­co­g­nised aut­ho­rities. The cri­tical theories of the Frankfurt School – Adorno and Hork­heimer – on coming to terms with German fa­scism and the li­be­ration pe­dagogy of the Bra­zilian pe­dagogue and phi­lo­sopher Paulo Freire – with his li­teracy cam­paign for op­pressed agri­cul­tural workers – were key in­tellectual and po­li­tical driving forces behind this pa­radigm shift. 

As early as 1964, a te­acher, Georg Picht, de­scribed the German edu­cation system as an edu­ca­tional ca­ta­strophe. After a few years of shock, po­li­ti­cians moved and in 1966 ap­pointed the German Edu­cation Council, which was made up of re­pre­sen­ta­tives from po­litics, ad­mi­nis­tration and science, in­cluding Jürgen Zimmer as an expert on the ele­mentary sector. This Edu­cation Council came to the con­clusion, among other things, that early edu­cation was of crucial im­portance for the edu­ca­tional bio­gra­phies of children and young people. Kin­der­garten became the focus of edu­ca­tional policy and became a field of reform with many hopes and expectations.

Jürgen Zimmer seized the op­por­tunity to apply his ideas of subject- and life­world-ori­en­tated cur­ri­culum de­ve­lo­pment to this edu­ca­tional sector. In 1971, he became head of the newly founded working group on pre-school edu­cation at the German Youth In­stitute (DJI). 

He and the staff of the Pre­school Edu­cation Working Group at the DJI thus became suc­cessful and pio­neering in­itiators of a fun­da­mental in­no­vation in the field of early childhood edu­cation and care that con­tinues to have an impact today. Re­co­g­nising children and their fa­milies as well as their ex­tended re­fe­rence groups as sub­jects and active creators of their living en­vi­ron­ments was the guiding prin­ciple. The fact that the prin­ciples of life­world-ori­en­tation, par­ti­ci­pation, in­te­gration and the re­spon­si­bility of po­litics to promote a child- and family-fri­endly en­vi­ronment are de­fined today in the Child and Youth Welfare Act, SGB VIII, which was nego­tiated at length in the 1980s and 1990s, is not least the result of this commitment. 

In the 1980s, Jürgen Zimmer shifted his focus to in­ter­na­tional work. In 1980, he was ap­pointed to a chair in in­ter­cul­tural edu­cation at the Free Uni­versity of Berlin. This opened up op­por­tu­nities for him to or­ganise study trips with stu­dents to other countries – in­itially to Turkey, one of the most im­portant im­mi­grant countries in Germany. This re­sulted in con­cepts and practice-ori­en­tated ma­te­rials for work in daycare centres and schools in Germany. Germany soon became too boring for Jürgen Zimmer. He was drawn to Ni­ca­ragua, a country that was trying to free itself from a dic­ta­torship at the time. Here he was the in­itiator of edu­ca­tional policy net­works and a po­li­tical ad­visor. It was here that he par­ti­cu­larly re­co­g­nised that edu­cation is always a question of com­munity de­ve­lo­pment. In 1983, he became Vice Pre­sident and later Pre­sident of the In­ter­na­tional Com­munity Edu­cation As­so­ciation (ICEA) and played a key role in es­tab­li­shing com­munity schools and centres in Germany and internationally. 

Since the mid-1990s, Jürgen Zimmer has been an in­itiator and key figure in the es­tab­lishment and further de­ve­lo­pment of the In­ter­na­tional Academy Berlin for In­no­vative Edu­cation, Psy­chology and Eco­nomics (INA gGmbH). His vision when founding the INA was to es­tablish a re­search, training and practice de­ve­lo­pment or­ga­ni­sation that would con­tribute to meeting global issues and chal­lenges with in­no­vative con­cepts in a university's re­search and tea­ching that tended to be di­vided along di­sci­plinary lines. He was in­stru­mental in creating op­por­tu­nities for people to work tog­ether who shared vi­sions for the de­ve­lo­pment of a de­mo­cratic edu­cation system and who would not have found a place for this in the uni­versity struc­tures. He was Pre­sident of the In­ter­na­tional Academy from its foun­dation in 1996 until 2017. 

In the 2000s, he in­cre­asingly shifted his ac­ti­vities to Thailand, where he founded the first School for Life – a school that opened up new op­por­tu­nities for children and young people who had little or no access to edu­cation in Thailand to educate them­selves and play an active role in the de­ve­lo­pment of their societies. 

Jürgen Zimmer cer­tainly gave everyone who worked with him a great deal of in­spiring im­petus and re­pea­tedly caused ir­ri­tation. He was cha­rac­te­rised by the fact that he was not afraid to ac­tively ap­proach people who came from back­grounds unknown to him and his es­tab­lished com­munity. He brought people tog­ether who would never have met wi­thout him. This opened up va­luable new ex­pe­ri­ences for those of us who took part. It also revealed dif­fe­rences that could not always be bridged, but were im­portant for cla­ri­fying positions. 

Jürgen Zimmer was a man with great vi­sions. Working them down into fe­a­sible steps under the given cir­cum­s­tances was not his thing. He usually suc­ceeded in winning over people who took on the en­dea­vours of these levels for him. 

Jürgen Zimmer and all his many con­tri­butors, ge­ne­ra­tions of stu­dents, col­le­agues in pro­jects and pro­grammes, po­li­ti­cians who sought his advice and that of his con­tri­butors, col­le­agues from the aca­demic world who argued with him, have cer­tainly had an enormous in­fluence on the de­ve­lo­pment of a de­mo­cratic edu­ca­tional land­scape. This ap­plies in par­ti­cular to the di­verse ac­ti­vities of the In­stitute for the Si­tua­tional Ap­proach in the INA and, above all, to the many daycare centres that have shar­pened and further de­ve­loped the si­tua­tional ap­proach co-founded by Jürgen Zimmer in their practice. 

All of this will con­tinue to live and work after his death. 

Jürgen Zimmer is sur­vived by his wife Birzana, five children and grandchildren. 

We mourn with them. 

Dr Christa Preissing, Pre­sident of the In­ter­na­tional Academy Berlin (INA gGmbH), Dr Doris Klap­penbach, Katrin Macha and Mat­thias Kracht (Vice Pre­si­dents), Monika Lentz (Ma­naging Di­rector), the share­holders and em­ployees of INA gGmbH