Honorary doctorates

With Hans Albert, the department honored one of the most influential theorists of science in our discipline. He coined the term " model platonism", by no means criticizing all models, but rather theories that are designed in such a way that they cannot be tested, i.e. cannot fail in principle when confronted with reality. This makes him one of the critical rationalists, of which he was the best-known and most important German representative. From this position, he criticized the Pope (Joseph Ratzinger's Rescue of Christianity: Restrictions on the Use of Reason in the Service of Faith, Aschaffenburg 2008) just as sharply as the Frankfurt School (keyword: Positivism Controversy). With his demands for interdisciplinarity and empirical relevance, he is well suited to our faculty.
Further information: https://hans-albert-institut.de/.

Ota Šik - a Jew, resistance fighter and member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) - studied economics after his liberation from the Mauthausen concentration camp and became a member of the Central Committee of the KSČ in 1962. At the time of the Prague Spring, he was Deputy Prime Minister and the mastermind behind the economic reforms, for which he coined the term "third way" between the market and the plan. Free prices for goods in conjunction with instruments such as employee participation were intended to ensure both efficiency and social justice. The invasion of the Warsaw Pact countries put a swift end to this; Ota Šik, who had grown up bilingual and spoke German as well as Czech, emigrated to Switzerland and became a professor at the University of St. Gallen (HSG). "Humane Economic Democracy" is the title of his main work from 1979 and stands for what he wanted and for which he was honored by our faculty.
Further information: Hans G. Nutzinger & Jiři Kosta: Ota Šik, Kassel University Speeches No. 8 (1990).

With Karlwilhelm Stratmann, the department honored an outstanding representative of modern vocational education historiography and a humanities-oriented educational theorist. During his academic career, Stratmann participated in various educational theory and vocational education discourses in Germany with around 140 published works. In his academic work, he aimed to reappraise the historical developments of significance for vocational education in order to adequately address the current challenges in vocational education. Through his many publications, he made a significant contribution to establishing vocational education as an educational science discipline. In collaboration with the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB), Stratmann initiated various congresses on vocational education and training history, the results of which still have a lasting impact thanks to a wide range of publications. In addition, he also participated in vocational education policy discourses. As holder of the Chair of Vocational and Business Education, he worked as a researcher and lecturer at the Ruhr University Bochum until his retirement in January 1997.

The University of Kassel honored Günter Wiemann, former President of the Lower Saxony State Institute for Teacher Training, Teacher Further Education and Teaching Research, Ministerial Director in the Lower Saxony Ministry of Education and Professor of Social Pedagogy at the former Technical University of Hanover (now Leibnitz University Hanover). Wiemann's greatest success, which still shapes vocational education today, was the testing and implementation of the basic vocational school year in Lower Saxony. During his professional and academic career, he promoted the combination of working and learning. Cooperation between schools and companies was therefore always at the forefront of Wiemann's vocational education and training policy. His work primarily dealt with questions of professional development in pre-vocational contexts and in initial vocational training. He shared his expertise in vocational education as part of his extensive international consultancy work. In addition to an honorary doctorate from the University of Kassel, Wiemann was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Technical University of Hanover in 1987 and the Russian Ushinsky Medal for Educational Sciences a year later.

The former President of the Federal Social Court, Matthias von Wulffen, was awarded the academic degree for his academic achievements in the field of social law. After working for many years in the Bavarian social courts, including at the Bavarian State Social Court and most recently as President of the Munich Social Court, von Wulffen was appointed to the Federal Social Court in Kassel in 1987, where he served as President from 1995 to 2007. The focus of his judicial and academic work concerned the law of statutory health insurance and also administrative proceedings under social law. From 2001 to 2005, Matthias von Wulffen was a member of the University of Kassel's University Council and was involved in the establishment of the tiered law degree course in Business Law.
Further information: Speech by Olaf Scholz on the occasion of the farewell of Matthias von Wulffen as President of the Federal Social Court.