"It wasn't a university, it was a school, so in the beginning." The Engineering School

Which obstacles made it difficult to set up an educational institution for engineers in Kassel after the end of the Second World War? What is the connection between a brewery and the Engineering School? And how did the '68 movement change the practice of training in mechanical engineering? We answer these questions in the second part of our short series on the history of mechanical engineering in Kassel.

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In the decades following the closure of the Polytechnikum, the need for personnel trained in mechanical engineering rose steadily in the Kassel region. For this reason, "officially approved mechanical engineering courses" were set up in 1908, which - with an interruption during World War I - continued until 1928. However, these courses could not meet the demand for trained specialists, because from the 1930s onwards, the calls for a state training school for engineers became louder and louder. Nevertheless, it took until 1955 before Kassel finally acquired its "Engineering School".

Due to the devastating bombing raids in 1943 and the lack of space continuing into the 1950s, teaching in the fields of mechanical and electrical engineering temporarily began in a school building at the Königstor. Then, in 1957, the foundation stone was finally laid for the buildings of the Engineering Schools of Civil and Mechanical Engineering on the site of the former Aktien-Brauerei and Aktienpark. Laboratories were built where the brewery's cellar facilities used to be. In the winter semester of 1958/59, the entire engineering school was able to begin operations at the Wilhelmshöher Allee location.

As the name "Engineering School" already suggests, the educational practice was immensely different from that of a modern university. "It wasn't a university in the beginning, it was a school," reminisces Rainer Herbold, who studied at the Engineering School from 1966 to 1970. Lectures were taught in a class setting and if you behaved badly, a negative note was made in the class register. At some point, however, this way of teaching was no longer accepted, says Herbold: "We were the revolutionaries and went on strike for 14 days every semester before exams. We wanted to be taken seriously and also campaigned for the abolition of class registers!" Largely forgotten today, the '68 movement changed the educational landscape not only at long-established universities, but also at the predecessor institutions of the University of Kassel.

Despite all the upheavals, the constant technical progress and the move to Holländischer Platz (Gesamthochschule Kassel), the study of mechanical engineering in Kassel shows a high degree of continuity and reliability. Subjects such as mathematics, physics, control engineering and technical mechanics are still central components of the curriculum today. The connection to the Engineering School has never been severed, as our mechatronics students still complete the majority of their courses at the Wilhelmshöher Allee location.

German text Daniel Koch

Source

Bennedik, Kurt (1965): 1955-1965. 10 years of the Kassel State School of Mechanical Engineering. Kassel.