In Germany, you even have to learn how to complain. And so on this October morning five women are sitting in room 1.4 and practicing the correct structure of a letter of complaint – from “1st sender” to “8th signature” as part of the “German as a foreign language” course. Meanwhile, the first sounds of “Hotel California” can be heard from the room next door: a sign that the senior gymnastics are about to start. One floor up you first hear baby screams and then see deeply relaxed women who have just come from “Pilates for Mother with Baby”. And two doors down, Nicole Beck stands in a spacious workshop surrounded by soldering irons and saws and gives her course participants tips on how to forge their own personal jewelry.
Colorful togetherness: The Taufkirchen VHS is celebrating its 50th birthday this Monday.
(Photo: VHS Taufkirchen)
Welcome to the adult education center in Taufkirchen am Ahornring, which is very busy even on a normal working day in the morning. One of the visitors who is now sitting in the large lecture hall is Anton Schonlau. The 77-year-old came here today neither for goldsmithing nor for Pilates, but to talk. About the Taufkirchner VHS, which celebrates its 50th birthday this Monday and whose beginnings Anton Schonlau not only experienced but also helped shape. “It’s great to see how the adult education center has developed over the past 50 years,” says the native of Munich, who moved to Taufkirchen in 1971 – the very year the VHS was founded.
What has remained is the joy and commitment in the work for mental and physical fitness.
(Photo: VHS Taufkirchen)
His former classmate Peter Seebauer – later the first chairman of the adult education center – teamed up with some initiators at the time, says Schonlau. Among them were the mayor at the time, Josef Geisenhof, his successor Walter Riedle and himself, who took over the post as second chairman. “This group of very interested people,” says Schonlau, was of the opinion that Taufkirchen needed an adult education center. After all, the community experienced rapid change at the time: the Am Wald settlement increased the population from 1,600 to more than 10,000 in just a few years; A tranquil farming village became a lively suburban community – at lightning speed. “There was a modest infrastructure with a school and a kindergarten,” says Schonlau. “But something was still needed for physical training – and for mental training.” And so in 1971 the sports club DJK Taufkirchen and the VHS were born; A year later, neighborhood help followed.
In the beginning, the adult education center lived primarily from the voluntary commitment of its members.
(Photo: VHS Taufkirchen)
In the beginning, the adult education center lived primarily from the voluntary commitment of its members. The first offers were language courses, shorthand and ten-finger writing, says Silvia Engelhardt, who has been running the VHS since 2015 and who went through the old programs on the occasion of the anniversary. There were also flute courses for children – the stumbling block that led to the founding of the music school a few years later. Silvia Engelhardt says that the range was gradually expanded as early as the 1970s. In 1978 the VHS moved into its first permanent office in the old town hall; At the end of the 1980s, the facility found a permanent home in the primary school in the forest, together with neighborhood help and a music school. At that time, Anton Rottenkolber was already a full-time VHS director; the educator and folklorist shaped the adult education center for 28 years until his retirement in 2015.
The impressions from five decades of adult education in Taufkirchen show that fashion and technology are changing.
(Photo: VHS Taufkirchen)
Hildegard Rudolph has been associated with the institution for almost 40 years. She moved to Taufkirchen in 1982 and gave her first Spanish course at the VHS two years later. “I had studied languages and wanted to do something that could also be agreed with the children,” says the now 68-year-old. “The lessons at the adult education center were a good option.” Since that time, Hildegard Rudolph’s Wednesday evening has been reserved for the VHS. At first she taught in what is now the middle school; in the meantime her course is taking place in the VHS building on Ahornring, which opened in 2003 and represented a milestone for the facility.
Today, up to 10,000 people attend the approximately 500 courses and events at the VHS every year. Most of it comes from the community, says Silvia Engelhardt. But registrations have also been made from neighboring towns such as Unter- and Oberhaching and even from Munich.
The visitor numbers mentioned refer to the year 2019 – a time when most people still associated the word Corona with either the sun or beer. The pandemic also affected the adult education center, admits Silvia Engelhardt. Accordingly, her wish for her 50th birthday is “that we stabilize again after Corona,” says the VHS director. “And that will be a huge task.”
The Volkshochschule Taufkirchen invites you to celebrate 50 years of VHS on Monday, October 25th, for the anniversary celebration in the culture and congress center. Musical interludes are offered and the author and entertainer Rolf-Bernhard Essig appears. It starts at 6 p.m. Please register by e-mail to [email protected].