They have draped the book clearly visible on the table behind which the author is sitting. His portrait is not visible on the blue cover, which shows children at the computer. But his name is on it in black letters. Michael Piazolo has written a book, this Wednesday the Minister of Education (FW) will present it for the first time in Munich’s Seidlvilla. “DEMIAN” is the title of the work, including a smaller one: “Bavaria’s schools in digital awakening”https://www.sueddeutsche.de/bayern/.”There are different political styles”, the author tries to explain his intention. And there is a lot of political frustration. Piazolo thinks that politicians need to explain more.
“DEMIAN” has also become a statement. Some ministers write books before they become ministers, such as Federal Economics Minister Robert Habeck (“Das Land in mir”, 1990). Other ministers write books when they are no longer ministers, if only to justify their policies to posterity – see ex-Health Minister Jens Spahn (“We will have to forgive each other a lot”, 2022). Rarely, however, do ministers write books when they are ministers. Piazolo can now count himself among this rare species. Whereby: Is the book perhaps to be understood, so shortly before the end of the legislative period, as a farewell to the political establishment? Finally, there is a rumor that others could also imagine the Minister of Education job quite well. Piazolo, on the other hand, does not want to speculate about what will happen after the state elections. It’s all about being up-to-date, he says. Corona was the big topic in this “extraordinary legislative period” – a topic that nobody knows whether it will still be of interest in a few years.
And so back to the work, whose title is reminiscent of Hermann Hesse’s “Demian”. The book had only been sent to the press the day before as a digital version, but reading the 257 pages in full before the performance in the Seidlvilla did not allow for the brevity of a day on earth. Put simply, it is about educational policy in complex times; about how it took a pandemic to get the long-awaited digitization of schools rolling – and about where Bavaria stands today from the point of view of the Minister of Education. As he writes in the foreword, Piazolo opted for “a kind of mosaic” made up of three narrative strands as the form of representation. The first story should therefore be a tracing of the past few years, “as appropriate as possible with the most important political initiatives, facts, programs”. Piazolo reserved the second level for himself “as the direct bearer of action and reflection”.
The letters from the student Demians to the Minister of Education and his replies form the third strand. Demian is fictitious, but his writing is said to be based on a collage of real letters. A bit like Hesse’s Demian, Piazolo’s Demian is gradually getting older and more mature. Piazolo says he has made a lot of notes about his school visits and conversations over the past few years, also for self-reflection: He likes to think about decisions not only beforehand, but also afterwards. These notes have now been incorporated into the book. “DEMIAN” is also an acronym for “digitization, personal responsibility, multi-professionalism, individualization and sustainability”.
“You do that for yourself too”
These are already some educational references and seen in this way somehow appropriate for an education minister. But anyone who, in view of the recapitulation, hopes for concrete internals of the state government – quarrels, angry sayings, flying water glasses, something like that – will be disappointed. Piazolo left out some piquant things. The name “Söder”, for example, only appears four times in the search in the digital book version. And then only in footnotes. Such a minimization of the Prime Minister’s person is unlikely to have happened that often in this legislative period.
And now? The book is to be published next Monday, published by Allitera Verlag. Price according to the Internet: 19.90 euros – and one reading, as it says on the back of the cover, for teachers, students and their parents. It probably won’t take first place in the bestseller lists, but the topic itself is too cumbersome for that. Digitization likes to elude people, even though they know about it; Many just want laptops, tablets and the other technical paraphernalia to work, the how behind it is considered to be of secondary importance. Piazolo also lowered the sales expectations in the Seidlvilla. He’s “to be honest,” he says: a book like that “you do it for yourself.”