The old saying that we do not learn for school but for life is something that most schoolboys questioned at the latest when they were supposed to learn the citric acid cycle by heart in biology. Sure, it has something to do with life – but with your own future?
After all, for those who want to learn something after school that could somehow help them in life, there is the adult education center. This is an institution that has always felt there. And one is not completely wrong: 125 years ago, on December 21, 1896, the “Volks-Hochschul-Verein” was founded in Munich as a forerunner of the Munich adult education center.
This early adult education center was based on the ideas of the economist and social reformer Ludwig Joseph “Lujo” Brentano, a nephew of the writers Clemens Brentano and Bettina von Arnim. At that time, the events were still very academic, after all, the lecturers were mainly professors from Munich universities who gave lectures in the evenings for a wider audience. Early topics were economics, but also educational lectures on hygiene and the need for vaccinations.
When it comes to topics at the adult education center, one has always moved with the times
You can see that some topics at the adult education center are as relevant today as they were then. But at the beginning of the 20th century, the adult education center expanded its range of programs: There were lectures on Buddhism and Beethoven, biology and bathing culture. Of course, the topics kept pace with the times. One hundred years ago, for example, Professor Erich Becher gave a lecture on the “materialist worldview” on four evenings, his colleague Professor Jakob Strieder on “German early capitalism”. In the program booklet of the 1920/21 course there is an important note for the course participants: “If the lecture room becomes impossible to heat due to the coal shortage, the listeners are asked to keep their coats on during the lecture.”
VHS program from 1917/1918
(Photo: VHS)
In the early years, the evening lectures were mainly held at the Technical University or the Ludwig Maximilians University; in the 1920s, the headquarters of the Munich Adult Education Center, as it has been called since 1923, was in the southern tower of the Isartor. This was the first time that the MVHS had its own location following a decision by the Munich City Council.
Politicians recognized the great importance of the adult education center for the city early on. Munich also sponsored a second educational institution early on: the “advanced training courses for workers” organized by students took place in urban training rooms. There workers could learn to write, read and do arithmetic.
After the war, the Allies relied heavily on adult education centers for democratic educational work
There were of course dark chapters in the long history of the largest adult education center in Germany. The historian Edith Raim is currently researching the Nazi era and its influence on the educational institution. Those in charge of the adult education center wanted to avoid a ban or closure and described themselves as a “national educational institution”. After 1945 the Allies relied heavily on adult education centers with “Reeducation”.
The Munich adult education center opened its doors to the population again in spring. The offer was more diverse and bigger than ever, the lecturers came and still come from all possible fields: Between 1994 and 2007 alone, Professor Joachim Kaiser gave more than two hundred lectures. With a total of 170,000 visitors, they were the most successful events at the adult education center.
The composer Carl Orff also stopped by at Haus Buchenried, a branch of the MVHS on Lake Starnberg. And former Lord Mayor Christian Ude attracts numerous listeners with his regular political discussion evenings. “I don’t know of any comparable place in our urban society where the integration of urban society in the broadest sense and thus also social cohesion are promoted so strongly through education and encounters,” said Mayor Verena Dietl (SPD), who is chairwoman of the MVHS supervisory board . The adult education center is actually a school for life.