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Helsinki Edition About Us |
East German Student in Focus "My first impression of Leipzig was horrible. Everything was grey - building sites everywhere but today Leipzig is a really beautiful city." Britta Meyer (23), born in Uslar, a small town in West Germany is a journalism student in Leipzig, East Germany. Britta came to Leipzig in 1995, five years after the reunification.Today, she is quite satisfied with both, her studies and the city. "There are many possibilities for gathering practical experiences. The students run the University radio, 'Mephisto 97.6'. Furthermore we edit a fortnightly published Campus-page in the newspaper 'Leipziger Volkszeitung'." Journalism students in Leipzig have to work practically for three months in order to receive the interim diploma after two years. Afterwards, journalism students have the option to undergo a traineeship at a TV or radio-station or at a newspaper. Britta decided to work at the newspaper, "Hessische/Niedersächsische Allgemeine", a regional paper situated in Kassel with a circulation about 270.000. Leipzig university is one of the oldest universities in Germany and was the first one, which offered an acadamical journalism education in Germany. The journalism section Leipzig had already been established in November 1916 by Karl Bücher. At that time it was called "Institut für Zeitungskunde". The national economist Bücher aimed to promote the idea of a practical training for newspaper journalists. He did not intend to establish an academically dominated newspaper science. About 20 years later the situation changed rapidly. During the Third Reich the fields of education were expanded by the Nazi Hans Amadus Münster: Radio and movies became a part of the journalistic training, although the office of propaganda opposed this idea. After World War II the university re-opened in 1946. At this time, the studies were characterised by both, continuity and new beginning. The political situation changed as well as the structure of the institute for journalism: it was not independent anymore, but became part of the faculty of social science.In 1954, the Karl-Marx-University Leipzig and the SED (the German Socialist Party) established the faculty of journalism which became the centre of journalism training in the GDR and put emphasis on teaching marxist-leninist ideals. Unofficially it was called the "red monastery". After the political changes in 1989 and the reunification of Germany in 1990, the journalism training in Leipzig had to change once more. Today the section of journalism is called "Institute of Communication and Media Science (KMW)". The process of transition and restruction took less than three years. A modified course of studies, still related to the old structures, started in the winter-term 1990/91. At the same time the institute for journalism had been established. This was turbulent because exams had to be postponed, the modified learning programme for the summer-terms had to be created. "Our major goal was to untie the 'Leipziger Journalistik' from its ideological fixation and political instrumentalisation. We wanted it to be open for a creative pluralism in science", remembers Prof. Dr. Karl Friedrich Reimers, founding dean of the new KMW- and Journalismstudies in Leipzig. "It is a pity that the history of journalism education in Leipzig is not on the agenda. You can read about it, but nobody tells the history of journalism training in Leipzig", Britta regrets. Clashes between East and West German students are not an issue in Leipzig. "There are no fundamental problems but from time to time we realize that we have had a different socialization", Britta explains. "Especially when we talked about children's books I clearly realized who came from Eastern and from Western Germany. The East-German students got really exited when remembering things of their childhood, the West-German had never ever heard about the books." Generally taken, the origin does not matters to Britta. "East or West - it makes no difference. Sympathy is what counts. I've got East and West German friends." Christian Hallerberg |
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