“Regulations down the loo”: the culture of conflict made in Bielefeld

The German Higher Education Framework Act had already caused major student protests when it came into force in 1976. The first amendment to it introduced, among other things, obligatory intermediate examinations, standardised periods of study and strengthened the role of professors in university committees. Ultimately, the protests of the Bielefeld students did not prevent the amendment, but confirmed the willingness of the local student body to engage in dispute. Often enough, the students directed their protests against the state policy and thus also against the university management. During his long term in office, Rektor Prof. Dr. Karl Peter Grotemeyer usually tried to open up a dialogue with the students and often showed that he was sympathetic to the position of the student body.

All University members united

In 1982, students, teaching staff and the university management even took to the streets together to protest against the state government’s planned cuts in the higher education sector. Hans Schwier, the NRW Minister of Science and Research, wanted to curtail the excessively high education expenditure by massively reducing the number of jobs and study places available for future teachers, thus preventing the impending flood of teachers in the state. The Bielefeld protest march with around 7,000 demonstrators, set off at the University and finished at the Alter Markt on 8 June 1982, ending with a speech by Rektor Grotemeyer. The Rektor criticized the state government sharply: “The rationale of the austerity measures of the past two years as well as those planned”, said Grotemeyer, “merely serve to continually rip open new holes in order to plug them elsewhere. This kind of patch up-job only creates new problems and makes existing problems worse. It cannot continue like this.”

The slogans and buzzwords were sometimes original, and sometimes less creative. Some protesters wanted to throw the “LPO ins Klo” (“Klo” is the German word for “loo”), expressing aptly their view of the tightened teacher examination regulations. Some marches turned into imaginative happenings, other marches were rather dreary; some attracted several hundred, others several thousand participants. However, all of the protest initiatives were built on mutual respect and understanding between students and university management for each other’s motives and goals as well as the willingness to communicate. This explains why, for a long time, Bielefeld University was spared prolonged conflicts.