Hellmut Becker as Schoolstatesman and Democratization of Schools in postwar Germany

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The aim of this study is to clarify the historical background of the democratization of German schools starting in the late 1960s by paying attention to the activities and educational theory of Hellmut Becker(1913-1993) as famous theoretical reader of this democratization of schools. The main results of this study are follows :1. Hellmut Becker, set up as a lawyer since German surrendared, became a legal advisor to Landerziehungsheim Schule Birklehof, whose principal, Georg Picht, was a great friend of Hellmut Becker since university period. With this as a momentum Hellmut Becker took an active part as a legal advisor to many private schools and also had a part in enacting the southwest German private school laws of 1950s.2. In addition to private schools Hellmut Becker became also a legal advisor to the various cultural- and academic organizations, especially Frankfurter Institut fur Sozialforschung, Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Psychoanalyse und Tiefenpsychologie, and Deutscher Volksschul-Verband, and contracted a friendship with many intellectual, which played an very important part in the demokratization of German postwar society, for instance M.Horkheimer, Th.W.Adorno, V.Weizsacker, A.Mitscherlich, etc. Through conversing with these intellectual Becker constructed his educational thought, which was underlied by the bilding up the "autonomous human" through the" autonomous school".3. The major reports of the German Council of Education ( Deutscher Bildungsrat), which offered the leading principles to the democratization of German schools starting in the late 1960s, were drawn up mainly by Becker's direct participation and his educational thought.