It takes a little more than 2 minutes to cross the 240 meters of the central hall of the “reform university” Bielefeld. From the outside, you cannot see the place where all paths come together. However, the passage is more than just the strictly functional architectonic core of the complex, which, from afar, looks like a fortified castle in an old science fiction movie. It seems to have come from outer space and landed on the hill of Teutoburg Forest.

The hall was conceived as a “band of communication” and thus cast the concept of a reform university in concrete. Communication and interdisciplinary work were to consolidate University Bielefeld, which started its teaching activity on 17 November 1969, as a place of scholarship.

The traditional idea of a university came under strong pressure in the 1960s. The number of students increased quickly; society complained about a lack of university graduates. People feared an “educational disaster.” From the mid-1960s on, an unprecedented number of new reform universities were founded.

Helmut Schelsky, one of the most prominent sociologists of the time, proposed the concept for the reform university of Bielefeld. His aim was to establish a center of interdisciplinary scholarship in order to stop the shift of research from universities to business. To this end, he realigned Humboldt’s doctrine of the universities’ educational mission in the direction of training students to be objective. Some like to see in this a genuine Bielefeld school of thinking and even speak of a “syndrome.” This suspicion often seeks its justification in the (system) theory of the first and probably most famous professor in Bielefeld, Niklas Luhmann. However, those taking his theory, which tries to describe society rather than to improve it, as a synonym for the whole Bielefeld idea overlook the number of top-ranking scholars who taught and researched there: for instance, the literary historian Karl Heinz Bohrer, the historians Reinhart Koselleck and Hans-Ulrich Wehler, the educational philosopher Hartmut von Hentig, and the sociologist Norbert Elias, who was visiting professor in Bielefeld for six years. There is no doubt: In its heyday, the provincial town’s university was an intellectual metropolis.

Schelsky’s notions of reform often conflicted with the students’ emancipation movement. “I don’t think I agreed with a single one of the statutes supported by the majority,” remembered Niklas Luhmann later, looking back on the founding years when students and teaching assistants tried to implement their reform proposals in the faculties.

What did the “theoretical university” mean in practice, though? A structural numerus clausus should guarantee a professor-student ratio of 1:30, thus enabling professors to dedicate every second year to research. However, already in the planning stage, the number of students to be admitted was raised from 3,600 to 5,000; in 1979 it had reached 7,700 and today there are more than 17,000 students. This number does not correspond with the founding idea at all.

Nevertheless, the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research has endured and remains the university’s nucleus. Its establishment was a final attempt to reconcile the only formally existing “unity of disciplines” with the development of modern research conditions.

Niklas Luhmann, Helmut Schelsky, and Dietrich Storbeck at the Faculty of Sociology conference on 17 November 1969.

Photo: University of Bielefeld