Klaus Mollenhauer Gesamtausgabe

Klaus Mollenhauer (1928–1998) is considered one of the most significant and prominent German educational theorists of the 20th century. The establishment of social pedagogy as an academic sub-discipline of educational science within universities is largely attributable to Mollenhauer’s theoretical contributions and his participation in public debates and professional discourses during the 1960s and 1970s. To this day, his name remains most closely associated with the fact that the concept of emancipation became a guiding principle for both general educational theory and the processes of professional self-definition within the fields of educational practice during the 1970s.

His work in the 1980s—which opened up educational science to questions of cultural theory and cultural history—is currently attracting significant attention, particularly in the Anglo-American and Asian spheres; similarly, his writings on aesthetic education became pivotal for research in that field during the 1990s. Portions of his work were translated into several languages ​​as early as the 1970s. While his later works are currently garnering international attention, his writings are now difficult to locate in Germany, often available only through antiquarian sources or scattered across various collections. This gap is to be addressed through a text-critical, annotated edition of Klaus Mollenhauer’s writings.

The edition of these writings—hosted on the "Klaus Mollenhauer Collected Works" (KMG) portal and supplemented by materials from his literary estate—is being produced by research groups at three different locations. Following the release of this online edition, a printed version—also available via open access and including a scholarly apparatus—will be published.