In memoriam: Ursula A. J. Becher (1934–2023)

Ursula A. J. Becher took over as director of the Institute in October 1992 and remained in the position until her retirement in 2000. She guided the Institute during a period of great social and pedagogical upheaval following the revolutions of 1989. Under her leadership the GEI developed numerous research and transfer projects that responded to the needs and wishes of post-socialist states in Central and Eastern Europe for close cooperation in Europe. She advocated an objective dialogue in which there was always room for dialogical reflection on common history and the future. The Joint German-Polish Textbook Commission, founded in 1972, played a significant role in her endeavours. She was committed to ensuring that textbooks provided a balanced and diverse depiction of historical and socially relevant topics and could therefore make an important contribution to cultural education, understanding and to the dissemination of values. Ursula Becher was particularly committed to strengthening historical educational perspectives and researching historical scholarship. As early as the mid-1990s she proposed that the GEI research digital educational media in addition to printed textbooks. As an expert in history didactics and textbooks, she contributed significantly to the development of textbooks with her professional expertise and passion for education and academia. She always encouraged textbooks and educational media to be viewed in terms of their great potential to be instruments of enlightenment and social progress.
The Leibniz Institute for Educational Media | Georg Eckert Institute will remember her with gratitude.