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Germany is the biggest paper exporter in the world, the biggest paper producer in Europe and the fourth biggest producer in the world. It is also the biggest market in Europe and a major export market for European pulp producers. However, only three German pulp and paper companies made it to the top 100 list of the industry in 2010 and none made it into the top 50 (PPI 2011). This article describes the development of the German industry from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the present in order to explain the factors contributing to this unusual state of affairs in a country which, during the second Industrial Revolution, created major players in the new global oligopolies in chemicals, machinery and metals. In many lighter industries, such as paper, the focus remained on domestic markets, or foreign companies came to dominate the industry. To cover the development of the industry, the chapter relies on existing research and statistical sources to describe changes in production, trade, raw materials and technology; changes in firms and industry structure, and changes in regulation. The article also discusses government policies, major historical events and their effects.

COVID-19 has done significant damage to individuals, families, workers and the economy. What is not known about the virus is part of the problem, and the knowledge gap drives an unprecedented and urgent search for knowledge. This article explores the challenges for lifelong learning and the relevance of transformative learning. Disorientation, disorienting dilemmas and critical reflection are the ingredients of such learning, since we can only learn our way out of this situation. The authors present American adult educator Jack Mezirow’s theory of transformative learning (TL) as an appropriate learning framework for lifelong learning. They draw on the work of American philosopher Richard Rorty and German philosopher and sociologist Jürgen Habermas to re-shape TL so that it supports the kind of learning that is sufficiently complex and nuanced to enable us to deal with contradictions, ambivalence and meaning-making in a world where not-knowing is the new normal.

A scientific research paper is more complex than a simple reporting of events. It is a document written for an expert audience that represents the science community’s notion of valid argumentation. In this sense, it is a construction intended to persuade the reader of the validity of the claims. A historical review of scientific papers shows that the form of papers has changed dramatically. The current standardized structure allows the knowledgeable reader to access information quickly, identify the paper’s strengths and weaknesses and use it as a basis for further scientific work.

The impact of radical political changes had a surprisingly strong impact upon the universities in Hungary. In the twentieth century, Hungary was part of two empires (the Habsburg and the Soviet empires), suffered from two World Wars, lived under two totalitarian regimes (communism twice, Nazism once), and experienced several revolutions. One would expect that universities would provide asylums, hiding places for professionals to defend themselves in such stormy atmosphere. In fact, however, the universities proved to be one of the first points to which political changes were extended. Besides showing data about the political influences on the number of universities, personnel, and curricula, this paper intends to provide an analysis of this transition, and illustrate the mechanism of change on the basis of the Technical University of Budapest, focusing on the period of 1945–1953. This is the period of the introduction of the Soviet university model to replace the traditional German one. The paper aims to prove that the myth of expertise does not shield universities from political intrusion but it helps to make the intrusion somewhat endurable.

The Bologna process and other higher education reforms provoked outspoken resistance from academics and students in many European countries. The protest is particularly strong in some German speaking countries. This paper deals with the distinctive features of the academic culture of these countries and argues that opposition against Bologna is mainly driven by an insistence on Humboldtian traditions. Bologna and governance reforms are interpreted as a violation of academic values from the perspective of the Humboldtian tradition. Both reforms are regarded as utilitarian approaches that threaten the cultural profile and identity of the Germanic tradition. The controversy over Bologna is not the first ‘clash of values’ of this kind. For more than a hundred years the Humboldtian guardians in the German speaking countries resist modernization of their education system. The paper traces the historical continuities of these controversies and links the debate about Bologna with the ideological discourse of the ‘German mandarins’.

The implementation of the Bologna Declaration (1999) has resulted in major changes to degree structures in Germany. The recommendation to adopt a two cycle system of degree awards (Bachelor’s and Master’s) within a given time frame represents a radical conceptual shift for curriculum designers and policy makers in German universities where the traditional degree system consists of one block of study leading to a Master’s award. The process of this reform and its resultant consequences remain live issues in the university sector and can be observed as the focus for conference proceedings over the last six years. The reform has posed particular challenges to universities concerned with TVET Teacher Training, given the professional nature of this orientation. As the dust begins to settle on the landscape, a clearer picture of the newly established models for Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees can be observed. With four years of further development ahead, this paper outlines generic developments in the university sector in Germany and focuses on the newly emerging structures of Bachelor’s and Master’s programmes in the TVET Teacher Training sector. The paper considers the extent to which such developments have remained in keeping with the original intentions of the Bologna Declaration and the positive changes envisaged by the TVET Teacher Training sector. Some aspects of the reforms can be seen to offer new opportunities and advantages for students and employers, while others appear to suggest the opposite. The authors conclude that the resultant changes have created a multifaceted landscape for TVET Teacher Training, which requires a shared understanding of the new programmes by universities and employers alike, if the new degree models are to achieve their originally intended aims.

This paper investigates the relationship between the eminent 19th-century naturalists Charles Darwin and Carl Vogt. On two separate occasions, Vogt asked Darwin for permission to translate some of the latter’s books into German, and in both cases Darwin refused. It has generally been assumed that Darwin turned down Vogt as a translator because of the latter’s reputation as a radical libertine who was extremely outspoken in his defence of scientific materialism and atheism. However, this explanation does not fit the facts, since, on closer investigation, Darwin not only gave serious consideration to engaging Vogt as the German translator of two of his books, albeit ultimately rejecting him, but he also collaborated with Vogt on the French editions of his works. In this paper we argue that this was not because Darwin was unaware of Vogt’s personality and blunt writing style; rather, Darwin seems to have decided that the benefits he would gain from their association would clearly outweigh the risk of offending some of his readers: in working with Vogt, who was not only a knowledgeable scientist but also an avowed adherent of Darwinism, Darwin could be assured of the scientific quality of the translation and of an edition that would not distort his central concepts – both of which were by no means matters of course in 19th-century translations of scientific works.

Orsted is best known for his discovery of electromagnetism in 1820, clearly his most important and arguably h is only significant contribution to ‘science’ understood as a body of knowledge pertaining to a canonical set of fundamental phenomena. Yet if by ‘science’ one understands the flesh-and-blood, words-on-paper world of ongoing human activity that produces such knowledge, then Orsted’s contemporary significance looms much larger. It turns out that a striking amount of the work of other scientists became known principally through his agency, sometimes becoming so transformed in the process that what the larger world of science took, and continues to take, as others’ work in fact bears the strong stamp of Orsted’s transmission. His fluency in German and French, his extensive European travels, and his wide circle of acquaintances all facilitated his personal influence. This paper examines in detail Orsted’s role in presenting—and significantly transforming—Winterl’s dualistic chemistry, in bringing before a Parisian audience Ritter’s experiments on the chemical action of light and his construction of a storage column for galvanic electricity, and in recasting Seebeck’s discovery of the “magnetic polarization of metals by temperature difference” in terms of his conception of thermoelectricity. It further examines some of the changes Orsted made in the presentation of his own work to different audiences—changes that throw in particular relief Orsted’s complex relationship to German Naturphilosophie—as it identifies some of the peculiar aspects of his presentation of his electrodynamical work of 1820. The result is an enhanced appreciation of Orsted’s important place in the science of his day, a deeper understanding of Orsted’s own scientific work, and an illustration of the complex interrelationship between individuals and the scientific community in the creation of generally accepted scientific knowledge.