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Mourning for Professor Horst Weishaupt

The University of Erfurt mourns the loss of its former colleague and former Dean of the Faculty of Education, Professor Horst Weishaupt. The renowned educational researcher initially held the professorship for "Empirical Educational Research" at the Erfurt/Mühlhausen University of Education and from 2001 at the University of Erfurt. We have now received the news of his death.

Professor Weishaupt, born in 1947, played a key role in shaping empirical educational research in Erfurt. His colleagues appreciated his holistic view of education and upbringing, which led him, as he himself always said, "not only to turn the small screws", but also to focus on the big ones that hold the world of education and education systems together.

As a researcher, he was particularly interested in topics such as inequality in the German school system; the consequences of demographic change for the education system; school organisation and development; but also the role of Educational Science and educational research in our society.

Horst Weishaupt qualified as a teacher of Music and Art Education in 1967 after studying at the “Pädagogisches Fachinstitut Jugenheim”. After teaching at a school in Darmstadt for a year, he began studying education at the Goethe University in Frankfurt in 1968, with minors in psychology, sociology, musicology and Protestant theology. This was followed by his first position as a research employee at the “DIPF | Leibniz-Institut für Bildungsforschung und Bildungsinformation”. From 1992 to 2004, he was a professor in University of Erfurt before being appointed professor of "Empirical Educational Research" at the University of Wuppertal. In 2005, he was elected Chairman of the "Centre for Educational Research and Teacher Training" there. From 2008 to 2013, he again worked for the “DIPF | Leibniz-Institut für Bildungsforschung und Bildungsinformation” in Frankfurt am Main – as head of the unit "Governance and Financing of Education" (today: Structure and Governance of Education). Professor Weishaupt has been an honorary member of the German Educational Science Association since 2016. One of his great services to his subject was that he collected and reported on systematic data on the development of Educational Science and educational research in Germany at a very early stage, such as his report "Educational Research in the Federal Republic", which he published in 1991 together with Brigitte Steinert and Jürgen Baumert and which can be regarded as a direct precursor to the later series "Educational Science Data Report".

We will always honour his memory. Our thoughts and sympathy go out to his relatives.

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