Student at any age

Deutsche Welle: Mr. Sloterdijk, the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design was founded in 1992 and you have been the head of the university for 10 years now. How does your university distinguish itself from others that also deal with media design in this digital age and in a time where the use of media is being taken for granted?

Peter Sloterdijk: We should not forget one thing: When the university was founded, it was avant-garde, not only according to German standards but also according to European standards. We have resumed the Bauhaus tradition - one of the few traditions of the German art and art history of the 20th century, which is nothing to be ashamed of.

In its later stage, the Bauhaus of Weimar and Dessau was called University of Design and when Otl Aicher [one of the pioneers of corporate design] took up the art of design (…) he of course used the principle of the "University of Design."

In today’s media world, the founding head of the university, Heinrich Klotz, was then able to start the University for Design Karlsruhe together with the Center for Art and Media Technology, which is our sister institution. During that time, this university was absolutely avant-garde and it has remained so to this day.

You mentioned Bauhaus, which has many recognizable characteristics. Do you think that in 10, 20, or 30 years, people will say, "That was typical Karlsruhe," about projects from the University of Design?

Yes. The University of Arts and Design, Karlsruhe distinguishes itself through the new education concept it has introduced and implemented. We educate our students in such a way that they sometimes have to deal with projects related to reality as early as their first semester. We believe that the best way to trigger the creativity of young people is not giving them many academic assignments but inviting them into the "reality studio" as soon as possible. That is what has always been done here.

We've had two young people who designed new door handles in their second semester and, lo and behold, they are now selling them all over the world. Things like that show that our education concept, which is a concept of project-based studies, works very well. We don't do academic shadowboxing; we let students work on real projects from day one. This is the idea that Heinrich Klotz [German art historian and founding director of the Center for Art and Media Design Karlsruhe] had after the utopian projects of the Bauhaus. It is an idea that even today proves to be successful.

I've asked you about the future because I want to talk about the Studium Generale which you and your colleague Bazon Barock have initiated under the title "The Professional Citizen." It is a series of courses that everybody can attend in order to become more professional and gain skills in a particular field...

This is something that has to be differentiated from the actual mission of the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design. (…) We have established "problem faculties" - what you might call "basic subjects for life." We assume that everyone is a patient, everyone is a consumer - and that everyone as a citizen is concerned about politics. Everyone has questions about faith; everyone is a reader or a recipient. These five key anthropological statements about human beings - people as readers/recipients, consumers, citizens, patients and religious beings - are reflected in the subjects people can study.

People have a tendency to consume, but we can also learn how to consume better. A person can change their consumption habits, they can face a religious leader with more confidence as an enlightened religious person, as a citizen they can professionalize themselves in dealings with politicians and become "professional" voters.

These courses take two years. After that, there are some rather simple exams and everyone can leave with a diploma certifying that that are a qualified consumer, a qualified patient, a qualified recipient, a qualified citizen and a qualified religious person.

I want to go back to your "vision for universities" and how you see this university as being a "citizen university" in a few decades. I have a feeling that this dinghy is supposed to become one with the mother ship sometime in the future. Am I right?

This can not happen for various legal and constitutional reasons. The "professional citizen" course we offer here is an artistic and political initiative. It is a project. It is not a school that has the status of an official institution according to the university law of the state of Baden-Württemberg.

But I thought you wanted to take that way so that academies can open to citizens...

That's right. We have taken up the impetus that has been felt in German universities for decades now. This also has to do with the change of age distribution in our society.

Many elderly people are now coming to universities because they want to do things in their later years that that younger people typically do.

They want their lives to end with learning just as it began with learning - which is a nice idea.

The opening of the university to all citizens is built on certain utopian tendencies that already existed in the 19th and 20th centuries. You're not finished with your education when you leave school as a youth. This is what these people feel, too, and so they want to continue learning. I think it's good for our university to use our resources to pick up and develop this impetus.

Interview: Gaby Reucher / es

Editor: Kate Bowen