Sybille Volkholz

Sybille Volkholz is a German educationalist and a former Berlin senator.

Life and works Sybille Volkholz was born at Dramburg (as it was known before the frontier changes mandated in 1945), a small manufacturing and market town in Pomerania, positioned at the edge of the marshy flatlands east of Stettin. Her birth coincided with the start of an eighteen-month period of intensive ethnic cleansing. She grew up and, till 1963, attended school far to the west, in Essen. She went on to study Sociology at Bonn, Cologne and the WWU (university) at Münster, from where in 1967 she received her first degree. That was followed by a three-year stint between 1967 and 1970 as a research assistant at the (subsequently expanded and in 1971 rebranded) Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, while studying for a career in the teaching profession. Then came a period of study in schools-level teaching at the College of Education (“Pädagogische Hochschule”) in West Berlin. Between 1972 and 1979 she taught at a secondary school in Berlin-Charlottenburg. Between August 1979 and March 1989, she attended a Teachers’ Training college (subsequently redesignated as a “Fachschule für Sozialpädagogik”) in the city. (“Ich habe viele Kämpfe durchgestanden für eine bessere Akzeptanz von behinderten Kindern”.) The already uneasy coalition between SPD senators and their Green-facing colleagues broke apart. The three Green senators were persuaded not to pursue their motion of no-confidence, but Sybille Volkholz, along with her like-minded colleagues Michaele Schreyer and Anne Klein, did resign. The Momper administration lost their majority: the political crisis resulting was less acute than might be thought, since new elections had already been scheduled to take place the next month. Following the 1990 Berlin state election Volkholz continued to serve as the AL spokeswoman on education, retaining the role following the 1993 party merger as a result of which the AL was subsumed into Germany's newly expanded “Green Party”. It was as a candidate from the party list that in 1990 she was elected to membership of the Berlin state parliament (‘’” Abgeordnetenhaus”’’), in which she retained her seat till 1999.

During the early decades of the twenty-first century Volkholz has continued to advocate improvements in the way that Germany organises its schooling. One theme to which she returns derives from the way in which the state has become ever more intrusive in society, notably in the field of education. The belief that the state is willing and able to solve all society's problems is not merely misguided, but discourages individuals from taking any responsibility for schools. She is an advocate for increased “inclusivity”, and for greater involvement of non-teaching professionals in the functioning of schools, often as volunteers, basing her ideas on an understanding of school organisation in North America. Local business leaders and of course parents could and should be encouraged to become far more hands-on in their involvement with individual schools. To some extent trends in what was West Berlin before 1990 have indeed moved in this direction, not on the basis of some great eureka moment on the part of government, but because ideas championed by Volkholz have become increasingly mainstream. Between 2000 and 2004 Volkholz headed up the Education Commission of the Heinrich Böll Foundation and also led the “Schools-Businesses partnership” of the Berlin Chamber of Commerce. From 2005 till 2015 she teamed up with the VBKI (‘’Association of Berlin Businesspeople and Industrialists’’) to organise a “Citizens’ Education Network” (subsequently renamed “Berlin Reading Sponsorship”) which organises volunteers to help promote and teach reading at primary and secondary schools to children in need of extra encouragement and engagement to master these vital skills. Since 2013 she has played a leading role with the “Training and Education Advisory Board” of the Brandeburg Gate Foundation.