25 Years vs. Five Months
Thomas Krüger led Germany’s Federal Agency for Civic Education (BpB) from 2000 to 2025. His successor, Sönke Rix, resigned after just five months.
The Book Maps the Battles
Historian Tim Schanetzky examines that question in “Politik der politischen Bildung,” published by Wallstein Verlag in 2025. The 252-page book traces the agency from its 1952 origins as the Bundeszentrale für Heimatdienst to today, and reviews collected by wallstein-verlag.de call it a “kleine Demokratiegeschichte.”
The monograph grew out of the research project “Ideas and Practices of Democratization after 1945,” funded by the Federal Commissioner for Culture and Media within the program “Central German Authorities and National Socialism.” Ronny Noak, a doctoral candidate at Friedrich Schiller University Jena, reviewed the volume; he has published 30 reviews.
“Letztlich ist dieses Buch eine kleine Demokratiegeschichte, die den Wandel der Vorstellungen von Demokratie und die Auseinandersetzungen darum hervorragend und anschaulich darstellt,” Isabell Trommer wrote in the Süddeutsche Zeitung on December 1, 2025.
From Re-Education to Crisis
The review on socialnet.de outlines a book examining political education from 1945 to the present, including the 1968 student movement. Schanetzky, a Privatdozent at the University of Freiburg, shows civic education became a battleground over democracy itself.
Schanetzky previously worked at the Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut Essen, where he held a DFG Heisenberg position from 2022 and led the "Crisis of Criticism" project.
In the 1950s, the agency immunized West Germans against communism. The 1970s Beutelsbach Consensus emerged as the central agreement, socialnet.de noted.
Reviewers Split on Length
The page count drew notice. socialnet.de lists 252 pages, while Tobias Schrörs wrote in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on October 28, 2025, that the book was “lesenswert und gemessen an seinem komplexen Gegenstand mit 200 Seiten durchaus schmal ausgefallen.”
Phillip Wagner wrote in H-Soz-Kult on February 16, 2026, that Schanetzky “demonstriert mustergültig, wie man der etwas angestaubten Geschichte der politischen Bildung durch eine demokratiehistorische Leitfrage neues Leben einhauchen kann.” Hans Jürgen Luibl called it in Erwachsenenbildung 2/25 “eine spannende und so erhellende wie ernüchternde Relektüre der politischen Bildung der letzten 80 Jahre.”
Hans-Joachim von Olberg noted in Politisches Lernen 1-2/2026 that “(Schanetzkys) Buch eröffnet viele neue Aspekte und andere Interpretationen als die bisherige Geschichtsschreibung der Politikdidaktiker auf die Entwicklung der politischen Bildung in Deutschland.”
Civic Education’s Open Questions
What is the Beutelsbach Consensus? A 1970s agreement that remains central to political education in Germany, according to socialnet.de.
What does the book cost? 26 euros in Germany and 26.80 euros in Austria, socialnet.de reported.
Worth a look