Impressions typical of the time

"Civic education seems essential if democracy is to flourish. [...] Education for international thinking is still in its infancy."

(Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze 1950: 37)

"Social work in the welfare society [...] So why do we still need social work, why do we still need welfare organizations? [...] Increased freedom and a higher standard of living are initially not an opportunity for some people, but a source of difficulties."

(Dietmar Freier 1966: 16)

"The social worker had not found any understanding from the administrator because, as a notorious dilettante [...] he had not been able to explain what he was doing in a comprehensible way. But now it is possible for him [...] to justify to an administrator that he is using the integrated methodology. The pleas of an expediently communicating social worker, the magical power of an eloquent pied piper, also softens the brittle obduracy and the calculating nature which, strangely enough, are so frequently occurring character traits of 'administrative critics'." (Rüdeger Baron 1978: 158)

"Market instruments such as competition and marketing must also be more firmly anchored in social policy with the aim of orienting services more towards the actual addressees and customers again, without jeopardizing the basic provision achieved through state social policy."

(Dietmar Freier 1989: 43)

Experiences in cooperation with colleagues from East Berlin (1991)

"The entire living conditions are changing: income ratios, consumer behavior, the balance of security and insecurity, social relationships, etc. All this is not only important for professional work and for those entitled to help, it also changes one's own personal life very profoundly." (Dietmar Freier 1991: 46)

Franco Rest (Dean of Faculty 8) on the 50th anniversary:

"Perhaps internationalization, the compulsion to thoroughly evaluate our teaching, the impending loss of values and attitudes in the face of economic and cold management pressures will soon force us to do justice to history, master the current problems and prepare a future for the people entrusted to us - from students to clients - that overcomes class hatred, makes room for an unconfessional but resolute Christianity and secures social peace, as Prof. Dr. Siegmund-Schultze wrote in the family book in 1948." (Franco Rest 2000: 21)