Michael Hartmer, a lawyer, was the managing director of the German University Association for 37 years, and has now retired at the age of 66.

Hartmer is a Westphalian, the humanistic grammar school in his native Hagen left a deep mark on him.

The German teacher there taught him early on to think in terms of thesis, antithesis and synthesis.

“Clarity, truth, honesty, no fuss”, these were his father's values ​​and actually his own too - perhaps with a little more fuss, he says of himself. He received his doctorate from the constitutional lawyer Ulrich Battis, who was then rector of the Fernuniversität Hagen was, with a thesis on the "disciplinary law of the liberal professions".

Heike Schmoll

Political correspondent in Berlin, responsible for the “educational worlds”.

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When he joined the German University Association as the second managing director in 1985, the association still had 12,000 to 13,000 members.

There are now 33,000 - that corresponds to a level of organization of 70 percent of university lecturers and academic staff at colleges and universities.

The office in Godesberg has grown from 11 employees to 70.

During his tenure, the budget of the German University Association has quadrupled.

Hartmer doesn't know half-heartedness

When it came to defending the freedom of science, Michael Hartmer showed no mercy. "We have to do something about this injustice," he said resolutely and offered the association's university law expertise and Westphalian stamina. He didn't know half-heartedness. He hated boastfulness and mendacity, and the expression of displeasure was quickly recognizable in his facial expressions. He took decisive action against the defamation of individual scientists such as the Bremen brain researcher and head of the laboratory for cognitive neurophysiology, Andreas Kreiter.

He argued sharply, but always personally committed and without regard to any party books.

The same applies to the failed presidential election procedure at the University of Göttingen, from which Lüneburg President Sascha Spoun initially emerged, but then withdrew.

In his glosses in the journal “Research and Teaching”, which has long since been more than an association journal, he regularly commented on university policy processes and impaled them with a sharp pen.

Hartmer has made DHV a flourishing company with several subsidiaries, including the fee-based coaching of university lecturers by lawyers, the many seminars that the association offers, and other subcontractors.

The "control freak" gives up the rank

For many professors, the DHV is the institution from which they can expect effective legal advice. And because the means of pressure are becoming more diverse in times of political correctness, most of them secure themselves against possible arbitrary acts in the scientific system. Hartmer was bubbling over with ideas and suggestions and has kept the employees of the office on their toes. There is hardly any professorial self-love and vanity that would have remained hidden from him during his long tenure.

Whoever speaks the longest in the DHV gets the most applause - but not for the quality of his utterance, but for the relief that the intellectual numbness of tolerance was allowed to unload in motion, he said almost casually in his farewell speech.

He described himself as a pessimist of purpose and a "control freak", which was not hidden in the office.

At the same time he was full of empathy and humor.

His successor will be the university lawyer Yvonne Dorf, who with a thesis entitled “The university professor - university professor as a civil servant.

Self-evident and / or necessity? "

She has worked as the second managing director at DHV since 2019.