The ex-education minister does not allow himself a longer cooling-off phase. As a non-party head of department on an ÖVP ticket, the 66-year-old geographer resided on Minoritenplatz with a short break from the end of 2017 to December 2021. Fassmann has been associated with the Academy for a long time.Vienna. As early as 1981, Faßmann was hired at the OeAW Institute for Demography. Until 1992 he worked as a research assistant in the local Commission for Space Research. Faßmann has been a member of the philosophical-historical class of the Academy of Sciences since 2000. He has suspended his position as director at the Institute for Urban and Regional Research at the Academy for his term as Minister. From 2000, Faßmann was also a professor of applied geography, spatial research and spatial planning at the University of Vienna, where he also served as vice rector from 2011 to 2017 – he retired as a professor last year.
The scientist, who was born in Düsseldorf on August 13, 1955, completed his entire schooling and studies in Vienna. In 1991 he habilitated in the fields of “Human Geography and Spatial Research”. In 1996 Faßmann became a professor at the Technical University of Munich, but four years later he was offered a new position at the University of Vienna. In 2011 he was promoted to Vice Rector for Personnel Development and International Relations, later taking over the agenda for research and international affairs.
In terms of content, the married father of two children dealt with topics such as the role of foreign jobseekers on the labor market, unemployment, the development of migration in Europe over time, regional identities or the influence of place of residence on educational careers. His main research areas also include comparative urban research and development. The question about “Austria as an immigration country?” the geographer and social researcher approached in a book in the 1990s. In more recent research projects, he has dealt with the values and expectations of refugees in Austria or the situation of newly arrived refugees from Syria, Iraq or Afghanistan.
In December 2017, Faßmann began his first term as Minister of Education, which ended after the ÖVP-FPÖ government burst in spring 2019. The 2.04 meter man entered politics via the expert track – even as State Secretary for Integration, the later Chancellor Sebastian Kurz (ÖVP) relied on Faßmann’s recognized expertise. In 2010 he became chairman of the expert council in the Ministry of Integration.
In this function, the scientist tried to put facts in the foreground. He usually preferred to leave the interpretation to politicians – albeit with outliers. He advocated sanctions for parents who prevent children from attending school. He also advocated banning the headscarf for teachers.
From Faßmann’s first term as Minister of Education, the introduction of German classes, the headscarf ban for kindergarten and elementary school children (later lifted by the Constitutional Court), and the earlier obligation to use numerical grades in elementary school are remembered. In the higher education sector, new access restrictions were introduced in individual subjects, while Faßmann put the brakes on tuition fees.
At the beginning of 2020, Faßmann again took over the Ministry of Education in the turquoise-green federal government. The second term was clearly marked by the Covid 19 pandemic and his attempt to keep schools as open as possible. Ultimately, this only succeeded at an advanced point in the pandemic through the introduction of an extensive test system, which also drew criticism. Faßmann reaped this again and again in pandemic management: “I beg your indulgence again for the short-term nature of the measures and the transfer of information,” he said when he said goodbye.
At that time he also emphasized that the universities had achieved “proper budgeting”. In addition, he has succeeded in creating a “research policy from a single source”. He referred, for example, to the implementation of the long-planned Research Funding Act, the RTI strategy (research, technology, innovation, note) that will last until 2030 and the RTI pact for the current three-year period, as well as increasing budgets for research institutions or -sponsor. From today’s perspective, the signing of the new performance agreement of the OeAW, which Faßmann as Minister of Education concluded with Zeilinger in March 2021, does not appear to be without a certain irony. As head of the Academy, he will now manage a large part of the total budget of 428.5 million euros for the years 2021-2023 himself.
Source: Nachrichten
