Birgitta M. Schulte. In search of the past

“Grün und Blau – Polackenfrau!” (“Green and blue – Polack woman!”). As a six-year-old in her first year of primary school, Birgitta had no idea of the meaning of the words that she and the other children were calling after one of the other girls there. Certainly, she couldn’t have guessed that they might actually have been used against her. When she looked down, she could see the green and blue colours in her neatly pleated skirt, just like the other girl. 

Birgitta M. Schulte was born in Bochum in 1951. Although she was enrolled at the Drusenberg primary school there, she soon had to leave her first-year class. Her parents moved to Steinheim in Westphalia, where they had the opportunity to run their own chemist’s shop, and took Birgitta and her brother, who was five years younger, with them. From year five onwards, she attended the structured secondary school in Detmold, which was later renamed the “Grabbe Gymnasium”. It was here that she took her “Abitur” (“A-Level”) school-leaving exams. Her father had already sat his Abitur at the Freiherr vom Stein structured secondary school in Recklinghausen, the first grammar school in the Ruhr region to take on pupils from “Haupt- and Realschulen” (less academically oriented lower secondary schools – translator’s note), and thus, especially, helped children from workers’ families to gain a higher education. This was just the kind of academic opportunity of which Adam in “Ruhrgemüse, polnisch” dreams. 

Her father wanted her to enter the family business at the chemist’s shop. Under pressure from him, she went on to study pharmacy. After doing so well at school and enjoying learning as a pupil there, she now had difficulty coping with the exams. At some point, she decided to quit. She simply didn’t want to be a pharmacist, and this was something that her father had to accept. Finally, Birgitta M. Schulte began studying to be a teacher of German and political science in Braunschweig and Bremen. She published her final thesis on Ödön von Horváth and then began work not as a teacher, but on the editorial board of the “educational magazines” division of the Westermann Verlag publishing house. Later, she contributed to the youth trade union magazine “ran”, as well as to “päd.extra”, a self-administered operation that published books and an influential magazine for teachers, as well as a journal on social work. 

In 1984, Schulte went one step further and went freelance as a journalist. Initially, most of her work was produced for radio. Her contributions here included items on gender relations during the First World War for the “Kultur und Wissenschaft” (“Culture and Science”) programme on the WDR station, as well as half-hour features such as “Der Beinah-Mord in Mesopotamien. Agatha Christie und die Archäologie” (“The Near-Murder in Mesopotamia. Agatha Christie and Archaeology”) for the Hessischer Rundfunk radio station. She also took on work for radio broadcasters such as Deutschlandfunk and Radio Bremen. Schulte also wrote an impressive range of articles for the print media. Her work was not only published in specialist journals such as “Pädagogik” (“Pedagogy”), “Deutsche Lehrerzeitung” (“The German Teacher’s Newspaper”) and “Erziehung und Wissenschaft” (“Education and Science”), but also in well-known daily newspapers such as the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”, the “Tagesspiegel” and the “Frankfurter Rundschau”. Her main areas of interest soon became apparent. As well as “education”, she was also interested in “women”, “culture” and “ecology”. 

As a journalist, standing still is simply not an option. Schulte was constantly delving into interesting new topics and has still not lost her love of learning. When radio stations began taking on fewer verbal contributions, Schulte looked around for other work opportunities and trained as a coach at the University of Bielefeld. One of her focal areas was biological sex in the cultural sphere, or “gender”. How do socially ascribed roles impact women and men? How do I consciously respond to them? What are the opportunities and limits of a gender-appropriate way of speaking and writing? As a specialist in “gender issues” in the Journalistinnenbund (association of female journalists) since 1999, Birgitta M. Schulte offers a range of different training courses on gender for the “Deutschland” magazine and for the Friedrich Ebert Foundation JournalistenAkademie (Journalist Academy), some in cooperation with the government Press and Information Office. She was a member of the “Gender-Training” network, offered courses on the subject in Germany and abroad, and from 2002 to 2006 was deputy chairwoman of the Journalistinnenbund.