Heike Fleßner (14 April 1944 – 2 February 2021) was a German educationalist and professor, whose work focused on social education and social work. She served as Professor of Social Pedagogy at the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg from 1996 until her retirement in 2009.
Career
Fleßner was born in Esens, East Frisia, Hanover, Prussia. From 1966 to 1971, she worked as a secondary school teacher. She later became a scientific assistant and then a director of studies at the University of Oldenburg. In 1980, she earned her doctorate from the same university, researching the development of public preschool education in rural Germany from 1870 to 1924. She completed her habilitation in 1994, receiving a venia legendi for educational science with a focus on social education, on the topic "Motherhood as a profession: historical findings or current structural feature of social work?" In 1996, she was appointed Professor of Social Pedagogy at the University of Oldenburg. In 1997/98, she was a visiting professor of women's studies at Towson University in Maryland, United States.
Fleßner was a co-founder of Gender Studies at the University of Oldenburg, which began offering a Master's degree in Gender Studies in 1997/98 and a BA in Gender Studies in 2007/08. She was also a co-founder of the university's Center of Interdisciplinary Research on Women and Gender (ZFG), which opened in December 2000, and she directed it until her retirement in 2009.
Her scientific work focused on analytics and conceptual developments in the field of gender- and diversity-conscious social education. For many years, she was involved in social policy and the institutional anchoring of public toddler care and early childhood education (crèche and kindergarten).
Political and organizational memberships
From 1985 to 1991, Fleßner was a member of the City Council of Oldenburg, focusing on urban development planning and youth welfare policy, particularly public early childhood education. From 2009, she served as deputy state chairman, and from 2013 as regional chairman, of the Landesverband Niedersachsen pro familia, the German Association for Family Planning, Sexual Education and Sexual Counseling. She was also a board member of the Bertha Ramsauer Foundation in Oldenburg and a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Center for Women and Gender Studies (ZIF) at the University of Hildesheim and HAWK Hildesheim/Holzminden/Göttingen.
Death
Heike Fleßner died on 2 February 2021 at the age of 76.
