Karl Steinbuch

• 1. Introduction

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  Karl Steinbuch is remembered in part for a single word. In 1957, together with Helmut Gröttrup, he coined Informatik, the German term for computer science. That word spread from Stuttgart to German-speaking universities across Europe, eventually giving English speakers the term informatics. Born in Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt on the 15th of June 1917, Steinbuch trained first as a physicist. He spent years as a working engineer, then became a professor. Along the way he accumulated awards that included the Konrad Adenauer award of science. Yet from the late 1960s onward, something changed. The man who had helped shape the vocabulary of computing redirected his energy toward right-wing political activism. His books on education and democracy reached the bestseller lists in Der Spiegel. They made him a prominent figure in the Neue Rechte movement. What Steinbuch built before that political turn is worth tracing on its own. So is what drove a pioneering scientist toward the Neue Rechte.

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• 2. Standard Elektrik Lorenz

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  Steinbuch studied at the University of Stuttgart, receiving his doctorate in physics in 1944. He joined both the National Socialist German Students' League and the Nazi Party. In 1948, Standard Elektrik Lorenz, a Stuttgart firm operating within the American ITT group, hired him as a computer design engineer. He eventually rose to director of research and development. Over the course of his time at SEL, Steinbuch filed more than 70 patents. Among his achievements at SEL was the ER 56, the first European computer built entirely from transistors. SEL marketed the ER 56 commercially, bringing the new technology to customers across the continent. In 1958, Steinbuch accepted a professorship at the University of Karlsruhe, where he became director of the Institute of Technology for information processing.

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• 3. The Learning Matrix

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  The paper Steinbuch published with U. A. W. Piske in 1963 introduced the theory of learning matrices and their applications. The Lernmatrix, which formed the heart of that work, represented an early implementation of artificial neural networks. In 1965, Steinbuch extended this research in a paper co-authored with Bernard Widrow. That paper presented a critical comparison of two types of adaptive classification networks. Alongside this neural network work, Steinbuch coined the phrase kybernetische Anthropologie. The term pointed toward the interface between cybernetics and the study of human beings. In 1971, the fourth revised edition of Automat und Mensch carried the subtitle "On the way to a cybernetic anthropology." In the same year, his book Mensch Technik Zukunft won the German non-fiction book award.

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• 4. Falsch Programmiert

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  In 1968, Steinbuch published Falsch programmiert, a book that challenged what he saw as fundamental failures in German society. A follow-up called Programm 2000 appeared the following year. He had begun writing about education policy as early as 1967. He framed his arguments alongside those of other authors he saw as fellow diagnosticians of Western decline. He cited works by Jean Ziegler from Switzerland, Eric J. Hobsbawm from the United Kingdom, and John Naisbitt. Together they issued a shared warning: in Steinbuch's framing, an emerging civic lobby society was heading toward education disaster. His 1978 book, Maßlos informiert, bore the subtitle "The Deprivation of Thinking." Steinbuch retired from the University of Karlsruhe in 1980. Four years later, his book Unsere manipulierte Demokratie asked in its subtitle whether Germans had to live with what he called the leftist lie.

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• 5. Honors and Memory

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  At the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, a scholarship program funded by state government grants bears Steinbuch's name: the Karl-Steinbuch-Stipendium. The German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina admitted him as a member, as did the International Academy of Science in Munich. His honors included the Wilhelm-Boelsche award's gold medal and a gold medal from the twenty-first International Congresses on Aerospace Medicine. He also received the Jakob Fugger award medal and the Medal of Merit of the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg. Steinbuch died on the 4th of June 2005 in Ettlingen. The trajectory of his book titles carries its own argument. His 1966 work Die informierte Gesellschaft addressed the history and future of telecommunications. By 1989, he had returned to the subject with Die desinformierte Gesellschaft, a title that answered the earlier one with a single prefix.

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