Teacher, teacher educator, author and traveller with a passion for history

Rainer Grajek studied history and art. He initially worked as a teacher and subject adviser before moving into in-service teacher education. Numerous scholarly and methodological contributions to history education, as well as studies of regional history, accompanied his professional career.

Between 1981 and 1986, Rainer Grajek worked as an adviser at the Ministry of Education in Maputo, Mozambique. There he helped lay the foundations of the new education system in the field of history teacher education, wrote curricula, teaching materials and textbooks, and taught prospective teacher educators in history. At the time, the Ministry was headed by Graça Machel, then wife of Mozambican President Samora Machel and later wife of Nelson Mandela.

He drew on his experiences and observations from Mozambique in his 2005 book “Berichte aus dem Morgengrauen. Als Entwicklungshelfer der DDR in Mosambik”. The book also received international scholarly attention; among those who reviewed it was the French historian and writer René Pélissier, in the Portuguese journal “Análise Social”.

In 1989 and 1990, Rainer Grajek held a teaching post at the College of Education in Lubango, Angola, where he trained graduate history teachers. After returning to Germany, he resumed his work in in-service teacher education and taught history at what was then Saxony’s largest Gymnasium (academic secondary school), in Großenhain.

Together with his wife, he travelled to numerous countries across the African continent and spent many years studying its history and social development. In his later years, his work as a historian and author increasingly took centre stage.