German Chapter of the ACM

Zusammenfassung

The German Chapter of the ACM was founded in 1968 by Albert Endres — one year before the Gesellschaft für Informatik — making it the oldest computing professional society in Germany. It has operated continuously for over fifty years, connecting German computer scientists to the international ACM community, organizing conferences, and building a network of 34 regional groups across the country in partnership with the GI. Where the GI grew into a large national society with tens of thousands of members, the German Chapter remained deliberately smaller and more international in orientation — a bridge to ACM’s global research community rather than a substitute for it.

Albert Endres and the Founding (1968)

Albert Endres (December 17, 1932 – December 28, 2020) was an IBM researcher and computer scientist who had spent a decade working on programming languages, compilers, operating systems, and database systems at IBM’s German operations when he founded the German Chapter in 1968. He had joined IBM in 1957 and would remain there until 1992 — a career spanning the full arc from batch computing to client-server systems.

Endres recognized a gap: German computing practitioners and researchers had ACM memberships and read ACM publications, but had no organizational structure through which to interact with the international ACM community locally. The United States had ACM chapters at universities and in cities; Germany had none. In 1968, Endres organized the founding of the German Chapter as a registered German association (eingetragener Verein) — a legal form that allowed it to operate with its own membership, budget, and governance while remaining part of the international ACM.

The founding preceded the Gesellschaft für Informatik by a year. The GI, established September 16, 1969, became the primary German computing society, while the German Chapter developed as a complementary organization with a more international orientation. Rather than competing, the two organizations eventually formalized their relationship: since 2004, the German Chapter has operated its 34 regional groups jointly with the GI, combining organizational infrastructure while maintaining separate identities.

After his IBM career, Endres became a full professor of computer science at the Technical University of Munich (1993–1997) and an honorary professor at the University of Stuttgart. He co-authored A Handbook of Software and Systems Engineering: Empirical Observations, Laws and Theories (with H. Dieter Rombach, Pearson, 2003) — one of the foundational texts of empirical software engineering.

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The Albert-Endres-Award was established in 2023 to honor Endres’s legacy and recognize outstanding contributions to computing in Germany. The first recipient was Ruth Breu (2023), the Innsbruck computer scientist who was vice-chair of the German Chapter under Thomas Matzner and a pioneer of service-oriented security architectures. The second recipient was Gerhard Schimpf (2024), who chaired the German Chapter 2008–2011 and has been one of its most active historians and documentarians.

Jean Sammet and the Böblingen Meeting (1977)

A milestone in the German Chapter’s early history was the informal meeting held in 1977 in Böblingen — the IBM research town near Stuttgart where much of IBM Germany’s technical work was concentrated. Among the first invited speakers was Jean Sammet, who had just served as president of the ACM (1974–1976, the first woman to hold the role) and was herself a computing pioneer: co-author of COBOL and creator of FORMAC, one of the first symbolic mathematics systems.

Sammet’s participation connected the German Chapter directly to the international ACM leadership and signaled that the chapter was taken seriously as a professional organization. The Böblingen meeting established a pattern of high-quality invited events that defined the German Chapter’s style: smaller and more focused than the large INFORMATIK conference, oriented toward practitioners and researchers together.

Organizational Structure

The German Chapter operates as a registered association headquartered in Munich. Its governing structure includes a chairperson, vice-chairperson, secretary, and treasurer, elected by the membership for two-year terms. The chapter maintains 34 regional groups throughout Germany, operated jointly with the GI — a structure that gives it geographic reach far beyond what its membership size would otherwise allow.

Working groups focus on specific technical and professional topics, including software engineering in higher education (SEUH), IT security, Industry 4.0 security, and ERP systems. The chapter co-organizes Mensch und Computer (MuC) — one of the largest German-language conferences on human-computer interaction — and the Software Engineering conference series.

The joint regional group structure with GI, formalized since 2004, reflects a pragmatic coexistence: both organizations serve the German computing community, both benefit from shared infrastructure, and both retain separate identities, publication series, and international affiliations.

Publications

The German Chapter published the Berichte des German Chapter of the ACM (Reports of the German Chapter of the ACM) — a monograph series through Springer/Teubner that documented conference proceedings and technical reports. The series reflected the chapter’s particular strengths in software engineering and human-computer interaction.

All Chairpersons

The following is the complete list of chairpersons (Vorsitzende) of the German Chapter of the ACM since its founding, sourced from the official chapter records:

Years	Chairperson
1968–1971	Albert Endres
1971–1973	Horst Hünke
1973–1974	Rudolf J. Beuerlein
1974–1976	Peter Schnupp
1976–1977	Rudolf J. Beuerlein
1977–1980	Peter Schnupp
1980–1981	Johann Klopcic
1982–1983	Walter Heldmann
1984–1985	Peter Gorny
1986–1990	Klaus Pasedach
1990–1994	Hans-Joachim Habermann
1994–1996	Sabine Jausel-Hüsken
1996–2001	Wolf-Rüdiger Gawron
2002–2003	Andreas Schwald
2004–2007	Thomas Matzner
2008–2011	Gerhard Schimpf
2012–2015	Axel Kern
2016–2019	Hans-Joachim Hof
2020–2023	Ernst-Oliver Wilhelm
2024–2027	Marc-Oliver Pahl

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Peter Schnupp (two terms, 1974–1976 and 1977–1980) and Rudolf J. Beuerlein (two terms, 1973–1974 and 1976–1977) both served non-consecutive terms, alternating leadership during a period of organizational consolidation. Peter Gorny (1984–1985) was a pioneer of human-computer interaction in Germany and one of the early advocates for HCI as a distinct discipline within German computer science.

Relationship to GI and ACM International

The German Chapter occupies an unusual structural position. In many countries, ACM has no independent national chapter organization — individuals join ACM directly and may attend local events. In Germany, the chapter’s status as an independent registered association means it operates with genuine institutional autonomy: its own membership rolls, its own budget, and its own governance independent of both ACM international and the GI.

The relationship with GI evolved from parallel existence toward formal cooperation. The joint regional group structure since 2004 is the most visible expression of this — a German computing professional can participate in regional events that count for both chapter and GI membership, reducing the friction of maintaining two separate organizational infrastructures.

The relationship with ACM international is similarly pragmatic. German Chapter members have access to the ACM Digital Library and can participate in ACM conferences and SIG activities. The chapter provides the local community and event infrastructure that ACM’s global organization cannot provide at the national level.

Legacy

The German Chapter’s claim to be the oldest computing professional society in Germany — older by a year than the GI — reflects its origins in the international ACM community rather than in German academic politics. Albert Endres founded it not to build a German institution but to give German practitioners access to an international one. That orientation — international connection rather than national representation — has characterized the chapter throughout its history and distinguishes it from the GI’s explicitly national and disciplinary mission.

The chapter’s Albert-Endres-Award, established three years after Endres’s death, ensures that the founding story is not forgotten — that Germany’s oldest computing society was built by an IBM engineer who wanted his colleagues to be part of the world.