Today, internationally, the largest performance art group is BBeyond in Belfast, led by Alastair MacLennan who knew Beuys and like many adapts Beuys's ethos. Beuys is known for his "extended definition of art" in which the ideas of social sculpture could potentially reshape society and politics. He frequently held open public debates on a wide range of subjects, including political, environmental, social, and long-term cultural issues.
He was a founding member and life-long supporter of the German Green Party. Soon after his birth, the family moved from Krefeld to Kleve , an industrial town in Germany's Lower Rhine region, close to the Dutch border. Beuys attended primary school at the Katholische Volksschule and secondary school at the Staatliches Gymnasium Cleve now the Freiherr-vom-Stein-Gymnasium.
While in school he developed skills in drawing and took lessons in piano and cello. Other interests included the natural sciences, as well as Nordic history and mythology. By his own account, when the Nazi Party staged their book-burning in Kleve on 19 May in his school courtyard, he salvaged the book Systema Naturae by Carl Linnaeus " In , Beuys was a member of the Hitler Youth ; the organization at that time included a large majority of German children and adolescents, and later that year membership became compulsory.
He participated in the Nuremberg rally in September He was 15 years old at the time. Given his early interest in natural sciences, Beuys had considered a career in medical studies, but in his last years of school he became interested in pursuing a career in sculpture, possibly influenced by pictures of Wilhelm Lehmbruck 's sculptures. He held the job for about a year. They both attended lectures on biology and zoology at the University of Posen , at that time a Germanized university.
During this time he began to consider pursuing a career as an artist. In , Beuys was stationed in the Crimea and was a member of various combat bomber units. Drawings and sketches from this time have been preserved, and his characteristic style is evident in this early work.
