Carl Mennicke

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August Carl Mennicke (born September 5, 1887 in Elberfeld , † November 15, 1958 in Frankfurt am Main ) was an influential German social pedagogue and religious socialist .

Early years

Mennicke came from a reformed religious petty-bourgeois family. Since the family could not finance higher education, he became an office worker at the age of fourteen. In addition, he continued his education and took the Abitur. Partly supported by the Reformed Church , he studied theology in Bonn , Halle and Berlin . From 1912 he studied in Utrecht on a scholarship . After completing his studies, he returned to Germany in 1914 to take on a vicariate position in Godesberg . During the First World War he was a soldier at times. In 1917 he became assistant preacher in Holten in the Ruhr area, where he got to know the poor living conditions of the workers.

Weimar Republic

A year later he joined the “Social Working Group Berlin-East”. This aimed on the one hand to promote workers' education, on the other hand it tried to promote the coexistence of students, academically educated and workers.

During the November Revolution of 1918/19 he was, along with Paul Tillich , one of the notable participants in a discussion group of religious socialists ("Kairos Circle").

Mennicke belonged at times to the USPD and then to the SPD . But he remained one of the most important religious socialists. Along with Eduard Heimann and others, he belonged to the Tillich circle . Among other things, he wrote for the Neue Blätter für den Sozialismus - magazine for intellectual and political design. He resigned from the Protestant Church in 1927 and began to distance himself from religious socialism.

Since 1923, Mennicke was the founder and head of the “Seminar for Youth Welfare” at the German University of Politics in Berlin. While social pedagogy was previously almost exclusively a female profession, the Mennickes facility was the first training place for men. The background to the establishment was the Reich Youth Act of 1923. The students mostly came from the youth movement. In 1925 the institution was renamed "welfare school" and offered an education course for men comparable to the social schools for women. In 1927 it was recognized by the state. The teaching staff consisted of recognized specialists at the time.

Since 1925 Mennicke was chairman of the Association of German Social Officials, the male counterpart to the female German Association of Social Officials. Under his leadership, both organizations merged in 1927 to unite the German Association of Social Officials and the Federation of German Social Officials.

From 1929 Mennicke was also a lecturer at the University of Frankfurt . In 1930/31 he became a professor there and was head of the Vocational Education Institute.

time of the nationalsocialism

At the beginning of the National Socialist rule he emigrated to the Netherlands . Works by him were burned on the occasion of the book burning in Frankfurt am Main. In 1934 his license to teach in Germany was revoked.

In Amersfoort he was director of the International School of Philosophy (International School voor Wijsbegeerte). This was a unique facility for adults that offered high-level philosophical courses.

He continued to deal intensively with socio-educational issues. In 1937 he published a draft of social pedagogy. This work is partly considered to be the first socio-theoretical foundation of a social pedagogy.

He was arrested after the German Wehrmacht invaded the Netherlands. Mennicke first came to the Wuhlheide labor camp . After a serious illness he was sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp . He was released after two years in prison. He remained under police work and lived as a metal worker.

post war period

After the war he went back to Amersfoort. He later went back to Frankfurt, where he taught as an honorary professor of sociology at the university until 1952.

In 1958 he received the Cross of Merit 1st Class of the Federal Republic of Germany. Shortly before his death in 1956 he was awarded the Goethe plaque by the city of Frankfurt .

Fonts (selection)

  • Social pedagogy: Basics, forms and means of community education. Edited by Hildegard Feidel-Mertz . Weinheim 2001, ISBN 3-407-32022-1 .
  • Social psychology: the general fundamentals and their application to social and political phenomena, especially the present day. Edited by Hildegard Feidel-Mertz. Weinheim 1999, ISBN 3-89271-811-3 .
  • Current events in the mirror of personal fate: a life story. Edited by Hildegard Feidel-Mertz. Weinheim 1995, ISBN 3-89271-430-4 .
  • Social pedagogy: grondslagen, vormen en middelen der gemeenschapsopvoeding. Utrecht 1937.
  • The human in space: an introduction to understanding Rainer Maria Rilke. Amsterdam 1937.
  • Fate and task of women in the present. 2nd edition Potsdam 1932.
  • Socialism as a movement and a task. Berlin 1926.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Joachim Henseler: How the social got into pedagogy: on the theoretical history of university social pedagogy using the example of Paul Natorp and Herman Nohl. Juventa Verlag, 2000 p. 184 ( books.google.de ).
  2. ^ Claudia Becker: Attempts at religious renewal in the modern age using the example of the Protestant theologian Friedrich Rittelmeyer (1872–1938) . Diss. Berlin, 2008 ( diss.fu-berlin.de ).
  3. ↑ Bernd Dollinger: The pedagogy of the social question: (social) pedagogical theory from the beginning of the 19th century to the end of the Weimar Republic. VS Verlag, 2006 p. 334 ( books.google.de ).
  4. ↑ Ralph Christian Amthro: The history of vocational training in social work: In search of professionalization and identity. Juventa-Verl. 2003, p. 385 ( books.google.de ).
  5. ^ Educational sciences and pedagogy in Frankfurt. ( Memento of July 15, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 482 kB).
  6. ^ Rudolf Tippelt: Handbook for Adult Education, Further Education. VS Verlag, 1999. p. 44 ( books.google.de ).
  7. ↑ Fabian Kessl, Hans Uwe Otto: Social Work (PDF; 232 kB).
personal data
SURNAME Mennicke, Carl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mennicke, August Carl (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German social pedagogue and religious socialist
DATE OF BIRTH September 5, 1887
PLACE OF BIRTH Elberfeld
DATE OF DEATH November 15, 1958
Place of death Frankfurt am Main