Eva Schmidt-Kolmer

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Eva Schmidt-Kolmer (born June 25, 1913 in Vienna , Austria-Hungary , † August 29, 1991 in Berlin ) was an Austro-German doctor, university professor, social hygienist and the most important crèche researcher in the GDR and as such contributed significantly to interdisciplinary work Medicine and Education .

Live and act

Childhood and youth

E. Schmidt-Kolmer was born in Vienna as the oldest of four children in a family with Jewish roots. Her father, Walther Kolmer (1879–1931), was a kk adjunct , human medicine and biology professor at the University of Vienna . Her mother, Lili Erika Kolmer, b. Pereles, since 1891 Perger (* 1887), was deported to Maly Trostinec on August 17, 1942 and murdered there on August 21, 1942.

Even during her school days at the girls' high school in Döbling, she campaigned for social justice. Eva Kolmer, who was an active member of the Communist Youth Association of Austria , left the higher education institution to express her solidarity with the working class and took over a job in a factory. As a working student, she prepared for the Matura , which she passed in 1931 as an external student. She began to work scientifically at the age of 17 and published an article entitled A Specific Detection of Cadmium .

Education

From 1932 Eva Kolmer studied medicine, and she also worked as an assistant in cancer research. She was also active as a member of the Association of Austrian Socialist Students . Eva Kolmer was also involved in the Social Democratic Workers' Party in Austria , after which it was banned in 1934 in the Communist Youth Association of Austria . She was briefly imprisoned in 1934 for her political agitation.

Eva Kolmer was unable to complete her medical studies because, as a communist of Jewish descent, she had to leave Austria after the German troops marched in in 1938.

Emigration and return

She emigrated to England via Switzerland and France and lived in London. Under the name Mitzi Hartmann, she reported in the publication Austria still lives on the troubled March days in Vienna in 1938. In 1939 she married her childhood friend Jakob Wolloch in London. In England Eva Wolloch u. a. Co-founder and 1939–1945 General Secretary of the Austrian Center and the Free Austrian Movement as well as the Free Austrian World Movement . From 1941 she lived with the German communist and journalist Heinz (Heinrich) Schmidt . After the end of the Second World War, she returned to Vienna, as she was intended as secretary of the Communist National Council Group . She was able to complete her studies here and worked as a doctor.

Relocation to the Soviet Zone and her main work in the GDR

In 1946 she moved with Heinz Schmidt to the Soviet-occupied part of Germany and became a member of the SED . Eva Kolmer's license to practice medicine was retrospectively recognized.

In 1947 she married Heinz Schmidt. The marriage had two children.

Initially, Eva Schmidt-Kolmer worked as a “department head for statistics and information” in the German central administration for health care . In this function she played a key role in the “Law on Mother and Child Protection”, which was passed by the People's Chamber on September 27, 1950 as one of the first laws in the GDR, which was founded in 1949. In addition, from 1948 to 1950 she was Federal Secretary of the Democratic Women's Association of Germany (DFD). Her husband was the director of the Berliner Rundfunk . But both work soon came to an abrupt end: As emigrants from the West, they were viewed with a great deal of suspicion, because they were close to a number of people who were suspected, arrested and convicted of treason in the course of Stalinist show trials. At that time, the people who had been removed from office were sent to 'production' for probation. So the family ended up in exile in Schwerin in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania in 1950 .

Eva Schmidt-Kolmer headed the health protection department for mother and child in the Ministry of Health of the State of Mecklenburg in Schwerin . In 1954 she and her husband were rehabilitated and they first returned to Leipzig . There she was an assistant at the Institute for Social Hygiene at Karl Marx University until 1956 .

A year earlier she had already been appointed head of the working group for infant and toddler hygiene of the working group of social hygienists in the GDR . In this group, the pediatricians discussed the findings of Anglo-Saxon researchers (such as John Bowlby and James Robertson ) on the effects of missing ties in home children and with their help, theoretical considerations of the still young bond theory were partially published in the journal Zeitschrift für Ärztliche Furtherbildung in der DDR . In the following years there were a number of comparative development studies of familial infants and young children and institutionally in daily and weekly cribs as well as in infant homes children cared for in the GDR. The results of the investigation always showed that the children in the home are still significantly behind in their development. The family-bound children showed the best results in all areas of development. Reform ideas (e.g. the gradual acclimatization of the children, personal toys, mixed age groups, constant care by the nursing staff and the promotion of contact with the family of origin) to improve care in the facilities were discussed and tested.

The meanwhile doctorate (1952 on the subject of health protection for mother and child ) and qualified medical doctor (1958 on the subject of psychometrics in children from 0–3 years and its importance for the hygiene of childhood ) was appointed lecturer in 1958 and a little later as professor at the Medical Faculty of the Humboldt University for the field of social hygiene. As a university lecturer, she founded the discipline of hygiene for children and adolescents , which she then successfully represented in teaching and research.

In 1959 she carried out her first comparative studies in Güstrow between children growing up in families, day nurseries, week nurseries and children's homes. In the same year Eva Schmidt-Kolmer became head of the Childhood Hygiene Department . After the Berlin Wall was built in 1961, the comparative research results were no longer published and the independent research teams in Halle, Leipzig or Berlin were dissolved. The attachment theory was no longer published, the reform ideas for out-of-home care for infants and small children in institutions were not pursued any further and withdrawn. Until the political turning point, aspects of attachment no longer played a role in crèche pedagogy in the GDR. From 1966 to 1974 Eva Schmidt-Kolmer was director at the Institute for Hygiene of Children and Adolescents . The name of the institute was deliberately chosen by the director "to make clear the interdisciplinary nature of the administrative and scientific tasks of health protection for children and adolescents as a whole". This centrally managed institute was in charge of the development of a centrally binding educational program for all crèches in the GDR. Eva Schmidt-Kolmer, who never left any doubts about her closeness to the system, was director of the institution until her retirement and remained closely associated with the institution as a scientific advisor until it was dissolved in 1990.

The focus of her scientific research was on the physical / psychological development of very young children (aged up to three years) in families, day and week day care centers and permanent homes. In this regard, she concluded that:

- the physical and psychological development of children is all the more unfavorable, the greater their isolation from family and social environment ;
- the development and health parameters of the children are all the more favorable, the more harmonious their care in the families and day care centers is ;
- The adaptation processes of the children during the transition to a children's facility depend on various factors: the age of the children, the medical history, the level of development, the type of care outside the family and the structure of the adaptation period after the child is admitted to the children's facility .

Following this insight, Eva Schmidt-Kolmer pleaded for the systematic development and expansion of day nurseries. Under her direction, from 1971 to 1973, the development of motor skills, play activities, language and social behavior in 6000 GDR daycare children from 1 to 3 years of age were observed and recorded with the help of test procedures. It was found that the more time the parents spent with them, the better the children developed. Particularly in the first two years of life, the child's entire psychological development depends crucially on the activities they do together with the parents.

After the fall of the Wall , Eva Schmidt-Kolmer campaigned for the establishment of the interest group medicine and society , an interdisciplinary meeting place for philosophers, psychologists, doctors and other scientific experts from East and West.

death

Eva Schmidt-Kolmer died on August 29, 1991 in Berlin. Her urn was buried in the grave complex for the victims and persecuted of the Nazi regime in Berlin's Friedrichsfelde central cemetery.

On the occasion of her death, former employees wrote about her:

Eva Schmidt-Kolmer remained true to the ideals of her youth until her death. Already seriously ill, they made destructive decisions in the implementation of social changes difficult. This includes the liquidation of numerous institutions, such as that of the "Institute for Hygiene of Children and Adolescents" that she founded. She was painfully affected by the fact that, in her opinion, doctors and scientists from East and West did not work together adequately in solving health problems for mother and child .

criticism

  • Schmidt-Kolmer's theory of development is to be seen as an attempt to integrate pediatrics, physiology, reflexiology and reflection theory, even if the result was not very convincing and rather syncretic and did not go beyond the level of a mechanical and vulgar Marxist sensualism. Even then, it stuck to its views and with them determined the crèche pedagogy of the GDR when the epistemological prerequisites on which they were based were long out of date in the GDR as well.
  • Unimpressed by the critical overcoming of the pseudo-Marxist-behaviorist 'Pavlovism' of the 1950s (rampant in Stalinist-indoctrinated scientific circles), Schmidt-Kolmer stuck to the basic positions of the doctrine of the “first and second signal system of reality”. On the other hand, in 1957 she helped the still young attachment theory to publish articles in the journal for medical training in the GDR. After the Wall was built in 1961, she publicly denied many of the results of synthetic evolutionary theory, human ethology and international child psychology of western style. It seems to have closed itself to the generally accepted psychoanalytic insights.

Political membership

Awards

Works (selection)

  • Austria still lives. London 1938.
  • Health protection for mother and child. Social hygiene textbook. Berlin 1953.
  • Guide to nursery and home education. Berlin 1958.
  • Behavior and development of the toddler. The influence of different social milieus on child behavior and its significance for hygiene in childhood. Berlin 1959.
  • Pedagogical tasks and working methods of the crèches. Berlin 1968.
  • als (Ed.): On the influence of the family and the crèche on the development of children in early childhood. Berlin 1977.
  • The social adaptation of children when they are admitted to pre-school education institutions. Berlin 1979.
  • als (Ed.): Crib pedagogy. Berlin 1984.
  • Pediatrics for day nursery teachers. Berlin 1985.
  • Early childhood. Berlin 1986.
  • Health protection for children and young people. Berlin 1986.
  • Movement education - visual education - music education. Textbook for medical education. Berlin 1986.

See also

literature

  • B. Arnim: Aims and tasks of the day nurseries in the GDR with special consideration of the scientific contributions of the medical doctor and social hygienist Eva Schmidt-Kolmer . Berlin 1998 (unpublished diploma thesis)
  • R. u. K. Becker, Ch. Grosch, G. Niebsch: In memorian Eva Schmidt-Kolmer . In: Yearbook of Psychopathology and Psychotherapy. 1991–1993, Berlin 1993.
  • M. Berger : Eva Schmidt-Kolmer. In: Hugo Maier (Ed.): Who is who of social work. Lambertus, Freiburg im Breisgau 1998, ISBN 3-7841-1036-3 , pp. 524-525.
  • G. Niebsch, Ch. Grosch, U. Boßdorf, G. Graehn-Baumann: Health, development and upbringing in early childhood: Science and practice of child care in the GDR. Eva Schmidt-Kolmer's share in the conception and implementation . Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-631-56187-4 .
  • J. Reyer, H. Kleine: The day nursery in Germany. Social history of a controversial institution . Lambertus, Freiburg im Breisgau 1997, ISBN 3-7841-0934-9 .
  • H.-D. Schmidt: Early childhood in the former GDR in the area of ​​tension between family and crèche . In: Psychology in Education and Teaching. 39, 1992, pp. 149-155.
  • Bernd-Rainer Barth :  Schmidt-Kolmer, Eva . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Reyer / Kleine 1997, p. 120.
  2. ↑ Niebsch / Grosch / Boßdorf / Graehn-Baumann 2007, p. 23.
  3. ↑ a. O. is given in the secondary literature Berger as the maiden name, according to the birth register the first letter of her family name begins with P instead of B.
  4. ↑ http://secarts.org/journal/index.php?show=article&id=620&PHPSESSID=
  5. ↑ Memorial book for the victims of National Socialism at the University of Vienna in 1938, Vienna 2009.
  6. ↑ Niebsch / Grosch / Boßdorf / Graehn-Baumann 2007, p. 124.
  7. ↑ J. Robertson: On Loss of Maternal Care in Early Childhood. In: Journal for Medical Training 1957, 21/22.
  8. ↑ Jens Plückhahn: Permanent homes for infants and toddlers in the GDR from the perspective of attachment theory . Diploma thesis FH Potsdam, Potsdam 2012, p. 59 ff. And p. 101 ff .; Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichterfelde - Ministry of Health of the GDR BArch DQ 1/13585 u. at the; Journal for Medical Training in the GDR 1957, 21/22, p. 895 ff .; 1958, 7, p. 307 ff .; 1959, 22, pp. 1443 ff .; 1960, 21, p. 1220 ff. And at the
  9. ↑ cf. Ulla Ruschaupt: Careers of women in teaching and research at the Humboldt University in Berlin after 1945 ( Memento of the original from December 17, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. P. 80 f. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.gender.hu-berlin.de
  10. ↑ Becker / Grosch / Niebsch 1993, p. 299.
  11. ^ Eva Schmidt-Kolmer: Behavior and development of the small child. The influence of different social milieus on child behavior and its significance for hygiene in childhood. Berlin, 1959.
  12. ↑ Niebsch / Grosch / Boßdorf / Graehn-Baumann 2007, p. 28.
  13. ↑ cf. http://ub-ed.ub.uni-greifswald.de/opus/volltexte/2006/235/pdf/arndt_gabriele_textteil.pdf p. 31
  14. ↑ Becker / Grosch / Niebsch 1993, p. 300.
  15. ↑ cf. Schmidt-Kolmer 1977 and Arnim 1998.
  16. ↑ Becker / Grosch / Niebsch 1993, p. 301 f.
  17. ↑ Reyer / Kleine 1997, p. 145.
  18. ↑ Berliner Zeitung , September 3, 1963, p. 2
  19. ↑ Neues Deutschland , June 28, 1983, p. 2
personal data
SURNAME Schmidt-Kolmer, Eva
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian-German physician, social hygienist, Member of the Bundestag
DATE OF BIRTH June 25, 1913
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH August 29, 1991
Place of death Berlin