Fritz Helling

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Fritz Helling (born July 31, 1888 in Schwelm ; † January 27, 1973 there ) was a German reform pedagogue. He worked from 1917 to 1933 as a teacher and from 1946 to 1951 as headmaster at the Schwelm high school .

Live and act

Fritz Helling worked from 1917 to 1933 as a teacher and from 1946 to 1951 as headmaster at Schwelmer Gymnasium (since 1907 Reform Realgymnasium with Realschule since 1945 municipal mathematical and natural science grammar school, since 1955 Märkisches grammar school).

As a member of the Association of Resolute School Reformers , he represented and practiced “pedagogy from the child” and “education from head and hand”. In addition, educating young people to participate in society was particularly important to him. Because of his resistance to the emerging National Socialism, he was removed from the public school service in 1933. After more than three months in prison, he found the opportunity to teach at a private school in Gladenbach, Hesse. In May 1945 Fritz Helling received the order from the British occupying forces to rebuild the school and teaching system in the Ennepe-Ruhr district and, as headmaster at the Schwelm high schools for boys and girls, to restart teaching under new educational and political guidelines .

Development of the grammar school after the war

Märkisches Gymnasium Schwelm (2005)

Under difficult external conditions, he made it possible to reopen the school on November 26, 1945. Until his retirement in 1951, he developed an extraordinary reform activity. This school and teaching reform carried four basic elements: expansion of student and parent participation to a close educational partnership with the teachers, “opening up the school” to the working and professional world, “handicrafts” in the middle school and “more free design of the lessons in the upper school” “With course options for the students and differentiation of the lessons between basic and advanced courses. In addition, he introduced two new upper school subjects: contemporary studies and social studies. Fritz Helling's plan to turn the school into a “house of living and learning” also shapes today's view of schools and is reflected in the school program at today's Märkisches Gymnasium.

The Schwelmer circle

Fritz Helling saw himself as a "political pedagogue" who, in his work, assumes an indissoluble connection between progressive education, upbringing and school and an equally future-oriented human society. For him this was only conceivable as socialist , with a synthesis of Christian social doctrine and political socialism in mind. Since he firmly believed in the power of pedagogy to develop a humane social order, he took over the chairmanship of the “ Democratic Cultural Association ” in Schwelm and, together with other school reformers, campaigned for the introduction of a reformed, democratic school system. When Federal Interior Minister Gustav Heinemann classified the Kulturbund as an anti- constitutional organization in the Federal Republic of Germany in 1951, Fritz Helling immediately applied for early retirement , even before a professional ban could be pronounced against him under the Adenauer decree . After leaving school, but also worn down by the political discrimination as a “communist” in the Adenauer era , he founded the Schwelmer Circle in 1952 , in which Heinrich Deiters , Otto Koch , Paul Oestreich , Leo Regener , Leo Weismantel and others joined Educators from the west and east of divided Germany came together to look for ways to reunite in a common democratic-socialist social and economic order with a uniform school system. Fritz Helling's activities in the “Schwelmer Kreis” were observed by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution until the 1960s. In comparing the school systems introduced after World War II, he saw the concept of the general education polytechnic high school introduced in the GDR in the 1960s and the extended high school based on it as an exemplary model for the West German federal states as well.

In 1955, according to the Viersen district archive , he exchanged letters with Hanna Meuter from the Lower Rhine region about plans for a German-French cultural exchange.

Honors

Honor roll in front of the Märkisches Gymnasium Schwelm

Publications (selection)

  • Questiones Livianae. , Verlag Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1921.
  • Introduction to German literary history. , Verlag H. Handel, Breslau 1928.
  • The early history of the Jewish people. , Klostermann publishing house, Frankfurt am Main 1947.
  • The catastrophe route in German history. Klostermann publishing house, Frankfurt am Main 1947.
  • School reform at the turn of the century. , Schule und Nation Verlags-GmbH, Schwelm 1958.
  • Ways of the school reformer Otto Koch 1912-1952: Based on autobiographical records. (Co-author Walther Kluthe ), Schule und Nation Verlags-GmbH, Schwelm 1962.
  • New general education. , Schule und Nation Verlags-GmbH, Schwelm 1963.
  • New politics, new pedagogy. , Schule und Nation Verlags-GmbH, Schwelm 1968.
  • Social responsibility educator. (Ed. Jürgen Eierdanz ), dipa-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1988, ISBN 9783763808076 .
  • My life as a political educator. (Eds. Burkhard Dietz , Jost Biermann ), Verlag Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 9783631533109 .

Secondary literature

  • Jost Biermann: The Schwelmer Circle (1952–1975). A German-German peace and education reform initiative in the tensions of the Cold War. With special consideration of the 1950s (2 parts) (= studies on educational reform 52), Peter Lang: Frankfurt a. M. u. a. 2017.
  • Burkhard Dietz: Fritz Helling - an enlightener and "political educator" in the 20th century , 2003.
  • Burkhard Dietz: Conference report . In: Pädagogik 54 (2002), H. 7–8.
  • Yearbook for Westphalian Church History , p. 477
  • Martin Rüther, Uwe Schütz, Otto Dann (eds.): Germany in the first post-war year. Reports from members of the International Socialist Combat League , ISK, from occupied Germany in 1945/1946. Saur, Munich 1998 ISBN 3-598-11349-8 p. 586

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Fritz Helling: The Bund decided school reformers in the culture war of the present. , BESch pamphlet No. 1, 1925
  2. ↑ Andreas Zimmer: The cultural association in the Soviet occupation zone and in the GDR: An East German cultural association in the course of time between 1945-1990. , Springer-Verlag, Wiesbaden 2018, p. 320, ISBN 9783658235536 .
  3. ^ Archive, Finding aid Meuter, serial no.398
  4. ↑ https://heimatkunde-schwelm.de/12Schulen/MGS/MGS%20Persoenitäten/Persoenitäten.html
personal data
SURNAME Helling, Fritz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German reform pedagogue
DATE OF BIRTH July 31, 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH Schwelm
DATE OF DEATH January 27, 1973
Place of death Schwelm