Georg Hellmuth Neuendorff

Georg Hellmuth Neuendorff (born October 26, 1882 in Belzig , Brandenburg province , † March 14, 1949 in Dresden ) was a German writer and reform pedagogue . He founded the Dürerschule in Hochwaldhausen in Hesse , which existed from 1912 to 1920 .

Life

The son of a preacher and school councilor passed his matriculation examination at a grammar school in Poznan in 1902 . After military service and practical language studies in Switzerland , he began studying modern languages, history and philosophy at Berlin University . However, he did not find access to what he believed to be an abstract university business and at the end of 1904 turned to writing. For example, he published two works by the English writer Percy Bysshe Shelley from the Romantic period in annotated German translations.

In 1909 he received an invitation to the Free School Community of Wickersdorf in the Thuringian Forest, founded three years earlier by Paul Geheeb and Gustav Wyneken . Here he worked for almost three years as a teacher for modern languages, German and history and also got to know his future wife Elisabeth Louis, who was also a teacher there. There were two sons from the marriage.

Neuendorff soon urged, based on his experiences as a teacher in Wickersdorf, to set up his own reform school (he himself spoke of an educational school in his writings ), which he was given the opportunity to do in 1912. In terms of ideology, Neuendorff was already close to the Free German youth and the Wandervogel . During a stay in a sanatorium in Waldhof-Elgershausen near Wetzlar , he found out about the climatic health resort of Hochwaldhausen in Vogelsberg, founded by Jean Berlit in 1903 . There were already plans to build a country school home there. Neuendorff and Berlit quickly agreed to build the new reform school in Hochwaldhausen. Neuendorff found the location in the near-natural low mountain range ideal, while Berlit expected its new spa center to be more attractive.

On September 2, 1912, the new Dürerschule Hochwaldhausen was opened. The institution quickly acquired a good reputation among the upper middle class and wealthy parents from all over the German Empire sent their children to boarding school in Hochwaldhausen. At the same time, recognized teachers worked there. Neuendorff presented his experiences as head of the Dürerschule in various specialist journals . He was also involved in folklore and local studies . From 1916 to 1918 he was drafted into military service.

Neuendorff cultivated a rather authoritarian leadership style and believed that he was irreplaceable in the management of "his" school. There was also a noticeable anti-Semitism , although a large number of the students and some teachers were Jews . After the November Revolution of 1918, the student opposition to Neuendorff grew stronger.

The suicide of a student in October 1920 finally uncovered a systematic abuse of several boarding school students by Neuendorff. The headmaster tried to evade his responsibility by fleeing to Argentina . Nevertheless, he was caught and sentenced in 1924 to 6 years imprisonment and loss of honor . The Dürerschule was closed at the end of 1920 and the mountain school was founded in its place in 1921 .

After his release from prison, Neuendorff settled in Dresden, where he lived at Arnoldstrasse 31 until his death. From then on he worked as a writer who dealt with so-called German abroad . However, South America , which had been aroused by his temporary stay in Argentina, moved more and more into the center of his interest. From 1935 until his death he published over 80 essays and books on Latin American topics. He also translated the works of South American authors into German.

Fonts

• Reform schools in the country and popular education. in: Non-profit sheets. Frankfurt am Main 1912
• The importance of the free school for the redesign of education and upbringing. in: The new education. Socialist pedagogical two-week magazine. Edited by Dr. MH Baege. Darmstadt 1919
• School community and student committee. in: German politics. Weekly for world and cultural politics. Edited by Ernst Bäckh, Paul Rohrbach, Philipp Stein. Berlin 1919
• Scattered Germanness in Europe. Leipzig 1937
• South American narrator. Halle (Saale) 1948

literature

• Maria Schwauß: GH Neuendorff on the 60th birthday. In: Art, Culture, and Science. Dresden 1942
• Karl August Helfenbein: The social education of the Dürerschule Hochwaldhausen. Lauterbach 1986
• Gerhard Kalkhof: The history of the climatic health resort Ilbeshausen-Hochwaldhausen. Grebenhain 1993