École nouvelle de Boulogne

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The École nouvelle de Boulogne was a private international day secondary school in Paris founded in 1934 by the German emigrants Fritz Karsen , Karl Linke and Walter Damus . They had all previously worked at the Karl Marx School in Berlin-Neukölln , where they had been expelled from their offices by the Nazis. Despite a similar name, the École nouvelle de Boulogne they founded has nothing to do with the Nouvelle École de Boulogne, which existed as a school experiment from 1947 to 1956 .

Reform pedagogy in France

A school called “École nouvelle” indicates its connection to French reform pedagogy, L'Éducation nouvelle , which Edmond Demolins began with his book L'Éducation nouvelle. L'École des Roches stands, which refers to the École des Roches school he founded in 1898 . According to Feidel-Mertz, this school is a rural education home based on the English model. The Pédagogie rocheuse , which he derived , led to the establishment of further schools, above all La Ruche , founded in 1904 (and closed in February 1917) , which functions as a rural education home based on the principles of the production school on a cooperative basis and has similarities in its social orientation with the Lietzschen rural orphanage in Veckenstedt . Today, the École des Roches presents itself on its website as an “exclusive” facility, which becomes all the more important when you take a look at the alumni page or the tariff page.

It can hardly be assumed that Fritz Karsen and his colleagues were guided by these elitist manifestations of French reform pedagogy. They are more likely to have been closer to the reform efforts of Célestin Freinet and Élise Freinet , who could look back on a long pedagogical-reforming work and who had started to build up L'École Moderne in 1933 in Vence . Célestin Freinet was also the initiator of a teachers 'cooperative, the CEL, from which the French teachers' movement École Moderne emerged. The aim of this association was to change the school system from within. A school experiment launched in 1947 and ministerially approved, known in France as the Nouvelle École de Boulogne and whose goals would have done any educational reform project to honor , was based on Montessori pedagogy and the pedagogical impulses of the Freinets . The school was closed in 1956 for administrative reasons. Despite the same name and location: There is no reference to the school of Fritz Karsen and colleagues, and the establishment of the school is almost unknown on the Internet.

Founding history

Fritz Karsen was one of the first to be given leave of absence from all his offices by the then Prussian minister of education, Bernhard Rust, in February 1933 and later dismissed due to political unreliability. On the day of the Reichstag fire , on February 28, 1933, Fritz Karsen emigrated to Switzerland with his family and moved to Zurich. He wrote for Swiss newspapers because a political refugee was not allowed to do any other work.

From his exile in Switzerland, Karsen “got in touch with friends in England and France. He wanted to found an international school in Paris. ”The project was conceived by Karsen as an opportunity to secure a livelihood for himself and his family while emigrating. His acquaintance with Max Horkheimer , who had settled the Institute for Social Research , which had fled from Frankfurt, in Geneva , came to his aid .

"The 'Horkheimer Institute', as it was often called, lent my father about two thousand dollars, which he later repaid, with which he could dare to found the École Nouvelle de Boulogne in Paris."

Gadde also points out that Karsen was also supported by an international committee for intellectual refugees in Geneva.

Another friend of Karsen's acquaintance, Paul Langevin , provided permission to found the school . He obtained the permit from the French Ministry of Education on June 14, 1934. It is not known whether this was solely due to Langevin's intervention. At the time, France was ruled by a conservative cabinet of national unity under Prime Minister Gaston Doumergue , but Feidel-Mertz claims that both the government and the teachers' union expected the establishment of the school to provide reforms to the French school system.

It was also important for the founding of the school that Karsen was supported by two old friends and colleagues from the Karl Marx School : Karl Linke and Walter Damus .

Difficult existence

The permission from the French Ministry of Education was both a blessing and a curse, as it was linked to the condition that the school had to adhere to the French curriculum. "Because of the rigid nature of the subject, any reform pedagogy was impossible." Sonja Petra Karsen , who, as before in Berlin, was again a student in a school run by her father, describes the differences between the Berlin reform pedagogy approach and the French cramming school on her own Experience:

“Accustomed to the lessons at the Karl Marx School, I was initially very difficult to accept the strict lessons that were based on prescribed textbooks. Much has been learned by heart, especially French literature and history. Every week 'compositions' had to be written about a sentence such as 'Je pense donc je suis' by Descartes. Everything had to be developed logically, and in the end the quotation had to be proven. I was fifteen years old at the time and it seemed too difficult to write an essay like this every week. Once my father felt sorry for me and wanted to help me. I was sure I would get a particularly good grade, but the opposite happened, whereupon my father remarked: 'The teacher is not smart enough to properly appreciate the work.' From then on I wrote my own compositions with good results. Later on I really appreciated these 'compositions' because they taught us to think logically. "

The refugees from Germany taught at the school

  • Fritz Karsen
  • Karl Linke
  • Walter Damus
  • Fritz Wolff;
  • Rodriguez Alvarez de Toledo. Peter Dudek mentions him as a teacher in the Free School Community of Wickersdorf : “The stateless Rodriguez Alvarez de Toledo worked from 1924 to 1928 as a teacher of mathematics, history and social studies in Wickersdorf. In 1933 he had to emigrate to protect himself. ”He had to leave Wickersdorf“ after a row with Wyneken , and after that he didn't want to work at any private school; was stateless and without an officially certified faculty and thus hardly a chance to work at a public school; he turned to Karsen, who managed to employ him as an 'assistant teacher', had him give mathematics, geography and history lessons in the higher grades and finally got him to pass the Abitur exam; When Brüning's savings regulations forced them to make blatant savings, Alvarez had to go; later he emigrated, first to Paris, then to New York. "According to Jürgen Oelkers, Alvarez was" the driving force behind an uprising by students and teachers against Wyneken, which led to tumultuous clashes in the school and as a result of which Alvarez was dismissed without notice ".

One shortcoming was that the rest of the school's teaching staff consisted only of teachers from French Lycées who taught part-time. No sustained support was to be expected from this side for a school and teaching structure deviating from the French norms. Feidel-Mertz also suspects that the French teachers were an obstacle to reforming everyday school life and suggests (without, however, specifying this) that the teachers' union, which was originally positive, has also distanced itself from the school.

On the part of parents and students, too, there seems to have been little interest in school education based on reform pedagogical ideas.

“The students came from different countries, some of them were children of German emigrants. Most prepared for the baccalauréat or used the school as a stepping stone to get into one of the Paris state Lycées. With a few exceptions, all were day students. "

Against the background, it is hardly surprising that, as Feidel-Mertz explains, after only a few months most parents had distanced themselves from school. They could not break free from tradition and demanded “that their children take the usual promotion exams at the state schools at the end of each school year so that they have the opportunity to return to the state schools at any time”.

On the other hand, the school was often not affordable for a target group Karsen intended, children from emigrant families, because school fees had to be charged, and many emigrant families were unable to raise that. Karl-Heinz Füssl describes this using Walter Friedländer as an example :

“In early 1934, Li Friedländer shared the fate of her husband in exile in Paris. Since then, however, they have been denied access to German savings. A loan from Schweizer Freunde was not a permanent solution. In addition to his voluntary work in social and career counseling in the 'Service Juridique pour les Réfugiés Allemands', Friedländer also headed the social department in the 'Commission Allemande de Secours'. The expense allowance obtained from the activities only ensured a modest income and was nowhere near enough to send the daughter Dorothee to the 'Ecole Nouvelle de Boulogne' set up by Fritz Karsen. Instead, Friedländer gratefully accepted the offer from the Swiss Regina Kägi-Fuchsmann , who had given his daughter a vacancy at the private reform school Glarisegg on Lake Constance. "

Karsen himself was also not happy with the situation of having to ask for money for education.

“My father, who had worked in public schools and universities throughout his professional life , was not at all interested in running a private school. He did not like being financially dependent on the parents of the pupils and having to take on pupils who actually belonged in another school. It was a difficult time for him. "

This unpopular financial dependency was certainly felt so oppressive because not only Karsen was affected, but his entire family.

“My mother did the kitchen with the help of a Belgian cook, and I was the housemaid when I didn't have to be in class. I found this kind of work to be education for democracy. I had to do work that I would otherwise never have known in my life; Even my mother never suspected in earlier years that she would have to cook for around forty people a day. "

The early end of the École nouvelle de Boulogne

The situation had obviously been so depressing for Karsen that he must have considered moving to the USA as early as 1935. This was again triggered by Max Horkheimer , who had meanwhile relocated the Institute for Social Research to New York. Horkheimer was ready to guarantee with an affidavit , but the American authorities denied Karsen and his family entry. At the beginning of 1936 the time had come: Fritz Karsen received an invitation from the Colombian government to work as an educational advisor in Colombia. Petra Sonja Karsen suspects that this was done through the mediation of Fritz Demuth from the Emergency Association of German Scientists Abroad , with whom her father deposited his documents. Fritz Karsen accepted this invitation and was able to travel with his family to Colombia via the USA in March 1936. From then on they lived in Bogotá .

Walter Damus initially continued the École nouvelle de Boulogne , a restructuring was evidently being considered: “The department for retraining German-speaking children and the language courses for adults in French, English and Spanish [should] be expanded. The school also organized a Franco-German holiday colony in St. Brevin on the Atlantic Ocean. "

In 1937 Walter Damus also had to give up. He closed the school and went to the Pestalozzi School in Buenos Aires .

If one proceeds from the cited parental criticism and the expectations contained therein, the orientation towards the Lycée as an indispensable (and unquestioned) career springboard, then in retrospect it was a mistake to establish the École nouvelle de Boulogne as a school in the rigid and elitist French higher education system want. The “chances of realizing school trials in the elementary school sector [were] greater than in the secondary sector. So could Pitt Kruger attempt of community life in the tradition of Ecoles Nouvelles succeed while Fritz Karsens attempt failed a private international day secondary school. "

literature

  • Hildegard Feidel-Mertz (Hrsg.): Schools in exile. The repressed pedagogy after 1933. rororo, Reinbek, 1983, ISBN 3-499-17789-7 .
  • Hildegard Feidel-Mertz: Education in exile after 1933. Education for survival. Pictures of an exhibition. dipa publishing house, Frankfurt am Main, 1990, ISBN 3-7638-0520-6 .
  • Karl-Heinz Füssl: German-American cultural exchange in the 20th century: education, science, politics. Campus, 2004, ISBN 978-3-593-37499-4 .
  • Sonja Petra Karsen: Report about the father. In: Gerd Radde : Fritz Karsen: a Berlin school reformer from the Weimar period. Berlin 1973. Extended new edition. With a report about Sonja Petra Karsen's father (= studies on educational reform, 37). Frankfurt a. M. [u. a.] 1999, ISBN 3-631-34896-7 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hildegard Feidel-Mertz (Ed.): Schools in Exile , p. 167. In view of the rather low reception of French reform pedagogy in Germany, reference is made to the article in the French WIKIPEDIA: Éducation nouvelle and La Ruche
  2. ↑ Alumni of the École des Roches ( Memento des Originals from August 1, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ecoledesroches.com
  3. ↑ Tariffs of the École des Roches ( Memento des Originals from August 10, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ecoledesroches.com
  4. ^ Nouvelle École de Boulogne in the WIKIPEDIA-FR
  5. ↑ There is a book on this by the two directors: Blanche Harvaux et Marie-Aimée Niox-Chateau: L'éducation nouvelle à l'école. Boulogne 1947-1956 , Ed du Scarabée, Paris, 1958, reprinted 1968
  6. ^ Sonja Petra Karsen: Fritz Karsen's educational activity in Europe and America 1933–1951
  7. ↑ Sonja Petra Karsen: Report about the father , in: Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen , p. 403
  8. ↑ Sonja Petra Karsen: Report about the father , in: Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen , p. 404
  9. ^ Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen , p. 205
  10. ↑ Such permission was not a given. At that time there was only one foreign school in Paris, the American one. (Sonja Petra Karsen: Report about the father , in: Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen , p. 404)
  11. ↑ a b c d Hildegard Feidel-Mertz: Pedagogy in exile after 1933
  12. ↑ Sonja Petra Karsen: Report about the father , in: Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen , p. 404
  13. ^ Report on the father , in: Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen , p. 404
  14. ↑ a b Hildegard Feidel-Mertz / Hermann Schnorbach: teachers in emigration. The Association of German Teacher Emigrants (1933–39) in the traditional context of the democratic teachers' movement , Beltz Verlag, Weinheim and Basel, 1981, ISBN 3-407-54114-7 , p. 105. However, it is not clear whether this is the former Draftsmen and caricaturists (among others for Ulk and Kladderadatsch ; (* 1876 - † 1940)), or the graphic artist Fritz Wolff (1897-1946), who worked for the Rote Fahne and the Pariser Tageblatt and was the editor of their successor organ, the Paris daily newspaper was. An essay by Walter F. Peterson says about the latter: “Information about Wolff's activities in the Weimar Republic and his political relations during the emigration are very rare and imprecise; his biography is largely opaque. He is said to have been assistant editor of the intelligence service of the United Communist Party of Germany, which Anna Geyer headed from December 1920 to August 1921. (Fritz Heine to Otto Wels, July 2, 1938, Archive of Social Democracy, Bonn (in future: AsD), SOPADE, Folder 51; also Victor Schiff to Ernst Reuter, July 13/15, 1946, Landesarchiv Berlin, NL Ernst Reuter , No. 515, sheet 36). A report submitted to the Paris police headquarters states that Wolff was born in Graudenz in 1897 and was a journalist by profession. He was observed as a political refugee because of his activities 'on the far left'. This certainly meant his work for the 'Inpress' press service founded in 1933 by the Hungarian communist Sándor Rádo. Report to the Délégation Judiciaires, ZStAP, holdings PTZ, no. 53, p. 46. “( Walter F. Peterson: THE DILEMMA OF LINKSLIBERAL GERMAN JOURNALISTS IN EXILE. The case of the 'Pariser Tageblatt' , note 43, pdf-page 14)
  15. ↑ Peter Dudek: "Experimental field for a new youth". The Free School Community of Wickersdorf 1906-1945 , Julius Klinkhardt Publishing House, Bad Heilbrunn, 2009, ISBN 978-3-7815-1681-6 , p. 309
  16. ↑ Dieter Haubfleisch: Note 55 on Wilhelm Blume: The study trip of the committee [the school farm Insel Scharfenberg in October 1924]
  17. ↑ Juergen Oelkers: "Pedagogical Eros" in German rural education homes , in: Werner Thole, Meike Baader, Werner Helsper, Manfred Kappeler, Marianne Leuzinger-Bohleber, Sabine Reh, Uwe Sielert, Christiane Thompson (eds.): Sexualized violence, power and pedagogy , Verlag Barbara Budrich, Opladen / Berlin / Toronto, 2012, ISBN 978-3-8474-0046-2 , p. 40. More on this conflict in the previously cited book Peter Dudek, p. 304 ff.
  18. ↑ Report on the father , in: Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen , p. 405
  19. ^ Karl-Heinz Füssl: German-American cultural exchange in the 20th century , pp. 160–161.
  20. ↑ Report on the father , in: Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen , p. 405
  21. ↑ Report on the father , in: Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen , p. 405
  22. ↑ Fritz Demuth biographical data in the Federal Archives
  23. ↑ Report about the father , in: Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen , p. 406
  24. ↑ Hildegard Feidel-Mertz (Ed.): Schools in Exile , p. 168