Alma de l'Aigle

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Alma de l'Aigle

Alma de l'Aigle (* February 18, 1889 in Hamburg ; † March 14, 1959 there ) was a German educator , author and rose connoisseur. She was a founding member of the German Association for the Protection of Children and a member of the Federal Testing Office for writings harmful to young people .

Life and work

Alma de l'Aigle's ancestors came from France and had fled the terror of the French Revolution as aristocrats in Holstein, then Denmark. She was the daughter of the civil service lawyer Friedrich Alexander de l'Aigle and his wife Christine, née Wokters. She had two younger sisters: Anita and Claudine de l'Aigle.

Alma de l'Aigle originally wanted to become a painter, but then, for financial reasons and at her father's request, she trained as a teacher. She first attended the teachers' seminar at the monastery school and then the Hamburg School of Applied Arts , where she completed training as a technical teacher. After completing her training, she first worked as a private educator in Hamburg; later she taught for 13 years at the State Aid School for the Disabled . During the First World War , she set up a wartime lunch table and arranged jobs for unemployed Hamburgers in the countryside.

In 1940, Alma de l'Aigle accompanied children from Hamburg as part of the Kinderland deportation to the mission house St. Peter der Steyler Missionare in Tirschenreuth . The Gauleitung ordered a Christmas party for Christmas, which should actually be free of cribs and Christianity. Together with other teachers, Alma de l'Aigle wrote the text for a nativity play, in the text of which concealed statements critical of the regime were incorporated. In 1949 Alma de l'Aigle published the text of the Tirschenreuth Nativity Scene, which was performed again in Tirschenreuth in 1949.

Her special educational commitment was to support people with learning disabilities throughout her life . Despite this attitude, she was initially able to continue teaching during the Nazi regime until she was dismissed from school in 1944 and transferred to the library of the educational institute.

After the Second World War, she worked as a teacher again, but applied for early retirement in 1950.

Alma de l'Aigle has published numerous children's books and parenting guides on parenting issues. She is considered an important representative of German special education .

Alma de l'Aigle died in 1959. She was buried in the old Niendorf cemetery .

Political commitment

After the First World War, Alma de l'Aigle joined the Young Socialists . She was a temporary member of the SPD and took part in the 1919 party congress in Weimar, for which she initiated a leaflet with ten proposals for an action program for social democracy. She also worked out a draft land reform .

In 1920 disciplinary proceedings were brought against her because she had refused to take an oath on the imperial constitution .

At Easter 1923 she took part in the Young Socialists Day in Hofgeismar , where she gave a lecture and helped found the Hofgeismar Circle . At the meeting she met Theodor Haubach , with whom she has been a close friend since then. From 1930 she worked actively in the editorial team of the Neue Blätter für den Sozialismus - magazine for intellectual and political design .

During the Second World War she kept in close contact with Haubach, who was active in the Kreisau district . During the period of his imprisonment, she maintained regular and intensive correspondence with him until his execution in 1945. She published his letters in book form after the Second World War.

After the Second World War, she was elected by the Hamburg citizenship as a member of the criminal chamber of the Federal Administrative Court. After 1949 she was temporarily a member of the All-German People's Party (GVP) and actively campaigned against rearmament in the Federal Republic . She ran unsuccessfully for the GVP in the 1953 federal election on the Hamburg state list.

In 1953 Alma de l'Aigle was one of the founding members of the German Child Protection Association . She was a member of the federal inspection agency for writings harmful to minors .

In her will she bequeathed her personal correspondence as well as numerous essay and lecture manuscripts to the archive of social democracy of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung ; the estate is kept in the Federal Archives in Koblenz.

Alma de l'Aigle garden

Alma de l'Aigle's father, Alexander de l'Aigle, bought an approx. 8000 m² plot of land in Hamburg-Eppendorf in 1888 . He built a house here and laid out a garden. This was divided into three areas: an ornamental garden with boxwood beds and numerous rose bushes in the area of ​​the house, a central section with a vegetable garden and a meadow with fruit trees. Alexander de l'Aigle cultivated numerous different types of roses and old fruits.

After the death of their father, the three daughters took over the care of the garden, with Alma in particular taking care of the garden. She published her memories of childhood in 1948 in the book Ein Garten .

She was particularly interested in roses. She maintained a close exchange with the gardeners and rose breeders Karl Foerster and Servais Lejeune as well as with the nurseries Strobel & Wohlt and Kordes, which specialize in rose breeding .

Garden de l'Aigle (2015)
Garden de l'Aigle (2015)

She incorporated her knowledge of roses into the book Encounters with Roses . In addition to rose breeding, growth forms and choice of varieties, she describes 700 types of roses and goes into a separate chapter on the special features of rose scents. When the publisher with whom she had negotiated the publication of her rose book wanted to delete entire chapters that were particularly close to her heart, she published the book in 1957 at her own expense, for which she took out a mortgage on her parents' house and from friends received a loan. After she had initially taken care of the distribution of the book herself, Schuler Verlag in Stuttgart took over the remaining circulation in 1958. Karl Foerster wrote a review of the book for Die Zeit . He praises the language, the specialist knowledge and particularly emphasizes the extensive description of the rose scents. Servais Lejeune describes the book as "the heart of all rose books".

After the death of the last of the three de l'Aigle sisters, the garden went wild and the house was later demolished. An application for monument protection to the cultural authority was rejected and the property was eventually sold to a Dutch investment company. In 1991 the property was to be built with condominiums and underground garages. A citizens' initiative was formed out of protest, from which the society for the promotion of garden culture evolved . This achieved that a third of the garden area with the rose bushes and fruit trees, some of which were still from the founding year 1888, could be preserved. The freely accessible Alma de l'Aigle garden is located as a private natural monument on the grounds of the Anscharhöhe Foundation and is looked after by the Hamburg Preservation Foundation.

Honors

"Keepsake" rose in the women's garden (2020)
  • In the Niendorf enclosure , a memorial stone commemorates Alma de l'Aigle.
  • A musk rose with fragrant pink blossoms, cultivated in the Kordes nursery in 1955, was named in her honor in memory of Alma de l'Aigle . The rose had originally fallen out of the breeder's selection, but was then further propagated on the initiative of Alma de l'Aigle in 1956 and brought onto the market in autumn 1958 by the Wohlt tree nursery, initially under the name of her chosen name Isabelle . After Alma de l'Aigle's death in 1959, the rose was dedicated to her. A copy of the rose plant "In memory of Alma de l'Aigle" is in the area of the women's garden in the Ohlsdorf cemetery .
  • In 2002, the city of Hamburg intended to name a street in Eppendorf Alma-de-l'Aigle-Weg in honor of the pedagogue . However, after protests from local residents about the complicated spelling of the name, the street was given a different name. For the same reason, the Eppendorfer Alma de l'Aigle School was previously renamed Ida Ehre School .
  • Since 2013, the Society for the Promotion of Garden Culture eV has awarded the Alma de l'Aigle Prize for Garden Culture to people who have made a special contribution to garden culture. The first prize winner in 2013 was Ruth Zacharias , who received the prize for the construction of the botanical garden for the blind in Radeberg .

Works

  • Conservative-revolutionary. In: Young German Voices. 1918.
  • Quality marks for all goods, as a basis for the voluntary return to quality goods. Diederichs, Jena 1920.
  • The sexual problem in upbringing. Hall, Lauenburg (Elbe) 1920.
  • Rabbits and other beloved animals. Thienemann, Stuttgart 1930.
  • Star diary. Thienemann, Stuttgart 1939.
  • with Theodor Haubach (posthumously): My letters from Theo Haubach. Hoffmann and Campe, 1947.
  • A garden. Claassen & Goverts, Hamburg 1948.
    • Extended reprint of the 1st edition in 1996 by Dölling & Galitz, Hamburg, ISBN 3-930802-39-2 .
  • Shards, silver and cement. Children's experiences from our days. Brunnen-Verlag, Hamburg-Wohldorf, 1948.
  • The Tirschenreuther Nativity Play. Bärenreiter-Verlag, Kassel 1948.
  • The eternal ordinances in education. Conversations with mothers. Hoffmann & Campe, Hamburg 1948.
    • from the 2nd edition as: Parents' Primer: the eternal order in education. 2nd, improved edition. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1950.
  • with Helga Prollius: You and your children. With drawings by Axel Sander. Rieck, Delmenhorst 1949.
  • Very little stories: To read aloud - to read for yourself for boys and girls aged 4–8. With drawings by Dorothea Henschel-Kastl. Köhler, Hamburg 1951.
  • Everything will be fine. With text drawings by Wolfgang Felten. Herder, Freiburg 1955.
  • Encounter with roses. Hanseatische Druckanstalt, Hamburg 1957.
    • 2nd Edition. Frick, Moos am Bodensee 1977.
    • 1st edition. Reprint of the 1958 edition, Dölling and Galitz, Hamburg 2002, ISBN 3-935549-16-4 .

literature

  • Brita Reimers: l'Aigle, Alma de . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 1 . Christians, Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-7672-1364-8 , pp. 172-173 .
  • Brita Reimers: Alma de l'Aigle - guardian of paradises . In: Die Gartenkunst  20 (1/2008), pp. 203–212.

Web links

Commons : Alma de l'Aigle  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gudrun Wedel: Autobiographies of women: a lexicon. Böhlau Verlag, Cologne 2010, p. 7.
  2. ↑ a b Wilhelm Kosch among others: German Literature Lexicon . The 20th century. Volume 1, Walter de Gruyter, 1999, column 110.
  3. ^ Gerhard Schmidt-Grillmeier: The Tirschenreuther Nativity Play. In: Oberpfälzer Heimat . Volume 44, Weiden 2000.
  4. ↑ Alma de l'Aigle: The Tirschenreuther Nativity Play. Bärenreiter-Verlag, Kassel 1948.
  5. ↑ a b c The Alma de l'Aigle garden - testimony of a woman committed to reform education and gardening culture. Information brochure of the Stiftung Denkmalpflege Hamburg ( denkmalstiftung.de ).
  6. ↑ H.-H. Paul: Inventory of the legacies of the German labor movement: for the ten West German states and West Berlin. On behalf of the Archive of Social Democracy of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung. K. G. Saur, Munich 1993, p. 7.
  7. ^ K. Weissmann: Fire for purification sake. In: Junge Freiheit - weekly newspaper for debate. January 2, 2009, accessed June 1, 2014.
  8. ↑ Illustration and location of the tombstone of the old cemetery in Niendorf at garten-der-frauen.de
  9. ↑ a b c H.-H. Paul: Inventory of the legacies of the German labor movement: for the ten West German states and West Berlin. On behalf of the Archive of Social Democracy of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung. K. G. Saur, Munich 1993, p. 6.
  10. ^ Günter Brakelmann: Die Kreisauer: momentous encounters: biographical sketches for Helmuth James von Moltke, Peter Yorck von Wartenburg, Carlo Mierendorff and Theodor Haubach. LIT Verlag, Münster 2004, p. 375.
  11. ↑ M. Martiny: The emergence and political significance of the "new sheets for socialism" and their circle of friends. In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte. Volume 25, Issue 3, 1977, p. 378.
  12. ↑ My letters from Theo Haubach. Hoffmann and Campe, 1947.
  13. ^ L'Aigle, Alma de . In: Martin Schumacher (Ed.): MdB - The People's Representation 1946–1972. - [Abatz bis Azzola] (=  KGParl online publications ). Commission for the History of Parliamentarism and Political Parties e. V., Berlin 2006, ISBN 978-3-00-020703-7 , pp. 10 , urn : nbn: de: 101: 1-2014070812574 ( kgparl.de [PDF; 187 kB ; accessed on June 19, 2017]).
  14. ↑ Karl Foerster: Floral fragrance and garden happiness - the enthusiastic appreciation of a rose book by a great rose grower. In: The time. August 15, 1957.
  15. ^ Cover text of the reprints from 2002, Dölling and Galitz Verlag, Hamburg / Munich 2002, ISBN 3-935549-16-4 .
  16. ↑ E. von Radziewsky: Choked off and plowed up - after a hundred years, Alma de l'Aigle's dream garden has to give way to excavators. In: The time. October 4, 1991, No. 41
  17. ↑ Festschrift for the 125th anniversary of the Anscharhöhe Foundation , Hamburg 2011, p. 47.
  18. ↑ Entry of the rose souvenir of Alma de l'Aigle on the World of Roses page , accessed on May 31, 2014.
  19. ↑ Report of the gardener Schwerdner in Rosenbogen - journal of the Association of rose lovers. Issue 4, year 1976; Excerpts from it on the garden literature homepage , accessed on May 31, 2014.
  20. ↑ What will become of the ineffable Alma de l'Aigle-Weg - Curious dispute: Two districts want Erna-Stahl-Straße. In: Hamburger Morgenpost. February 2, 2002, accessed June 1, 2014.
  21. ↑ Your name moves Hamburg - Alma de l'Aigle: A woman does not get the honor she deserves. In: Hamburger Morgenpost. February 8, 2002, accessed June 1, 2014.
  22. ↑ Presentation of the Alma de l'Aigle Prize on the homepage of the Society for the Promotion of Garden Culture, accessed on June 20, 2017.
personal data
SURNAME l'Aigle, Alma de
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German educator, author and rose connoisseur
DATE OF BIRTH February 18, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH March 14, 1959
Place of death Hamburg