Andreas Mehringer

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Andreas Mehringer (born March 10, 1911 in Bernloh, a district of Warngau ; † December 21, 2004 in Munich ) was a German social / curative pedagogue . He is considered a reformer of German home education after 1945.

Biography and work

He was the youngest of four siblings. At the age of seven he lost his 34-year-old mother. Two years later he got a stepmother, to whom he said he had no access and who suffered from rejection.

At the age of six he started school in the undivided village school (seven classes in one room). After four school years, Mehringer came to the Scheyern boys' seminar near Pfaffenhofen an der Ilm , led by Benedictines, on the advice of the pastor and his teacher . In 1927 he switched to the boys' seminar in Freising . He completed the last two years of high school in Rosenheim . After graduating from high school, he took a year of seminars from 1929 to 1930 at the teacher training institute in Pasing , which at the time was still an independent town. Parallel to his studies, he worked as a substitute teacher at various Munich suburban schools.

From 1931 to 1936 he studied pedagogy in Munich , at that time still connected with psychology . He chose philosophy and literary history as minor subjects . The student was one of the last students to listen to Aloys Fischer . In addition to his studies, Mehringer worked as a prefect in a children's home run by nuns. He was on duty with the apprentices early in the morning, in the evening and on the weekends. Here, as a prefect, he got to know the rigors of the institutional system of that time. This experience is said to have awakened in him the desire not to remain a teacher, but to lead a home himself. He completed his studies with a thesis on the socio-educational approaches in the work of Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi . The title of his dissertation, completed in 1936 and published a year later, was: Pestalozzi as a welfare teacher. A Contribution to the History of Welfare Education . He described the Swiss pedagogue as someone who deserves a place of honor in the pedagogical ancestral gallery of National Socialism . In the alleged Pestalozzi sense, he advocated not neglecting healthy and valuable youth. Mehringer commented on this in his dissertation:

On the basis of the new findings, it is of course necessary first of all to take into account the promotion of healthy youth by 'preventing hereditary offspring' on the one hand and by promoting marriages based on racially favorable principles on the other. I would also like to interpret this in Pestalozzi's sense, as the first and best 'preventive' measure, as 'wisdom that prevents evil before it occurs' .

Andreas Mehringer then worked as a teacher in a small town in Upper Bavaria, then as a district clerk for the National Socialist People's Welfare Association , then in a youth home and finally as a psychologist in the air force's aptitude test center. During the Nazi dictatorship, he also published some articles that were compromising from today's perspective, in which he appeared, among other things, as an advocate of eugenics in accordance with the National Socialist youth welfare policy:

The National Socialist youth welfare service pays special attention to the genetically healthy German family. She could not expect much success from caring for people with lower inheritance. The inferior inheritance cannot be cured; it must be eliminated by preventing it from reproducing any further. The youth welfare service leaves this gradual elimination of inheritance inferiority to the state inheritance legislation .

At the time, he presented this approach as having no alternative. Otherwise - as he had already stated in his dissertation before working for the NSV:

to portray welfare as a whole, especially child welfare, as a pointless undertaking which only serves to keep the scum of humanity, which would have to perish for reasons of selection, alive artificially and, moreover, with means that are withheld from healthy offspring received .

After 1945 he took over the management, which Elisabeth Bamberger offered him, of the destroyed Munich orphanage (which he managed until 1969). There he introduced the family principle , which quickly became the model for other homes and thus occasionally replaced the institutional education that was still common in many places at the time . The family-like home group was not an invention of the new home manager. Even Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi , Johann Hinrich Wichern and Eva von Tiele-Winckler tried from the institution education an oriented at the family home education to form (Roper 1976, p 240). Mehringer himself claimed:

We are the first home in Germany that works on the family principle. There are now also experiments in Cologne, Pforzheim and in the Black Forest

He did not mention that the Marie Mattfeld Children's Home in Oberammergau had already successfully tested the family principle in a group in 1950

Andreas Mehringer later wrote about his home concept:

Do you have to ... barrack the children like in an old institution? Does the difference between a family child and an institution child have to be so huge? We say: no. There are some essential elements of the family that are transferable to substitute placement. It is primarily these three: the manageable small number; then: not all the same, but different children in the group, big and small, boys and girls, and finally the self-contained way of living in this small, mixed group. In other words: the own four walls that everyone wants to have for themselves, that they love because they need them. Children also need them .

In 1949 he took over the editing of the trade journal Our Youth (which he held for almost 40 years) and in the same year founded the Friends of Former Orphans eV

He devoted particular attention to improving the homes for babies and young children, which he ultimately pleaded for the closure of them and consequently also campaigned for the qualitative improvement of the adoption and foster homes.

In addition, he taught for a few years, encouraged by Prof. Philipp Lersch , at the Munich University, among other things, on home education for family-free children , current problems in youth welfare , pedagogy in early childhood , social pedagogy in schools .

Andreas Mehringer was active as a journalist. As an orphanage father , he tried to influence the development of social / home education and youth welfare. His small paperback A Little Curative Education , which is one of the classics of curative education , achieved great importance . Its (curative) educational core statements are briefly formulated. He found that the diagnosis 'neglected', which is no longer in use, does not mean that the child is neglected, but rather that it has been neglected . In general, the principle of pedagogy should be to give trust first in order to generate trust.

Meetings and conferences at home ( German Youth Welfare Day ) and abroad ( World Congress for Youth Welfare ) repeatedly gave him the opportunity to point out educational and socio-educational concerns, problems and grievances in the field of public youth welfare. He was particularly involved in meetings of the General Welfare Education Day and the International Society for Home Education by giving presentations and working in working groups. In the 1960s he was a member of the board of the association for children and maternity protection. V. at. He was particularly interested in the Amalie-Nacken Children's Home in Dachau, which was based on the family principle.

Andreas Mehringer was married twice. The first marriage had three children.

criticism

The criticism of the life and work of Andreas Mehringer (see web links) is sparked primarily by his unclear position towards central aspects of the National Socialist youth welfare. He was actively involved in its implementation both as an employee of the NSV and as an author, as the above quotations can prove. His repeated appearance as a proponent of eugenics deserves special mention, because evidently relevant references can still be found in his written work in 1985. Since this attitude at the beginning of the 20th century also met with approval in church circles and within the socialist labor movement, Mehringer cannot therefore necessarily be characterized as a National Socialist educator. However, he thereby promoted the implementation of the racist ideology of the National Socialists and can therefore also be made responsible for the injustice committed in these contexts. Mehringer never commented on the critical queries with which he had been repeatedly confronted since the late 1980s. The question of how he was able to accept the Janusz Korczak Prize (which is dedicated to the memory of a prominent Holocaust victim) in 1978 - without saying a word about his NSV time - has also remained unanswered. In connection with his involvement in the NSV, his originality as a reformer of German home education after 1945 has also been questioned. Kuhlmann and Schrapper see in his approach of family-oriented home education, which he implemented as home manager in the Munich orphanage, only an implementation of the NSV youth home concept , leaving out the racist components originally contained therein. This view contradicts a deeper look into the history of institutional education, because as has already been shown above, well before 1933 important personalities in education tried to implement the family principle. This is adjoined Mehringer could after 1945 also have oriented (!).

Recently there have been allegations of former orphanage children accusing Mehringer of severe corporal punishment. B .. Rädlinger even writes u. a .: "Educator N. is accused of having raped young people and probably also children ('child fucker') [...] Mehringer is also blamed for this by two people in a not entirely clear way".

Honors

Regardless of the criticisms that were not yet known at the time, Andreas Mehringer was made an honorary member of the International Society for Home Education - IGfH . In 1978 he was awarded the Janusz Korczak Prize for his educational life's work.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Mehringer 1937, p. 164.
  2. ↑ Mehringer 1937, p. 165.
  3. ↑ Mehringer 1939, p. 135.
  4. ↑ Mehringer 1936, p. 165.
  5. ↑ cit. n. Rädlinger 2014, p. 61
  6. ↑ cf. ibid.
  7. ↑ Mehringer 1976, p. 60.
  8. ↑ freunde-der-waisenkinder.de
  9. ↑ cf. Mehringer 1936/37, 1938, 1939.
  10. ↑ cf. Babic 2008 and Mehringer 1985.
  11. ↑ cf. Kappeller 2000.
  12. ↑ cf. Kuhlmann 1989, p. 253.
  13. ↑ Kuhlmann / Schrapper 2001, p. 309.
  14. ↑ cf. Campe 2008, p. 146 ff.
  15. ↑ Abused by Mutti - story of a home child -. to: merkur-online. March 22, 2012.
  16. ↑ cf. Rädlinger 2014, p. 92 ff.
  17. ↑ Rädlinger 2014, p. 97

Fonts (selection)

  • Pestalozzi as a welfare teacher. A Contribution to the History of Caring Education. Munich 1936. Dissertation, unpublished version
  • Pestalozzi as a welfare teacher. A Contribution to the History of Caring Education. Munich 1937. Dissertation, published version (given due to different page numbers from the unpublished version)
  • Abnormal childhood and youth. In: German youth welfare. 30th year, No. 8 (November 1938), Edition A, pp. 277-287.
  • Acquisition and guidance of employees in the NSV youth welfare. In: German youth welfare. 31st year, issue 4/5 (July / August 1939), issue A, pp. 129–144.
  • Janusz Korczak. Second Wuppertal Korczak Colloquium. Editor: Friedhelm Beiner. Universitäts-Druck Wuppertal 1984 (review). In: Our youth. Volume 37, No. 8/1985, pp. 336-337.
  • Principles of modern institutional education. In: H. Landes, F. Scheck, F. Stippel (ed.): Handbook of youth welfare. Munich 1980, pp. 137-144.
  • Home children. Collected essays on the history and the present of home education. Munich / Basel 1976.
  • Abandoned children. Unconfidence in early childhood is difficult to make up for. Munich / Basel 1986.
  • A little curative education. How to deal with difficult children. Munich / Basel 1979.

literature

  • Bernhard Babic: Is it all just ignorance and naivety? From the sometimes questionable way of dealing with the Nazi past. In: Forum youth welfare. Issue 1/2008, pp. 69-75.
  • Günther Baumann: The Munich Orphanage Chronicle 1899–1999. Munich
  • Manfred Berger : Andreas Mehringer - His life and work. In: heilpaedagogik.de , 2005 / H. 2, pp. 22-26.
  • Manfred Berger: Andreas Mehringer - Reformer of home education after 1945. A biographical-pedagogical sketch. In: Zeitschrift für Erlebnispädagogik. 26 2006 / H. 1, pp. 62-67.
  • Ludwig Campe: Andreas Mehringer (1911-2004). An educator in two worlds . Munich 2008.
  • Ursula Göllner, Hannelore Buschner: Andreas Mehringer. An educator in the home. Presentation - analysis - criticism. Dortmund 1977.
  • Manfred Kappeler : The terrible dream of the perfect human being. Racial hygiene and eugenics in social work. Marburg 2000.
  • Renate Kremer, Thomas Leicht: The pedagogue Andreas Mehringer. His thoughts on home education. Tubingen 1985.
  • Carola Kuhlmann: Hereditary illness or educable? Youth welfare between donation and destruction. Welfare education in Westphalia 1933-45. Weinheim 1989.
  • Carola Kuhlmann, Christian Schrapper : On the history of educational assistance from poor relief to assistance with upbringing. In: V. Birtsch, K. Münstermann, W. Trede (eds.): Handbook Educational Aids. Guide to training, practice and research. Münster 2001, pp. 282–328.
  • Roland Merten : Dr. Andreas Mehringer. In: Our youth. 2005 / H. 2, pp. 51-53.
  • Christian Schrapper: Andreas Mehringer (1911–2004) - A life in two worlds. In: Our youth . 2005 / H. 9, pp. 385-393.
  • Friedrich Franz Röper: The orphaned child in the institution and home. Goettingen 1976.
  • Christine Rädlinger : "Christmas was always very nice". The children's homes of the state capital of Munich from 1950 to 1975. Processing of home education (welfare education) in the years 1950 to approx. 1975 in Munich homes owned by the city, Munich 2014

Web links


personal data
SURNAME Mehringer, Andreas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German curative teacher
DATE OF BIRTH March 10, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Bernloh, district of Warngau
DATE OF DEATH December 21, 2004
Place of death Munich