Arthur Spier

Arthur Spier (born July 22, 1898 in Ballenstedt , † March 30, 1985 in New York City ) was a German educator and school director.

Life

Spier, who comes from a strictly Orthodox Jewish family, received a school education in Bad Schwalbach . Considered a mathematical talent, he developed measuring instruments for aircraft during World War I and survived a crash during a test flight that sustained injuries. He then studied mathematics, physics and philosophy at several universities in Germany. In addition, he studied Jewish Studies at the University of Frankfurt am Main and at the Rabbinical Seminar in Berlin . After the state examination in 1922 at the University of Marburg , he was awarded a teaching qualification for higher schools in 1924 with distinction.

In 1926 Spier was appointed director of the Talmud Tora School in Hamburg. He succeeded Joseph Carlebach and continued the changes in the educational concept introduced by Carlebach. He developed the school into a Jewish comprehensive school, which included elementary school, elementary school and high school, two "auxiliary classes" for students with learning difficulties, craft classes and a seminar for Jewish trainee teachers. With the state recognition in 1932 Spier received the post of senior director of the school with 700 pupils, in which all pedagogues taught in all branches of the school.

After the seizure of power in 1933, the school initially no longer received any government funding. Spier, who knew how to deal with the competent authorities and the Gestapo extremely skillfully , managed to get them back and to keep teaching at the school relatively undisturbed. The school now imparted technical and agricultural knowledge and prepared the students for emigration, with Spier helping children, parents and colleagues in need. The National Socialists imprisoned and abused Spier for a short time during the November pogroms in 1938 . Eleven days after his release from prison he obtained the release of colleagues who had been interned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp and who had returned to enable the school to resume.

In the next few months Spier campaigned for Kindertransporte , which led to England and other European countries. He traveled with several transports to England, where he helped organize the accommodation of more children until the beginning of the Second World War , with which the transports ended. After the National Socialists cleared the school in the summer of 1939, Spier moved the remaining Jewish schools into the building of the Jewish girls' school. In March the Gestapo instructed the headmaster to raise money in the USA for a supposedly planned “Jewish reservation” in Lublin . Spier did not return to Germany, but settled in New York. There he founded and directed the Manhattan Day School, which he organized and directed according to the principle of the Hamburg School. His concept, which earned him a high reputation, developed into a model for many comparable schools in the USA. Spier also directed the Spanish-Portuguese School in New York.

With the Comprehensive Hebrew Calendar, Spier wrote a generally understandable mathematical calendar that establishes the connection between the Jewish calendar and the Gregorian calendar for the years 1900 to 2100. The third edition of the widespread work appeared in 1986.

literature

• Ursula Randt : Spier, Arthur . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 1 . Christians, Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-7672-1364-8 , pp. 301-302 .
• Spier, Arthur , in: Joseph Walk (ed.): Short biographies on the history of the Jews 1918–1945 . Munich: Saur, 1988, ISBN 3-598-10477-4 , p. 349

Web links

• Miriam Gillis-Carlebach : Spier, Arthur on dasjuedischehamburg.de
• Arthur Spier: Father of Day Schools in America , at the Manfred and Anne Lehmann Foundation