August Christian Riekel

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August Christian Riekel (born September 23, 1897 in Wolfsanger near Kassel , † August 1, 1967 in Tutzing ) was a German educationalist and screenwriter . In the latter function he used various pseudonyms : Herbert Borden , Karl Dankworth , Harald von Leyden and above all Harald Bratt .

Life

Riekel was the son of a foreman at the Henschel machine factory in Kassel. He attended the secondary school in Kassel until 1914 , but was only able to take his Abitur in 1920 due to his military service in the First World War .

Riekel studied philosophy , psychology and education at the universities of Marburg , Munich and Göttingen from 1920 to 1923 . His most important academic teachers were the Catholic philosopher Clemens Baeumker , the Marburg psychologist Erich Rudolf Jaensch (with whom he received his doctorate in 1922), as well as Aloys Fischer and Oswald Kroh .

In 1922 he was with the work of the physiological psychology of animals and small children at the University of Marburg doctorate and on October 1, 1923, 26 years at the Technical University of Brunswick with the work problems of teacher education habilitation .

In 1923 he became a private lecturer for philosophy, in 1924 assistant at the chair for philosophy and education - first with Oswald Kroh , then with Willy Moog . In 1927 he received a teaching position for educational science. On July 1, 1928, he was appointed associate professor for educational psychology and general educational science at the TH Braunschweig and a short time later - after he had turned down an offer at the University of Hamburg - as a full professor at the TH Braunschweig. One of his closest students here was Hans Löhr .

In 1930 he later founded the Research Institute for Educational Sciences in the Villa Salve Hospes in Braunschweig . This was closed again in 1931.

Riekel was very controversial both scientifically and as a person. The bourgeois circles in the Free State of Braunschweig were bothered by his progressive ideas in education and school policy. His colleagues and party comrades (Riekel was a member of the SPD ) repeatedly came into conflict with him personally.

Finally, on April 13, 1931, he was forcibly retired . The application was made by his own colleagues in the Department of Cultural Studies (most of them also Social Democrats). After the Nazis seized power in 1933, his retirement was converted into a dismissal by the NSDAP minister of education, Dietrich Klagges , on the basis of the law for the restoration of the professional civil service , § 4 “political unreliability”. As a result, instead of full pay, he only received a greatly reduced pension.

August Riekel kept himself afloat financially by writing plays and screenplays under the pseudonym Harald Bratt. While his plays and first films were still politically harmless, his work on the propaganda films Ohm Krüger and Ich Anklage made him part of the National Socialist propaganda machine, which forced him to justify himself after the war.

He sold the rights to his play Der Herrscher , which contains motifs from Gerhart Hauptmann's play Before Sunset , so that it became the basis for Veit Harlan's film Der Herrscher in 1937 , although he had nothing to do with its production.

Venue of the "Art Theater" on Praterstrasse in Vienna

In 1938 he moved to Baden near Vienna and after the war to Bloemendaal in the Netherlands . He later returned to Germany and applied for redress . Immediately after the Second World War, in autumn 1945, he opened the “Art Theater ” in Vienna at Praterstrasse 25 (former venue for the Rolandbühne and the Exl-Bühne ), which Fritz Eckhardt led after him .

His play office hours or the night of the Fourth in 1953 by the British broadcaster BBC filmed ( Night of the Fouth ) and named the best TV show of the year.

In the 1950s he was commissioned by the North Rhine-Westphalian Ministry of Culture to produce a film entitled Triumph über Trümmer , but Riekel's production company, which was founded after the war, went bankrupt .

1956 Riekel received the status of a professor emeritus back and was rehabilitated.

Works (selection)

Fonts

  • Kant and the coming generation. A speech on the two hundredth birthday of Kant, given to the professors and students of the Technical University of Braunschweig. Braunschweig 1925.
  • The philosophy of the renaissance. Munich 1925.
  • The problems of teacher training. Thoughts and Proposals. Braunschweig 1925.
  • Tasks and limits of public education. Osterwieck / Harz 1926.
  • Problems of educational psychology. An investigation into the current status and the future possibilities of pedagogically oriented selenium research and psychology. Munich 1927.
  • On the nature of education. Investigations into the problem of the concept of education. Braunschweig 1927.
  • The democratization of education. Leipzig 1928.
  • Problems of educational psychology. An investigation into the current status and future possibilities of pedagogically oriented soul research and soul science. Munich 1930.
  • Academic Teacher Education: Idea and Shape. Langensalza 1931.

Plays

  • Return of an Olympic Champion (1932)
  • Beyond Worries (1932)
  • His Excellency the Fool (1933)
  • The Island (1933)
  • The ruler (1934)
  • Gustav Kilian (1935)
  • A great man in private (1936)
  • The Romanov House (1937)
  • Duschenka (1938)
  • The women of Shanghai (1939)
  • The Hotel of Emigration (Premiere September 28, 1945, Vienna Art Theater)

Scripts

Film adaptations

Sources and literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Helmut Hirsch: Teachers make history - the institute for educational sciences and the international textbook institute. Wuppertal / Ratingen / Kastellaun 1971
  2. ↑ a b c Hans-Ulrich Ludewig: August Riekel and his work in Braunschweig. In: G.Biegel / A.Klein / P.Albrecht / T.Sonar (eds.): Jewish life and academic milieu in Braunschweig. Frankf. a. M. 2012, pp. 51-63; Photo by Riekel on p. 58
  3. ↑ a b c d e Uwe Sandfuchs: University teacher training in the Weimar Republic and in the Third Reich. Bad Heilbrunn / OBB 1978
  4. ↑ a b c d Armin Stock / Elfriede Billmann-Mahecha / Uwe Wolfradt: German-speaking psychologists 1933 - 1945. A dictionary of persons. Wiesbaden 2015, pp. 369-370
  5. ^ Anikó Szabó: Expulsion, return, reparation. Göttingen university professor in the shadow of National Socialism. Wallstein Verlag 2000, p. 632
  6. ↑ a b Nicole C. Karafyllis: Willi Moog (1888-1935): Ein Philosophenleben, Freiburg / Munich 2015, p. 181
  7. ↑ Hein Retter: Oswald Kroh and National Socialism. Weinheim 2001, p. 67, F.16
  8. ↑ a b Hein Retter: Psychology in Education. Oswald Kroh and his successors at the TH Braunschweig in the Weimar Republic. In: With the current, against the current. Contributions to psychology in Braunschweig. Frankf. a. M. 2013, pp. 47-70
  9. ^ André Eckardt: The former "International Research Institute for Educational Sciences" in Braunschweig. In: International Yearbook for History Teaching Vol. 9 (1963) pp. 318 - 321
personal data
SURNAME Riekel, August Christian
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bratt, Harald
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Screenwriter
DATE OF BIRTH September 23, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Wolfsanger
DATE OF DEATH August 1, 1967
Place of death Tutzing