Clara Israel

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Clara Israel (born October 28, 1876 in Spandau , † October 22, 1942 in Berlin ) was of Jewish origin and a pioneer of social work in Germany. She was the first female magistrate in Prussia.

Live and act

Growing up with four siblings, she went through the usual training for girls of her class as the daughter of an old-established merchant family. Attending the theater, education, maintaining music and traveling were the focus of family life.

Clara Israel graduated from the Royal Augusta School and then a kindergarten teacher and after -school teacher seminar. In retrospect, she felt that her upbringing and education at home, in school and in seminars had shaped her for life .

For many years she worked in a day care center near Berlin's Alexanderplatz. At the age of 17 she had joined the girls and women groups for social aid work . She also worked on a voluntary basis at the German Center for Child Welfare .

As one 1908 Juvenile courts began to set up, Clara Israel was on the recommendation of Alice Salomon entrusted with the juvenile court, whose job in the first place and for the most part consisted of winning delinquent boys or girls for a decent life and to protect them from recidivism . After the city of Charlottenburg took over the facility in 1923, she became head of the district welfare department of the Charlottenburg youth welfare office with the title of social secretary . In this role she had a decisive influence on the development of social work from traditional poor relief to modern welfare work. She was responsible for almost all areas of welfare at the time such as:

Social work in the field of youth welfare and economic welfare, in particular foster child protection, advising parents, foster parents and guardians on all educational matters, protective supervision, youth court assistance, care for psychopaths, care for neglected and homeless young people, care for pregnant women, care for children in hospitals, care for people with gender disorders , Caring for male adolescents who have left school .

In 1929, Clara Israel was appointed head of the Berlin-Charlottenburg youth welfare office as the first female magistrate in Berlin. In addition, she also taught guardianship and youth justice at the municipal welfare school for welfare workers in Charlottenburg and at the welfare school of the social pedagogical seminar of the Charlottenburg youth home . Clara Israel was a member of the main board of the German Association of Social Workers and the Board of Trustees of the Social Hygiene Academy Berlin-Charlottenburg .

On March 11, 1933, she was expelled from all offices because of her Jewish origins. Affected by this expulsion, she wrote to a welfare worker friend of her:

What is happening in Germany today demands a statement from everyone, but it must also not allow anyone to struggle with ballast in the wrong place. Your path is not even either. You will need all your strength. Don't waste it in the wrong place! And I go my way. I was once able to bear responsibility for many; Today I refuse to take the small responsibility that a visit to me discredits. I, my sense of honor and my humanity are not affected as long as I do not blame myself.

After 1933, Clara Israel became involved in the Jewish home care association in Berlin-Charlottenburg . A few days before her 66th birthday, she committed suicide, together with her sister Rosa Grunwald and her life partner, the welfare worker Margarete Hartstein , because the order to deport her had come. The burial at the Jewish cemetery in Weißensee took place at night so that the Gestapo could not confiscate the bodies.

Fonts (selection)

  • Care or welfare for the small pensioners, in: Soziale Berufsarbeit 1927, H. 11/12, S. 4 ff.
  • Further education issues, in: Social professional work 1928, no. 7/8, p. 10f
  • Reduction of care workers as an austerity measure, in: Soziale Praxis 1931, no. 12, p. 378 ff.

literature

Remarks

  1. ↑ Romanoff 2006, p. 48.
  2. ↑ Quoted from Romanoff 2006, p. 67.
  3. ↑ Maier 1998, p. 273.
  4. ↑ Quoted in Lowenthal 1965, p. 75.
personal data
SURNAME Israel, Clara
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German social worker and first female magistrate in Prussia
DATE OF BIRTH October 28, 1876
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin-Spandau
DATE OF DEATH October 22, 1942
Place of death Berlin