Elfriede Feudel

Elfriede Antonie Feudel (born October 30, 1881 in Stargard in Pomerania ; † March 30, 1966 in Freiburg im Breisgau ) was a German pioneer of rhythm , as a method of physical education that holistically deals with all dimensions of the human being, his physical and mental and spiritual powers .

Live and act

She was the second of nine children of the lawyer and notary Adalbert Thurau and his wife Elisabeth, b. by Gizycki. The family moved to Berlin in 1890 . Elfriede Thurau completed the Royal Teachers' Seminar there . After completing her studies, she worked from 1901 to 1904 as a tutor and educator in England. When she returned to Germany, she got a job as a teacher at a Catholic elementary school in Berlin-Schöneberg. At the same time, the young teacher attended lectures at the university on music, philosophy and music.

In 1910 she attended a performance in rhythmic gymnastics by Émile Jaques-Dalcroze at the Royal Academy of Music and decided to be trained in this method. She took leave of absence from school and completed her training in rhythmic gymnastics at the Educational Institute for Music and Rhythm in Hellerau near Dresden , which was directed and co-founded by Jaques-Dalcroze. May 1913 she received her diploma in rhythmic gymnastics . In January 1915 Elfriede Thurau still passed the school musician exam in Berlin. She then worked as a music teacher in Essen until 1919. During a vacation stay in Upper Bavaria she met the painter Alfred Feudel. The two married in November 1918. The marriage had three children.

In 1926 she was actively involved in founding the German Rhythmic Association. In the same year Elfriede Feudel published rhythmics. Theory and practice of physical and musical education . She defined the rhythm as a dialogue between music and movement , as can be seen from the following quote:

Lessons have the important and very attractive task of creating an interaction between the musical interpretation of physical impulses (based on the assumption that a child is allowed to sing their own melody to their improvising movement) and the physical feeling of the music (based on the fact that the The end of a melodic phrase should be marked by a change of direction) and thereby unconsciously strengthen the feeling of unity of physical and musical expression before it is transferred into consciousness and made fruitful .

From 1927 to 1935 she headed the rhythmic seminar at the Dortmund Conservatory. Afterwards she was a lecturer at the Rhythmics Seminar at the Folkwang School in Essen and from 1943 to 1945 at the University of Music in Leipzig, where she was appointed professor. During the Nazi period, despite repeated requests from her superiors, she did not join the NSDAP. She was a member of the following NS organizations: NSV, Deutsches Frauenwerk, Reichsdozentenschaft, Reichsmusikkammer and Reichsluftschutzbund. Elfriede Feudel gave several lectures and courses as part of the Nazi community Kraft durch Freude . In 1939 she published her monograph Rhythmic Education , in which she presented the realities of space , time , force (dynamics) and form as the creative and challenging elements of rhythmic education, as the very own subject matter of rhythmic physical education (Feudel 1939, p. 39).

From 1947 to 1949, the rhythmist took part in the reconstruction of the Stuttgart University of Music , where her student Ingeborg Pistor led the rhythmic seminar. Then she took over the research-lectures-expert opinion department in the newly founded working group for rhythmic education in the Association of German Sound Artists and Music Teachers . In this position, she organized workshops, lectures and published numerous writings a. a. her basic work: Breakthrough to the rhythmic in education .

In 1956 Elfriede Feudel moved to Freiburg / Br. There she gave rhythm lessons in the kindergarten teachers' seminar of the Caritas Association.

Principles of their rhythm

For Elfriede Feudel, rhythm is a harmonious and equal interplay of music and body:

In rhythm, music and body face each other on an equal footing: the music should be based on the movement of the body, the body movement should reproduce the music (Feudel 1956, p. 17).

Her decisive discovery was the realization that in addition to the elements of time and force (dynamics) that are present in music, space and form are added as shaping and inviting forces that also apply to movement, each of which has an educational significance. Accordingly, the human being has to fit in with his body in time, space, force and form in such a way that he first sees the extreme opposites within time (fast-slow), space (straight-curve, horizontal-vertical, narrow-wide, forward-backward, etc.), which expresses strength (strong-weak, loud-quiet) and form (legal-illegal, good-bad) in its movement, then the finer differences and transitions between these end points and finally the slightest fluctuations learns to reproduce on the way between the poles (Feudel 1949, p. 175). Elfriede Feudel wanted to restore a close connection between mind, soul and body, as it is still present in small children, through the movement-related dialogue with music as an opponent, through training the musculoskeletal system and the senses in tasks of dealing with the elements mentioned lead to a bodily apprehension and understanding of the world.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Raisch 1998, p. 110
2. ↑ Feudel 1926, p. 33
3. ↑ cf. Berger 2001, p. 108

Works (selection)

• Rhythmic gymnastics in school, Berlin 1915
• Rhythm. Theory and practice of physical and musical education, Wolfenbüttel 1926
• Rhythmic education, Wolfenbüttel 1939
• Breakthrough to the rhythmic in education, Stuttgart 1949
• Rhythmic-musical education, Wolfenbüttel 1956
• Dynamic pedagogy. An elementary guide for rhythmic education in schools, Freiburg 1963

Literature (selection)

• Hans Gerd Feudel: A life for rhythm , Konstanz 1981
• Songrid Hürtgen-Busch: The pioneers of rhythmic-musical education in Germany , Frankfurt / Main 1995, pp. 225–289.
• Reinhard Ring / Brigitte Steinmann: Lexikon der Rhythmik , Kassel 1997, pp. 81–85.
• Ulrich Raisch: Pedagogy “from the rhythm”: pioneer of a new physical education - Elfriede Feudel , in: Katharine Ruf (Hrsg.): Bildung has (no) one sex , Frankfurt / Main etc. 1998, pp. 100–112.
• Manfred Berger : Elfriede Feudel “Breakthrough to the Rhythmical in Education” - A biographical-pedagogical sketch , in: Zeitschrift für Erlebnispädagogik 2001 / H. 1/2, pp. 104-116.

Web links

• Elfriede Feudel in the women's wiki
• Rhytmikon: The founders