Elisabeth Engels

Elisabeth Engels (born April 20, 1892 in Schiltigheim near Strasbourg ; † June 23, 1970 in Bad Pyrmont ) was a German teacher and founder of a private school. Based on her anthroposophical and educational reform orientation, she began in the mid-1930s as a private school entrepreneur in the Rhineland and later in Lippe, her 40-year pedagogical work for her students, whom she wanted to unlock for the "good, true and beautiful" throughout her life.

Life

Elisabeth Engels was born as Elisabeth Kleser in Schiltigheim near Strasbourg . In 1902 the family moved to Cologne. Here she attended the Queen Luise School, an upper secondary school, where she graduated from high school in 1913 . She then attended the teachers' seminar and a year later she was qualified to teach high schools . In 1923 she married in spite of that prescribed celibacy for government servants ( teachers celibacy ) the chemist Oskar Artur Engels. Elisabeth earned their living together with their private school .

As headmistress in the Third Reich

Engels began her work as a teacher in the state school service of the city of Cologne in the 1920s . From 1931 to 1933 she worked as a study assessor in the Hessenbruch reformatory in Weiden near Cologne. In 1933 she founded her first own school, in which she devoted herself to educating girls in the spirit of the bourgeois women's movement. She founded her private school Schwertleite in Bad Godesberg . The sword line was the once common knight doctorate of the Middle Ages and was a guiding metaphor for them. This school was formally a state-recognized lyceum, i.e. a special girls' school. Special household classes underpinned this claim, in which the girls, in addition to arithmetic and writing, were also practically prepared for their later tasks as housewives and mothers. The special educational concept had no place in the Nazi school system in the long term. In the late summer of 1939, the Gestapo closed her school . Elisabeth Engels was banned from working as a teacher. In September 1939 she opened the Schwertleite study center in Detmold , intended for girls who came to Detmold from the extensive rural surroundings, attended secondary schools and were looking for sheltered accommodation during this time. In the troubled times of the Second World War, the Schwertleite in Detmold became a refuge of protective, humanitarian humanity for its residents - far away from the Nazi demon. Elisabeth Engels developed her personal and educational charisma here. After she was classified as "exonerated" in the denazification process in 1948 , she was also able to resume teaching.

Private school at Varenholz Castle

In 1949, Engels moved with her Schwertleite student home from Detmold to Nordlippe on the Weser and rented Varenholz Castle . In October 1951 she received a permit from the Ministry of Culture of North Rhine-Westphalia to run a private secondary school for boys and girls there.

"A special natural talent makes a special performance a duty" - this motto was Elisabeth Engel's inner "motor". Their goal was a school for the broadest possible population. Your boarding school should not become an isolated, elitist school community beyond social and societal references and realities. She tried to take in well-off and less well-off children next to each other; the latter attended school as so-called "day students" at a much lower price. At the beginning of her career in Hessenbruch, a home for "difficult to educate" people, she had the experience of how important a good education is, especially for poor and delinquent young people. Elisabeth Engels tried to realize this modern educational concept in her private boarding school as early as the 1950s. Today it is part of modern child and youth welfare.

Entirely anthroposophical, musical elements - eurythmy performances were part of it, for example - became an integral part of the curriculum and thus went far beyond the secondary school curriculum of that time. She wanted to reach the hearts of her students, in line with the classic educational concept.

The Foundation

In January 1969, Engels decided to transfer the school and boarding school to a foundation that would continue her life's work under the name Elisabeth Engels Foundation. Elisabeth Engels died on June 23, 1970. A memorial stone with the inscription Our Unforgotten Director… reminds of her in front of Varenholz Castle.

literature

• Karl-Heinz Bebermeier: Elisabeth Engels. The woman director. A courageous educator in difficult times from 1892 to 1970. Merkur Druck, Detmold 2009, ISBN 978-3-936225-26-6