Elsa Gindler

Elsa Gindler (born June 19, 1885 in Berlin , † January 8, 1961 in Berlin) was a German gymnastics teacher and founder of a form of gymnastics and movement therapy . Since she gave her school neither a theoretical superstructure nor a strong name, the term “Gindler work” or “Gindler therapy” is often used today. The main feature of this work is the careful promotion of self-awareness and the development of natural abilities. Their approaches were taken up by body therapy and body psychotherapy .

Life

Elsa Gindler grew up in poor conditions in Berlin. She had to finance her commercial training as an unskilled worker in a factory, as a domestic help and through tailoring. From 1906 she worked as an accountant in a cabinet maker. In addition to her job, she attended general education courses in the evenings and was involved in the life reform movement. Gindler once said of herself that she was an ... ardent pioneer in the formation of women .

In 1911 Gindler got to know the gymnastics teacher Hedwig Kallmeyer , who had been trained in America by Genevieve Stebbins , and was trained by her in "harmonious gymnastics". Gindler started working as a freelance gymnastics teacher in autumn 1912 and began working with her first training group in 1917. She trained around 60 gymnastics teachers by the mid-1920s. Franz Hilker founded the German Gymnastics Federation in 1925 together with Gindler and other gymnastics schools . Gindler was deputy chairwoman until 1933.

In 1924 Gindler met the music teacher Heinrich Jacoby , who researched the importance of behavior and condition for processes of perception, design and expression and who taught his findings in courses for the general public. In the period that followed, Elsa Gindler and Heinrich Jacoby also gave joint courses in which they dealt with "... questions about the development and post-development of human possibilities". In a lecture entitled "The gymnastics of the professional" Elsa Gindler explained in 1926 that only concentration leads to improved performance, but not learning certain movements.

Heinrich Jacoby had to emigrate in 1933, so that until 1939 the collaboration between him and Elsa Gindler could only take place in summer courses in Switzerland and Italy.

Elsa Gindler stayed in Germany. However, she firmly opposed National Socialism and helped politically and racially persecuted people, which she put herself in danger. She was able to continue holding her seminars in Berlin. Shortly before the end of the Second World War, their workrooms were destroyed by bombs, with most of their records documenting their work being destroyed. After the end of the war, Elsa Gindler succeeded in rebuilding a gymnastics school in Berlin-Dahlem, where she worked until her death in 1961. A year after her death, a grove was planted in Israel "to express our gratitude and our admiration for Elsa Gindler and for her work".

reception

Elsa Gindler and Heinrich Jacoby never gave their work on holistic physical perception and forms of expression a formal name. However, Gindler's work ("the work") strongly influenced the development of so-called body psychotherapy and body work . In the early 1930s, for example, Elsa Lindenberg , then girlfriend / partner (Reich was still married to Annie Pink ) of Wilhelm Reich , and Laura Perls , Fritz Perls's wife , but also Ruth Cohn, worked for Elsa Gindler. Through them, their experiences were incorporated into the concepts of vegetotherapy and gestalt therapy and, through their students Lily Ehrenfried and Charlot Selver, also into the integrative movement therapy of Hilarion Petzold .

Due to the forced emigration of several of Gindler's students, further international spread took place. In particular, Charlotte Selver , who emigrated to the USA in 1938, introduced “work” there under the name Sensory Awareness and reached well-known students from the left (emigrated) psychotherapist scene and representatives of the Human Potential movement. In this way, Selver, along with many others, also significantly influenced the Esalen massage . Lily Ehrenfried spread the teachings of Elsa Gindler in her therapeutic gymnastics practice in Paris as "Gymnastique holistique". Basic elements were also decisive for the work of u. a. Moshé Feldenkrais and Elaine Summers . The Gindler students who remained in Germany continued their personal development of “the work”. The most influential were Sophie Ludwig, Elfriede Hengstenberg and Frieda Goralewski . The latter also gave training in their work.

literature

• Edith von Arps-Aubert: The working concept of Elsa Gindler (1885-1961), presented in the context of the gymnastics of the reform pedagogy. Diss. Marburg. Publishing house Dr. Kovac, Hamburg 2010, ISBN 978-3-8300-5233-3 .
• Alice Aginsky: Rééducation fonctionelle guidée à partir du Chemin de la détente. Paris 2000.
• Charles VW Brooks: Experience through the senses (Sensory Awareness) in the German adaptation by Charlotte Selver. Innovative Psychotherapy and Human Sciences Vol. 7, ed. by Petzold Hilarion, Paderborn 1997.
• Heinrich Dauber : Gindler tradition and Gestalt pedagogy. In: Integrative movement therapy. No. 1, (2003), p. 4ff.
• Hilarion G. Petzold (2005m): Materials on the history of body psychotherapy. In: Integrative movement therapy 1, pp. 28–42.
• Edith de Jaco-Stebler: Gindler and Jacoby in gymnasium lessons. In: Ehrhardt, Johannes (Ed.): Paths of mindfulness, characteristics and further developments of the Gindler impulses. CALE Papers No. 13, University of Hanover, 2001.
• Jutta Emde-Mosebach: Life and Work of Elsa Gindler 1885–1961, Master's thesis, Kassel 2001.
• Lily Ehrenfried: Breathing, Moving, Recognizing. unchanged new edition of the work published in Berlin in 1957 with the title, Physical Education for Mental Balance. Goralewski-Gesellschaft eV, Berlin 1986.
• Gabriele M. Franzen: Becoming ready to react internally and externally. The work of Elsa Gindler . Subtitle: Post-development as a holistic concern between the fields of movement research, pedagogy and therapy as well as meditation. In: Learning in Motion. Volume for the 2nd European Feldenkrais Congress, 2006. Ed .: Feldenkrais Association Germany, pp. 243–261.
• Marianne Haag and Birgit Rohloff (eds.): Working with Elsa Gindler - Elsa Gindler's notes and reports from a participant . Series of publications by the Heinrich Jacoby-Elsa Gindler Foundation, Vol. 2/3. Berlin 2006.
• Norbert Klinkenberg: Mindfulness in body behavior therapy. A workbook with 20 test situations from the Jacoby / Gindler work. Stuttgart 2007.
• Sophie Ludwig: Elsa Gindler - from her life and work. Perceiving what we are feeling. Christians, Hamburg 2002, ISBN 3-7672-1398-2 .
• Peggy Zeitler: (Ed.): Memories of Elsa Gindler, from the writings of the Sensory Awareness Foundation. Munich 1991.

Web links

• Literature by and about Elsa Gindler in the catalog of the German National Library
• Official website of the Jacoby Gindler Foundation
• Brief information and further links
• Detailed biography

Individual evidence

1. ^ Arnd Krüger : History of movement therapy, in: Preventive medicine . Springer, Heidelberg Loseblatt Collection 1999, 07.06, pp. 1–22.
2. ↑ The gymnastics of the professional (pdf; 111 kB)
3. ↑ cf. Gabriele M. Franzen: Gora in the context of Elsa Gindler's work - from the point of view of the development of modern body and psychotherapies. In On the red carpet. Berlin: Goralewski Society 2003, p. 121ff
4. ↑ cf. Bernd Bocian: Fritz Perls in Berlin 1893-1933. Wuppertal: Verlag Peter Hammer 2007, pp. 253f
5. ↑ Hilarion G. Petzold: Materials on the history of body psychotherapy. Ed .: Integrative movement therapy. tape 1 , 2005, p. 28-42 .
6. ↑ http://judythweaver.com/writings/the-influence-of-elsa-gindler-ancestor-of-sensory-awareness/