Emma Plank (Pedagogue)

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Emma Plank (born Emma Spira November 11, 1905 in Vienna , Austria-Hungary ; died March 13, 1990 in Cleveland ) was an Austro-American educator.

Life

Emma Spira, called Nuschi, was a daughter of the civil servant Emil Spira and Doris Langbein, she had the brother Leopold Spira, born in 1913 . After elementary school, she attended the public girls 'college of the school association of civil servants' daughters. At the age of 13 she took part in a summer camp organized by Eugenie Schwarzwald in Bad Ischl and at 16 was one of the leaders of a scout camp. From 1922 she Montessori teacher was in the "House of Children" in Vienna X . In 1924 she studied for a semester with Géza Révész in Amsterdam and in 1927 attended a course in Montessori education in Berlin, attended specialist seminars in Switzerland, Denmark and England and was one of the leading practitioners of the Montessori movement in Vienna. In 1927 Spira passed a state examination for the teaching post for elementary schools at the Federal Teachers' Institute and from 1931 taught the Montessori classes in the elementary school in Grünentorgasse, Vienna IX . In 1932 she married the Viennese lawyer Robert Plank . Spira-Plank did a training analysis with Annie Reich .

After the annexation of Austria , Emma and Robert Plank fled to London, where they built a home for Basque refugee children, the Basque Children's Home, and in the same year they went on to the USA, where they worked as a house helper and then as a teacher at Presidio Hill School in San Francisco. She studied at Mills College in San Francisco, doing a Masters in Child Development.

In 1948 she went back to Vienna with a project by the American Friends Service Committee to set up an experimental kindergarten and to train kindergarten teachers for it. Since she did not have a teaching degree, the Austrian bureaucracy blocked her wish to teach kindergarten teacher training, and she returned to the USA in 1950. From 1950 to 1954 she headed the Hanna Perkins Nursery School founded by Anny Angel-Katan , a teaching kindergarten with difficult children, and from 1950 worked as a lecturer at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio , initially as an assistant professor, and finally until 1972 as Professor Emeritus in the School of Medicine, Pediatric Department, Cleveland Metropolitan General Hospital . From 1955 she was director of the Child Life and Education Program for mental health care for children in hospitals and promoted her model for other hospitals.

After Robert Plank's death in 1983, she returned to Vienna in 1984.

Fonts (selection)

  • From the practice of the Montessori school . In: The Source, 1927
  • Herbert at school . In: Zeitschrift für psychoanalytische Pädagogik, 1933, pp. 83–88
  • Affective promotion and inhibition of learning . In: Zeitschrift für Psychoanalytische Pädagogik, 1933, pp. 122–128
  • Emma Berner (pseudonym): A sleep disturbance caused by fear of death . In: Zeitschrift für psychoanalytische Pädagogik, 1937, pp. 44–45
  • Contributions to contemporary children's education . Vienna: Fountain of Youth, 1950
  • Memories of Early Childhood in Autobiographies . In: The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 1953
  • with Robert Plank: Emotional Components in Arithmetical Learning, as seen through Autobiographies . In: The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child. 1954
  • Working with Children in Hospitals . The Press of the Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, 1962
    • Help for children in the hospital . Translation of Heidrun Sutor. Munich: Reinhardt Verlag, 1973

literature

  • Plank, Emma N. , in: Werner Röder; Herbert A. Strauss (Ed.): International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933–1945 . Volume 2.2. Munich: Saur, 1983 ISBN 3-598-10089-2 , p. 909
  • Documentation archive of the Austrian resistance (ed.): Jüdische Schicksale. Reports from the persecuted . Vienna: ÖBV, 1992, pp. 26–33
  • Franz Hammerer: Maria Montessori's educational concept. Start of implementation in Austria . Vienna: Jugend und Volk, Vienna, 1997, pp. 213–215 (bibliography of the writings)
  • Charlotte Zwiauer: Emma N. (Spira-) Plank. Psychoanalytically oriented Montessori pedagogy in Vienna from 1922-38 and its tradition in emigration. Project report . Vienna, 1999
  • Charlotte Zwiauer: Emma Spira Plank . In: Brigitta Keintzel, Ilse Korotin (ed.): Scientists in and from Austria. Life - work - work . Vienna: Böhlau, 2002, ISBN 3-205-99467-1
  • Plank, Emma Maria , in: Handbook of Austrian Authors of Jewish Origin, 18th to 20th Century , 2002, p. 1044
  • Leopold Spira: The Century of Contradictions . Vienna: Böhlau, 1996 ISBN 3-205-98609-1

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Plank, Emma
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Spira, Emma (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austro-American educator
DATE OF BIRTH November 11, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH March 13, 1990
Place of death Cleveland