Erich Less

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Erich Less (born September 11, 1894 in Steinhorst near Hanover ; † May 2, 1961 in Göttingen ) was an important representative of humanities education . Today he is considered one of the most important history educators.

life and work

The pastor's son graduated from the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gymnasium in Hanover in 1913 and studied history, German and Latin in Tübingen from 1913 . He became a member of the Nikaria Association and took part in the Free German Youth Day on the Hoher Meissner . Less took part in the First World War from 1914 to 1918 , where he was a member of the Academic Freischar .

After the war ended, Less continued his studies in Göttingen . In April 1919 he became a member of a volunteer corps , possibly the Roßbach volunteer corps , for six months . In 1921 he completed his studies with a doctorate on Rehberg and Stein under Karl Brandi and the state examination. He had already begun further studies in education in 1920. After traineeship and assessor exams, he was Herman Nohl's assistant at the educational seminar from the beginning of 1923 to the end of March 1927 . In 1921, Nohl and Less founded the Göttingen Adult Education Center, which less was in charge of until 1924.

Less did his habilitation in 1926 in Göttingen for pedagogy on the basics of history teaching and was appointed professor for pedagogy at a pedagogical academy . He initially taught at the PA Kiel and completed his habilitation at the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Kiel , where he was an honorary professor. In 1930 he took over the management of the new PA Altona . The Prussian minister of education Adolf Grimme promoted him. After its closure in 1932, he moved to PA Frankfurt am Main as director.

In 1931 he became chairman of the newly founded German section of the New Education Fellowship , which continues to accompany reform pedagogy today .

After the National Socialist " takeover " of power , Less was initially given leave of absence in May 1933 and released from civil service in September 1933. He appealed on revision and in 1934 was assigned a position as a teacher. Although he was never to join the NSDAP or any other Nazi organization, Less was one of Nohl's students who opened up to National Socialism . In 1933 he defended the “real” intentions of the movement and took the view that his own ideas could not be implemented outside the Nazi system. Less applied for admission to the Reich Association of German Writers and established contacts with military circles. At the end of 1935, when a post for less at the Frankfurt Lessing-Gymnasium became vacant, he took leave of absence for free scientific activities. He wrote military educational publications on National Socialist defense education and appeared for the German Society for Defense Policy and Defense Sciences . His main military educational work, which was published in 1938, received less resonance due to its complex presentation than his later diverse and very successful lecturing activities, in which less was allowed to visit the troops at any time. During the Second World War he was drafted and worked for various Wehrmacht staffs as a support officer and Nazi command officer, including from October 1942 to October 1943 with General Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel's staff .

Like Herman Nohl and Eduard Spranger , he avoided a sharp reckoning with National Socialism, as was typical of the time, and turned against Allied denazification . In his own denazification process lasting several years, Less had to justify himself for his activities as a military educator and National Socialist command officer (NSFO) before the first classification of the Göttingen-Stadt ruling chamber as "exonerated" after an objection by the British military government in September 1948 was confirmed. Less had been able to make credible that in his last military educational book, The Education of the Soldier, ideologically incriminating statements had not been inserted by him but by censorship and that his function as NSFO was a protective measure by General von Stülpnagels after he had been noticed by statements critical of the regime. His biographer Kurt Beutler sees this classification as "unencumbered" by a series of so-called Persilscheine third, which the Spruchkammer followed uncritically. In 1945, Less initiated the establishment of the Göttingen University of Education; In 1949 he followed Nohl as a full professor of education at the University of Göttingen .

In 1949, less than one of the first in the Federal Republic of Germany advocated a reorientation of historical didactics based on the principle of political education. As a member of the Bundeswehr personnel appraisal committee and its advisory board for internal management issues, he was involved in the development of the Bundeswehr.

Göttingen, Stadtfriedhof: Grave Erich Less

In his education in the humanities he started from Wilhelm Dilthey's philosophical approach . Contrary to the majority of history teachers, he did not want to see history lessons as a mere image of the science of history, but to recognize peculiar pedagogical elements. In the post-war period up to his retirement in 1961, he was one of the leading educational theorists , course coordinators and involved in various educational policy committees. Together with Wilhelm Flitner and others he founded the magazine for pedagogy in 1955 .

From July 1955 to 1956 he was a member of the personnel appraisal committee for the new Bundeswehr.

Less died in Göttingen in 1961 from tumor edema .

Known students

Lessons students included the educationalists Herwig Blankertz , Wolfgang Klafki , Wolfgang Kramp , Theodor Schulze and Klaus Mollenhauer .

Fonts

  • The basics of teaching history. Studies on didactics in the humanities , Teubner, Leipzig 1926.
  • Wehrmacht education and war experience . Berlin 1938.
  • Goethe and the Generals . Insel-Verlag, Leipzig 1942.
  • New ways in history teaching . Frankfurt am M. 1949 (4th edition 1969).
  • On the question of citizenship education . Oldenburg 1951.

literature

  • Kurt Beutler : Humanities Education Between Politicization and Militarization - Erich Less , Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1995.
  • Uwe Hartmann : Erich Less , in: Detlef Bald , Uwe Hartmann u. Claus von Rosen (ed.): Classics of pedagogy in the German military . Nomos, Baden-Baden 1999, ISBN 3-7890-6039-9 , pp. 188-209.
  • Alexander Hesse: The professors and lecturers of the Prussian educational academies (1926-1933) and colleges for teacher training (1933-1941) . Deutscher Studien-Verlag, Weinheim 1995, ISBN 3-89271-588-2 ( limited preview in Google book search).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Klaus Bergmann: Historical learning in elementary school. In: Handbook for political education in primary schools. Edited by Siegfried George and Ingrid Prote. Schwalbach / Ts .: Wochenschau Verlag 1996, pp. 319–342. Again in: Klaus Bergmann: History Didactics. Contributions to a theory of historical learning. Schwalbach / Ts .: Wochenschau Verlag ³2008 (Forum Historical Learning), pp. 116–130, here p. 117.
  2. ↑ Werner Kindt and Theodor Wilhelm (eds.): Basic writings of the German youth movement. Diederichs, Düsseldorf 1963, p. 580.
  3. ↑ Günter Blümel and Wolfgang Natonek: “The noble endeavor to benefit the broad masses”. Contributions to the history of the Volkshochschule Göttingen. Univ.-Verl. Göttingen, Göttingen 2013, ISBN 978-3-86395-125-2 , p. 123.
  4. ^ A b c Wolfgang Klafki and Johanna-Luise Brockmann: Humanities pedagogy and National Socialism. Herman Nohl and his “Göttingen School” 1932–1937. An individual and group biographical, mentality and theoretical history investigation. Beltz, Weinheim 2002, ISBN 3-407-25250-1 , p. 22.
  5. ↑ Günter Blümel and Wolfgang Natonek: “The noble endeavor to benefit the broad masses”. Contributions to the history of the Volkshochschule Göttingen. Univ.-Verl. Göttingen, Göttingen 2013, ISBN 978-3-86395-125-2 , pp. 148–151.
  6. ↑ Wolfgang Klafki and Johanna-Luise Brockmann: Humanities pedagogy and National Socialism. Herman Nohl and his “Göttingen School” 1932–1937. An individual and group biographical, mentality and theoretical history investigation. Beltz, Weinheim 2002, ISBN 3-407-25250-1 , p. 138 f.
  7. ↑ a b Wolfgang Keim: Education versus training. Was there a paradigm shift in educational thinking under the Nazi dictatorship? In: Hartmut Lehmann and Otto Gerhard Oexle (eds.): National Socialism in the Cultural Studies. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2004, ISBN 978-3-525-35862-7 ( publications of the Max Planck Institute for History . 211), p. 242 f .; Wolfgang Klafki and Johanna-Luise Brockmann: Humanities Education and National Socialism. Herman Nohl and his “Göttingen School” 1932–1937. An individual and group biographical, mentality and theoretical history investigation. Beltz, Weinheim 2002, ISBN 3-407-25250-1 , pp. 265-272.
  8. ↑ Uwe Hartmann: Erich Less , in: Detlef Bald u. a. (Ed.): Classics of pedagogy in the German military . Nomos, Baden-Baden 1999, pp. 188–209, here p. 195.
  9. ↑ Erich Less: The Age of Re-education 1945–1949. Hermann Nohl on his 80th birthday . In: Westermann's educational contributions . Part I. 11th vol. 10 October 1959, pp. 403-410. Part II. 11th vol. December 12, 1959, pp. 517-525. Parts III and IV. Volume 12, January 1, 1960, pp. 9-13. Part V. 12th vol. H. February 2, 1960, pp. 74-79.
  10. ↑ Uwe Hartmann: Erich Less , In: Detlef Bald u. a. (Ed.): Classics of pedagogy in the German military . Nomos, Baden-Baden 1999, pp. 188–209, here p. 195; Kurt Beutler: Humanities education between politicization and militarization - Erich Less . Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1995, pp. 142-154.
  11. ↑ Kurt Beutler: Humanities education between politicization and militarization - Erich Less . Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1995, pp. 145ff.


personal data
SURNAME Less, Erich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Less, Erich Friedrich Adolf (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German educator
DATE OF BIRTH September 11, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Steinhorst , Hanover Province
DATE OF DEATH May 2, 1961
Place of death Goettingen