Ernst Behm (pedagogue)

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Ernst Behm (born August 24, 1902 in Heiligenbeil , † July 1, 1990 near Stockholm ) was a German-Swedish educator, political activist and emigrant. He was a pedagogue persecuted during the Weimar period because of his membership of the KPD , who emigrated to Denmark in 1933 and then to Sweden in 1935 . Together with his wife Agnes Behm-Barow, he was active there in the Association of German Teacher Emigrants and worked with Willy Brandt . After the end of the Second World War, he only returned to Germany for a short time and then lived in Sweden until his death.

Behm's life up to emigration

Behm's East Prussian years

Born and raised in East Prussia , Ernst Behm comes from a politically active working-class family. His father, Julius Behm (* 1871), a railroad worker, was a district member of the SPD .

Ernst Behm completed his own school education between 1917 and 1923 as an elementary school teacher, which from 1921 included a two-year visit to the teachers' college in Lyck . He encountered problems there after it became known that he had joined the KPD in 1922. Despite several attempts to dismiss him, he was able to complete his training and take the first teacher examination on February 23, 1923.

Not because of his political activities, but because of the economic situation at the time, he became unemployed after completing his training and moved to Berlin in the course of 1923. Also in 1923 he had become a member of the German Volkslehrer (GDV) union, founded in 1921 .

Between Barkenhoff and Thuringia

Behm, who was considering going to the Soviet Union , received advice from a KPD comrade to work for the Red Aid of Germany (RHD) and to take up a job at the Barkenhoff children's home that had just been founded . There, “needy working-class children whose fathers or mothers were in prison for political reasons or who had died in the political struggles of the early 1920s were supposed to recover [...] and receive a socialist upbringing”. Behm followed this advice and looked after the first group of 18 children who came to Barkenhoff for six weeks from September 1923. In addition to a political upbringing in the spirit of the KPD, these children also had a wide range of opportunities for practical work in the existing workshops, the garden and in the kitchen. Based on the Russian model of the production school , Behm was able to practice approaches of a work school for the first time .

Behm's engagement at the Barkenhoff initially only lasted until October 1923, as he hoped to be able to help build a progressive school system in Thuringia . In 1923 a state government made up of the SPD and KPD was formed there, and this workers' government also seemed to offer the educator Behem attractive prospects. However, this ended SPD-Left Party coalition in November: On November 6, 1923 Thuringia was the Reichsexekution occupied, the Reichswehr invaded and put the government on. Behm, who had found a job as a teacher, was arrested by members of the Reichswehr two weeks before Christmas during class and remained in a Weimar prison until March 1924 .

“He was accused of illegally possessing weapons and accused of influencing the children politically. He was accused of having read passages from the " Internationale " on the blackboard in his class . This was enough to sentence him to a fine and dismiss him from school with immediate effect. "

- Siegfried Bresler : Ernst Behm - Life Path of a Political Pedagogue , pp. 42-43

For Ernst Behm that was the end of his career in public education, and he returned to the Barkenhoff. The pedagogue Karl Ellrich was already working there , and together with him, Behm was able to further develop the concept of working lessons and develop child-friendly forms of political theater and political discussion. But the conservative press quickly mobilized against him as a person as well as against the alleged political influence on the children on the Barkenhoff, and the district administrator presented the RHD with the alternative of either dismissing Behm or closing the facility. In order to save the home, Behm left the Barkenhoff in February 1925 after consulting with leading KPD comrades.

Reform pedagogy and KPD opposition

The next few years were marked by different employment relationships for Ernst Behm. After leaving Barkenhoff, he first worked for a few months in the Berlin youth welfare department and then switched to editorial positions at communist regional newspapers in Stettin and Königsberg . On June 11, 1928, he received a teaching position for the first time at the 34th elementary school in Berlin-Lichtenberg . He was interested in Fritz Karsen's attempts at reform and tried to transfer the reform pedagogical models practiced at the Karl Marx School to his work at the elementary school. For him, that meant overcoming subject boundaries and intensifying the concept of the work school and overall teaching. But he also gave - as earlier in Thuringia - ideological instruction , which replaced religious instruction and also made political issues the subject of instruction. This means that he must have followed the line of the German Freethinkers Association , of which he became a member in 1928. On June 16, 1931, he passed the second teacher examination.

In addition to his school work, Behm was still active in the KPD and still worked in the RHD. But he came closer and closer to the course of the KPD opposition (KPD-O) and rejected the social fascism thesis . In 1929 he was excluded from the KPD and, after an interlude in the KPD-O, joined the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany (SAPD) in 1931 . After the so-called seizure of power , he was removed from his previous school and transferred to another elementary school on April 26, 1933. This episode ended on October 1st, 1933: Ernst Behm was dismissed, referring to the law to restore the civil service . The Biographical Handbook of German-Speaking Emigration states that he had previously carried out illegal activities for the SAPD in Berlin and had fled to Copenhagen “on the instructions of the SAPD Reichsltg.” . Bresler reports, however, of an arrest warrant issued against Behm. Thanks to a warning from his wife, he was able to escape the Gestapo people who wanted to arrest him to Denmark.

Excursus: Agnes Barow

Ernst Behm's reference to his wife, who warned him in 1933 about the impending arrest, refers to an unknown person, and no source mentions a first marriage either. Only Behm's second marriage to Agnes Barow (born July 14, 1897 in Berlin-Schöneberg - † 1974 in Sweden) is known. After Dünzelmann she grew up in Berlin-Lichtenberg and worked as a teacher from 1928 to 1934. Your personal card archived in the Library for Educational History Research (BBF), however, gives a somewhat more differentiated picture. Accordingly, she had already acquired the teaching qualification for secondary schools in October 1918 at the Oberlyzeum Neukölln , today's Albert-Schweitzer-Gymnasium . Not on the staff card, but in the database entry, reference is made to substitute lessons in elementary schools in Berlin-Oberschöneweide , before they are then for the period from June 1, 1920 to April 30, 1925 at the Berthold-Otto-Schule in Berlin-Lichterfelde found a job. This school, which still exists today, was not a state school, but the private tutor school founded by its namesake , one of the best-known reform schools of the Weimar period. According to Ketelhut's account, when she was just starting out at the Lyceum she felt overwhelmed, was on the verge of collapse and was introduced to the Otto family by a teacher friend of hers and employed at the school. For them, who rejected the predominant teaching style in normal schools , this was a dream come true.

Why Agnes Barow left the Berthold Otto School in 1925 and what she did in the following three and a half years is just as unknown as the identity of Hans Barow, who, like Agnes Barow, was found in the finding aid for the estate of the reform pedagogue Berthold Otto (1859-1933 ) Is mentioned.

In 1928 the paths of Agnes Barow and Ernst Behm cross: on October 1, 1928, about four months after Behm, she also got a job at the 34th elementary school in Berlin-Lichtenberg, and like Behm, she was transferred in 1933. From May 1, 1933 on, she taught at the 32nd elementary school in Berlin-Kaulsdorf before voluntarily retiring from school on September 1, 1935. She also worked illegally for the SAPD and emigrated to Sweden in 1935. There is only a short contribution from Dünzelmann about Barow's further life: “In Stockholm she was an active member of the teaching community and the FDKB . In November 1944 she also voted for SAP [D] to join SOPaDe . In 1945 she belonged to the Demokratiska hjälp kommittén för Tyskland and helped with the dispatch of relief supplies. In 1948 she and Ernst Behm married, both last lived in Sollentuna. "

Emigration and the Post-War Period

Emigrant in Denmark and Sweden

Ernst Behm, who was a member of the respective regional executive board of the SAPD in Denmark and then in Sweden, was deported from Denmark in 1935 due to his political activities and from then on lived in Stockholm. Bresler reports on Behm's continued interest in educational issues and that he "organized a teachers' group among the German emigrants". As with Agnes Barow, this was the Association of German Teacher Emigrants , to which he belonged from 1935 to 1939. From 1935 to 1945 he was also a board member of another emigrant community, the Arbetarrörelsens flyktingshjälp .

Apparently, however, it was not possible for Behm to secure his livelihood with educational activities. In 1937 he retrained to become a precision mechanic, practiced this profession until 1944 and then worked in an archive. In 1938 Behm joined the Swedish trade union and worked in parallel in the national group of German trade unionists . From 1942 onwards he organized himself politically in the International Group of Democratic Socialists , also known as the Little International , and about which it was stated in a chronology of Willy Brandt's life: “In September 1942 an 'International Group of Democratic Socialists' met for the first time in Stockholm. to discuss the post-war European order. She follows the 'Norwegian Socialist Study Circle'. Willy Brandt has played a key role from the start. In autumn 1942 he becomes secretary of a committee that is supposed to work out a draft for the group's peace goals. Up to 1945, around 60 democratic socialists from 14 countries regularly take part in the meetings of the so-called 'Little International'. The inner circle includes Martin Tranmæl , the Austrian Bruno Kreisky , the Swedes Torsten Nilsson and Alva and Gunnar Myrdal , the Hungarians Vilmos Böhm and Stefan Szende , the Pole Maurycy Karniol and the Germans Ernst Paul and Fritz Tarnow . "

Due to his participation in the Small International , Ernst Behm's continued rapprochement with the SPD is hardly surprising. In July 1944, together with Willy Brandt, Stefan Szende, and August and Irmgard Enderle, he was one of the authors of the programmatic publication On the Post-War Policy of the German Socialists . This brochure, published anonymously, was the last SAP work in Scandinavia and addressed domestic and foreign policy issues for a Germany after the foreseeable defeat. Politically, the formation of a "democratic-socialist unity party" was advocated. "August Enderle, Irmgard Enderle and Ernst Behm were in charge of the final chapters 'The trade union reorganization', 'Questions of economic development' and 'On the restructuring of the educational system'."

In the autumn of 1944, the vast majority of SAP members living in Sweden, including Ernst Behm, joined the SPD. After that they no longer appeared in public, and it was not until September 25, 1945 that Brandt, Szende and Behm justified them in a lengthy paper entitled Why entry into social democracy? their position and are directed at the remaining SAP members: “Based on these considerations, we recommend our friends and comrades, with whom we have worked together in SAP, to build a democratic-socialist system that is as uniform as possible in the spirit of the good SAP tradition Party in Germany to participate. "

The years after the Second World War

According to Bresler, Ernst Behm followed developments in Germany after 1945 “with great interest and yet very critically. He couldn't decide whether to return, especially since he had meanwhile found a job with a school book publisher in Stockholm ”. As a result of Bresler, this publishing activity already existed in 1947, while the Biographisches Handbuch only mentions a position as department head from 1952; it lasted until 1967. Before that, he had been on the board of the SPD group in Sweden since 1946 and initiated and led school assistant courses for German emigrants on behalf of the Samarbetskommittén för Demokratieiski uppbyggnadsarbete (SDU). For a time he was also secretary of the SDU. As the Swedish contribution to the reconstruction of Germany, the SDU organized the exchange of adult educators and, with the support of the Swedish government, endeavored to “arrange study visits and exchange programs for adult education teachers and students who intended to later work in adult education”. The intensive range of courses in folk high schools played an important role, promoting political and social reorientation and promoting democratic awareness-raising. The Biographical Handbook states that Behm's courses were aimed at a wide audience , including German and Austrian teachers, social workers and journalists, and that he published articles on school policy in the journal Die Sozialistische Tribüne .

Failed re-emigration

Bresler mentions that Ernst Behm first traveled to Germany in 1947 and found a teaching position in Bad Harzburg through previous contacts with the teachers' union . After six months, Behm stopped this activity and returned to Sweden, allegedly because he hadn't found anything interesting to stay in Germany. In the already cited article in the exile archive, there is even talk of several failed attempts to return.

In 1949 Behm took on Swedish citizenship and became a member of the Swedish Social Democratic Workers' Party . In 1951 he was one of the founding members of the Swedish-German Society .

Ernst Behm lived with his wife in Sollentuna.

Works

  • Willy Brandt, Stefan Szende , Ernst Behm: Why join social democracy? , SAPD, Stockholm 1945. The text was addressed to the members of the SAPD living in Sweden.
  • The Swedish school reform , Metopen-Verlag, Wiesbaden 1949.
  • Picture and word. A picture book for German lessons , Svenska Bokförlaget, Norstedt (Stockholm) 1962. According to Dünzelmann, this was a picture dictionary for German lessons in technical schools.

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Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The most detailed information about ERnst Behm comes from Siegfried Bresler, who conducted an interview with him on October 18, 1988 in Sollentuna . Unless otherwise stated below, the information used comes from the article by Bresler (see: Literature ).
  2. ↑ a b c d Personal card Ernst Behm (see: Sources )
  3. ↑ Hildegard Feidel-Mertz and Hermann Schnorbach mention in their book Lehrer in der Emigration , p. 227, Behm's membership in the GDV and in the General Free Teachers' Union of Germany (AFLD), while it is in the Biographical Manual of German-Speaking Emigration after 1933-1945 ( see: Sources ) it is said that from 1923 he was a member of the union of German elementary school teachers . Since there was no association with this name, it could only have been referring to the GDV.
  4. ^ Siegfried Bresler: Ernst Behm - Life Path of a Political Pedagogue , p. 42
  5. ↑ Behm was under police surveillance; a file on this is in the Stade State Archives: Rep 174 Osterholz Fach 1 / No. 20 - about the Barkenhoff teacher Ernst Behm
  6. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k Ernst Behm , in: Werner Röder, Herbert A. Strauss (ed.): Biographical manual of German-speaking emigration after 1933–1945
  7. ↑ a b c Siegfried Bresler: Ernst Behm - Life Path of a Political Pedagogue , p. 44
  8. ^ BBF database entry: Agnes Barow
  9. ^ A b Anne E. Dünzelmann: Walks in Stockholm - In the footsteps of German exiles 1933–1945 , pp. 54–55
  10. ↑ a b Personal card Agnes Barow
  11. ^ Homepage of the Berthold Otto School
  12. ↑ Klemens Ketelhut: Berthold Otto as an educational entrepreneur , p. 268 ff.
  13. ^ Finding aid on the estate of the reform pedagogue Berthold Otto (1859–1933) . The BBF archive database only knows about him: “Barow, Hans. Cand. phil. Places of activity: Ratzdorf <Guben district>, Halle <Saale> ”. ( Archive database of the BBF: Hans Barow )
  14. ↑ On Barow's membership in the Association of German Emigrant Teachers, see: Hildegard Feidel-Mertz / Hermann Schnorbach: Lehrer in der Emigration , p. 227. The FDKB had several regional organizations depending on the country of exile; According to the Biographical Handbook, the Swedish one was co-founded in 1944 by Ernst Behm. The Demokratiska hjälp kommittén för Tyskland was one of several auxiliary committees in Sweden, most of which had been founded by German emigrants. See: Robert Bohn, Jürgen Elvert, Karl Christian Lammers (eds.): German-Scandinavian Relations after 1945 , Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-515-07320-5 , p. 151, note 60
  15. ↑ On Arbetarrörelsen's flyktingshjälp, which is shaped by social democracy, see: Anne E. Dünzelmann: Stockholm Walks , pp. 25–26 (also available online)
  16. ↑ Anneliese Raabke gives a very vivid report on the work of this "regional group" and other relief actions in which Ernst Behm and Agnes Barow were involved in an article for the yearbook Democratic History : Karl-Werner Schunck: Exil in Scandinavia - two life reports . Anneliese Raabke and Martin Krebs , in: Advisory Board for History in the Society for Politics and Education Schleswig-Holstein e. V. (Ed.): Democratic History , Volume 1, Malente 1986, pp. 257-258 (pdf pages 21-22). For Anneliese Raabke (1909–2004) see: Anne E. Dünzelmann: Stockholm walks , p. 126 .
  17. ↑ Willy Brandt online biography: Democratic socialist and journalist in Sweden. Timeline 1940–1946
  18. ↑ Willy Brandt: Zwei Vaterländer , pp. 38–39. Large parts of the brochure are printed in the book (pp. 153–205).
  19. ↑ Willy Brandt: Zwei Vaterländer , p. 358, note 16.
  20. ↑ Willy Brandt: Zwei Vaterländer , p. 250. The paper is also printed as Document 14 (p. 242–252).
  21. ^ Josef Olbrich: History of adult education in Germany , Leske + Budrich, Opladen 2001, ISBN 978-3-8100-3349-9 , pp. 323-324
  22. ↑ According to Claudia Fröhlich, this magazine was an organ initiated by Fritz Bauer and Willy Brandt, which in the year and a half of its publication had become the central organ of the German-language exile press in Sweden. The circulation peaked in April 1945 with 1,000 copies. (Claudia Fröhlich: "Against the tabooing of disobedience" Fritz Bauer's concept of resistance and the coming to terms with Nazi crimes , Campus Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2006, ISBN 3-593-37874-4 , p. 274)
  23. ^ Exile archive: Ernst Behm
  24. ↑ This was probably a re-establishment, because such a society had existed since 1913. During the Nazi era, however, some of the members had sympathized with the Nazi regime, which was possibly the reason for the re-establishment in 1951. (Anne E. Dünzelmann: Stockholm Walks , p. 29–30)
  25. ↑ This writing is attributed to Ernst Behm in the Biographical Manual of German-speaking Emigration , while the catalog of the German National Library only states that it is an “Authent. Darst. D. Swedish Inst. Fd cultural exchange with d. Abroad "trade. An author is not specified there.
personal data
SURNAME Behm, Ernst
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Swedish educator, political activist and emigrant
DATE OF BIRTH August 24, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Holy ax
DATE OF DEATH July 1, 1990
Place of death near Stockholm