Ernst Krieck

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ernst Krieck, 1930

Ernst Krieck (born June 6, 1882 in Vögisheim ; † March 19, 1947 in Moosburg an der Isar ) was a German teacher , writer and professor . Alongside Alfred Baeumler, he is considered a leading National Socialist educationalist .

Life

After finishing secondary school , Krieck went to the Karlsruhe teacher training college . During the subsequent activity as a primary school teacher , Krieck began to criticize the prevailing school system as mechanical and too bureaucratic. During this time, Krieck continued his self-taught training .

In 1910 his first literary work Personality and Culture appeared . In 1917 Krieck published Die deutsche Staatsidee , in 1920 The Revolution of Science and finally in 1922 Philosophy of Education , which is considered to be his most important book. For this book he received an honorary doctorate from the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg .

After four more years as a freelance writer, Krieck was appointed to the Pedagogical Academy in Frankfurt am Main in 1928. Until the end of the 1920s he represented the traditional views of the liberal teaching staff, dealing with the school policy of the SPD , the Center Party and the Catholic Church, but then took a turn. In 1931 he became a member of the ethnically -minded, anti-Semitic Kampfbund for German culture . After he had proclaimed "Heil auf die Third Reich" at the solstice celebration in 1931, he was transferred to the Pedagogical Academy in Dortmund . In the Ruhr area in particular, he now appeared frequently as a political speaker. On January 1, 1932, he became a member of the NSDAP ( membership number 710.670) and the National Socialist Teachers' Association . Because of further Nazi agitation he was suspended as a professor in 1932. Before the Reichstag election in July 1932 , he participated in election events.

After the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists , he was the only candidate to be elected rector of the University of Frankfurt on April 21, 1933, on the basis of a ministerial decree . Just the day before, he had been appointed professor of education and philosophy. He was the first National Socialist to become rector of a German university. After his election, he declared that the “old gap between the people and the university [was] finally bridged.” His election was the beginning of a union “between the leader of the city, the leadership of the NSDAP and the leader of the university”. He announced the aggressive cleansing and harmonization of the university: “It is our common goal to turn the city of Frankfurt into a stronghold of the German spirit. We are walking towards a new culture that was paved by National Socialism and its leader with the political revolution (...). ”One of the first measures was the public book burning on the Römerberg on May 10, 1933.

Krieck became editor of the new magazine Volk im Werden , which appeared approximately every two months from 1933 to 1943 and was intended to present National Socialist ideas in education. In this journal, Krieck also published many articles. In 1934 a lecture by Viktor von Weizsäcker on "medical tasks" was printed in this journal , which he had given in December 1933 at the invitation of Martin Heidegger , who was rector of the University of Freiburg at the time. How Weizsäcker's publication came about is not exactly clear. In 1934, Krieck went to the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg , where he took over a chair for philosophy and education, and in the summer of 1936 he officially appeared in the program together with Bernhard Rust . From 1934 he also worked in the security service of the Reichsführer SS and did spy services for him in the science section. In 1935 he became a Gaudozentenführer in Baden in the Nazi Lecturer Association . From April 1937 to October 1938 he was rector of the university. The “Völkisch-Politische Anthropologie” from the years 1936 to 1938, which he regarded as the life's work and “core” of his ideology theory, sparked a heated controversy with the Nazi race theorists - above all with Wilhelm Hartnacke , whereupon Krieck resigned from all party and academic offices . In 1938 he resigned from the SS and was honored with the rank of SS-Obersturmbannführer. He kept his chair in Heidelberg until the end of the Second World War .

In 1939, Krieck became an employee at the anti-Semitic institute for the research and elimination of the Jewish influence on German church life . In addition, he became an honorary member of the Reich Institute for the History of New Germany . In 1944 he was appointed to the leadership of the Nazi lecturers' association.

After the end of the Second World War, Krieck was dismissed from university service by the US occupying forces and interned in Moosburg on the Isar ; he died on March 19, 1947 in detention.

What is striking about Krieck's biography is that he became a university professor without a high school diploma . Krieck, who grew up in a working class environment - his father was a bricklayer and small-scale farmer - did not have the opportunity to attend grammar school. Therefore, training as a primary school teacher was the only way for him to get a higher education. Thanks to his unreserved support of the National Socialists, Krieck was able to be appointed to higher services through teacher training. Krieck was dissatisfied with his résumé and built his personal experiences into his social criticism.

The estate of Ernst Krieck and his daughter Ilse Krieck is in the Heidelberg University Archives. It consists of photo albums, individual images, a bust of Ernst Krieck, correspondence and five shellac records with a speech by Ernst Krieck.

plant

"Philosophy of Education"

Krieck's ideas about education, which he describes in this book, were very unusual at the time. He intended to "break the planned influence of the elderly on the youth [...]". The way in which children grow up in social communities is decisive for the “right” upbringing. It is more than scheduled training and is therefore "functional". Because it is always carried out where certain forms of community life affect and shape the child, it is in contrast to the “ intentional ” approach of school and parents. With this theory he turned against the generally valid ideas of the 1920s that education should take place rationally in schools and universities. He designed a three-layer model in which “functional” education should take place: “The lowest layer of educational factors consists of the unconscious effects, ties and relationships between people. They form the subsurface of community life, the most direct and strongest bond in the organic structure […]. ”The second layer is on the level of conscious social action, for example in the family or at work. Krieck wrote about this: “[…] every interaction has educational effects on those involved, even if these effects are neither intended nor conscious. In it, people become mutually forming powers. [...] When two people take part in a business or a job, they constantly have an educational effect on each other through agreement or opposition. ”In simplified terms, the principle“ All educate all ”can be derived from this. Only in the third layer is there a rationally organized education based on concrete intentions, methods and purposes. All three layers are of equal importance and are dependent on one another. Basically, all social and societal life has an educational implication. Here we come across an essential concept of Krieck's theory of education, namely that of “ community ”. Since every person is a member of communities, he is also brought up according to the respective type expectation and in turn contributes to the upbringing of others. The highest form of community is the " people ", to which everyone is in a membership relationship. In this context, Krieck differentiates between four forms of mutual "foreign education":

  1. The community educates the members.
  2. The limbs educate one another.
  3. The members educate the community.
  4. The community educates the community.

It must be said that Krieck does not recognize every unit as a community. To explain these forms of education, Giesecke chooses the example of the family: The family as a community educates its members, e. B. the children. These educate each other and through their ideas also the family as a community. The communities educate other communities, e.g. B. Neighboring families. Furthermore, two forms of "self-education" are described:

  1. The community educates itself.
  2. The individual educates himself.

The question that remains unanswered is how communities can educate themselves if this is not done at least through the initiative of their members. With the individual "self-education" is meant the performance that the individual achieves by obtaining his own version of the different educational requirements and trying to fulfill them.

In the place of actual upbringing, Krieck uses “breeding”. It is a process of the collective insertion of man. What is meant is the formation of an individual within a community through fixed values ​​and a standardized evolutionary process. The goal is to develop into a defined “type”. Only the individual who is matched to the “type” becomes a “full-fledged member” of the community and is the result of the formation and breeding process.

"National Political Education"

On January 1, 1932, Krieck joined the Nazi teachers' association. His educational ideas became particularly clear in the work “National Political Education”. In it, Krieck calls for a “politicization” of the sciences. Due to the current emergency in Germany, all efforts should now be directed towards the presentation of productive prospects. The introduction to this treatise says: “The age of 'pure reason', of 'unequivocal' and 'value-free' science is over.” Krieck sees “political opponents” primarily among adherents of liberalism , individualism , collectivism and pacifism . The new bearer of “political” science is the National Socialist movement itself. If in his previous works he demanded that educational science should describe the educational effect on the community, he now explains the educational significance of the Nazi mass movement.

The community should be arranged again in such a way that the “people” reappear as an “organic” totality and the individual members understand themselves as “members”. As a “taskmaster”, the state should draw the whole people to conscious participation in this task. Here a basic intention of the National Socialist ideology becomes clear, which the "movement" only sees realized through the reorganized education of the youth. Furthermore, the emancipation of women is condemned. She belongs in the family and has no place in public life. “The political Amazon, the symbol of the feminine age” appears as a “caricature of man and woman at the same time”.

In the second part of his "National Political Education", Krieck developed a concept of school and education as an alternative to reform pedagogy . Both are subject to a need for reform that can only be initiated by the “ethnic” community. For Krieck, school is still not a place in which values, norms and goals are communicated, but rather: "The principle of the national school reform means: classifying, integrating in all directions, so that education can grow out of the organic bond."

Another essential aspect of his work is the concept of “ race ”, which is glorified as a mythical symbol: “Race manifests itself as an order of life, power that permeates attitude, direction of will and history, which is revealed by instinct, feeling for life [...] and thus [...] rises to the task. ”The term must always be linked to the political objective and is defined by the ruling class. It serves the education and upbringing of the new man: “From the general mixing and muddling of the liberal age, a racially strong humanity is selected and cultivated as the backbone of the developing people and the supporting layer of the national state as a whole.” For Krieck, the Führer principle seems to be the guarantee, possibly to compensate for inevitable tensions that could arise from the upheaval. Only this dogma could hold the movement together in such a case.

The commercial success of this book - 80,000 copies were sold by 1941 - can be explained, according to Giesecke, on the one hand by the fact that Krieck's sharp criticism of the Weimar Republic in it met with a broad response from the German population, on the other hand there was hope of an improvement in general Situation to the Nazi movement. Nevertheless, Krieck failed to provide many explanations for his approaches. The demand for fundamental changes in upbringing is not based on any possible solutions. He sees the answers in the National Socialist movement. Because this "[...] has to develop the elementary means and methods of mass excitement and mass movement brought into use from the instincts of his leaders into a general breeding form, a training system that develops racial consciousness to the highest degree in the whole people [...] [ ...]. ”In contrast to his“ Philosophy of Education ”, this work had unmistakable features of a political campaign.

He described his attitude towards religion in 1943 in the book Heil und Kraft : 'Every religion comes from Asia; Religion is alien to us in terms of species and meaning ... In keeping with the nature and purpose of the Germans, the living belief in God and fate '.

Awards

Fonts (selection)

  • Philosophy of education . Eugen Diederichs , Jena 1922, archive.org
  • Völkisch general state and national education . Bündischer Verlag, Heidelberg 1932.
  • National political education . Armanen , Leipzig 1932
  • The German state idea . Armanen, Leipzig 1934.
  • Outline of educational science. Five lectures. Quelle & Meyer, Leipzig 1936.
  • Völkisch-Political Anthropology (series, 3 volumes). Armanen, Leipzig 1936–1938
  • National character and sense of mission. Political ethics of the empire. Writings at the Reich Institute for the History of the New Germany . Armanen, Leipzig 1940
  • as editor: People in the process of becoming. Cultural Political Journal. (UT also: Zweimonatsschrift ; initially also: Zeitschrift für Erneuerung der Wissenschaften. ) Armanen, Leipzig, 1933–1942 (first in 1932 as a single title: EK, Volk im Werden. Stalling Library: Schriften an die Nation, 38. Verlag Gerhard Stalling , Oldenburg )
    • Issue 7: Of German Art and Science. Special issue of the Heidelberg student body for the 550th university anniversary . o. author., ibid. 1936
    • As the alleged publisher, but camouflage: Volk im Werden. Armanen, Leipzig 1936.
    • Anthology: EK, science, worldview, university reform. ibid. 1934

literature

Web links

Commons : Ernst Krieck  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Jürgen Schriewer: Ernst Krieck. In: Historical commission at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences (Hrsg.): New German biography. Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, pp. 36-38.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Ernst Klee : The personal dictionary for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . Second updated edition. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2005, p. 341.
  3. ↑ Wolfgang U. Eckart , Volker Sellin , Eike Wolgast : The University of Heidelberg in National Socialism , Springer, Berlin 2006, p. 21, preview in the Google book search
  4. ↑ Giesecke, p. 45.
  5. ↑ a b c d Janine Burnicki, Jürgen Steen: The seizure of power at the university. In: Frankfurt 1933–1945. Institute for Urban History , accessed on May 8, 2014 .
  6. ↑ Ernst Krieck: Völkische Bildung. In: People in the process of being. Published by Ernst Krieck, Leipzig, Armanen, Heft 1, 1933.
  7. ↑ Udo Benzenhöfer : The medical philosopher Viktor von Weizsäcker . An overview of life and work , Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Göttingen 2007, pp. 111–112. ISBN 978-3-525-49127-0 .
  8. ^ John Brown Mason: Nazi Concepts of History. In: The Review of Politics. Volume 2, No. 2 (Apr., 1940), pp. 180-196, pp. 180-181, 188.
  9. ↑ Hans Prolingheuer : We went astray. Pp. 150-151.
  10. ^ Giesecke: Hitler's pedagogues. Juventa-Verlag, Weinheim / Munich 1993.
  11. ↑ Puzzling records, a speech on the Frankfurt Römer
  12. ↑ Ernst Krieck: Philosophy of Education. Diederich, Jena 1930.
  13. ↑ Ernst Krieck: National political education. Armanen-Verlag, Leipzig 1932.
  14. ↑ Giesecke, p. 49.
  15. ^ Giesecke, p. 46.
  16. ↑ Giesecke, p. 45 ff.
  17. ^ Quotation from Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich. Fischer Paperback, 2005, p. 341.
  18. ↑ a b Giesecke, p. 59.
  19. ↑ Contains “The Communist International” 1937, No. 6 with texts by Georgij Dimitroff , Wilhelm Pieck , M. Ercoli , Franz Lang and others. a., mostly related to the Spanish Civil War. To: German Exile Archive , German National Library , 2, # 11862. At Gittig, Illegale Antifaschistische Tarnschriften 1933–1945, # 389. Gittig² # 679
  20. ↑ The book appears as a collection of essays, most of which have already been published individually, especially in my magazine “Volk im Werden”.
personal data
SURNAME Krieck, Ernst
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German teacher, writer and professor
DATE OF BIRTH June 6, 1882
PLACE OF BIRTH Vögisheim
DATE OF DEATH March 19, 1947
Place of death Moosburg on the Isar