Ernst Wilmanns

Ernst Wilmanns (born March 13, 1882 in Durango , Mexico; † April 28, 1960 in Wuppertal ) was a German history teacher , author of history textbooks and headmaster of the so-called Carl-Duisberg-Oberrealschule in Wuppertal- Barmen .

biography

He was born in Mexico as the son of a commercial employee, but grew up in Lichterfelde near Berlin from 1886 .

After studying history, German and French and his doctorate in 1904, he entered the school service in Strasbourg ; later he worked as a teacher in Lübeck and Bielefeld , before becoming headmaster in what was later to become Wuppertal in 1923. During the First World War he served for four years; In 1939/1940 Wilmanns was drafted again. Politically he was close to the DDP in the Weimar Republic .

In 1913 he published the first basic principles for using sources in history lessons . In the Weimar Republic, he advocated the use of sources in the upper school against conservative representatives, in order to enable learners to make their own judgments about textbooks. In 1933 he hastily turned to National Socialism in an essay and revised his textbooks in the Teubner publishing house with the latter in mind. Like few other headmasters, however, he did not join the NSDAP and was often unruly. When the Carl-Duisberg-Oberrealschule was evacuated in August 1943 as a result of the air raids , he went into retirement. He saw the cause of the German catastrophe in apostasy.

Accordingly, after 1945 he saw the central position of Christianity as the remedy for a new education. History lessons should be rearranged on this basis. When the history teachers association was re-established in 1949, he gave the central lecture, but the majority did not follow this depoliticizing view. But his vote in favor of the exemplary principle in history lessons and against the professional completeness claim (“courage to gap”) also had an effect .

family

Ernst Wilmanns was the second eldest son of the merchant and consul Hilmar Franz Günther Wilmanns (1847–1912) in Durango, Torreón . His mother Frieda Elsner died in 1891. Ernst Wilmann's older brother was Richard Wilmann's surgeon , while his sister Armgard Frieda was married to the Lutheran Bishop Otto Dibelius .

His father Hilmar's brothers included the Germanist Wilhelm Wilmanns , the lawyer and Reichstag member Karl Wilmanns and the ancient historian Gustav Heinrich Wilmanns .

The psychiatrist Karl Wilmanns and the chemist Gustav Wilmanns were his cousins. Their father Franz Rudolf Florenz August Wilmanns (1843–1931), who was also temporarily a merchant in Durango, was also a brother of Richard Wilmann's father Hilmar.

Works (selection)

• Source reading on the history of the Middle Ages. In: past and present. Volume 3, 1913, pp. 212-224
• (Ed.): The source in history lessons. Teubner, Leipzig 1932.
• Pinnow, Hermann: History book for the intermediate level . Part: Issue A., Mainly f. Prussia / Tl 4 A., E. Wilmanns: German history from the Congress of Vienna to the present . Leipzig, Berlin 1935.
• Pinnow, Hermann: History book for the intermediate level; Part: Issue A., Mainly f. Prussia / Tl 4 A., German history from the Congress of Vienna to 1918 . By Ernst Wilmanns, Teubner, Leipzig 1935.
• The Prussian state thought - The Great Elector, Friedrich Wilhelm I, Friedrich the Great. Matthiesen, Berlin 1941.
• History lesson - laying the foundations for its methodology. Klett, Stuttgart 1949
• Basics of history teaching. Klett, Stuttgart 1962 (posthumously and with the assistance of Wilma Wilmann's daughter)

literature

• M. Barricelli: Access Denied? The conjunctions of criticism, community and worldview in Ernst Wilmanns (1882–1960). In: W. Hasberg and M. Seidenfuß: History didactics (er) under the grip of National Socialism? LIT, Berlin a. a. 2005, p. 187 ff ( Google Books )

supporting documents

1. ^ School homepage of the Carl-Duisberg-Gymnasium ( Memento from October 21, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
2. ↑ Family tree of the Wilmanns family