Erwin Marquardt (pedagogue)

Erwin Marquardt (born January 15, 1890 in Reutlingen , † November 28, 1951 in Berlin ) was a German educator and school reformer.

Erwin Marquardt attended grammar school as the son of a Reutlingen merchant family and then wanted to pursue an academic career. From 1909 to 1914 he studied history and philosophy in Jena , Munich , Tübingen , Gießen and Göttingen . As a student, he became involved in workers' education and led 1909-1911 academic workers teaching courses in Tübingen and Göttingen. In Göttingen he became chairman of the social democratic workers' education committee and joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in 1912 . In addition, he worked until August 1914 as a local editor in Göttingen for the SPD newspaper Volkswille, which was published in Hanover .

During the First World War he was drafted as a soldier and had to interrupt his academic career. In April 1919 he was finally able to take the teacher examination. In 1920 he joined the education reformers Fritz Karsen and took over as Studienassessor the place of Alumnatsinspektors at the Prussian Hauptkadettenanstalt in Lichterfelde . After Fritz Karsen the management of the Kaiser-Friedrich-secondary school in Neukölln took over, followed him Erwin Marquardt 1922 as a teacher at this secondary school . As a member of the teaching staff, he played a decisive role in the transformation of the grammar school into a new school in the spirit of the Federation of Decided School Reformers . The school was renamed the Karl Marx School in 1929 . As a pedagogue and school reformer, he devoted himself particularly to training in the advanced classes and the worker-high school graduate courses . In addition, he was a course director at the Berlin workers' training school and freelance work for the socialist monthly books , the forward and the magazine Die Arbeit des Allgemeine Deutschen Unionssbundes (ADGB).

On behalf of the Prussian government , Erwin Marquardt left Berlin in 1928 to head the new type of home adult education center in Harrisleefeld . This university with boarding school, which Chancellor Hermann Müller opened with a speech on September 29, 1928, was intended to prepare capable workers and simple employees with courses in political and legal sciences, economics, finance and social sciences for management positions in state and municipal administrations. Due to his successful work as an educational organizer, he received two tempting offers from Berlin in 1929. The ADGB offered him the management of the new trade union school in Bernau and the Berlin magistrate wanted to hire him as director of the Greater Berlin Adult Education Center. He returned to Berlin, reorganized the Volkshochschule Groß-Berlin as the successor to Theodor Geiger and led the voluntary amalgamation of the Freie Volksbildungsvereine in Groß-Berlin into a working group . In doing so, he transferred his practical experience as a school reformer to adult education. Under his leadership, the number of adult education students enrolled in Berlin increased sixfold.

After the Nazis came to power , Erwin Marquardt was dismissed as director of the Greater Berlin Adult Education Center in 1933. In addition, the fascist rulers banished him from teaching. He went into internal emigration for twelve years and made his living as a subordinate clerk in the Berlin-Reinickendorf district office . In 1944 he was dismissed as a politically unreliable person and had to make do with irregular allowances for casual work until the end of the Second World War .

After the liberation of Berlin in 1945 by the Red Army , Erwin Marquardt again actively campaigned for the development of a democratic, secular and socially oriented school system. His services as a teacher at the Karl Marx School and as an organizer of adult education in Berlin during the Weimar Republic were not forgotten and his skills for the rebuilding were in demand again. In August 1945, the German Central Administration for National Education (DZfV) was formed in Berlin on the basis of Order No. 17 of the Soviet Military Administration (SMAD) of July 27, 1945 . The SMAD appointed Paul Wandel ( KPD ) as President of the DZfV and Erwin Marquardt (SPD) as First Deputy President. Other deputies in the DZfV Presidium were Emil Menke-Glückert ( LDP ) and Johannes R. Becher for the Kulturbund . The core task of the DZfV was the development of an anti-fascist , secular and socialist school and education system. Due to the extensive dismissal of Nazi-exposed teachers and the selection and training of suitable new teachers , teacher training in the Soviet Occupation Zone (SBZ) was of particular importance. The DZfV steered school policy through guidelines and curricula and was thus an important instrument for the organization and introduction of the socialist standard school in the Soviet Zone. As a school reformer, Erwin Marquardt saw the possibility of a new beginning on the basis of the law passed in 1946 to democratize German schools . In his commentary - The law on democratic school reform - he referred to the reform efforts before 1933 in 1946 and, following on from this, promised the construction of a democratic and socialist unified school that would "elastically" promote the individual talents and interests of the students and, in the sense of a working school, theory and Should merge practice in class. In the DZfV, however, he was not free to design the new school , as he had in mind together with school reformers such as Fritz Karsen, Paul Oestreich or Siegfried Kawerau during the Weimar Republic, deviating from the guidelines of the Socialist Unity Party (SED ) enforce.

Together with Heinrich Deiters and Wilhelm Heise , he began to publish the pedagogical library of the Volk und Wissen Verlag . Among other things, he took part in the editing and publication of several writings by the enlightener Christian Gotthilf Salzmann , the pedagogue Heinrich Pestalozzi and the Germanist Rudolf Hildebrand in various volumes of this book series.

With the founding of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) on October 7, 1949, the DZfV was transferred to the Ministry of National Education under the minister named Paul Wandel . Erwin Marquardt initially remained directly subordinate to the minister without any function. In November 1949 he took over the position of deputy director of the German Central Pedagogical Institute , from which the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the GDR emerged in 1970. Between Marquardt, as the decided representative of German reform pedagogy, and the director of the institute, Hans Siebert , there were disputes over educational policy, which prompted the minister to withdraw Marquardt from the institute in January and to continue to employ him directly in the ministry. From mid-1950 Marquardt worked on behalf of the minister, to whom he remained directly subordinate, as a research assistant at the Humboldt University . Eventually he was appointed head of the preparatory committee of the Central Pedagogical Library , which was set up for the German Central Pedagogical Institute and which Leo Regener headed from 1952 . Due to his health, the Council of Ministers of the GDR granted him a pension in October 1951, which he could take in retirement for only one month until his death on November 28, 1951.

Publications (selection)

• History of socialism from ancient times to modern times. (= Course Disposition No. 12, Central Education Committee of the SPD ). Berlin 1922
• Schiller. His life and his poetry. (Edition in 4 volumes (Ed.): E. Marquardt), Volksbühnen-Verlag, Berlin 1924
• Georg Herwegh - on the 50th anniversary of his death on April 7, 1925. (= Arbeiter-Bildung No. 8, series of publications by the Central Education Committee of the SPD ). Berlin 1925
• On the question of the democratization of schools. Volk und Wissen Verlag, Berlin / Leipzig 1946
• The law on democratic school reform. Volk und Wissen Verlag, Berlin / Leipzig 1946

literature

• Werner Korthaase : Portrait Erwin Marquardt (1890-1951). In: Gerd Radde et al. (Ed.): School reform - continuities and breaks: Das Versuchsfeld Berlin-Neukölln. Volume II: 1945 to 1972. Springer VS , 2012, ISBN 978-3-8100-1181-7 , pp. 222-224.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Günter Blümel, Wolfgang Natonek: The noble endeavor to benefit the broad masses. Contributions to the history of the Volkshochschule Göttingen. Universitätsverlag Göttingen 2013, ISBN 978-3-86395-125-2 , p. 41.
2. ^ Volkszeitung Flensburg of September 29, 1928.
3. ↑ SBZ manual, p. 230.
4. ↑ Christian Gotthilf Salzmann: (1) Ameisenbüchlein or instructions for a sensible upbringing of the educators. (2) Cancer books or instructions for an unreasonable upbringing of children. (3) Something else about the upbringing and the announcement of an educational institution. (Selection by Johannes Bärm and Hans Märtin; editors: Heinrich Deiters, Erwin Marquardt), Volk und Wissen Verlag Pedagogical Library , Berlin / Leipzig 1948.
5. ^ Heinrich Pestalozzi: Letters to a friend about the stay in Stans. (Editors: Erwin Marquardt, Wilhelm Heise, Heinrich Deiters), Pedagogical Library Volk und Wissen Verlag, Berlin / Leipzig 1947.
6. ↑ Rudolf Hildebrand: From German language lessons in school and from German education in general: About foreign words and about old German in school. (Editors: Erwin Marquardt, Wilhelm Heise, Heinrich Deiters), Pedagogical Library Volk und Wissen Verlag, Berlin / Leipzig 1947.