Eugenie Black Forest

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Photo from the 1920s by Grete Kolliner

Eugenie "Genia" Schwarzwald (born July 4, 1872 in Polupanowka near Tarnopol , Galicia, Austria-Hungary ; † August 7, 1940 in Zurich ; native Nussbaum, also written as Nussbaum) was an Austrian educator, social reformer and women's rights activist, who was particularly a pioneer is known in girls' education. She was the sister of Anton Norst (actually Isidor Nussbaum).

Live and act

Born in the Crown Land of Galicia as the daughter of Leo and Ester Nussbaum (Nussbaum) , she completed her schools in Czernowitz and attended a teacher training institute before studying German (minor subjects English, philosophy and pedagogy) at the University of Zurich from 1895 to 1900 , the only one at the time University in German-speaking countries that allowed women to study regularly. On July 30, 1900, she was one of the first Austrians to receive her doctorate with her dissertation “Metaphor and parable in Berthold von Regensburg ”. phil. PhD.

Eugenie Schwarzwald (1872–1940) educator, women's rights activist
Eugenie Black Forest

Black Forest School

After her marriage to Hermann Schwarzwald on December 16, 1900 , she lived in Vienna, where she took over the girls' college at Franziskanerplatz 5 from Eleonore Jeiteles (1841-1918) in 1901. However, the Imperial and Royal Ministry for Cultus and Teaching only gave her a permit for three years provisional management of the school, in 1905 she had to appoint the mathematics teacher Ludwig Dörfler pro forma as director of the school. The Black Forest was not allowed to run her school independently for a long time, and the academic degree she acquired in Zurich was never recognized in Austria. Nevertheless, she succeeded in gradually developing the Lyceum into a school center with elementary school, high school and general advanced training courses. The elementary school was also the first school with community education . The basic ideas of their pedagogy were shaped by non-violence, the promotion of imagination and creative power and the free development of every child. She maintained an exchange of ideas with Maria Montessori ; her ideas later formed the basis for Otto Glöckel's comprehensive school reform.

From 1911 she ran the school as a girls' high school with eight classes. It was the first school in Austria where girls could graduate . Since 1913 the school has had its new home in Vienna 1, Wallnerstrasse 9 (identical to Herrengasse 10). Of the well-known writers and artists who met in the later-built Literaten café Herrenhof in the same house, the Black Forest was able to win some as teachers, including Oskar Kokoschka (painting and drawing), Adolf Loos (architecture), Arnold Schönberg and Egon Wellesz (music) , Hans Kelsen (sociology and economics) and Otto Rommel (literature). Rommel was also director from 1916 to 1919. Edmund Bernatzik (1854-1919) organized the law academy for women from 1917, when women were not yet admitted to study law.

The apartment of the Schwarzwald couple in Vienna 8, Josefstädter Straße 68, designed by Adolf Loos, was another meeting point for well-known personalities from Vienna at the time. The authors Elias Canetti , Egon Friedell , Robert Musil , Karin Michaëlis and, during his stays in Vienna, Rainer Maria Rilke also visited her salon . In addition to Baron Lajos Hatvany (1880–1961), Alexander Moissi and Paul Lazarsfeld , Alma Mahler-Werfel and Berta Zuckerkandl were among their guests. Thanks to the special gift of the hostess, who was called "Frau Doktor" by almost everyone in her environment, to be able to accept completely different personalities in their respective peculiarities and to be charmed by their charm, people with the most diverse political views came together here, from Othmar Spann , a spiritual father of the corporate state , to Karl Popper and Robert Scheu to socialists and communists. In Robert Musil's main work, the fragmentary novel The Man without Qualities , the character of Diotima, also called Hermine Tuzzi in the novel, has some features from Eugenie Schwarzwald.

"Fraudoktor.Jugendbild" is the caption in the work of Alice Herdan-Zuckmayer , which Eugenie Schwarzwald describes as the main character of her autobiographical writing in the register of the book "Geniuses are not included in the curriculum".

During the First World War , she organized communal kitchens, old people's homes, recreation homes and teaching girls' homes. During the inflationary period, she then founded the “Austrian Friendship Aid for Germany”, which ran communal kitchens in Berlin and rest homes in the countryside. From 1918 she set up several homes for children and adults, for example in Bad Topolschitz , on Semmering , in Bad Ischl , Mödling , Reichenau an der Rax , Waidhofen an der Ybbs and Bad Fischau , and in 1919 a youth workshop for boys was established in Vienna- Favoriten .

In 1920 the Black Forest took over the Villa Seeblick (Archkogl) in Archkogl am Grundlsee , which also developed into a meeting point for young people, writers, actors and friends, for example for the pianist Rudolf Serkin and the writers Jakob Wassermann , Carl Zuckmayer and Sinclair Lewis , the Actors Axel von Ambesser , Helene Weigel , Elisabeth Neumann-Viertel and the British photographer Bill Brandt as well as his brother, the painter Rolf Brandt. Around 1930 her circle of friends also included Helmuth James Graf von Moltke , who later, as the founder of the Kreisau Circle, resisted the Hitler dictatorship and was executed in 1945, his later wife Freya Deichmann and her brother, the resistance fighter Hans Deichmann .

In a letter she described herself sarcastically and probably not in all seriousness as an anti-Semitic: “What annoys me, who is honestly anti-Semitic, is the fact that a Jew, even if he has no talent or character, does but the flaws and the suppleness of his race, necessarily got there. The Jewish question is insoluble because the host peoples only want bad Jews. ”This isolated statement is in stark contradiction to her help for Jews, whereby she never considered origin and religious affiliation in her help for people. When she had to leave Austria in 1938 and finally took up residence in Zurich, she registered with the residents' office with the religious affiliation “Israelite denomination”.

From 1933 she helped refugees from Germany, in 1934 she supported persecuted social democrats. In 1938 she was surprised by the Anschluss during a stay in Denmark with Karin Michaëlis on the island of Thurø ; she did not return to Vienna, but emigrated to Switzerland. In Austria all their property was Aryanized and the school closed; most of the schoolgirls had to emigrate or were later murdered in the Shoah . Her husband was able to flee from Austria to Switzerland in September 1938, where he died in 1939.

In 2011, the Eugenie-Schwarzwald-Weg in Vienna- Donaustadt (22nd district) was named after her.

Well-known students

Works

  • Gottfried Keller at school . 1911.
  • Selma Lagerlöf at school . 1912.
  • Ten years of school . 1912.
  • The Semmering School . 1913.
  • The homecoming of the lost book . Private print Gotthard Laske, Berlin, 1934.
  • The ox from Topolschitz . Feature sections. Edition Garamond, Vienna and Mülheim a. d. Ruhr 1995, ISBN 3-85306-006-4 .
  • The legacy of Eugenie . Eugenie Schwarzwald's collected feature articles 1908–1938 (edited by Robert Streibel). edition pen published by Löcker Verlag, Vienna 2017, ISBN 978-3-85409-878-2 .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Letter from Black Forest to Hans Deichmann dated November 3, 1931. In: Hans Deichmann Leben with provisional permission: Life, work and exile of Dr. Eugenie Schwarzwald (1872–1940). Berlin 1988, p. 229.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Black Forest, Eugenie
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Black Forest, Genia (nickname); Nussbaum, Eugenie (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian educator and women's rights activist
DATE OF BIRTH 4th July 1872
PLACE OF BIRTH Polupanowka near Tarnopol , Galicia , Austria-Hungary
DATE OF DEATH August 7, 1940
Place of death Zurich , Switzerland