Eva Seligmann

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Eva Seligmann (* 1912 in Berlin ; † June 1, 1997 in Bremen ) was a German reform pedagogue .

Life

Seligmann was the daughter of the Jewish haberdashery dealer Alfred Seligmann (1877–1943) and the Protestant pianist Margarete Fritz . The father was a member of the German Peace Society (DFG), the mother in the Federation of Resolute School Reformers and advocate of women's suffrage . In 1923 the family moved their residence and business from Hausvogteiplatz in Berlin to Erkner .

Seligmann grew up in a pacifist parental home. In her youth she was an active member of the pacifist World Youth League , which was a member of the German Peace Cartel. Later (1933) she was a member of the International Socialist Combat League .

After attending grammar school, she began her training as a teacher at the Pedagogical Academy in Frankfurt am Main in 1931 . She was still able to take her exams here, but was then "not allowed to teach at a public school as a so-called mixed breed". From 1935 to 1936 she was a teacher at the private Alpine school home on the Vigiljoch near Meran , then from 1937 to 1938 at the Jewish rural school home in Herrlingen . She writes about her work there:

“I gave lessons in elementary school and in the lower classes of secondary and secondary schools. Some English too. I remember with gratitude the freedom teachers had to organize their lessons. The school reform ideas of the Weimar period continued to have an effect in Herrlingen, whereas they had long since been generally superseded by National Socialist ideology. [..] One focus of my work was to explore the beautiful nature of the Swabian Alb with the children. [..] With a gymnastics group of girls and little boys, I took on an area of ​​work for which I was only insufficiently trained through a six-month course in physical education with Dore Jacobs in Essen. It was an attempt to improve the posture and movement sequences of the children and to give them a sense of the body that had a stabilizing effect on their mental state. "

In retrospect, Eva Seligmann viewed the fact that everyone in Herrlingen was also involved in the daily work in the kitchen and in the house as "a good preparation for later situations when it was important to be ready for any kind of work". And she refers to another suggestion that she received there: "I began to occupy myself with Martin Buber's world of thought , with Jewish history and the history of anti-Semitism, and to get to know many forms of Jewish life and Jewish fate with an inner share."

In March 1939 the “Jüdische Landschulheim Herrlingen” had to close and Eva Seligmann emigrated to Great Britain . There she worked in various families as a nanny and cleaning lady. She trained as a nurse and midwife in exile and worked in these professions throughout the Second World War . After the war ended, she and friends founded a home in England in 1945/46 for children who had been freed from concentration camps .

Although her father perished in the Auschwitz concentration camp and her brother Raimund (* 1914) committed suicide, she consciously returned to Germany in 1946 with the intention of founding a school with the aim of recognition and integration for everyone , also for the disadvantaged. She first went back to Frankfurt, then worked at the Odenwald School from 1947 to 1951 , where she was finally able to take her second teacher examination, and then headed children's homes for the workers' welfare in Haiger and in the Gehringshof near Fulda . In July 1955 Martha Friedländer , a friend from the time they worked together on the German Educational Reconstruction Committee , advised Eva Seligmann to come to Bremen. From 1956 she built up special needs education in Bremen and worked here as a teacher, headmistress and until her retirement in 1977 as a school councilor for the special education system. She was also responsible for the schooling of the migrant children, “which was considered a particular stroke of luck by many. Because the remigrant understood better than many others, so to speak, what these children were missing: support not only in one, but in two languages! She continued to work on this after her retirement in 1977 and set up homework help for foreign children. "

Honors

Stumbling block for Eva Seligmann in Erkner
  • In Bremen - Blumenthal , district Lüssum-Bockhorn , Eva-Seligmann-Straße was named after her.
  • In Bremen-Farge the meeting place of the workers welfare organization is called Eva-Seligmann-Haus
  • In Nuremberg there is the Eva Seligmann School , a special educational support center
  • The Eva-Seligmann Prize is awarded annually by the National Association of Bremen Association Special Education Association awarded
  • In front of the house at Ahornallee 34 in Erkner , stumbling blocks were laid for Eva Seligmann, her brother Raimund and for their parents Margarete and Alfred

Fonts (selection)

  • Eva Seligmann, memories of a contentious educator. Documented and edited by Heide Henk; published by the Bremen School History Collection ; Edition Temmen : Bremen 2000 ISBN 978-3-86108-636-9
  • When children don't obey! Hamburg 1951

Web links

Literature, sources

  • Edith Laudowicz : Seligmann, Eva . In: Women's history (s) , Bremer Frauenmuseum (ed.). Edition Falkenberg, Bremen 2016, ISBN 978-3-95494-095-0 .
  • Lucie Schachne: Education to Resistance. The Jewish Landschulheim Herrlingen - 1933-1939 , dipa-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1986, ISBN 3-7638-0509-5 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jürgen Eierdanz, Armin Kremer: "Neither expected nor wanted". Critical educational science and pedagogy in the Federal Republic of Germany at the time of the Cold War , page 61, Schneider-Verlag, Hohengehren 2000, ISBN 3896763180 and ISBN 9783896763181
  2. ↑ a b c Eva Seligmann: As a teacher in Herrlingen , in: Lucie Schachne: Education for Resistance , pp. 114–116
  3. ↑ a b Wiltrud Ulrike Drechsel: Eva Seligmann , in: Digital collection of state and Bremen University Library
  4. ↑ On the history of the Gehringshof
  5. ↑ Biography of the Seligmann family and biography (pdf; 1.8 MB)
personal data
SURNAME Seligmann, Eva
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German reform pedagogue
DATE OF BIRTH 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH June 1, 1997
Place of death Bremen