Franz Scharmer

Memorial plaque for the first individual psychological experimental school in Vienna-Brigittenau

Franz Scharmer (born April 4, 1891 in Vienna ; † November 27, 1984 ) was an Austrian pedagogue and psychologist who played a key role in initiating the use of individual psychology as part of the Vienna school reform.

Life

Scharmer was the second son of the gunsmith Anton Scharmer. He spent part of his childhood in Budapest, where his father was an armorer in a Hungarian regiment. Back in Vienna, he attended the General People's School, the country's real and upper secondary school and the private College of Education of the Catholic School Association, where he completed his matriculation examination graduated in 1910 with honors. He worked as a young teacher at the training institute's practice school and as a substitute at the public community school for boys in the IX. District of Vienna. In 1912 he made his teaching qualification examination for elementary school. During the First World War, Scharmer served as a soldier on the Southern Front from 1917 to 1918, where he was taken prisoner in Italy for almost a year . In 1923 Scharmer passed the state school examination and in 1924 became a permanent secondary school teacher. From the 1920s he studied as an extraordinary student at the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Vienna, but had to give up his plan to obtain a doctorate for health reasons.

From the school year 1920/21 on he taught at the boys' school at Staudingergasse 6 in the XX. District of Vienna where Oskar Spiel and Ferdinand Birnbaum worked. These three teachers were the initiators of the individual psychologically oriented school experiment from 1924 to 1927 as part of the Vienna school reform at this school. After the school closed in the summer of 1935, Scharmer first moved to the secondary school at Greiseneckergasse 29 and then to the secondary school in Pyrkergasse, where he took over the position of headmaster in 1939 when he was called up for military service in World War II. From November 1944, Scharmer was drafted into the Volkssturm deployment in Slovakia for six months.

After the end of the war he immediately began to rebuild the Viennese school system. He was involved as the head of the practical exercises at the state teacher training institute Hegelgasse 12. In 1951 he became principal school director and member of the examination committee for general elementary, secondary and special schools. He was also a lecturer at the Pedagogical Institute of the City of Vienna . In 1956 he was honored to retire.

plant

As a proven school practitioner, Scharmer made an important contribution to the success of the individual psychological experimental school, as his colleague Oskar Spiel confirmed: My partner in the practical work was Franz Scharmer, the unsurpassed problem school methodologist and real master in leading the class as a pronunciation community, without its equality in thinking and design the experimental school would hardly have been manageable.

This is also expressed in the report of the headmaster at the teacher training institute on his school management: ... his methodological skills, but above all his love for young people made him very popular with his students. He knew how to educate, inspire and lead young people. The classes led by him as the head of the class were distinguished by their special discipline and distinguished behavior. He was not just a teacher to his students, he was a fatherly supervisor.

literature

• Franz Scharmer / Oskar Spiel: The school class: a working and living community , in: International magazine for individual psychology, 6th year, S. Hirzel, Leipzig 1928
• Oskar Spiel: On the switching board of education (1947), Verlag Hans Huber Bern / Stuttgart / Vienna 1979, ISBN 3-456-80674-4
• Wolfgang Keim, The Vienna School Reform of the First Republic - A Forgotten Chapter in European Reform Education , 1984. Published as an article in the magazine: Die Deutsche Schule , Volume 76 No. 4
• KJ Parisot, Education as a Path from Imitation to Self-Assessment , Dissertation, Vienna 1966 (1973)
• Lutz Wittenberg, history of the individual psychological experimental school in Vienna , dissertation, Vienna 2000, ISBN 3-85114-739-1