Frida Winckelmann

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Frida Winckelmann (born July 3, 1873 in Berlin ; † November 4, 1943 ) was a German politician and educator .

Live and act

After attending secondary school for girls and training as a (senior) teacher, Frida Winckelmann worked as a teacher at secondary schools for girls in Berlin and Charlottenburg from 1892 to 1906 . Afterwards she headed the educational home in Schloss Drebkau for a few years . One of her students there was Paul, the son of Else Lasker-Schüler .

In 1912 she received the approval "to set up and manage an educational institution for weak and retarded children" in her house in Birkenwerder near Berlin, Bergallee 1. The children and young people were not, however, "lagged behind", but either children from their parents' homes who embraced the reform pedagogical idea the rural education centers followed or, as Karl Radek recalled, “the children of our illegal comrades”. Students in Birkenwerder were u. a .: Eleonore (Lore) Rosenthal, Lotte Kornfeld (later companion of Johann Knief ), Ruth Seele, Karl Liebknecht's children Wilhelm, Robert and Vera and Hertie Goldstein (who later became Robert Liebknecht's wife).

The house in Birkenwerder was always open to political friends. These included Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg , Karl Radek and Hermann and Käte Duncker . Kate Duncker wrote about her: “This Winckelmann is an original, actually quite Dickensche figure. So: She has a country house of education, albeit somewhat primitive in nature in Birkenwerder. […] And in order to keep this home, Miss Winckelmann teaches at a number of private seminars, higher girls' schools, etc. in Berlin "

Winckelmann was first a member of the SPD , was involved in the Spartakusbund and from 1917 in the USPD , later she became a member of the KPD . After the revolution, she briefly belonged to the Ministry of Science, Art and Public Education and the Prussian Ministry of Education in the Weimar Republic and developed concepts for the adult education center and the single school. Together with Alexander Schwab and others, she founded a “Free University Community for Proletarians”, from which the “Council School of the Greater Berlin Workers” emerged in the spring of 1919, which was taken over by the union after almost two years.

In 1922, she was withdrawn from her permission to continue the education home in Birkenwerder. The reason was the allegation that it was a “refuge and accommodation for people belonging to foreign radical communist party groups”. Winckelmann left Birkenwerder and Berlin.

She turned to political friends in the Gotha school administration and in April 1923 got a job at the "advanced training school" in Gotha. Despite positive professional assessments, at the end of September 1925 she received the dismissal from the Thuringian Ministry for National Education - a professional ban due to her activities for the KPD. Winckelmann was active in the International Workers' Aid (IAH), functionary in the "Greater Thuringia District Management" of the KPD and editor of the Thuringian Volksblatt of the KPD, which appears in Gotha . In January 1927 she was elected to the Thuringian state parliament for the first time . She was one of eight KPD members in the fourth Thuringian state parliament and took an active part with speeches, especially on the topics of welfare and education: "We demand a uniform school that gives everyone the opportunity to advance according to their talents." (State Parliament speech in June 1929). After political struggles for direction in the KPD, Winckelmann was expelled from the KPD in March 1929 together with her party friend Albin Tenner . Both joined the KPO (Communist Party Opposition). Frida Winckelmann returned to her house in Birkenwerder in 1930, Tenner and his family went with them. Both joined the Socialist Workers' Party ( SAP ) in 1932 . Hugo Jacoby, one of her friends from Gotha, also lived in the “communist villa of Frida Winckelmann” (Birkenwerder police report).

In 1933 Winckelmann first went into hiding and worked illegally in the resistance against the Nazis, especially in Berlin-Reinickendorf and Berlin-Britz . On September 20, 1933, Winckelmann was arrested by the mayor in her house and taken to the women's prison in Berlin . From there she came to the Moringen concentration camp . Her home has been confiscated and dispossessed. After her release from the concentration camp in April 1934, she was not allowed to return to Birkenwerder and found accommodation with friends in Berlin. Frida Winckelmann died of an illness in November 1943.

In 1993 the Bergallee in Birkenwerder, which had received its name at the end of the 1940s, was renamed again.

literature

  • Heike Stange: Between obstinacy and solidarity: Frida Winckelmann (1873–1943). In: Mario Hesselbarth, Eberhart Schulz, Manfred Weißbecker (eds.): Lived ideas. Socialists in Thuringia. Biographical sketches. Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, Jena 2006, ISBN 3-935850-37-9 , pp. 458–464.
  • Heike Stange: The parliamentary work of women in Thuringia and their political biographies. In: Harald Mitteldorf (Red.): “Now finally women can become members of parliament!” (= Thuringian Landtag, writings on the history of parliamentarism in Thuringia. Volume 20). Hain-Verlag, Weimar and Jena 2003, ISBN 3-89807-039-5 , pp. 66-70.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Sigrid Bauschinger : Else Lasker-Schüler. Biography. Göttingen 2004, p. 130. See also the report on the school and Frida Winckelmann in Else Lasker Schüler: Die rotbäckige Schule . In: Vossische Zeitung. No. 303 of July 1, 1910 (morning edition).
  2. ↑ a b c Karin Kuckuk: In the shadow of the revolution. Lotte Kornfeld (1896–1974). Biography of a forgotten woman. Bremen 2009, pp. 20-25.
  3. ↑ a b c d Heike Stange: Between obstinacy and solidarity: Frida Winckelmann (1873–1943). In: Mario Hesselbarth, Eberhart Schulz, Manfred Weißbecker (eds.): Lived ideas. Socialists in Thuringia. Biographical sketches. Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, Jena 2006, ISBN 3-935850-37-9 , pp. 459, 460, 462, 463.
  4. ↑ Diethart Kerbs:  Schwab, Alexander. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 23, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-428-11204-3 , p. 770 f. ( Digitized version ).
  5. ↑ Steffen Kachel: A red-red special path? Social Democrats and Communists in Thuringia 1919–1949. Cologne, Weimar, Vienna 2011, p. 189.
  6. ↑ According to the current state of research, Winckelmann was never a member of parliament. Heike Stange: The parliamentary work of women in Thuringia and their political biographies. In: Harald Mitteldorf (Red.): “Now finally women can become members of parliament!” (= Thuringian Landtag, writings on the history of parliamentarism in Thuringia. Volume 20). Hain-Verlag, Weimar and Jena 2003, ISBN 3-89807-039-5 , p. 68
  7. ↑ Short biography on:  Tenner, Albin . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
personal data
SURNAME Winckelmann, Frida
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician and educator
DATE OF BIRTH July 3, 1873
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH November 4, 1943