Fritz Gansberg

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Friedrich (Fritz) Gansberg (born April 9, 1871 in Bremen ; † February 12, 1950 in Bremen) was a German writer , elementary school teacher and reform pedagogue . He called for more artistic performance and childization in school, as well as less scholarship and more privacy and thus the fight against tradition and for a new understanding of children and teaching.

biography

family

Gansberg was born as the second youngest child of the married couple Friedrich and Elisabeth Gansberg. The father was a janitor in a large tobacco company. In 1891 he succeeded in moving up from a wage worker to another class of society when he became the owner of a grocery store. The mother died giving birth to the seventh child. The father's second marriage resulted in five more children. Gansberg grew up in a strict and thrifty, but also education-conscious and ambitious family. While his brothers took up a trade, following the example of their father, the withdrawn, sometimes dreamy Fritz wanted to become a teacher.

education and profession

Gansberg attended elementary school and was trained together with Heinrich Scharrelmann under Georg Credner at the Bremen teachers ' college from 1885–1890 , which only accepted highly talented elementary school students . Due to the shortcomings and disappointments of the training system, he looked for new pedagogical paths at the beginning of his career. From 1890 Gansberg taught in the elementary school on Birkenstrasse for two decades. Thanks to his calm, always friendly and level-headed manner, his lively teaching methods, his patience, his encouragement and his empathy, he soon gained the respect of his colleagues and superiors, but especially the admiration of his students. Since Gansberg was single and he saw his job as a calling, he devoted his whole life to teaching and children.

At the beginning of the First World War in 1914 he was used as a soldier and as a teacher in Latvia . After the war he taught at various schools in Bremen. Gansberg remained a primary school teacher out of conviction and consequently turned down the offer to found an experimental school in 1919. Nevertheless, he continued to give lectures and published articles and books.

After 1933

The most difficult time for him began with National Socialism , where primers and books had to be redesigned and educational publications seemed pointless. He was finally retired in 1936. During the Nazi era, Gansberg limited himself mainly to purely subject-related textbook work and hoped for the return of democracy soon . During the bombing raids he fled to Fallingbostel . There he suffered a lot from the spatial separation from his hometown, where after numerous attempts he could no longer find an apartment.

His health was badly damaged in the last years of his life and the commuting from Fallingbostel to Bremen, the fight with the school authorities for recognition of his life's work, as well as the disappointment with the new generation of teachers left their mark on Gansberg, until he finally left on February 12, 1950 after a short time Illness succumbed to a heartbeat.

pedagogy

With his pedagogy, Gansberg wanted to educate the mind more than the intellect by awakening, developing and keeping creative powers. He was convinced that the self-activity of the mind and the inner experience are set in motion by lecturing and performing.

His reform pedagogical conceptions, which he recorded in democratic pedagogy, are borne by the responsible love for children. For him, interest is the basis of teaching, which goes hand in hand with productivity as a goal and individual self-realization as well as enjoyment of work and self-activity. One can arouse and encourage interest in children by offering appropriate lessons.

Gansberg's lessons are both methodically and content-wise geared towards this child's interest, which is an emotional state that rests in people and must be tracked down by the teacher. By activating the feelings, learning content should find its way into the student's soul life. The actual teaching work of systematic remembering should become intellectual knowledge by means of the imagination.

In addition to the individual educational goal of making human existence more worth living in, Gansberg pursues the goal of social democratization, because people should be able to work independently. Instead of the demand for obedience and the gathering of knowledge, an education for critical self-responsibility and judgment should take place. He puts trust in the ability of the individual to judge and act morally independently.

Proximity to nature was also important for Gansberg, as he was of the opinion that this would be lost to the city children. He wanted to counteract this problem by treating local studies in depth in class.

“Whoever does not believe in this world deep down cannot be creatively active in it.” This belief in a positive meaning of this world, which made Gansberg not give up hope even in the darkest hours, was the basis of his life's work.

Honors

  • The Fritz-Goose mountain road in Bremen- Schwachhausen was named after him.
  • The school on Fritz-Gansberg-Straße and the Fritz-Gansberg-Kindergarten in Bremen-Schwachhausen bear his name
  • The Fritz Gansberg School in Wiesbaden got his name.
  • The Gansbergsteig in Berlin-Gropiusstadt was named after him.

Works

  • Chat hours. Descriptions for the first lesson. 1902
  • At home with us. A primer for little townspeople. 1905
  • Fibelfreud und Fibelleid - A companion to the primer for city children At home with us. 1905
  • Creativity - suggestions for animating the classroom. 1907 (2nd edition)
  • Forays into the world of big city children. A reading book for school and home. 1907
  • From the prehistory of man. Walks through home and wilderness. 1908
  • Productive work - contributions to a new pedagogy. 1909
  • Democratic education. A wake-up call for self-activation in class. 1911
  • Creativity. Suggestions to enliven teaching. 1912
  • How We Understand the World - A Guide to Thinking Language Lessons. 1913
  • The free essay. Its basics and its possibilities. A happy textbook and reading book. 1914/1922
  • Basic principles of school organization in the new people's state - A lecture given to the Bremen teachers in March 1919. 1920
  • How we understand the world - a guide to thinking language teaching. 1920
  • At home with us - a primer for little townspeople. 1924
  • The adventures of Simplicissimus - With the 18 pictures of the "great evils of war". 1924
  • Local Studies in Stories - The Class Books by Fritz Gansberg, Volume 1. 1925
  • Adventure in distant lands. Geography stories based on famous storytellers. 1933
  • Germany in Stories and Pictures of Life - Part 1: Southern and Central Germany. 19 ??
  • Germany in Stories and Pictures of Life - Part 2: Northern Germany. 1937
  • A hundred stories from little Helmut - 1st part. around 1940
  • Our mother tongue - a local exercise book for German lessons. 1941
  • The direction pointer - a guide in German lessons, especially when using the workbooks, our mother tongue. 1943-1945
  • Roland , monthly magazine for liberal education: co-editor together with Heinrich Scharrelmann

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Karl Schaefer: A contribution to the question of art in schools. In: Mittheilungen des Gewerbemuseum zu Bremen, 20, 1905, No. 1, p. 3.
personal data
SURNAME Gansberg, Fritz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gansberg, Friedrich (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer, elementary school teacher and reform pedagogue
DATE OF BIRTH April 9, 1871
PLACE OF BIRTH Bremen
DATE OF DEATH February 12, 1950
Place of death Bremen