Fritz Karsen

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Fritz Karsen (born November 11, 1885 in Breslau , Province of Silesia , † August 25, 1951 in Guayaquil , Ecuador ) was a German educator . He was one of the leading school reformers in the Weimar Republic , was one of the first founders of a comprehensive school in Germany and a pioneer of the second educational path .

Origin and first professional experience

Fritz Karsen was born as Fritz Krakauer. He was the second son of the senior teacher Gustav Krakauer and his wife Clara, née Bernstein. He had three siblings. The family was of Jewish descent. Fritz was baptized Protestant at the age of 14. Like his older brother Otto, he was given the name Karsen as a schoolboy. Both attended the liberal Johannesgymnasium in Breslau.

After graduating from high school in March 1904, Karsen studied Sanskrit , Indology and Philosophy in Breslau , then German and English with the aim of becoming a teacher. On July 24, 1908, he received his doctorate with a dissertation on Henrich Steffens , and on July 10, 1909, he passed the state examination in the subjects of German, English and philosophical propaedeutics and thus acquired the license to teach the upper level.

In October 1909, Karsen began the second phase of his senior teacher training, which took him to various schools. He passed additional exams (1910 for the subject French in the intermediate level and 1911 for the subject gymnastics and games). In October 1911 he was employed as a senior teacher and received his first position at the secondary school in Liegnitz . On April 1, 1912, he was transferred to the secondary school in Magdeburg, where he worked for six and a half years. The First World War also fell during this time, in which Fritz Karsen did not have to take part, as he was exempt from military service due to a stomach ailment. During this time in Magdeburg, Karsen married Erna Heidermann, a Hanoverian civil servant's daughter, who had attended secondary school in her hometown and then the art college in 1917.

The first years in Berlin

At the beginning of the 1918/1919 school year, Karsen had applied for a senior teaching position at the Luise-Henriette-Schule, a lyceum with an attached teacher training college in Berlin-Tempelhof . On October 1, 1918, he was appointed to a senior teaching position there. The educational historian Gerd Radde suspected both scientific and political motives behind this step, the move from Magdeburg to Berlin. The latter became clear as early as the end of 1918 when Karsen spoke out in favor of a democratic educational policy at a philologists' meeting in Charlottenburg and thus took on an opposition role within the assembly. In May 1919 he became a member of the SPD , and in September of the same year he founded together with Franz Hilker , Siegfried Kawerau , Otto Koch , Paul Oestreich , Elisabeth Rotten , Anna Siemsen and others. a. the Association of Resolute School Reformers .

This first time in Berlin also saw the birth of Fritz Karsen's and his wife Erna's only child: their daughter Sonja Petra Karsen (who died in the USA in 2013) was born on April 11, 1919 .

Karsen's involvement in the Association of Resolute School Reformers and the attempt to at least partially transfer the concepts developed there into everyday school life at the “Luise Henriette School” led to profound tensions between him and the director of the school. Director Brinker practiced what would be called bullying today , but underestimated Karsen's resistance. Karsen asked the Prussian Ministry of Culture to clarify the disputed questions - and he was successful: Minister Konrad Haenisch instructed the director about the inappropriateness of his behavior. At the same time, however, he created distance between the two opponents: By letter of April 14, 1920, Karsen was appointed senior director of studies at the State Educational Institute in Lichterfelde.

State educational institution sounds harmless, but there is much more to it than that. It was supposed to be the successor institution of the Prussian Hauptkadettenanstalt , hence an educational conversion project .

Radde has described the failure of this reform project - its external and internal adversaries - in detail, and Sonja Petra Karsen sums up her father's assignment:

“He should transform this military facility into a 'State Educational Institution' (STABILA). But it was met with tremendous resistance on the part of the monarchist teachers as well as the students. The attempt to reformulate this well-known institution of the former Prussian cadet corps in an educational way failed due to the political conditions at the time. "

In 1920, Karsen left the Lichterfeld facility and became a research assistant in the Prussian Ministry of Culture. There he had the opportunity to write his 1921 book "The School of Society". Alluding to this title, Radde comes to a very positive assessment of Karsen's short time at the State Educational Institute , which was momentous for his further work:

“Nevertheless, for Karsen, Lichterfelde was not just an episode. The insights gained here moved him to see the foundations of his pedagogy in a political context and to reorient himself. In this way, Lichterfelde appears as a turning point: it ushers in an era in Fritz Karsen's work, which is characterized by his commitment to the 'new school', to a school of the 'emerging society'. "

Karsen's official activity in the ministry consisted of dealing with educational experiments in public and private schools in Germany, which he did not only theoretically, but also through many internships. In doing so, he came into close contact with Wilhelm Paulsen , who was appointed to the Berlin Higher School Council in January 1921, and his ideas for a community school. Karsen became a committed advocate of Paulsen's school and educational policy drafts, which "resulted in a radical internal and external reform of the Berlin school system (which not least also meant the end of high school as a domain of the bourgeoisie)". In this context, the new school means “no longer just the opposite of the so-called 'old school', as representatives of the various reform pedagogical currents had long since developed; for Paulsen and Karsen it was always at the same time an expression of the emerging society, that is to say in the transition to socialism ”.

Already in this early phase a controversy emerged which was later repeated at the Karl Marx School and brought the Karsen into conflict with those who believed school reforms were only possible after a radical upheaval in the political balance of power. He, Paulsen and Kurt Löwenstein affirmed the possibility of going to work immediately in all areas within the limits of what was possible. This reformist approach, which rejected politics and school development successively, brought Karsen not only into contradiction to communist positions, but also to earlier comrades-in-arms from the Association of Decided School Reformers , above all Paul Oestreich .

From Kaiser-Friedrich-Realgymnasium to Karl-Marx-Schule

Karsen's urge towards pedagogical practice found a new field of activity through his appointment as senior director of studies at the Kaiser-Friedrich- Realgymnasium in Berlin-Neukölln in 1921, to which in 1923 he included courses for high school graduates for workers, which made it possible to catch up on the Abitur on the second educational path. In 1927 he added an eight-grade elementary school to his school. In 1929/30, this attempt at a “ unified school ”, which had the characteristics of what is now a comprehensive school, was renamed “Karl Marx School”.

Memorial plaque on Haus Sonnenallee 79 in Berlin-Neukölln

Karsen's Neukölln years were interrupted in 1927 by a stay of almost six months in the USA. He traveled - like Erich Hylla a year earlier - was invited by Richard Thomas Alexander , the director of a college responsible for teacher training at Columbia University . Here he met Alexander's assistant John Taylor, who later sat in on Karsen in Berlin for a year. Through Taylor in 1946, Karsen was given the opportunity to return to Berlin for some time as part of the American re-education program.

Karsen, who had traveled to the United States with his wife and daughter, gave lectures and a summer course at various colleges and universities there. He was particularly interested in teacher training and universities such as Fisk University , to which only black people were allowed. He also came into close contact with leading educationalists such as John Dewey , Helen Parkhurst , Orville Gilbert Brim and Carleton Washburne, through whom he learned about the Winnetka Plan .

According to his daughter's assessment, the stay in the USA “influenced my father's educational ideas, as he admired many things in the field of education in the USA. He incorporated some of the newly gained insights into the program of his school in Berlin. ”However, this admiration for the American education system did not suffice to stay in the USA:

"My father received several offers to stay in the United States, but his work in Berlin interested him much more, especially because he was already in the process of conceiving the ' Dammwegschule ' project."

Exile in Switzerland and France

On February 21, 1933, Karsen was dismissed from school service by the National Socialists . A week later, on February 28, 1933, the day the Reichstag burned in Berlin , the family crossed the Swiss border and moved to Zurich.

“The Swiss have been very generous to us, especially the Social Democrats and some young Zurich architects whom my father probably got to know through a recommendation from Bruno Taut . They found us an apartment in Zurich-Neubühl. At that time it was the most modern settlement in the city. This apartment was furnished with Bauhaus furniture that the architects had from exhibitions. The furniture was of course only borrowed. I have to say we have seldom lived so nicely. It must also be mentioned that the internationally known publisher Dr. Emil Oprecht and his wife took care of us in a touching way, including Dr. Hans Ganz , a well-known Swiss painter, composer and writer, was one of my parents' friends, as was the architect Max Erns Häfeli . "

Despite this prominent support, it was clear to the family that they would not be able to stay long in Switzerland, not for financial reasons, and also because Fritz Karsen was only allowed to work to a very limited extent. His only source of income were articles in Swiss magazines about German education and pedagogy, but about one that was no longer available in Germany. So the plan arose to found an international school in Paris, which was realized in 1934.

Presumably in French exile, Karsen had also become a member of the Association of German Teacher Emigrants .

The École nouvelle de Boulogne founded by Fritz Karsen was not very successful, and so the school had to be closed in 1937 by Karsen's successor as headmaster, Walter Damus .

Exile in Colombia

Fritz Karsen had already left the École nouvelle de Boulogne in 1936 and moved to Bogotá as an educational advisor to the Colombian government . Before that, in 1935, despite an affidavit from Max Horkheimer , who in the meantime had moved with the Institute for Social Research from Geneva to New York, immigration to the USA had failed due to the restrictive US immigration regulations . Karsen had met Horkheimer in 1929 when he had given a course on educational science at Frankfurt University.

Sonja Petra Karsen suspects that the invitation to Colombia was mediated by Fritz Demuth from the Emergency Association of German Scientists Abroad , with whom her father deposited his documents. Fritz Karsen accepted this invitation, and thanks to the French “Titres de Voyage”, the entire family, whose German passports had meanwhile been blocked by the German Reich, was able to travel to Colombia via the USA in March 1936. From then on they lived in Bogotá .

There was a small German emigre scene in Bogotá, which the German architect Leopold Rother soon joined. Together with him, Karsen planned the Bogotá university campus for the Universidad Nacional de Colombia . As with the Dammwegschule project , which he had tackled together with Bruno Taut , Karsen and Rother were again striving for an architecture that was oriented towards the special requirements of an educational institution. The Dammweg School thus became a kind of blueprint for the new university, supplemented by further architectural recourse to Bruno Taut.

“As mentioned before, it was Karsen who suggested a circular shape with a free space in the middle, and he thus agrees with Rother. Rother, with his theoretical knowledge of expressionism and modern urban planning, developed this concept further. Both Karsen and Rother were familiar with these movements. Karsen, who had worked with Bruno Taut in Berlin, was of course familiar with the horseshoe settlement, which Taut designed according to the rules of the garden city. Taut was also commissioned in 1912 to draw up the development plan for the Falkenberg garden city. The concept of the horseshoe settlement, with a spacious park in the middle, can be compared with the original plan by Karsen for the university town. Rother had already made suggestions for modern housing developments, for example in the competition for the design of a police accommodation in Essen in 1929. For two of the variations that Rother proposed for this competition, he created a housing development scheme in the form of a horseshoe with a central open space , very similar to the Taut project built a few years earlier. In his lectures, Rother also emphasizes housing development projects that have the dynamism of Expressionism. An example of this is the vocational and technical school in Berlin Charlottenburg by Hans Poelzig from 1927, which was a model for his school town in Santa Marta. With his knowledge of the European avant-garde and his interest in expressionism, it is not surprising that Rother took up Karsen's idea of ​​a circular preliminary design for the campus in Bogota and developed it. "

The implementation of the plans resulting from the joint work was later solely the responsibility of Leopold Rother, since Karsen moved to the USA in 1938. In the two years before that, however, he not only dealt with the planning for the new university, but also traveled the country on behalf of the government and, on the basis of the experience gained, submitted plans for the further development of the entire Colombian educational system from elementary schools to to the universities. “Among other things, he handed over projects for the 'Escuela Normal Superior' and teacher training to the government; He suggested that a pedagogical faculty be added to the Universidad Nacional. He also subjected their curricula to a critical revision. "

By decree of the Colombian President, Karsen received "on February 26, 1937 in appreciation of his extraordinary achievements the Colombian citizenship" bestowed. A year later, however, his health was troubling him. Karsen suffered from high blood pressure , which put him at great risk in the Colombian high altitude. He therefore applied for leave in 1938, which he wanted to spend in the USA. The American consul in Bogotá, however, offered him a quota visa instead of a visitor's visa , which enabled him and his family to enter the USA permanently. Fritz Karsen then let his contract with the Colombian government expire, and on May 12, 1938, he and his family arrived in New York.

Exile in the USA

In 1938 Fritz Karsen moved to New York and, on the mediation of Wilhelm Gaede, became a lecturer in education at Brooklyn College . The income thus generated was insufficient to support the family, and Karsen also received a “Rockefeller Scholarship for 'displaced scholars'”, which was intended as three-year start-up funding for permanent employment by Brooklyn College. Sonja Petra Karsen reports that teaching at college was not easy for her father, as it was heavily regulated and primarily aimed at imparting knowledge that could be queried through “multiple choice tests” . "It was not easy for a reform pedagogue to work under such conditions."

Fritz Karsen was not permanently employed at the time and was only paid every semester. He worked intermittently at Bryn Mawr College and the City College of New York . After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor , he became unemployed in 1943: The young people were drafted as soldiers after the associated entry into the war, which reduced the number of students so much that even the permanent teachers hardly had any students to teach.

But in 1943 there was also a new job opportunity. The US Army established the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP), the task of which was to “give officers an introduction to the cultural, economic and political conditions” of the countries in which they were to be deployed. Karsen was hired as a lecturer for Germany and France. At the same time, he was also involved in an early re- education project:

“From 1943 onwards, as the head of a working group of historians and educators for the Bermann-Fischer-Verlag , he also prepared a history book for German schools. From this textbook with the title 'History of our World', which was planned to be published in three volumes, the two volumes dealing with modern times came out in 1947. They have been approved for school use by the control commissions of the three western occupying powers. "

In 1944, Fritz Karsen gave up his Colombian citizenship and became an American citizen. “It was only this change that gave him the feeling that the time of emigration was behind him.” In autumn 1945 he became an “instructor” in the German department of the New York “City College”. It was his first permanent job since leaving Germany. His supervisor was Professor Sol Liptzin , who worked as a scientist, author and educator on Yiddish and German literature and who headed the Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies.

Post-war and early death

In 1946 an old friend called Fritz Karsen, John W. Taylor, whom he had met in 1927 while studying in the USA. Taylor had meanwhile become head of the education department of the "Office of Military Government" of the US Army (OMGUS) and offered Karsen a job in Berlin. So it came about that Karsen returned to Germany from 1946 to 1948 as Chief, Higher Education and Teacher Training in the Education and Cultural Relations department of OMGUS. He lived in Berlin-Dahlem and had ample opportunity to meet former colleagues and students of the Karl Marx School and to discuss with them. However, he no longer went to the school itself. Together with Paul Oestreich and Arno Wagner, he campaigned at the Prussian state assembly in Berlin in April 1947 to facilitate the transition to higher schools by introducing an eight-year joint elementary school for all pupils.

One of his most important tasks that Karsen performed in Berlin was - initially in collaboration with Robert Havemann - building up the German Research University .

Before this project could be realized (and then realized differently than what Karsen and Havemann intended), Karsen returned to the USA, rejecting several German job offers. “He returned to America in 1948 because of his indebtedness to America. America had enabled him to start over, to lead a normal life again. For this reason - and no other - he never wanted to give up his American citizenship again. "

Grave of Fritz Karsen in Guayaquil / Ecuador -15. September 2019

From 1948 he worked again at the City College of New York as Assistant Professor of German, later as Associate Professor of Education at Brooklyn College. In 1951 he reformed the university system in Ecuador on behalf of UNESCO . “He felt very comfortable there, and his plans to reform the university system were very well received by the government. But he could no longer realize it, because on August 25, 1951, while crossing the Guayas River, his life suddenly ended in the middle of a conversation - he was talking to an emigrant - with a stroke. My mother had him buried in the very beautiful cemetery in Guayaquil, which was decorated with tall palm trees. "

Under the title “Who the Fritz is Karsen?”, An event organized by the Museum Neukölln and the Fritz Karsen School in cooperation with the August Bebel Institute took place on November 21, 2015 for the 130th birthday of Fritz Karsen the question was asked: What was so fascinating about Karsen's approach? How is he remembered today? What remains of his reforms? Education Councilor Jan-Christopher Rämer said: “The idea of ​​being able to learn in a community school can be traced back to Fritz Karsen and was politically implemented by the then Neukölln Education Councilor Kurt Löwenstein. Today everyone is talking about the creation of community schools. In Neukölln, the legacy of our thought leaders is being further developed through new educational concepts at the Rütli, Campus Efeuweg, Fritz-Karsen and Walter-Gropius community schools. The basic idea of ​​learning together for as long as possible is as relevant today as it was almost 100 years ago. "

Works

Monographs

  • Henrik Steffen's novels. A contribution to the history of the historical novel , Quelle & Meyer, Leipzig, 1908 (dissertation)
  • The school of the developing society . Stuttgart / Berlin 1921.
  • German experimental schools of the present and their problems . Leipzig 1923.
  • The new schools in Germany . Langensalza 1924.

Essays

  • The uniform school in Neukölln (pedagogy and school building). In: The Dammweg School Neukölln. Berlin 1928, pp. 3–25.
  • From the advanced school to the comprehensive school. In: Pedagogical supplement of the Leipziger teacher's newspaper. No. 35/1928, pp. 301-305.
  • Sense and shape of the work school. In: Adolf Grimme (Hrsg.): Essence and ways of school reform . Berlin 1930, pp. 100-119.
  • Preface to a curriculum. In: Structure. 4, 1931, pp. 33-41. (Reprinted in: Inge Hansen-Schaberg, Bruno Schonig (Ed.): Basic knowledge of pedagogy: Reform pedagogical school concepts . Volume 1: Reform pedagogy. History and reception . Baltmannsweiler 2002, pp. 128-138)
  • New school in Neukölln (1929). In: Gerd Radde et al. (Ed.): School reform. Continuities and breaks. The Berlin-Neukölln test field. Volume 1: 1912-1945. Opladen 1993, pp. 172-174.
  • The social work school as a community school. In: Gerd Geissler (Hrsg.): The problem of the teaching method in the educational movement . Weinheim 1994.
  • Critique of the method of free intellectual work. In: Gerd Geissler (Hrsg.): The problem of the teaching method in the educational movement . Weinheim 1994.

literature

  • Dietrich Benner , Herwart Kemper : Theory and history of reform pedagogy. Volume 2: The educational movement from the turn of the century to the end of the Weimar Republic . Weinheim / Basel 2003, pp. 268–289.
  • Alfred Ehrentreich:  Karsen, Fritz. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 11, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1977, ISBN 3-428-00192-3 , p. 300 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Johann Peter Eickhoff: Fritz Karsen: A pioneer of modern experiential education? Lueneburg 1997.
  • Inge Hansen-Schaberg : Democracy and experience orientation at Fritz Karsen. In: Astrid Kaiser, Detlef Pech (Hrsg.): History and historical conceptions of general teaching . Baltmannsweiler 2004, pp. 135-138.
  • Dietmar Haubfleisch: Berlin reform pedagogy in the Weimar Republic. Overview, research results and perspectives. In: Hermann Röhrs, Andreas Pehnke (Ed.): The reform of the education system in the East-West dialogue. History, tasks, problems (=  Greifswald studies on educational science .  1). Frankfurt am Main u. a. 1994, pp. 117-132. (unchanged again in: Ibid., 2nd, extended edition, Frankfurt [inter alia] 1998, pp. 143–158; slightly updated online version: Berliner Reformpädagogik in der Weimarer Republik, Marburg, 1998 )
  • Wolfgang Keim: The rediscovery of Fritz Karsen - Gerd Radde on his 70th birthday. In: Pedagogy and Everyday School Life. 2/1994, pp. 146-158.
  • Wolfgang Keim, Norbert Weber (ed.): Reform pedagogy in Berlin . Basel 1998 (especially on Fritz Karsen and Gerd Radde).
  • Siegfried Mielke (Ed.) With the collaboration of Marion Goers, Stefan Heinz , Matthias Oden, Sebastian Bödecker: Unique - Lecturers, students and representatives of the German University of Politics (1920-1933) in the resistance against National Socialism. Lukas-Verlag, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-86732-032-0 , p. 351 (short biography).
  • Jürgen Oelkers: Reform Education. A critical story of dogma . Weinheim / Munich 1996, pp. 158, 253, 255ff., 270, 277.
  • Sonja Petra Karsen : Report about the father. Overall-Verlag, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-925961-08-9 . reprinted in and quoted from:
  • Gerd Radde : Fritz Karsen: A Berlin school reformer during the Weimar period . Berlin 1973. Extended new edition. With a report about Sonja Petra Karsen's father (=  studies on educational reform. 37). Frankfurt am Main u. a. 1999, ISBN 3-631-34896-7 .
  • Gerd Radde: Persecuted, repressed and (almost) forgotten: The reform pedagogue Fritz Karsen. In: Educational Science and National Socialism: A Critical Position Determination. 1990, pp. 87-100.
  • Hermann Röhrs: Reform pedagogy. Origin and course from an international perspective . Weinheim 1998, pp. 223f., 336, 349.
  • Karl Sturm: The History Plan of the Karl Marx School. In: Inge Hansen-Schaberg: The practice of reform pedagogy. Documents and comments on the reform of the public schools in the Weimar Republic . Kempten 2005, pp. 72-76.
  • Rainer Winkel (Hrsg.): Reform pedagogy concrete . Hamburg 1993, pp. 85-99.
  • Ernesto Vendries Bray: Leopold Rother and the modern movement in Colombia. Dissertation at the Department of Architecture at the Technical University of Darmstadt . Darmstadt 2014. (tuprints.ulb.tu-darmstadt.de)
  • Inga Meiser: The German Research University (1947–1953). (= Publications from the archive of the Max Planck Society. Volume 23). Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-927579-27-9 . The study is the revised version of a dissertation submitted in 2010; it is available online at (archiv-berlin.mpg.de) .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ on all of this see Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen. 1973 Berlin, p. 21.
  2. ↑ Sonja Petra Karsen: Report on the father. P. 391, and Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen: a Berlin school reformer during the Weimar period. P. 22.
  3. ^ Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen: a Berlin school reformer from the Weimar period. Pp. 23-24.
  4. ↑ The school still exists, but now as a co-educational school: Luise-Henriette-Gymnasium
  5. ^ Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen: a Berlin school reformer from the Weimar period. Pp. 24-25.
  6. ^ Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen: a Berlin school reformer from the Weimar period. Pp. 25-27.
  7. ↑ Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen: a Berlin school reformer of the Weimar period, pp. 36–44.
  8. ↑ Sonja Petra Karsen: Report on the father. P. 393. School operations continued until 1934, however.
  9. ↑ From the Hauptkadettenanstalt via the STABILA to the Hans-Richert-Schule
  10. ↑ "He works in the department for experimental schools under Erich Hylla , whom he already met in Lichterfelde." ( Gerd Radde: In the footsteps of Fritz Karsen. A biographical outline ). Whether Karsen and Hylla already knew each other then cannot be judged. The fact that Karsen, as Radde claims, worked under Hylla in the Prussian Ministry of Education in 1920 or 1921 is incorrect, because Hylla was still a school councilor in Eberswalde at the time and only joined the ministry in 1922.
  11. ↑ A reference to the article community school is forbidden in this context, since this article is completely unhistorical and completely negates the reform approaches of the 1920s.
  12. ^ Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen: a Berlin school reformer from the Weimar period. Pp. 50-51.
  13. ^ Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen: a Berlin school reformer from the Weimar period. Pp. 52-53.
  14. ↑ "The term comprehensive school was coined in 1963 by the West Berlin School Senator Carl-Heinz Evers (SPD) to distinguish it from the socialist unified school in the GDR ." It has established itself in the FRG through the SPD-ruled countries.
  15. ↑ A year before Karsen, Erich Hylla also stayed at Columbia University: "In 1926, Mr. Hylla spent a year in the United States at the International Education Institute of Columbia University." Frank H. Jonas: Educational Research in Germany
  16. ↑ For Richard Thomas Alexander see the article in the English Wikipedia: en: Richard Thomas Alexander .
  17. ↑ Sonja Petra Karsen: Report on the father. In: Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen: a Berlin school reformer from the Weimar period. Pp. 411-412. In 1946, through John Taylor, Karsen received the offer to work for OMGUS in Berlin, where he met and worked again with Thomas Alexander, who was also an OMGUS employee. (Inga Meiser: Die Deutsche Forschungshochschule (1947–1953). P. 67.) See also: “As the educational systems began functioning along older lines, E&RA strength rose to forty officials by mid-1946. Because of its lowly status within the military government, E&RA was unable to attract a prominent American education expert to lead it. Military Governor Lucius D. Clay was, therefore, forced to appoint his unknown section chief, John W. Taylor, who had a doctorate in education from Columbia Teachers College. Taylor then enlisted his old mentor, Richard Thomas Alexander, as his adviser. Both were well acquainted with prewar German education. An outspoken critic of the traditional multitrack system, Alexander enlisted German reformers, such as the Prussian education expert Erich Hylla, in his cause. "(Detlef Junker (ed.): The United States and Germany in the era of the Cold War , p 396.) The E&RA, the "Education and Religious Affairs Section", is a department of OMGUS that was headed by Taylor until spring 1947, then by Alexander. (Johannes Weyer: West German Sociology, 1945-1960. German Continuities and North American Influence , Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, 1984, ISBN 9783428056798 , p. 329) For this change from Taylor to Alexander see also: victims of circumstances , Der SPIEGEL, 14 March 1983
  18. ↑ Sonja Petra Karsen: Report on the father. In: Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen: a Berlin school reformer from the Weimar period. Pp. 396-397.
  19. ↑ Sonja Petra Karsen: Report on the father. In: Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen: a Berlin school reformer from the Weimar period. P. 397.
  20. ↑ Sonja Petra Karsen: Report on the father. In: Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen: a Berlin school reformer from the Weimar period. P. 403. The aforementioned Max Ernst Häfeli was the architect of the Werkbundsiedlung Neubühl , where the Karsen family lived during their time in Zurich.
  21. ↑ Hildegard Feidel-Mertz / Hermann Schnorbach: teachers in emigration. The Association of German Emigrant Teachers (1933–39) in the traditional context of the democratic teachers' movement , Beltz Verlag, Weinheim and Basel, 1981, ISBN 3-407-54114-7 , p. 331
  22. ^ A b Sonja Petra Karsen: Report on the father. In: Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen: a Berlin school reformer from the Weimar period. Pp. 403-406.
  23. ↑ http://www.bundesarchiv.de/aktenreichskanzlei/1919-1933/0pa/adr/adrag/kap1_4/para2_56.html Fritz Demuth's biographical data in the Federal Archives
  24. ↑ Report on the father. In: Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen. P. 406.
  25. ↑ Ernesto Vendries Bray, Leopold Rother and the modern movement in Colombia , dissertation at the Department of Architecture at the Technical University of Darmstadt , Darmstadt, 2014. Available on the Internet under Dissertation on Leopold Rother , p. 191.
  26. ↑ Sonja Petra Karsen: Report on the father. In: Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen: a Berlin school reformer from the Weimar period. P. 407.
  27. ^ A b Sonja Petra Karsen: Report on the father. In: Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen: a Berlin school reformer from the Weimar period. P. 408.
  28. ↑ Report on the father. In: Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen. P. 409.
  29. ↑ After his naturalization in the USA William Richard Gaede, was a high official under the Prussian minister of education Adolf Grimme and emigrated after 1933 to the USA, where he became professor for German studies at Brooklyn College and later also dean. (Sonja Petra Karsen: Report about the father. In: Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen: a Berlin school reformer from the Weimar period. P. 409). Literature by William Richard Gaede in WorldCat and by Wilhelm Richard Gaede
  30. ↑ THE ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION'S REFUGEE SCHOLAR PROGRAM In Table 2: Refugee Scholars Aided, 1933–1939 , which can be accessed via this page , Karsen is listed as a sociologist from Berlin.
  31. ↑ Sonja Petra Karsen: Report on the father. In: Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen: a Berlin school reformer from the Weimar period. P. 410.
  32. ^ A b Sonja Petra Karsen: Report on the father. In: Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen: a Berlin school reformer from the Weimar period. P. 411.
  33. ↑ Sonja Petra Karsen: Report on the father. In: Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen: a Berlin school reformer from the Weimar period. P. 411. The books were no longer published by Fischer-Verlag in 1947, but by Suhrkamp. "History of our world" in WorldCat
  34. ↑ Sonja Petra Karsen: Report on the father. In: Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen: a Berlin school reformer from the Weimar period. Pp. 411-412.
  35. ^ Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen: a Berlin school reformer from the Weimar period. P. 212.
  36. ↑ Sonja Petra Karsen: Report on the father. In: Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen: a Berlin school reformer from the Weimar period. P. 413.
  37. ↑ Sonja Petra Karsen: Report on the father. In: Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen: a Berlin school reformer from the Weimar period. P. 413.
  38. ↑ On the 130th birthday of Neukölln reform pedagogue Fritz Karsen
personal data
SURNAME Karsen, Fritz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German educator
DATE OF BIRTH November 11, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH Wroclaw , Province of Silesia
DATE OF DEATH August 25, 1951
Place of death Guayaquil , Ecuador