Fritz Rössel

Fritz Rössel (born February 16, 1886 in Horba ; † March 27, 1966 in Hamburg ) was a German curative educator who in 1931 presented a pioneering work on curative education .

Live and act

Dissertation 1925 by Fritz Rössel

The father Gotthilf Rössel was a teacher. After finishing secondary school, Fritz Rössel completed the state teacher training college in Rudolstadt . Then Rössel was a teacher at the Trüperschen reform home Sophienhöhe in Jena . In 1906 he enrolled at the University of Jena . There he attended lectures by Wilhelm Rein and Otto Binswanger, among others . In 1910 he entered the Hamburg school service and devoted himself primarily to auxiliary school work. Rössel was badly wounded during the First World War , returned to school in 1916 and taught at the headshot station of the Finkenau hospital . In 1923 he enrolled at the University of Hamburg , where he received his doctorate in 1925 under Gustaf Deuchler . From 1927 to 1937 he was scientific advisor at the Hamburg seminar for pedagogy and had a teaching position in psychology. From May 1, 1933, Rössel was a member of the Nazi teachers' association. In November 1933 he signed the German professors' confession of Adolf Hitler . In May 1937 he tried to become a member of the NSDAP , but was rejected as a former member of the Masonic Lodge (1922-1933 and 1949-1966 in Hamburg):

Rössel interpreted his entry into the great state box of the Freemasons of Germany as a reaction to the 'party-political confusion of 1922'. The lodge had 'quietly cultivated the patriotic idea' and he had known even before joining that no Jews were being accepted there .

Rössel also pointed out that he had “committed himself to work in the new Reich without reservation to the best of his knowledge and belief in his professional and personal life”; His lectures and research in his specialty, auxiliary school pedagogy, had served since 1933 to 'penetrate educational work with National Socialist ideas', with a particular focus on eugenic education. He developed the social helper service into a people's helper service. It could now also be performed in National Socialist formations such as the Hitler Youth or the State Service. Despite his attempt to adapt and the intervention of the state school supervisor Wilhelm Schulz , who was valued by the National Socialists , Rössel had to leave the university.

After 1945, Rössel campaigned in particular for remedial / auxiliary school education, although it was largely forgotten.

Criticism of Rössel's work

As the two historians of special / curative education Dagmar Hänsel and Sieglind Ellger-Rüttgardt show, the pedagogue spoke out in 1912 in favor of legal measures that "promote the 'reproduction of mentally ill and degenerate strains'". should prevent. He specifically regretted that “science has not yet provided any tangible evidence that we could prevent the reproduction of mentally ill and degenerate strains with legal measures (prohibition of marriage, castration) in consideration of heredity in psychopathology. '” Ellger -Rüttgardt explains in more detail that the auxiliary school pedagogue was “not free from moralizing judgment” when, for example, he particularly emphasizes the alleged alcohol abuse in auxiliary school families, emphasizes the supposed spending of larger amounts of money by older pupils for the 'cathedral' and 'cinematographers' and in detail goes into the 'ethical defects' of auxiliary school children. "To clarify her statement, Ellger-Rüttgardt selects the following quote:

A few other cases remain to be noted. They move in the same direction as the ones just mentioned, but their heaviness particularly tarnishes the future of boys. A boy stole a parcel unseen from a cart containing a silver watch and a lorgnette . He brought the lorgnette back, but kept the watch, which he took to the watchmaker for repairs as one hand was missing. The theft was discovered by accident. The boy stubbornly denied it, but could be convicted. He wanted to give the watch to his father.

In his remedial education theory, Rössel excluded the mentally handicapped as well as the multiply handicapped and at the same time dependent children and adolescents from the outset. He represented the then customary view of auxiliary school pedagogy that handicapped children and young people had no business in the public schools and should be left to care in the idiot institutions .

Fonts (selection)

• On the psychology of the written expression of mentally weak children , Halle 1923.
• Attempt to characterize the auxiliary school child, obtained from observations of his behavior and forms of activity in the auxiliary school itself , Diss. Hamburg 1925.
• Helping in curative education work (contributions to the basic question of curative education), Halle 1931.

literature

• Sieglind Ellger-Rüttgardt: The auxiliary school teacher. Social history of a group of teachers , Weinheim / Basel 1980.
• This: auxiliary school education and National Socialism - traditions, continuities, break-ins. On the professional ideology of auxiliary school teachers in the German Empire and in the Weimar Republic , in: Ulrich Herrmann / Jürgen Oelkers, (ed.): Pedagogy and National Socialism , Weinheim / Basel, 1988, pp. 147–165.
• Dies .: Fritz Rössel, in: Dies. (Ed.): Learning disabled pedagogy. Study texts on the history of disabled education. Volume 5, Weinheim / Basel / Berlin 2003, p. 202.
• Klaus Saul : Teacher Training in Democracy and Dictatorship. On the Hamburg reform model of university elementary school teacher training , in: Eckardt Krause u. a .: (Ed.): Everyday university life in the "Third Reich". The Hamburg University 1933–1945 , Berlin / Hamburg 1991, pp. 367–408.
• Christian Lindmeier: Fritz Rössel's attempt to lay the foundations of curative pedagogical theory on a phenomenological basis , in: Zeitschrift für Heilpädagogik, 2001/2, pp. 62–68.
• Dagmar Hänsel: The Nazi period as an asset for auxiliary school teachers . Julius Klinkhardt, Bad Heilbrunn 2006, ISBN 3-7815-1491-9 .
• Ulrich Bleidick (Ed.): General Disability Education , 2009 ISBN 3-407-57224-7 .
• Hans-Christian Harten, Uwe Neirich, Matthias Schwerendt: Racial hygiene as an educational ideology of the Third Reich . Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2009.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Saul 1991, p. 387 f.
2. ↑ Ibid., P. 388.
3. ↑ Hansel 2006, p. 32.
4. ↑ Ellger-Rüttgardt 1988, p. 157 f.
5. ↑ Ellger-Rüttgardt 1980, p. 179.
6. ↑ Ellger-Rüttgardt 1980, p. 179.
7. ↑ Lindmeier 2011, p. 65.