Gustav Wirsching

Gustav Wirsching (born March 8, 1895 in Stuttgart , † May 27, 1961 in Radolfzell ) was a German music teacher .

Life

Gustav Wirsching was strongly influenced by the youth movement , the Wandervogel , the Kronacher Bund and the singing movement after the First World War . One of the decisive factors for his musical development was that he had a music teacher in Professor Heinrich Lang during his training as a primary school teacher at the seminar in Esslingen, who recognized his outstanding talent and actively promoted him.

After three years of training, the nineteen-year-old took up his first position as a tutor in Loffenau (Black Forest) in 1914, but was soon drafted into the war. He was seriously wounded after just ten days and was in the hospital from autumn 1914 to summer 1915 before he was able to return to school. From 1915 to 1920 he taught at the Evangelical private teacher training institute in Denkendorf (preparatory institute). One of his students was the Swabian storyteller Karl Götz , who enthusiastically tells of his school hours with Gustav Wirsching in his book “Am hellen Mittag”.

After the Denkendorf Institute was closed, he taught in Stuttgart from 1923 to 1942 at the Falkert School, the state's experimental school at the time. In 1943 he took over a teaching position for music at the Öhringen Teachers Training College.

Soon after the collapse, in the summer of 1945, he gathered children loitering on the Killesberg in Stuttgart and opened the school on the Kochhof. From 1946 to 1960 he taught music at the Pedagogical Institute in Stuttgart (later the Ludwigsburg University of Education ), where he founded the university's chamber choir, with which he undertook numerous concert tours to South Tyrol and Switzerland.

Gustav Wirsching's talent and enthusiasm for music led to the fact that he founded the "Stuttgarter Singkreis" in 1921 and thus (in the words of Hans Grischkat ) became the "founder and spiritual father" of the working group of the Stuttgarter Singkreise . In 1923 he organized a “trip to Italy” with six other primary school teachers. The group hiked from Stuttgart to Naples and back again. On the way, the Italian drivers appeared as musicians, actors and storytellers and made numerous contacts with artists and personalities up to and including an audience with Pope Pius XI. Karl Haug wrote an impressive travel diary about this hike and illustrated it with drawings.

Under the impression of this excursion, the "Swabian Teachers' Guild" was created on the initiative of Gustav Wirsching, an association of teachers with the aim of promoting the "internal school reform". The first step towards the public was the Singing Week in Nagold in 1924 with Fritz Jöde . As a closed group, the guild took part in the 1927 congress of the International Working Group for the Renewal of Education (IAK, today World Federation for the Renewal of Education, WEE, and “New Fellowship”) in Locarno with over a thousand participants from 46 nations. The theme of the conference was "Freedom in Education". There the participants of the teachers guild hoped for support for their goal of a free and predominantly child-oriented school. Among the participants were Peter Petersen and Gustav Wyneken .

Important impulses for the further work of the teachers' guild came from the connection to Friedrich Schieker and his school at the Kräherwald in Stuttgart. Through him and his "community school", in which the students were taught together until the end of the 7th school year, the members of the teachers' guild got to know influential personalities of the society at the time, such as Martin Buber , Leo Weismantel , Elisabeth Rotten and Theodor Bäuerle, and through them Thoughts of reform pedagogy .

His estate is in the Württemberg State Library .

Fonts

• (Ed.): Schwäbisches Liederbuch , Stuttgart 1938. New edition Stuttgart 1997 (Silberburg Verlag).
• (with Karl Aichele): Our Singfibel , Stuttgart 1950.
• (with Karl Aichele): Our song book 1 , Stuttgart no year.
• with Karl Aichele, Bernhard Binkowski and Hermann Feifel: Our song book 2 , Stuttgart 1950.
• (with Karl Aichele): Our songbook for Hessen , Frankfurt a. M. 1948.
• (with others): Our songbook for country and people on the Rhine, Moselle and Saar . Stuttgart no year
• (with Karl Aichele): Our songbook for north German children , 9th edition Stuttgart 1965.
• (with Walter Klingenburg and Rudolf Schaal): At home with us . 2nd edition Esslingen 1965.

Web links

• Literature by and about Gustav Wirsching in the catalog of the German National Library
• Wirsching and the teachers' guild on the website of the Baden-Württemberg State Archives

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Short biography on the website of the Württemberg State Library