Gustav Wyneken

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Gustav Wyneken
“The program book of the controversial youth educator!” Dust jacket by: Gustav Wyneken: Schule und Jugendkultur , Jena 1928.

Gustav Adolf Wyneken (born March 19, 1875 in Stade ; † December 8, 1964 in Göttingen ) was a German reform pedagogue and founder of the Free School Community of Wickersdorf . Wyneken played a leading role at times in the youth movement , especially on the occasion of the First Free German Youth Day in 1913 on the Hoher Meissner . For a short time after the November Revolution of 1918 , Wyneken took on responsibility for school policy. Soon after, when he returned to Wickersdorf, he was sentenced to prison for child abuse . His subsequent attempts to regain influence as a pedagogue failed. Even as a writer and speaker, he later failed to revive his reform pedagogical ideas.

Life

Beginnings as an innovator in the school system

Wyneken was born in Stade in an evangelical-Lutheran family. From 1894 to 1897 he studied theology and philology in Berlin , as well as at the universities of Halle, Greifswald and Göttingen. In 1898 he received his doctorate with a thesis on Hegel's criticism of Kant . In the autumn of 1900 he married the teacher Luise Margaretha Dammermann (1876–1945), called Lisbeth, with whom he had a son, Wolfgang Günther (1901–1902), and a daughter, Ilse Irene (1903–2000). With the third child Annemarie Elisabeth Wyneken (1906–1942), called Anne, he denied paternity, but had to pay for their maintenance. The couple separated in 1906 and divorced in 1910. From 1900 to 1906 Wyneken and his wife worked as teachers in the rural education homes in Ilsenburg and Haubinda ; there he was an employee of Hermann Lietz , with whom he fell out.

In 1906, together with Paul Geheeb , who later founded the Odenwald School , he founded the Free School Community of Wickersdorf in the Thuringian Forest with the aim of renovating the school. This educational reform project should serve the idea of ​​education as the formation of the human being in the sense of a worldview . For Wyneken it was a matter of redefining the relationship between teacher and student . This should be based on camaraderie and leadership . He opened the school for co-education and sex education . In contrast to the Christian lessons in traditional schools, the atheist Wyneken placed a focus on artistic, especially musical education. The large proportion of Jewish students was remarkable, but Wyneken viewed them with skepticism. The Jewish student body "causes a certain one-sidedness and lowers the level of physical fitness". Student participation became an important part of the school community. In 1909 Geheeb left Wickersdorf in a dispute with Wyneken.

The school project was hostile to the conservative side because of its innovations. In 1910 Wyneken was fired from the ministry. But he continued to maintain his influence on Wickersdorf, z. B. on the school community's youth newspaper, The Beginning , which has been published since 1913 and which has repeatedly caused a sensation through abuse. From 1910 he was chairman of the Federation for Free School Communities and editor of its newspaper. He also tried to found a new school or a " youth castle " and thus create a field for his educational ideas.

In 1913 he published the text School and Youth Culture , in which he metaphysically justified the practice developed in Wickersdorf . According to this, there would be an objective spirit in which mankind would come to self-awareness in thought. Every person is thus one of many “refractions” of this one spirit. Service to him is the meaning of life and thus also the task of all education. Since art is a direct expression of belief in this spirit, he attached great importance to arts education, including amateur play . Organizationally, he proposed a so-called “school community” for all schools, which should serve the purpose of discussion between students and teachers, but not the democratic decision-making.

Reform educational lead figure of the youth movement

With his pedagogical approaches, Wyneken influenced the emerging youth movement as an adult , to which he was connected from 1912. Wyneken created the term “ youth culture ” against the subservience of the Wilhelmine era as well as against school and family. In 1913 he influenced the pre-formulation of the “Meißner formula” for the First Free German Youth Day on the Hohe Meißner , but was ultimately not enthusiastic about the result. Here, too, there were tensions, as Wyneken made a claim to leadership, which was rejected by many groups at the Youth Day.

In a publication published at the beginning of 1913, Wyneken had certified the Wandervogel that it had made it halfway to a full-fledged youth culture:

“It is right and good, yes, a necessary act, if the wandering bird, so to speak, weaned the youth from school, weaned them from seeing their world in school, but it is not the ultimate goal. […] The other half of youth emancipation consists in redesigning the school to become the actual place of youth life and youth culture. […] It may seem bold to the representatives of the wandering bird if we coordinate our small school and our association of a few hundred members of their great movement with their thousands of followers. But quite apart from the sympathy of the many around the country, which we have also acquired, we believe, through the thought work that our school system embodies and that does not stand still with us, that we have done so much for the youth that it is for it is time to look for us. "

Wyneken criticized the Wandervogel movement with regard to an only superficial endeavor for art and culture. One found an expression of youthful happiness in song and dance, but was satisfied with it and let it be. The whole artistic attitude of the wandering bird was directed to mere enjoyment of the mood, “and to a rather comfortable and cheap one. [...] It is actually not possible to let the essence of art shine in all its holiness in the young souls and, at the same time, to hand over all sorts of splinters and refuse of art to them for any play and enjoyment School community in the art appropriation also a serious and thorough work associated with privation.

Wyneken was in contact with free-thinking intellectuals such as Walter Benjamin (who was his student), Magnus Hirschfeld , Siegfried Bernfeld and Martin Buber . He was also friends with the nature prophet Gusto Gräser . After a lecture held in the autumn of 1914 on “The War and the Young”, in which Wyneken celebrated the war as an ethical experience, Benjamin renounced him and accused him of betraying his own ideas. In 1918 Wyneken was briefly employed in Bavaria and Berlin in the Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs and was responsible for several edicts for the renewal of the school (student participation, organizational rights and the abolition of compulsory religion). For the social democratic Prussian minister of education Konrad Haenisch he wrote an appeal to the youth to create a new school, free from subservience, mutual distrust and hypocrisy. Student responsibility should be promoted through elections and the formation of student councils. There was resistance to this not only in the teaching body, which was predominantly shaped by different educational goals and methods, but also among the young people who were called to new ways of thinking and acting:

“The vast majority of young people themselves were either indifferent or actively hostile. Elections, as suggested by the minister, took place in a few large cities, and often a majority did not vote. […] Wyneken's reforms were unacceptable to anyone who believed in the strong authority; and that meant for the majority of Germans. Even from his liberal and socialist colleagues, Wyneken did not get the support he had hoped for. After a few weeks he had to resign. "

Sexual abuse

In 1919 Wyneken was again head of Wickersdorf, where he soon found himself exposed to allegations of sexual abuse of two students and had to quit in 1920. The offense, which Wyneken also admitted, happened on a multi-day Whitsun hike together. Wyneken had “hugged and kissed a 12-year-old boy and a 17-year-old boy in complete nakedness”. These incidents came to court at the instigation of an assistant teacher. This had viewed Wyneken's behavior as sexual abuse and accused him of having abused the two students and others for homosexual intercourse. In the 1921 trial against him, at the request of the defense, a friend of Wyneken's, the writer and propagandist of the thesis of "heroic male societies as the basis of the state" Hans Blüher , was summoned as an expert to exonerate Wyneken. According to a newspaper report, he attested Wyneken a "fateful" relationship with boys of his own sex, in which more erotic expressions than in a "paternal-avaricious relationship", for example in kisses, hugs and certain caresses. But this has nothing to do with homosexual disposition and lust. Wyneken was nevertheless sentenced to one year in prison for child sexual abuse in the revision process , the judgment in October 1922 confirmed. The case was discussed controversially across Germany. Werner Helwig reports on a solidarity meeting of the Neroth Wandering Bird , which was attended by around 300 boys and girls. To this end, a greeting from Wyneken was read out, in which he wrote:

“Your standing up for me makes me proud and happy. More important than that I am helped is that young people are loyal. You have no way of knowing whether I am guilty or innocent under the law. Your decision to remain loyal to me and to confess this loyalty publicly must be independent of all legal "facts" and judgments. Yes, it may even have to be independent of the statutes and evaluations of the current moral law. [...] We have to meet on a higher level than criminal law and civil morality. That in decisive hours men, whom almighty time and eternal fate call to it, must be deaf to the threat of the penal law and even to the recognized demands of the moral law that they take the standard of their actions from somewhere else, draw from a deeper source must as out of the daily consciousness of the crowd - that only in this way can the deeds happen which must happen again and again if the world is not to suffocate - that is a truth that we cheer in poetry and suppress in life. "

Wyneken was released from prison on April 23, 1923 as part of an amnesty . In the following years he lived as a writer. After the assassination of Walther Rathenau in 1922, he suggested educational measures against the emerging National Socialism . In 1925 he was allowed to continue working as an economic manager in Wickersdorf; however, he was not allowed to teach. Even so, he had a huge impact on the establishment, which created tension. In 1931 there was another abuse allegation against Wyneken, who now had to leave Wickersdorf for good and went to Berlin with the pupil concerned. In public he expressed himself on the abolition of § 175 and 218 and a free sexuality of the individual. In 1934 he moved to Göttingen .

During and after National Socialism

During the Nazi era and again after the Second World War , Wyneken tried in vain to find a new job as a teacher. In his world views , which were only published after 1945 , he also represented racist positions. So he wrote:

“The final agglomerations within humanity will, as far as we can now foresee, be the great races , and the decisive battle will be fought between them. We want the world to rule the white race. "

He was no longer able to influence the reorganization of the educational system. In 1944 Wyneken wrote his Critique of Childhood : an attempt at a life balance and an attempt to justify the allegations of abuse at the same time. The text remained unpublished until 2015. The chance to take over the management of Wickersdorf again in 1946, he gambled away with excessive demands. His attempts to revive educational reform ideas as a speaker and writer also failed. He died on December 8, 1964 in Göttingen.

Wyneken was not only controversial among contemporaries because of its pedagogical approaches. As a charismatic personality, he repeatedly came into conflict with other educators, with authorities and also with parents who accused him of being responsible for their children turning away from them.

Fonts

  • School and youth culture . Jena 1913. 2nd edition Jena 1914.
  • The new youth. Your struggle for freedom and truth in school and at home, in religion and eroticism . Munich 1914.
  • The fight for the youth. Collected essays . Jena 1920.
  • The European spirit. Collected essays on religion and art . 1921
  • Eros . Lauenburg 1921.
  • Wickersdorf . Lauenburg (Elbe) 1922.
  • (Ed.) Of the Laotse Tao Te King. German by F. Fiedler . Hanover 1922.
  • Worldview . 2nd Edition. Munich 1947.
  • Musical worldview . Munich 1948.
  • Farewell to Christianity - religion, Christianity, Bible, beginnings and others . Munich 1963.
  • Free school community Wickersdorf. Small writings (=  educational reform in sources, vol. 4). Edited by Ulrich Herrmann. Jena 2006, ISBN 3-938203-41-2 .
  • Gustav Wyneken. Chronicle of a great friendship. Erich Ebermayer , sources and contributions to the history of the youth movement. Dipa Publishing House, 1969.
  • Childhood criticism. An apology for “pedagogical eros” (sources and documents on the history of education). Edited and commented by Petra Moser and Martin Jürgens, with a foreword by Jürgen Oelkers. Bad Heilbrunn 2015, ISBN 978-3-7815-2037-0 .

Journal articles (selection)

In: The Socialist Doctor

  • Votes against § 218. 7th year (1931), issue 4 (April), p. 104 ( digitized version ).
  • “Marxism - forever?” In: Die Andere Zeitung , Hamburg 1958, No. 10 of March 6, 1958, pp. 11-12.

literature

  • Bert Andréas : “I am not a Marxist”. We received the following communication from Switzerland regarding a contribution by Gustav Wyneken published in No. 10 of the AZ . In: The Other Newspaper. Hamburg 1958, No. 12 from March 20, 1958.
  • Peter Dudek : “Body abuse and desecration of the soul”. The trial of the reform pedagogue Gustav Wyneken . Julius Klinkhardt Publishing House, Bad Heilbrunn 2020, ISBN 978-3-7815-2345-6

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ulrich Schwerdt: Landerziehungsheime - Models of a "new education" . In: Inge Hansen-Schaberg , Bruno Schonig (Ed.): Landerziehungsheimpädagogik . tape 2 . Schneider Verlag, Hohengehren 2002, ISBN 3-89676-499-3 , p. 79 .
  2. ↑ Peter Dudek: You are and will remain the old abstract ideologue! The reform pedagogue Gustav Wyneken (1875–1864) - A biography . Julius Klinkhardt, Bad Heilbrunn 2017, ISBN 978-3781521766 , p. 39 ff.
  3. ^ Walter Laqueur : The German youth movement. A historical study . Science and Politics, Cologne 1978, p. 91.
  4. ^ Jutta Neupert: Wyneken, Gustav. In: Wolfgang Benz , Hermann Graml (Hrsg.): Biographisches Lexikon zur Weimarer Republik . CH Beck, Munich 1988, p. 374 f.
  5. ^ Gustav Wyneken: Wandervogel and Free School Community . From: Die Freie Schulgemeinde, volume 2 from January 1913. Quoted after. Werner Kindt (Hrsg.): Documentation of the youth movement . Volume I: Basic scripts of the German youth movement . Diederichs, Düsseldorf 1963, p. 88ff.
  6. ^ Gustav Wyneken: Wandervogel and Free School Community . From: Die Freie Schulgemeinde, volume 2 from January 1913. Quoted after. Werner Kindt (Hrsg.): Documentation of the youth movement . Volume I: Basic scripts of the German youth movement . Diederichs, Düsseldorf 1963, pp. 87f.
  7. ^ Walter Laqueur: The German youth movement . Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik, Cologne 1978, p. 140.
  8. ↑ Peter Dudek: Loving Chastisement. An abuse of authority in the name of reform pedagogy . Julius Klinkhardt, Bad Heilbrunn 2012, ISBN 978-3-7815-1843-8 , p. 50.
  9. ^ Ernst Klee : The culture lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 .
  10. ↑ Quotation from Ulfried Geuter: Homosexuality in the German youth movement. Friendship and sexuality in the discourse of the youth movement, psychoanalysis and youth psychology at the beginning of the 20th century. Frankfurt am Main 1994, p. 209 f.
  11. ↑ Christian Füller: Abuse, Violence, Ideology. How ideas enable sexual violence . In: Wilfried Breyvogel (Hrsg.): Scouting forms of relationships and styles of interaction: From scoutism to the Bundische Zeit to the debate on abuse. Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2017, p. 246.
  12. ↑ Quoted after Werner Helwig: The blue flower of the wandering bird . Extended new edition, edited and provided with an afterword by Walter Sauer . Heidenheim an der Brenz 1980, p. 170.
  13. ↑ Peter Dudek: Loving Chastisement. An abuse of authority in the name of reform pedagogy . Julius Klinkhardt, Bad Heilbrunn 2012, p. 51.
  14. ↑ The Socialist Doctor. Monthly magazine of the Association of Socialist Doctors. VII year. Number April 4, 1931.
  15. ^ Gustav Wyneken: Musical Weltanschauung . Erasmus, Munich 1948, p. 37.
  16. ↑ Gustav Wyneken: Critique of Childhood. An apology for 'pedagogical eros'. Edited by Petra Moser, Martin Juergens. With a foreword by Jürgen Oelkers. Klinkhardt, Bad Heilbrunn 2015.
  17. ↑ Printed in: Jacques Grandjonc : Une vie d'exile. Bert Andréas 1914-1984 . Trier 1987, pp. 62-63. (= Writings from the Karl-Marx-Haus supplement)
personal data
SURNAME Wyneken, Gustav
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wyneken, Gustav Adolf (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German educator with significant influence on the youth movement
DATE OF BIRTH March 19, 1875
PLACE OF BIRTH Stade
DATE OF DEATH December 8, 1964
Place of death Goettingen