Hans Altenhuber

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Hans Altenhuber (born November 15, 1924 in Purkersdorf ) is an Austrian adult educator.

Life

Hans Altenhuber was born as the fifth child of seven children. The family lived in Purkersdorf in a cramped apartment with a “room-kitchen-cabinet”, the water was fetched outside from a pump well. The toilet was also outside the apartment and kerosene lamps served as lighting . His father was a metal lathe operator, foreman and union member, member of the SPÖ and the Schutzbund . Altenhuber was often with the children's friends in childhood . Unlike the mother, who liked to see her children go to church. Hans Altenhuber was an altar boy for a while . The apartment in Purkersdorf was on the Vienna Woods , which was used for excursions, with the Red Falcons for camping.

When his father's company closed, he found work as a secretary at the Purkersdorf community, but earned too little as a non-high school graduate, so that he had to find a livelihood with other sideline jobs. In 1934 there was no activity of the Schutzbund during the February fights in Purkersdorf, which is why the father was able to keep his job, but his salary was cut again, the SPÖ and the Kinderfreunde were banned.

The Altenhuber siblings all attended secondary school and a technical college, two of them became engineers. Hans Altenhuber was the only child in the family to attend the Fichtnergasse grammar school in Hietzing. This on the recommendation of the teacher and the pastor, with Latin from the 1st grade, and Greek from the 3rd grade, where he was practically a homo novus among students of doctors, lawyers and businessmen . He was mostly able to escape school fees with a reduction or exemption because his parents had no money for it. In the corporate state , the high school students also had to wear the patriotic badge with the red-white-red on oak leaves and the inscription Be united , which the director paid close attention to. And as a student from Purkersdorf, he also had to regularly provide confirmation that he had been to church on Sunday, while the students living in Vienna completed their church visit closed on Sunday. When Austria "annexed" Austria to Nazi Germany , he felt "swept along" by the enthusiasm and was able to continue attending grammar school and graduate in 1942.

Immediately after graduating from high school, like all his brothers, he was drafted into the armed forces. Altenhuber reported to the paratroopers out of a "sporty disposition" and was assigned there. Their major missions, such as on the island of Crete (1941) , were over. It was now a kind of ascension command because as a soldier you were deposed as a so-called fire brigade when there were gaps in the front. His first assignment was in Tunisia.

He was wounded three times in the war, once very badly, barely survived, was able to return, and was able to start studying history, education and philosophy at the University of Vienna in early 1946 and graduate in 1950. His inner reversal happened in his American captivity with the American newsreels, where the concentration camps were shown. This became his engine to study and demonstrate the Nazi crimes, with Wolfgang Speiser as a role model, and to advocate democratization. At the University of Vienna, little was heard of contemporary history. The beginning of the First World War was the latest and was presented in seminars and lectures by the Swiss professor Jean Rudolf von Salis .

After completing his studies, he did not find a full job as a high school teacher. He was already married and had a son, so he kept looking and got a full job as a career advisor for high school graduates and students at the Vienna State Labor Office . So he was able to visit all schools with a high school diploma in Vienna and invite all interested students to his office on Esteplatz for a conversation.

At the employment office he met his colleague and psychologist Werner Mann, who was a lecturer at a community college and who also knew Wolfgang Speiser well. Altenhuber was then able to work part-time in popular education with Speiser. My best-known entry was then in 1961 a series of contemporary history lectures at Urania Vienna , the first in Austria on Nazi rule. He was able to show documents that were not yet known in Austria because he was able to attend seminars on contemporary history at the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich. He was able to show tapes from the Reichstag on March 24, 1933, including the speech by the Social Democratic leader Otto Wels against the Enabling Act . In this series he also showed Alain Resnais's 1955 film Night and Fog .

Altenhuber then worked in the Ministry of Social Affairs for a school for the disabled on the subject of rehabilitation and for the first implementing decrees for the labor market promotion law. In 1971, Hans Kriegl, a man of Catholic adult education and former director of the Fichtnergasse grammar school, died, and Altenhuber was able to move up to this position under Minister Fred Sinowatz as head of the adult education department in the Ministry of Education. There he was involved in the formation of the Conference of Adult Education Austria (KEBÖ), where competing associations also found a cooperation. The initiative for the merger came initially from Hans Fellinger from the Chamber of Labor and was initially opposed by the Catholic side. In 1972, however, the merger came about because joint projects from 1971 were funded by the Federal Ministry, and the resulting collaboration was perceived as positive.

KEBÖ then created a joint training institute for adult educators with a course and certificate. A joint advertising campaign was launched on television and radio. As a result, the Adult Education Promotion Act was created within the framework of the federal private sector administration.

From the Ministry of Education, Hans Altenhuber worked with Ludwig Soswinski from the Mauthausen camp community to set up a memorial and memorial and to employ the necessary staff for the exhibition and the tours. A solution was then found through political education through the Association of Adult Education Centers.

Awards

Publications

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ceremony for the Section Head i. R. Dr. Hans Altenhuber http://erwachsenenbildung.at , December 23, 2013
personal data
SURNAME Altenhuber, Hans
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Altenhuber, Johann
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian adult educator
DATE OF BIRTH November 15, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Purkersdorf