Hans Scherpner

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Hans Scherpner (born March 10, 1898 in Aachen , † September 25, 1959 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German social work scientist . He dealt with the historical context of the development of social work; he also developed and researched in the field of methodology .

Life

Hans Scherpner came from a middle-class background. His father was an insurance agent. He attended high school in his hometown and in six other cities. After graduating from high school in 1917, he attended lectures on welfare with Christian Jasper Klumker at the University of Frankfurt am Main . There he met his wife, who also had a doctorate in social science and was a student of Klumker. After the end of the war he studied Protestant theology in Tübingen and Marburg . In 1922 he passed his first theological exam. Then he turned back to the welfare sector and initially worked as a volunteer with Christian Jasper Klumker at the Frankfurt welfare seminar. He received his doctorate in 1923 on the subject of " Child welfare in the Hamburg poor reform of 1788 " and in April 1923 he became Klumker's extraordinary assistant at the "Seminar for Welfare and Social Education", as it was now called.

He received a grant from the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial, which enabled him to do research in the Netherlands from 1927 to 1928 . Here he continued his historical studies on the history of social work . These studies finally ended in his habilitation thesis " The views on the poor in the transition from the Middle Ages to the modern age - a contribution to the history of the origins of modern welfare ". In 1932 he gave his inaugural lecture at the University of Frankfurt on the subject of "Welfare and Politics".

In 1934 the chair was not filled again after Klumker's death. Scherpner, who had hoped for this place, felt the reprisals of the National Socialist regime firsthand. The seminar for welfare and social education was continued and Scherpner became its deputy director in 1935. As a private lecturer , however, he had no salary basis . He was forced to earn his living as the head of the Frankfurt Student Union . Nevertheless, he kept the faculty up until the winter semester 1944/45. He did not succeed in obtaining a professorship during National Socialism . In 1943 he had submitted the first draft of his "Theory of Welfare" in an effort to succeed Klumker. This application was put on hold at the endeavor of Wilhelm Polligkeit . While Hans Scherper initially offered seminars as part of the National Socialist People's Welfare (NSV), in which he spoke about the helping relationship , Scherpner increasingly turned against the radical functionalization of social work. In 1948 the seminar resumed its operations. In 1949 Scherpner received an honorary professorship and became the head of the seminar. In 1958 he was appointed to the scientific council at the University of Frankfurt. In 1950 he took over the management of the Institute for Social Work and Educational Assistance, which was sponsored by the US military government . This enabled him to combine theory and practice in social work at his faculty. He took over the chairmanship of the professional association of male social workers in 1950. From 1952 until his death he was also a member of the main committee of the German Association for Public and Private Welfare . Scherpner founded the first Hessian educational counseling center in Frankfurt am Main back in the 1930s .

His research results were published by his wife, Johanna Scherpner, after his death.

Effect and theory

Unlike his mentor and teacher Klumker, Scherpner did not like being in the scientific limelight. Throughout his life he dealt with the history of social work, the training and methodology of social work and its theory.

He understood care as a personal relationship between those in need and those in need. This is socially organized and designed differently, depending on the era and circumstances. For Scherpner, help, in the sense of a social worker trade concept, is a function of the community, i.e. a social phenomenon. It is therefore not an altruistic act or individual motivation. For him, help is rooted in the communal coexistence of people, in families, neighborhoods and social spaces. Due to the increasing complexity of the aid, it is then seen as a state task. Aid is consequently organized and institutionalized by the state. There are also dependencies on caring help, depending on the specific socio-cultural circumstances. For Scherpner, therefore, there can be no historically and universally valid concept of social work at all times.

Furthermore, he always saw social work as individual help . He saw two levels of need for help:

  1. material poverty / impoverishment
  2. psychological and social neglect .

He clearly differentiates politics from welfare: political action serves as a stabilizer for rule. It would be about maintaining power and individual claims. This would be dysfunctional for the welfare system, since it has the individual, the weak, in view. In his inaugural speech in 1932 he already feared an increasing functionalization of care through politics. In his first writings, he was already discussing the possibility of adapting the case work models developed in the USA to German conditions.

Before his death, he was planning a larger book project entitled "Introduction to the Methodology of Child Care", and his preliminary work was found in his estate. It didn't finish, however. Scherpner was in arguments with Alice Salomon and Carl Mennicke . He understood social work philosophically. He was a critic of the legal monopoly . He is rightly considered one of the first, if not the first, historians of social work. He kept pointing out the timeliness of care.

Fonts

  • The child welfare in the Hamburg poor reform of the year 1788. Berlin 1927.
  • Theory of Care. Goettingen 1962.
  • Hanna Scherpner (arr.): History of youth welfare. Göttingen 1966, 2nd, through. 1979 edition ( references from the Karlsruhe virtual catalog ).
  • Studies on the history of welfare , Frankfurt am Main 1984

literature

personal data
SURNAME Scherpner, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Social work scientist, social pedagogue and historian
DATE OF BIRTH March 10, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Aachen
DATE OF DEATH September 25, 1959
Place of death Frankfurt am Main