Hans Würtz
Hans Würtz (born May 18, 1875 in Heide , Holstein as Johannes Hansen , † July 13, 1958 in Berlin ) was one of the most influential and controversial protagonists of the “cripple pedagogy” (pedagogy for the physically handicapped) during the Weimar Republic .
Life
Personal and professional development
Hans Würtz was a child born out of wedlock. His father Johann Peter Würtz and his mother Johanna Olufs, b. Hansen, died in his earliest childhood, which is why he grew up with an uncle on the island of Föhr . He had a bad relationship with his foster parents. He also turned down the offer to enter his uncle's trading business. Instead, Würtz wanted to become a teacher and take care of children in need. After his teacher training at the preparatory institute in Aabenraa , he accepted a job as a substitute teacher on Föhr. Due to disputes with lecturers, he was prematurely dismissed from the teachers' college in Tondern , which he attended from 1894. Thanks to good relationships, Würtz got a second chance at the teachers' seminar in Eckernförde .
After successfully completing his training as an elementary school teacher in 1902, he dedicated himself to his activities as an elementary school teacher in Heidedorf Uk . Fuchs says that Würtz seemed obsessed with teaching. He founded a reading club and a theater association and, as a member of the Order of Good Templars , warned against alcohol consumption on Sunday trains from village to village. After disciplinary proceedings that were initiated against him for causing disturbance and which ended in his favor, he received a raise in salary.
In 1904 he was appointed to Altona as a primary school teacher , where he met his future wife, Gertrud Nielson, whom he married in 1907. In Hamburg is also the long-standing friendship with the developed Biosophen Willy Schlüter with which he 1914 the book Uwe's mission published. Through a further friendship with the committed women's rights activist Anna Plothow , he got a job as a primary school teacher in the boys' school in Berlin-Tegel in 1910 and was finally appointed to the Berlin Cripple Healing and Educational Institution for Berlin-Brandenburg in 1911 . The Oskar-Helene-Heim in Berlin-Zehlendorf emerged from this institution, where Würtz took the place of education inspector.
Together with the doctor Konrad Biesalski, Hans Würtz built the Oskar-Helene-Heim, which, under the direction of the two, was one of the largest private orthopedic institutions for children and young people. In the first third of the 20th century, it was regarded as the center of care for cripples in Germany and gained international reputation. The office of the German Association for Cripple Care EV and the Prussian State Association for Cripple Care was also housed in the facility.
Although Würtz lacked both theoretical and practical experience in the care of the disabled, he now worked with great commitment with young physically handicapped people. He was also active as a speaker. So he spoke in September 1920 at the VI. Congress for cripple welfare in Berlin on the "psychological conditions for educational work in the different types of cripple schools, especially in kindergarten" n:
- “ The speaker described how the psychological peculiarities of crippling, which are not based on predisposition, but only arise as a result of inhibitions in the life of consciousness, require particularly good psychological observation skills and a pedagogical tact on the part of the teacher. Director Würtz wants the kindergarten to be preserved from any rigidity of reason. Its task is to introduce the senseless cripple child into the colorful world of the sensory life with the help of sensory psychological exercises, to balance his handicapped rhythm of life and to help him to conquer the world of the community on his own. "
His marriage ended in divorce in 1928. He married Rosalie von Molo that same year.
Handicapped work
From 1911 to 1933, against the background of social Darwinist , eugenic and racial hygiene ideas, Würtz developed a special pedagogy for physically handicapped people, the cripple pedagogy , which was also shaped by reform pedagogy . In this most productive phase of his life he developed all ideas for his cripple education and cripple psychology. He presented his observations and the concepts that resulted from them in the Zeitschrift für Krüppelfürsorge , of which he was co-editor from 1915 to 1933.
Since 1915, in addition to his work as an educational inspector, he also worked as the administrative director of the Oskar-Helene-Heim and was involved in clubs and associations for both cripple and orphan care. Orthopedist Konrad Biesalski died in 1930 . Würtz and Biesalski had worked together as partners and equals for many years and were very much in agreement in their basic understanding of cripple welfare. After Biesalski's death, Würtz was the most important representative of the Oskar-Helene-Heim.
Immediately after the Nazi regime came to power in 1933, Würtz was suspected of being an enemy of the people, noble communist , freemason , philosemite and pacifist , and was dismissed from his office and convicted. He was accused of "misusing Goebbels' pictures" because he mentioned Joseph Goebbels twice in the lists of famous cripples in his 1932 work Zerbrecht die Krücken because of his clubfoot . In addition, since May 15, 1933, at an extraordinary general meeting of the Krüppel-, Heil- und Welfare Association for Berlin-Brandenburg eV, he was accused of misappropriating donations from the Oskar-Helene-Heim charity and of having used the crutches to finance the book Zerbrecht . Above all Hellmut Eckhardt , managing director of the "German Association for Cripple Welfare", and the teacher Knabe accused him of embezzling funds. Würtz's old colleagues Eckhardt and Knabe then took on leading roles in the care of cripples, while Würtz was still in custody.
Würtz was released without notice and without a pension in 1933 and fled to Czechoslovakia in early April due to warnings . He lived there in Prague with his friend and colleague Augustin Bartoš, who was a doctor and director of the Prague cripple home.
On May 12, 1933, he returned to Berlin to defend himself against accusations of infidelity and wasting donations from the Oskar-Helene-Heim. Shortly after his arrival, he was taken into " protective custody " and sentenced on January 22, 1934 to one year in prison with probation. On the day of his release from prison, he left Germany immediately after receiving a warning from an educator at the Oskar-Helene-Heim. He went back to Czechoslovakia and initially settled in the Sudetic city of Neumark . From 1935 to 1938 he changed his place of residence several times until he finally moved to Vienna .
In 1946 he came back to Berlin and applied for a cancellation of the sentence. In 1947, Würtz was rehabilitated by overturning the 1934 judgment and erasing his criminal record, and in 1949 he took over the post of curator at the Oskar-Helene-Heim.
After his death in 1958 he was buried in the Dahlem forest cemetery. His grave was dedicated to the city of Berlin from 1992 to 2014 as an honorary grave .
plant
Cripple pedagogy
At the beginning of the 20th century the term “ cripple ” was a common term. The word “cripple” is frowned upon today because its use is stigmatized. The experts agreed to use other terms such as "people with physical disabilities" or "handicaps".
Würtz was an advocate of the term "cripple". He rejected all suggested substitute words, such as "damaged", "needy" or "bresthaft", as these do not describe what is in the "power word" cripple . He gave a purely onomatopoeic reason:
- The letters 'Kr' are crashing, provocative, harsh and reject sentimentality. The double P underlines the defiant of the 'Kr' with a touch of mischievous audacity. The term cripple aptly describes the soul of the cripple (Würtz 1934, col. 1484 f).
The cripple movement used this word as a geuse word in their actions, such as the cripple tribunal in Dortmund in 1981, one of the most important protests of the autonomous German disability movement against the International Year of the Disabled in 1981 , against human rights violations in nursing homes , in workshops for the disabled and in psychiatry.
The cripple pedagogy is the historical foundation of the special education of physically handicapped children and represents the basis of today's special education . According to Petra Fuchs, the concept of one-sided adjustment in the integration of people with physical disabilities formed the cornerstone of their care and upbringing until the end of the 1980s .
According to Fuchs, Würtz viewed people with physical disabilities as "inferior", while he perceived the professional "healthy cripple educators" as "superior". In Würtz's opinion, the solution to the “cripple problem” with the aim of integrating physically disabled people into society lay in their “humanization” and adaptation to the “strength values of the healthy”, a process that, in his opinion, can only be achieved under the guidance of an ethically high “ Krüppelerziehers "who infect the cripples with his own freshness".
In this context he stated:
- “For this reason, the cripple educator must also be manly. The cripple must be able to align, strengthen, and steel his moral fighter with him. Soft, too supple, too inward-looking natures are not really suitable for the Krüppelheim [...]. The cripple must not give up a certain hardness and sharpness of his will and thinking in general, if he is not to lose his inner stability at the same time. You have to tactfully feel your way into the inner conditions of the disenfranchised ... It's not everyone's business. But finally, one shouldn't be too surprised that differentiated pedagogical influences also include a certain kind of mind and soul in the educator himself. In the care of the cripple it is only particularly noticeable that an inner vocation is required for this profession. Under no circumstances would a beneficial educational activity in the cripple home be developed if all educators were cripples themselves. ”(Würtz 1921, p. ??)
Würtz also attempted to establish an independent cripple psychology . The term “ cripple soul ”, which he coined and the resulting cripple soul, developed into a technical term in the 1920s. The concept of the cripple soul created the basis for a monocausal connection between physical disability and psychological deviation, in such a way that Würtz assumed that a "cripple body" must also contain a "cripple soul". Würtz took the natural superiority of "healthy people" over "cripples" for granted. Even the "cripple child" lives "as it were in an artificial ghetto", B. could not participate in the joy of movement of "normal" children in common play. The result: the “cripple child” becomes “all too easily shy of people, suspicious, suspicious, sensitive, malicious and envious. A psychological mechanism develops ”(Würtz 1932, p. 65).
He described the character deficiencies of physically handicapped people assumed by Würtz as individually anchored characteristics that had to be combated in and on the "types". He said:
- “The cripple is in an inner tension against the healthy. He has different habits of movement, different needs, different security and resting positions. He doesn't like to go out of himself. He is often embarrassed by the impartial and involuntary nature of community people. His mind does not like to dissolve with the general mood. He is a fighter for life and doesn't like to disarm inside. Confessions without mistrust shame him: he is always suspicious. A kindhearted indulgence and recognition depresses him too: he is jealous. Harmless joie de vivre, which believes all the best in fate, makes him cross. He has already been in too much pain and is constantly on guard against the fate that neglected him. In short: he is a community sick! ”(Würtz 1921, p. 3).
Friedrich Malikowski , member and important representative of the "Self-Help Association for the Physically Disabled" (also known as the Perl-Bund ), and his colleague Herbert Winkler accused Würtz of overemphasizing individual traits of the physically disabled as well as of his purely phenomenological approach. By using this method, the expressions of life of people with physical disabilities were raised to particular importance, while expressions of equal value “healthy people” by Würtz were not used for a comparison. Winkler put it:
- “In the cripple, the motor function is disturbed as a result of his deviating physique, that is more physical than psychological and can therefore only be used with great caution as a basis for characterological judgments. The old and still existing prejudices against cripples, however, overlook this completely changed prerequisite and are thus explained by a fallacy ... The attitude of the teacher, doctor or cripple educator to the frail child and his behavior towards him must therefore not only be based on the external impression founding ”(quoted in Bergè 2005, p. 135 f).
Malikowski further criticizes that Würtz did not establish a relationship between the mental development of physically handicapped people and the societal conditions under which they grew up:
- "The approach that takes the cripple detached from the relationship to the community only as an object of investigation [...] often leads to judgments that are not very convincing and poorly founded."
There was no evidence at all of a “potentially harmonious development of disabled children” in the numerous publications and oral statements by Hans Würtz. Malikowski, on the other hand, saw a correlation between the existence of physically handicapped people on the one hand and society on the other and suggested that Würtz should take a “more sociological approach”.
Compulsory education and integration
According to Petra Fuchs, Hans Würtz and other "cripple pedagogues" had a strong interest in expanding the "cripple institutions" from a professional-political point of view, because the concept of "cripple education" was without the facilities and the expansion of "cripple homes" according to the tripartite principle - medical treatment, education and training, and vocational training - not feasible. In his book "Das Seelenleben des Krüppels", Würtz says:
- “Every cripple child capable of school belongs to a special cripple school, in which, taking into account the various ailments, instruction is given according to certain methods based on a special cripple soul science” (Würtz 1921, p. 6).
Würtz was of the opinion that the "cripple" must be brought up for the community and that his ability and willingness to work are the main criteria for his worth:
- “Only work ennobles him [the cripple] to enrich the world, to donate a surplus of form, order, context that the world would not have gained on its own, even without his deed. It turns him from an impotent seeker of meaning, who is hostile to himself and the world, to the meaning giver of life. ” (Würtz 1921, p. ??).
For this reason, Würtz also differentiates between cripples who are worthy of funding and those who are not, because the state's funds are only not wasted with those cripples who can turn them from “alms recipient to taxpayer” (Biesalski). The integration idea that Würtz pursued must therefore be described as an assimilative integration idea , in which only the physically handicapped should do their part to integrate into society, the "healthy" were not affected by this integration work.
Würtz's position on eugenics
The assessment of Würtz's attitude and shared responsibility under National Socialism and on the subject of eugenics is controversial among historians, educators and special educators.
Würtz wrote as early as 1914:
- “Eugenics extends to the cripples through the education of efficiency, which communicates strength and the power of victory. She is not so timid that she shies away from outward ugliness. We [those working in “cripple welfare”] are eugenicists too. We want something noble and power-giving to grow everywhere. Our eugenics are only more comprehensive. Instead of quarreling impotently with the moral law of keeping life holy, we bring more brave fighters to culture in trained cripples who are not a burden to the healthy. ” (Würtz 1914, p. 188 f).
He later stated:
- “The frail has to give his utmost in strength ... he has to choose: either victorious struggle against frailty or ailing wreckage in crippling. Act or death ” (Würtz 1921, p. ??).
The word death in this saying is interpreted by some well-known special educators (including Hans Stadler) as the opposite of deed. Stadler writes in this context:
- "Death, as misunderstood by Sierck and Kunert, does not denote biological, physical death, but the opposite of action, namely a powerless, willless existence, a passive, resigned state" (Stadler 2004, p. 216).
Fonts (selection)
- Uwe's broadcast. A German educational book with special consideration of the cripples , Leipzig 1914
- The will wins. An educational and cultural contribution to the welfare of war cripples , 2 volumes, Berlin 1915
- The German picture book for young and old , Berlin 1916
- Victorious fighters for life , Munich 1919
- The soul life of the cripple , Leipzig 1921
- Break the crutches. Cripple problems of mankind. Fateful children of all times and peoples in words and pictures , Leipzig 1932
- Cripple care and cripple soul science . In: Adolf Dannemann (Ed.): Encyclopaedic Handbook of Curative Education. Vol. I, hall a. S. 1934, col. 1484-1500
literature
- The toddler in cripple care . In: Children's home 1921 / H. 2, pp. 57-58
- Udo Wilken: Pedagogy for the physically handicapped . In: S. Solarová (ed.): History of special education. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1983, 212-259. ( online )
- Manfred Berger : Hans Würtz - His life and work. In: heilpaedagogik.de 2011 / H. 4, pp. 19-25
- Petra Fuchs: "Physically handicapped" between self-abandonment and emancipation. Self-help - integration - segregation . Luchterhand, Neuwied and Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-472-04450-0
- Sieglinde Kunert: Behavioral disorders and psychagogical measures in physically handicapped children . 3. Edition. Schindele, Neuburgweier 1976, ISBN 3-88070-043-5
- Friedrich Malikowski: cripple psychology and cripple pedagogy . In: Federal intelligence service for the self-help of the physically disabled, 3 (1922)
- Martin Memmert: "Cripple" as an honorary title. The cripple pedagogy of Hans Würtz, the one who thought with the heart. In: Martin and Günter Memmert: The spine in the view. Searching for traces in art, history and language. Springer-Verlag, Berlin Heidelberg 1999, page 239ff.
- Oliver Musenberg: The physically handicapped educator Hans Würtz (1875-1958). A critical appreciation of the psychological and educational concept against the background of his biography . Kovac, Hamburg 2002, ISBN 3-8300-0661-6 (also Dortmund, Diss. 2001)
- Udo Sierck: Work is the best medicine. On the history of rehabilitation policy . Konkret-Literatur-Verlag, Hamburg 1992, ISBN 3-89458-112-3
- Peter Sloterdijk : Only cripples will survive. In: ders .: You have to change your life. About anthropotechnics. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt / M. 2009, pp. 69-99
- Hans Stadler, Udo Wilken: Pedagogy for physical disabilities. Study texts on the history of disabled education . Beltz, Weinheim et al. 2004, ISBN 3-407-57206-9 / ISBN 3-8252-2378-7 ( http://www.pedocs.de/frontdoor.php?source_opus=1675 ): pdf
- Hans Weiß: Hans Würtz , in: Maximilian Buchka et al. (Ed.): Life pictures of important curative educators of the 20th century . Ernst Reinhard Verlag, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-497-01611-X , pp. 385-409
Web links
- Literature by and about Hans Würtz in the catalog of the German National Library
- Literature by Hans Würtz in the Max Kirmsse collection of the University Library of Marburg
- Oskar-Helene-Heim Berlin Association (with information on the history of the home)
- http://archiv-heilpaedagogik.de/down/Medien/Kurzbiographien-Berger/Wuertz,%20Hans.pdf
Individual evidence
- ↑ as a son born out of wedlock he was given his mother's maiden name, in later years he took his father's name
- ↑ cf. Children's home 1921, p. 58
- ↑ Cripple Tribunal 1981 + 20 ( Memento of the original from March 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed January 2, 2012.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Würtz, Hans |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Würtz, Johannes |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German special educator |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 18, 1875 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Heath (Holstein) |
| DATE OF DEATH | July 13, 1958 |
| Place of death | Berlin |