Heinrich Hanselmann

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
former curative education seminar HPS, Zurich-Fluntern

Heinrich Hanselmann (born September 15, 1885 in St. Peterzell , † February 29, 1960 in Ascona ) was a Swiss educator .

Studies and first years of employment

His father was a farmer, his mother a homeworker. The gifted boy was allowed to attend the district secondary school in Altstätten despite financial difficulties and still received private Latin lessons. After attending a Protestant teacher training institute in Schiers , Hanselmann was a teacher at the deaf and dumb institute in St. Gallen from 1905 to 1908 . From 1908 to 1911 he studied psychology, education, psychopathology, anatomy and physiology in Zurich, Berlin and Munich. In 1911 Hanselmann received his doctorate in Zurich with Friedrich Schumann on "Optical Movement Perception". From 1911 to 1912 he became an assistant at the psychological institute in Frankfurt am Main and from 1912 to 1916 he took over the management of the "work training colony and observation institute for psychopathic and mentally weak young people" in Steinmühle near Frankfurt am Main. 1917–1923 he was central secretary of the Swiss foundation “Pro Juventute”.

Curative education

His habilitation took place in 1923 in curative education at the University of Zurich . The subject of his habilitation thesis was: The psychological foundations of curative education . In 1924 he was a co-founder and director (until 1941) of the “Curative Education Seminar” (HPS) in Zurich, an advanced training facility for teachers. He wrote about the new training center:

The training of the regular candidates of the HPS. is now happening with us for the time being in annual courses, whereby the summer semester is essentially dedicated to theoretical, the remaining two thirds of the year to practical training. As far as the respective course catalog allows, the candidates are obliged to attend regular lectures at the university, where they are matriculated at the philosophical faculty during the summer semester. This concerns the lectures on general and experimental psychology and pedagogy, the history of pedagogy, elementary school studies, curative pedagogy and hygiene ... The focus is on the seminar exercises, for which 7-12 hours per week are free .

In 1924, Hanselmann, with a foundation from Alfred Reinhart, founded the Albisbrunn Rural Educational Home for children and young people with disabilities. He directed the home from 1924 to 1929. At the same time, he worked in his private practice as an education and marriage counselor. In 1931 he was appointed the first professor of curative education at the University of Zurich. When the International Society for Curative Education was founded in 1937 , Hanselmann was appointed its first president.

Hanselmann is considered to be one of the most important representatives of special and curative education in the 20th century. In 1930 he published his main work, Introduction to Curative Education , which Andreas Mehringer described as the classic work of youth welfare . Hanselmann turned against the prevailing view that curative education is the doctrine of research into abnormal children, since he did not consider the word pair "normal / abnormal" to be a scientific term, but a normative evaluation. Instead, he defined curative education as the teaching of the upbringing and care of all those children whose physical and mental development is permanently hampered by individual or social factors. He particularly counted among the possible obstacles to development: 1. Sensory impairments ( deafness , blindness , hearing impairment , poor eyesight ); 2. Developmental inhibitions of the central nervous system (mild, moderate and severe intellectual disabilities ); 3. Psychiatric abnormalities (so-called difficult to educate children). Hanselmann strove for a comprehensive view of human development, which, based on Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, considered thinking, feeling and acting (“head, heart and hand”) as their equal foundations.

The Nazi dictatorship also affected curative education in Switzerland. In this regard, the I International Congress for Curative Education , which took place in Geneva from July 24-28, 1939, is instructive. Heinrich Hanselmann was responsible as the organizer. In his welcoming address he discussed the current political situation and recalled the Jewish curative educator Theodor Heller , who committed suicide in 1938 after the Nazis had removed him from his position:

In our present times, the political borders of individual countries around the world are being walled high with particular vigilance. All the more urgent is therefore every attempt to overcome distrust and to renew the evidence that the borders of the country do not have to be borders of the spirit and should not be. Because for the human mind all autarky means life threat, it leads to dystrophy and finally to atrophy. Our honored honorary president, the main initiator for the foundation of our society, the father of modern curative education in Europe, Dr. Theodor Heller, died .

Heinrich Hanselmann himself gave a lecture on the tasks of curative education in the present and future . He took the view that the emergence of developmental disturbances in children and adolescents on decent way to prevent, where he as a last resort, radical means to this end for a physical sterilization pronounced if a systematic maintenance is not possible or not sufficiently guarantee capable of preventing reproduction . And elsewhere he wrote about the subsequent care of weak-minded girls who are, in particular, objects of seduction :

What we have seen in very many cases is the fact that mentally weak girls are particularly at risk because they are seen as less 'valuable' than people who 'do it less'. Through a thorough sterilization one will achieve that the progeny is limited, but not the complete prevention of the development of mental weakness in general. (...) We speak from experience when we find that the planned follow-up care, even without sterilization, can contain the risk of reproduction to a very large extent. Where a marriage of the mentally weak especially with a weakly mentally weak partner cannot be prevented despite all attempts to the contrary, then sterilization is of course an absolute requirement .

Werner Villinger , whose involvement in the T4 euthanasia campaign is much speculated but little factually known , criticized this view in a review of the textbook on the psychopathology of childhood for doctors and educators , in which Heinrich Hanselmann's contribution appeared, as follows:

We cannot agree with him if he thinks that a systematically developed follow-up care, even without sterilization, adequately curbs the danger of the mentally weak reproducing .

After the collapse of the Nazi dictatorship, Heinrich Hanselmann did not conceal the crimes of the Nazi state against the disabled. In the foreword to the third edition of his Introduction to Curative Education from 1946 he wrote:

The totalitarian governments in Germany and Italy have advocated the radically shortest path for the 'treatment' of all 'abnormal' children, but also of all adult, physically and mentally frail people and, as far and as long as it was possible for them, also committed it, namely the 'Killing life unworthy of life'. Only those adults whose use made them appear 'just socially useful' were excluded from the killing; however, they were sterilized on the basis of newly enacted laws, provided that their ailments were regarded as inherited and inheritable .

Heinrich Hanselmann was married to the deaf and dumb teacher Annie Heufemann. The couple had a daughter.

Special educational institutions in Sankt Augustin and Pinneberg bear the name of the Nestor of curative education .

Awards

  • 1951: World Youth Welfare Award
  • 1956: Honorary doctorate from the Medical Faculty of the University of Zurich

Works

  • The curative education seminar Zurich. In: Erwin Lesch (ed.): Report on the second congress for curative education in Munich July 29 to August 1, 1924, Berlin: Justus Springer, 1925, pp. 15–20.
  • Introduction to curative education. Erlenbach-Zurich; Leipzig: Rotapfel, 1930.
  • Textbook of childhood psychopathology for doctors and educators, Erlenbach-Zurich / Leipzig 1938
  • Report on the 1st International Congress for Curative Education, Zurich 1939.
  • Introduction to curative education. Erlenbach-Zurich: Red apple 1946.
  • Basic lines for a theory of special education (curative education), Zurich: Rotapfel, 1941.
  • Andragogy: nature, possibilities, limits of adult education. Zurich: Rotapfel, 1951.
  • The psychological foundations of curative education (post-doctoral thesis from 1923). Berlin: Marhold, 1997.

literature

  • Werner Villinger: Textbook of the psychopathology of childhood. Book review. In: Clinical weekly. 18th Jhg., No. 1, 1939, pp. 29-30.
  • Erich Benjamin et al. a .: Textbook of Childhood Psychopathology for Doctors and Educators. Zurich, Leipzig 1938.
  • Christian Mürner : The pedagogy of Heinrich Hanselmann. On the relationship between development and disability. Swiss. Central Office for Curative Education, Lucerne 1985.
  • Ursula Hoyningen-Süess: Special education as a science: Heinrich Hanselmann's theory of special education. Ed. SZH, Lucerne 1992.
  • Manfred Berger : Heinrich Hanselmann - His life and work. In: info. Quarterly magazine of the professional association of curative educators. Volume 2, 1998, pp. 8-10.
  • Rolf Castell et al .: History of child and adolescent psychiatry in Germany from 1937 to 1961. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2003.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hanselmann 1925, p. 17
  2. ↑ cit. n. Berger 1998, p. 9
  3. ↑ see Josef Spieler
  4. ↑ cf. Castell et al. 2003, p. 367 ff.
  5. ↑ Hanselmann 1939, p. 9
  6. ↑ Hanselmann 1939, p. 17 ff.
  7. ↑ Hanselmann, in: Benjamin a. a. 1938, p. 322 f
  8. ↑ Castell et al. 2003, p. 468
  9. ↑ Villinger 1939, p. 30
  10. ↑ Hanselmann 1946, p. 8
  11. ↑ Mürner 1985, p. 33
personal data
SURNAME Hanselmann, Heinrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss educator
DATE OF BIRTH September 15, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH St. Peterzell
DATE OF DEATH February 29, 1960
Place of death Ascona