Helmut von Bracken

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Helmut von Bracken, 1977

Helmut von Bracken (born May 21, 1899 in Saarn near Mülheim an der Ruhr , † February 16, 1984 in Marburg an der Lahn ) was a German psychologist , doctor and educator , author and publicist . He is considered the " Nestor of German special education ".

biography

The eldest son of the evangelical pastor Rudolph von Bracken had a childhood and youth characterized by his fatherly strictness, which he tried to escape in the euphoric patriotism of the epoch by participating in the First World War ( graduation from high school in 1917).

After the war (coastal defense battery in Flanders ), he returned disaffected to the Saar parsonage, where the young man , who had meanwhile become a staunch social democrat, soon found the conflicts with his conservative father, who was loyal to the emperor, unbearable. Therefore he joined the " Wandervögeln " and completed training at the teachers' seminar in Greiz .

During the activity as an assistant teacher in Gera (1921-1927), he studied psychology and educational sciences at the universities of Leipzig (with Felix Krueger ), Berlin (with Max Wertheimer and Kurt Lewin ), and Jena , where he in 1925 when Wilhelm Peters Dr. phil. received his doctorate . This was followed in 1928 by a lectureship at the Technical University of Braunschweig and in 1930 the habilitation in psychology.

In addition to his academic work, von Bracken was also heavily involved in politics and a member of the USPD , the SPD and the Free Teachers 'Union of Germany (FLGB) as well as the resulting General Free Teachers' Union of Germany (AFLD). At the AFDL organ Der Volkslehrer von Bracken acted as editor from 1927 to 1930, and from 1931 to 1933 he was a member of the office of the International Trade Secretariat of Teachers (IBSL) .

On October 1, 1930, the state parliament of the Free State of Braunschweig elected a coalition government made up of the DNVP and NSDAP , in which the NSDAP first appointed Anton Franzen and then Dietrich Klagges as the minister for the interior and public education. On April 25, 1932, Bracken was withdrawn from teaching at the TH Braunschweig by order of the minister of education because of his membership in the USDP and SPD. He was allowed to keep his Venia Legendi , but renounced it in August 1933 due to previous hostility and the impending official removal from the faculty due to the law to restore the civil service . His book The Corporal Punishment in Upbringing was on the black list there on the occasion of the book burning in Braunschweig and was removed from the library after May 10, 1933.

Bracken went to the Netherlands , where he worked as a research assistant at the Psychological Institute at the University of Amsterdam . Presumably during this time he also became a member of the Association of German Teacher Emigrants , the successor organization to the AFDL. When von Bracken noticed how the situation of his Jewish colleagues in the Third Reich was deteriorating, he vacated his Dutch research position in favor of needy exiles and began studying medicine at the Friedrich Wilhelms University in Bonn in 1935 , which he completed with a doctorate in 1940 to the Dr. med. graduated from Hans Schäfer .

In 1939 Bracken was obliged to do military service, but was able to join the medical service in 1940. Possibly in order to achieve this change and to evade military service, he joined the NSDAP in early 1940. He experienced the end of the Second World War as a senior medical officer in the Navy .

After the war, from 1946 to 1954, he earned his family's livelihood with the help of a general practitioner in Braunschweig , where he also worked as an adjunct professor for the technical university. During this time he made many international contacts and received a visiting professorship at Harvard University , where he deepened the scientific exchange with foreign psychologists such as Gordon Allport, which had already begun before the war .

Bracken had been reported several times in the post-war period, among other things because of his presence at shootings and because of the mistreatment of soldiers. However, all proceedings were dropped and he was not proven to have misconduct. However, in 1955 and 1959 he himself had to withdraw requests for compensation because he had been informed that these would not be successful due to his membership in the NSDAP.

In 1954, Bracken moved to Hesse as an associate professor at the Jugenheim Pedagogical Institute near Darmstadt , from where, from 1955, he directed the first courses for the training of special needs teachers in Marburg . In 1958 he came to the Philipps University of Marburg as an honorary professor and transferred the special education courses there to the newly founded university institute for special education, of which he became the first director in 1963; at the same time he received the full professorship.

Even after his retirement in 1967, he continued to be scientifically active, attended international congresses, published numerous magazine articles and books and gave lectures. Only a few days before his death from a stroke at the age of 85, he took a doctoral examination.

Politically committed to the SPD since the 1920s , in 1955 he was a member of the "Great Program Commission" of the Godesberg Program .

Bracken married Martha Schirmer in 1922, and their daughter Suse was born in 1929. She followed in her father's footsteps by studying psychology herself and practicing as a therapist in Bremen for a long time. After the divorce in 1963 he married Karola Karthaus (* 1922), elementary school teacher and later speech therapist and passionate hobby singer. The jazz musician , band leader and composer Rick von Bracken (* 1964) came from this marriage .

plant

Bracken worked on an interdisciplinary basis in the areas of industrial psychology (fatigue research), human genetics ( twin research ), personality psychology , social psychology ( prejudice research ), psychology of aging, psychology of upbringing and psychology of disabled children and is considered a “nestor of German special education”. He was the founder and editor of the scientific journals Psychological Contributions and Curative Education Research , author, German translator of several works by the US personality psychologist Gordon Allport and first director of the Institute for Special Education at the Philipps University of Marburg.

Awards (selection)

Bracken received a number of awards and honors, including

Publications (selection)

  • Personality assessment based on personality descriptions. Investigations on the problem of the personal sheet (Jenaer papers on youth and educational psychology, issue 1). Beltz, Langensalza 1925, pp. 3-50.
  • Corporal punishment in education. On the other bank, Dresden 1926.
  • Connectedness and order in the internal life of twin pairs. in: Journal for ped. Psychology. 1936, No. 37, pp. 65-81.
  • Age changes in mental performance and the inner soul world. in: Journal for Age Research. 1939 I, pp. 256-266.
  • On the social psychology of authority in: Psychologische Rundschau. 1950, I, pp. 94-102.
  • Changes in the human personality in middle and old age. in: Studium Generale. 1952, No. 5, pp. 306-315.
  • With HP David (ed.): Perspectives in Personality Theory. Basic Books, New York 1957; Tavistock, London 1958; Huber, Bern 1959; Eudeba, Buenos Aires 1963.
  • On the methodology of curative education. in: Curative Education Research. 1964/65, No. 1, pp. 3-12.
  • Human Genetic Psychology. in: PE Becker (Ed.): Human Genetics. Volume 1. Thieme, Stuttgart 1969, pp. 409-561.
  • (Ed.) Upbringing and teaching disabled children. Academic Publishing Company, Frankfurt am Main 1968.
  • Prejudice against disabled children, their families and schools. Marhold, Berlin 1976.

literature

  • Ludwig J. Pongratz, Werner Traxel and Ernst G. Wehner (eds.): Helmut von Bracken. in: Psychology in self-portrayals. Volume 2. Verlag Hans Huber, Bern, Stuttgart, Vienna 1979.
  • Lothar Tent: In memory of Helmut von Bracken. in: Curative Education Research. - 11 (1984) 2, pp. 127-142.
  • Michael Wetter / Daniel Weßelhöft: Victims of National Socialist Persecution at the Technical University of Braunschweig 1930 to 1945 , Georg Olms Verlag, Hildesheim, 2010, ISBN 978-3-487-14359-0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ For the history of the two teacher organizations see: Rainer Bölling: Teachers, School Policy and Workers Movement in the Weimar Republic
  2. ↑ The Volkslehrer in the catalog of the German National Library
  3. ↑ a b Hildegard Feidel-Mertz / Hermann Schnorbach : teachers in emigration. The Association of German Teacher Emigrants (1933–39) in the traditional context of the democratic teachers' movement , Beltz Verlag, Weinheim and Basel, 1981, ISBN 3-407-54114-7 , pp. 227–228
  4. ↑ Michael Wetter / Daniel Weßelhöft: Victims of National Socialist Persecution at the Technical University of Braunschweig 1930 to 1945 , p. 93
  5. ↑ a b c Michael Wetter / Daniel Weßelhöft: Victims of National Socialist Persecution at the Technical University of Braunschweig 1930 to 1945 , p. 94
personal data
SURNAME Bracken, Helmut von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German psychologist, physician and educator, author and publicist
DATE OF BIRTH May 21, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Saarn near Mülheim an der Ruhr
DATE OF DEATH February 16, 1984
Place of death Marburg on the Lahn