Hildegard Hetzer

Hildegard Anna Helene Hetzer (born June 9, 1899 in Vienna ( Austria-Hungary ); † August 12, 1991 in Giessen ) was an Austrian psychologist and professor of psychology at the Giessen University of Education .

Life

Hetzer was the eldest of three daughters of the lawyer Friedrich Hetzer and attended a Protestant private school, then a humanistic grammar school in Vienna. In 1919 she passed her high school diploma and then trained as a welfare worker (exam as a “people's nurse”). From 1922 she worked as a carer in a day care center ("Hortnerin"). After Karl Bühler was appointed to the University of Vienna and his wife Charlotte Bühler also started her child psychology studies, Hetzer began studying psychology in the hope of finding help in coping with the problems she confronts in her everyday professional life in a proletarian district of Vienna was. Charlotte Bühler noticed her positively and worked as her assistant and at the child transfer office of the City of Vienna . In 1927 she became a doctor of philosophy doctorate . Lotte Schenk-Danzinger , who had been working for Charlotte Bühler since 1927, later became Hetzer's successor .

In 1931 Hetzer was appointed professor of psychology and social education at the Pedagogical Academy in Elbing ( West Prussia administrative district ), but in 1934 he was dismissed from civil servant status due to the law to restore the civil service . She then found a part-time job in Berlin, where from 1934 to 1939 she was a psychological expert at the "Association for the Protection of Children from Abuse and Abuse" and at a special kindergarten run by the youth welfare office for children with mental disorders. In 1940, Hetzer was assigned to the National Socialist People's Welfare Service as a clerk . In 1942 Hildegard Hetzer was transferred to Posen ( Poznań , Poland) by the NSV , shortly afterwards, in March 1942, assigned to the Gau Children's Home Brockau ( Bruczków , Województwo Leszczyńskie, Poland), where Polish children are psychologically examined and “selected” for “Germanization” “Were. According to her own statements, she did not know anything about the actual events in this children's home and was transferred back to Posen in mid-May 1942. What exactly she was doing there is unclear, but according to her own statements she was active in SS resettlement camps and dealt with "racially and hereditary-biological suspect children". According to her own statements, she did not pretend to be an agent of the Nazi regime and, together with other welfare workers, withdrew Polish children from the Nazis' control. Your activity at that time remains controversial.

At the end of 1944 she reported sick and was taken to a sanatorium in Ballenstedt in Saxony-Anhalt; in autumn 1946 she left the Soviet zone of occupation . After this long illness, Hildegard Hetzer was able to find a position in teacher training in 1947 , she was appointed professor at the Pedagogical Institute in Weilburg an der Lahn , where Reinhard Tausch also worked from 1954. This institution for primary school teacher training was closed by the Hessian state government in 1963. In 1950 she became an extraordinary, 1953 extraordinary, 1959 full professor in Weilburg an der Lahn; From 1948 to 1957 she had a teaching position for child and adolescent psychology at the University of Marburg , she was involved in a leading position in setting up educational counseling centers in Hesse. In January 1961 she was given a full professorship for educational psychology at the Gießen University of Education (from 1967 part of the University of Gießen ), where she stayed until her retirement in 1967 and for many years thereafter. Up until her 90th birthday, she held a two-hour lecture there every semester, which was appreciated by the students.

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In her first years, she worked with Charlotte Bühler, Lotte Schenk-Danzinger and Lucia Vecerka to study children's play or childhood and poverty. As an assistant at the university, she developed the first inventory of the behavior of children in the first year of life, as well as collections of material for the toddler tests for the first to sixth year of life. In 1935, together with Wilfrid Zeller, she developed the “Vienna Infantry Test” with which they standardized child development . Only then was it possible to differentiate between “normally” and “abnormally” developed children, which became a further justification for interventions in families of the “lower”, often disadvantaged classes. In the journal for infant research, the two praised their test as a time-saving diagnostic tool for an efficient eugenic policy. You can also read:

“The entirety must be kept as free as possible from socially abnormal personalities. [...] The public is also interested in answering the question from the outset whether the measures are worthwhile in the given case, so that public funds are not wasted on hopeless efforts. "

During the Nazi era, the Viennese child transfer point was used to decide whether the children were to be given educational measures or whether they were used for medical experiments and killed, because follow-up reports were often only formulated differently.

Hildegard Hetzer was the first to coined the term hospitalism , which was later associated with the name of the psychoanalyst René Spitz and his studies on children in care in Europe and the USA. Later, her research related to the subjects of "mentally conspicuous children", "abused children", "children from divorced marriages" or "mental and emotional health of children". From her time in Weilburg, her subjects changed in the direction of school psychology: school readiness , dyslexia , social psychology of the school class were now dealt with by her.

The studies by Hetzer are characterized by a wealth of detail, precise structuring of the observation material, clear presentation and action-related consequences for the everyday life of educators and parents. In their style, they are more similar to the reports of ethologists than to today's quantitatively oriented developmental psychological work.

After her retirement, Hetzer did volunteer work in many areas (e.g. in the working committee “Good Toys”, in the Lebenshilfe , in the university and in the student union).

Honors

• Awarded the Federal Cross of Merit 1st Class on April 4, 1972 for her voluntary work
• 1979 Honorary doctorate from the University of Marburg
• 1982 Honorary membership of the German Society for Psychology
• 1984 honorary membership of the professional association of German psychologists

selected Writings

• Hildegard Hetzer: The symbolic representation in early childhood. First contribution to the psychological determination of school readiness. Deutscher Verlag für Jugend und Volk, Vienna and Leipzig 1926 (= Viennese work on educational psychology from the Psychological Institute, Vienna; also dissertation).
• Hildegard Hetzer: Childhood and Poverty. Psychological methods in poverty research and poverty reduction. Hirzel, Leipzig 1929 (= Psychology of Welfare. Edited by Gertrud Bien, Charlotte Bühler and Hildegard Hetzer. Volume 1).
• Hildegard Hetzer and Charlotte Bühler: Toddler Tests. Development tests from 1 to 6 years of age. Barth, Leipzig 1932.
• Hildegard Hetzer: Psychological examination of the child's constitution. With a foreword by Dr. Wilfried Zeller. Barth, Leipzig 1937.
• Hildegard Hetzer: Psychological assessment of primary school students. Development tests for 7–9 year olds. Barth, Leipzig 1939.
• Hildegard Hetzer and Lothar Tent: The school readiness test. Selection means or educational aid. The Weilburger test items for group exams for school beginners and their practical application. Piorkowski, Lindau (Bodensee) 1958.
• Hildegard Hetzer: A psychology that benefits people. My way from Vienna to Giessen. With a foreword by Lothar Tent and Eberhard Todt. Hogrefe, Göttingen 1988 (autobiography).

Literature about Hildegard Hetzer

• Heinrich Düker and Lothar Tent: Festschrift for the 65th birthday of Professor Dr. Hildegard Hetzer. Hain, Meisenheim am Glan 1965 (= psychological contributions. Volume 8. 2/3.).
• Eberhard Todt: Obituary for Hildegard Hetzer. In: Psychological Rundschau. Volume 43, 1992, pp. 46-47.
• Gerhard Benetka: Hildegard Hetzer. In: Brigitta Keintzel, Ilse Korotin (ed.): Scientists in and from Austria. Life - work - work. Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-205-99467-1 , pp. 285–289.
• Manfred Berger : Hetzer, Hildegard. In: Hugo Maier (Ed.): Who is who of social work. Lambertus, Freiburg im Breisgau 1998, ISBN 3-7841-1036-3 , pp. 244–245.
• Ders .: Who was ... Hildegard Hetzer ?, in: Sozialmagazin 1999 / H. 10., pp. 8-10
• Utz Maas : Persecution and emigration of German-speaking linguists 1933-1945. Entry on Hildegard Hetzer (accessed: April 13, 2018)

Web links

• Literature by and about Hildegard Hetzer in the catalog of the German National Library
• Hildegard Hetzer [1]
• Hildegard Hetzer [2]
• Gerhard Benetka & Clarissa Rudolph. On the history of the integration of psychological test procedures in the context of child welfare in Vienna during the Nazi era. [3]

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Reinhard Tausch. In: Ernst G. Wehner (Ed.): Psychology in self-portrayals. Volume 3, Huber, Bern 1992, pp. 275-304.
2. ↑ Course catalog HfE Gießen SS 1961. Retrieved on January 11, 2019 . 
3. ↑ Reinhard Sieder, Andrea Smioski: Violence against children in educational homes of the city of Vienna. Final report . Vienna 2012, p. 43 ( online [PDF]). Online ( Memento from March 11, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
4. ^ Helgard Rau: Bonding. The importance of the first minutes, hours and days of life. ( PDF ( Memento of the original from January 5, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. )