Lily Ehrenfried

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Lydia Ehrenfried , known by the nickname Lily , also Lilly or Lili (born August 20, 1896 in Breslau ; † 1994 in Paris ) was a German doctor, physiotherapist and founder of holistic gymnastics or somato therapy of Jewish origin, which since her persecution lived in Paris by the Nazi regime in France after the end of World War II .

Life

Berlin memorial plaque on the house, Turmstrasse 21, in Berlin-Moabit

After finishing school, Ehrenfried first trained as a nurse , then studied medicine in order to work in the internal department of the Moabit Hospital in Berlin from 1926 to 1927 . Further training in paediatrics , orthopedics , physiotherapy and sports medicine followed . From 1926 she treated infants and children with physical abnormalities as a part-time orthopedic gymnastics teacher. In 1928 she established herself as a general practitioner in Schöneberger Motzstraße .

She was particularly committed to birth control , an urgent problem in view of unemployment and mass impoverishment, and from 1929 to 1933 she headed a “marriage and sexual counseling center”, which the Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg district office had opened on her initiative and which provided information about contraceptive methods as well distributed free contraceptives .

Due to the polemical discussion on the subject of birth control by the conservative-nationalist political spectrum joined Ehrenfried the association Socialist physicians and ran in 1931 on the free trade union list for the Medical Council election . By the seizure of power of Hitler threatened, she fled because of a warning of the SA via Basel and Nice to Paris. After the invasion of the Wehrmacht, she fled to southern France, but was interned in Camp de Gurs on May 25, 1940 . A month later, however, she managed to go underground and survive in France with false papers.

In Berlin Ehrenfried had been a student of the gymnastics teacher Elsa Gindler . In Paris, where she settled after the Second World War, she worked exclusively as a physiotherapist and ran a small practice until old age. Hilarion Petzold is one of her students there . She also came into contact with Masamichi Noro , who incorporated elements of her work into his method of Kinomichi and whose courses Ehrenfried regularly attended.

In the Moabit Hospital (in Entrance K of House M, Turmstrasse 21), a plaque from the series of Berlin memorial plaques was unveiled in her honor (and others) on May 30, 1997 .

Holistic gymnastics

Ehrenfried's lasting achievement is the development of holistic gymnastics, a soft gymnastics , the aim of which is the development of biomechanical spontaneity of the entire body and thus liberation from educational and mechanical constraints. Starting with simple, slow movements, the student learns to find his or her natural mobility again, that is, to move without tension and pain. The physiotherapist describes the movements exclusively verbally, without demonstrating them, and the student converts these descriptions into movements according to his skills. Every gymnastics lesson includes phases of relaxation , straightening the body and muscular toning . The aim is to enable the muscular apparatus to interact flexibly over long distances so that the movement of one body region also affects another, far away body region, such as the movement of the jaw on the diaphragm, and through natural breathing also the to stimulate internal organs. The holistic gymnastics is recommended for healing as well as preventive for stress , muscle tension , back pain and the like and has an effect on the mental state of the practitioner.

Holistic gymnastics is practiced mainly in France, but also in Greece by the Association des Elèves du Docteur Ehrenfried .

Publications

  • De l'éducation du corps à l'équilibre de l'esprit . Aubier, Paris 1956, reprint 1997.
    • German version: Physical education for mental balance. Somatotherapy, a forgotten healing factor . Westliche Berliner Verlagsgesellschaft Heenemann, Berlin 1957, 2nd, revised and expanded edition 1967, unchanged new edition under the title: Breathing, Moving, Recognizing , Goralewski-Gesellschaft Berlin, 1986.
    • Greek translation: Από την αγωγή του σώματος στην ισορροπία του πνεύματος: Η ολιστική γυμναστική . Μετάφραση, επιμέλεια: Μανία Τσίτσα. Επιστημονική επιμέλεια: Άννα Τσίτσα-Κούνιο. University Studio Press, Thessaloniki 2002.

literature

Web links

Commons : Lily Ehrenfried  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Ehrenfried, Lily
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ehrenfried, Lydia; Lily; Ehrenfried, Lilly; Ehrenfried, Lili
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German doctor and physiotherapist
DATE OF BIRTH August 20, 1896
PLACE OF BIRTH Wroclaw
DATE OF DEATH 1994
Place of death Paris