Horst Ziebell

Horst Ziebell (born November 14, 1927 in Dramberg ; † August 17, 2007 in Bad Oldesloe ) was a German special education teacher and headmaster .

Live and act

Ziebell, who came from Pomerania, was the son of the official Paul Ziebell and his wife Hedwig, née Müller. He had to stop attending the council school in Stettin until the end of 1944 due to the Reich Labor Service and military service and British captivity. The family fled to Lübeck , where Ziebell received his school-leaving certificate at the Katharineum in March 1947 . From 1948 to March 17, 1950 he studied pedagogy for elementary school teachers at the University of Education in Kiel. After the first teacher examination, he taught at auxiliary schools in Schleswig-Holstein and Hamburg , where he passed the second teacher examination in March 1953.

Ziebell, who lived in Hamburg with his wife Lucie, née Thiele, then initially taught as a special school teacher at the Burgstrasse auxiliary school in Hamburg-Hamm . At the same time, from 1953 to 1955 he took a newly established special education additional course. At the Hammer School he took on a “preliminary class” for children with severe, mostly mental, disabilities. Although the demand for such forms of instruction was great, at that time such preliminary classes only existed at four Hamburg auxiliary schools. Since disabled children were not considered to be required to study and attended school, the Hamburg school administration was reluctant to set up additional classes for such students.

On February 12, 1960, Ziebell invited parents of mentally handicapped children to his school. During the meeting he led, they founded Lebenshilfe Hamburg . In May of the same year, many parents met again in the auditorium of the foreign language school. They vehemently demanded that mentally handicapped children be given the right to attend school. The Hamburg school authorities complied with these demands in autumn 1960. She followed the example of Munich , where two schools for the disabled had previously been opened. The authority commissioned Ziebell to set up this first state teaching facility in Hamburg, which he took over in 1961.

The school opened on April 5th at Elbchaussee 99. The three classes with initially 23 and a little later 36 students were initially only given rooms that were not suitable for the needs of the students. The school had three teachers, a youth leader and a kindergarten teacher. Ziebell suggested giving it the name “Special Education Day School”. From 1963, following Ziebell's model, the school authorities set up six more such schools. Due to the increasing number of pupils, the school on Elbchaussee received a branch school in Notkestrasse 23 in 1963. It was given a new building that met the requirements in November 1974 in Kielkamp 16 as a “special school for the mentally handicapped in Kielkamp”.

School at Kielkamp (2020)

At Easter 1964, the school in Notkestrasse received so-called “Kö classes” for children who were not only mentally but also physically disabled. The school in Kielkamp set up such classes in 1975. Since this school offered sufficient space, it took over the students from Notkestrasse in 1977, which then closed.

During his time as headmaster, Horst Ziebell not only worked out the organization of the schools, but was also the first to create educational concepts for schools for the disabled based on a holistic view of mankind. He saw the cooperation between parents and school as a prerequisite for this. He saw it as the primary goal of the school to help mentally handicapped children to develop community skills. Through practical activities he wanted to enable them to live as independently as possible with the aim of making a small contribution to their own livelihood. Therefore, he designed a practice-oriented all-day course.

Since no suitable concepts existed yet, Ziebell wrote a first binding curriculum for schools for the disabled in a commission with high school councilor Otto Hattermann, headmistress Gerda Luscher and professor Ursula Hagemeister . At the federal level of Lebenshilfe , he was involved in its pedagogical committee. There he worked on texts that gave recommendations for education and teaching at special schools for the mentally handicapped. These appeared in 1965 and 1966. As a lecturer at the University of Hamburg , he taught special education and took over the students as trainee teachers at his school.

In 1989 Ziebell, who valued teamwork and a college with teachers from a wide variety of professional backgrounds and training courses, retired. In 1998 the Hamburg Senate awarded him the silver medal for faithful work in the service of the people .

literature

• Bodo Schümann: Ziebell, Horst . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 6 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2012, ISBN 978-3-8353-1025-4 , p. 392-393 .
• Bodo Schümann: After the annihilation: dealing with people with disabilities in Hamburg's politics and society from 1945 to 1970 . LIT-Verlag, Münster 2018, ISBN 978-3-643-14178-1 , pp. 149–152 .