Hugo Rosenthal (pedagogue)

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Hugo Rosenthal (born December 14, 1887 in Lage (Lippe) , † December 6, 1980 in Haifa ) was a German-Israeli educator. After an initial stay in Israel between 1924 and 1929, he took over the establishment of the Herrlingen rural school home , which Anna Essinger co-founded, and founded the Herrlingen Jewish rural school there . After its dissolution in 1939, he and his family moved to the British Mandate of Palestine . At the same time as his immigration, he took the name Josef Jashuvion. From 1940 to 1956, the year he retired, he was director of the Ahavah children's and youth home in Kirjat Bialik , whose roots were in Berlin.

Hugo Rosenthal's life before 1933

The Yad Vashem Documentation belonging to Josef Hugo Rosenthal-Jashuvi (see sources) contains a two-page curriculum vitae, probably written in November 1966, with the entry “Born in 1987 in Lage i. Lippe ”begins and ends with“ In 1966 my book appears with the aid of the Ministry of Education and Culture and the Youth Aliyah == published by the education department of the city of Haifa. ”The book mentioned actually appeared in 1966 ( Education and tradition: forty years of education ), but this is supposed to be about Rosenthal's early years.

Rosenthal does not mention his family background in his résumé. He was born “the fifth child in a row of nine siblings and grew up in a liberal-religious milieu. He was very talented and showed musical skills at an early age. ”From 1893 to 1903 he was first a student at the“ Israelitische Elementarschule ”in Lage, and then at the municipal secondary school in Bielefeld . From 1903 to 1908 he attended preparatory classes at the Marks Haindorf Foundation in Münster , which meant attending the teachers' seminar led by Meier Spanier . It was during this time that Rosenthal turned to Zionism, which he expressly mentions and places in connection with the death of Theodor Herzl : "1904 Zionist (in Hamburg Israel. Family sheet I read the news of Theodor Herzl's death and the Basel program") Rosenthal became not only trained as a teacher in Münster, but also as a prayer leader .

For the years 1908 to 1914 Rosenthal mentions his activities as a teacher, religion teacher and prayer leader. He does not mention that he taught at a one-class Jewish elementary school in Gütersloh until 1910, but instead mentions his continuing education, which is apparently parallel to the activities mentioned: “New ways in the teaching (educational) work of the elementary school, e.g. Partly under the influence of the "Bremen teachers" - visit to the Landerziehungsheim am Solling (1908!) Pedagogical studies for the state examination: E. Neumann , Introduction to experimental pedagogy Kerschensteiner : Concept of the work school “. This shows that he became familiar with the most progressive educational and (school) psychological currents of his time at an early stage.

As a soldier from the very beginning, Hugo Rosenthal took part in the First World War from 1914 to 1918 and was a soldier at the front in France and Poland. He mentions his war awards and wounds, but not the "death of his younger brother who perished right next to him".

Rosenthal's résumé for the years 1919 to 1924 begins with his marriage and ends with his emigration to Palestine. He “married [...] Betty 'Judith' Goldschmidt, a musician and trained concert pianist. From 1920 to 1924 they lived with their three children in Wolfenbüttel, where Rosenthal was employed at a traditional Jewish middle school. ”This“ traditional Jewish middle school ”was the Samson School . He himself does not go into this further, but refers to his now increasing Jewish commitment, the establishment of a Hachshara center and the co-founding of the Brith Haolim , a Jewish migrant association . In a subsequent handwritten addendum, he also mentions attending the arts and crafts school in Braunschweig ("Kartonage u. Buchbinder") and a course at the University of Physical Education in Berlin . That looks like targeted preparation for what actually happened in 1934, the Aliyah , the immigration to Palestine together with the entire family, which now included three children: Gabriel (1920–1943), Uriel (1923–2017) and Rachel (later married Galay).

From 1924 to 1929 Hugo Rosenthal was a teacher at the Hebrew secondary school in Haifa, where he worked as a sports and handicraft teacher. He also founded an institute for children's research there, and then returned to Germany in 1929 due to health and economic problems. Rosenthal chooses a different reading: he returned to expand his vocational training and then became a teacher at a Berlin elementary school. And apparently only a temporary stay in Germany was planned, because he writes: "The rapid growth of the National Socialist movement made me postpone my return to Erez Israel." From 1931 to 1933, according to his curriculum vitae, he took over the "management of a working group of teachers, Students, youth leaders on questions Jewish. Education ”and“ produced an amazing wealth of scientific and journalistic publications ”. Lucie Schachne has included a selection of these writings in her bibliography.

The political dimension of 1933 does not play a role in Hugo Rosenthal's résumé. At the time, Anna Essinger seemed “no longer to be a place in Germany where children could be raised in honesty and freedom”, which is why she was looking for a new home outside Germany for the Herrlingen Landschulheim . Hugo Rosenthal and his wife drew a different conclusion: "My wife and I decide to stay in Germany as long as there is an opportunity for orderly educational work for me." In a later manuscript, which was never published, he even describes this decision of himself and his wife as a decision “to remain on the newly formed Jewish front in Germany”. A lively journalistic work was part of this “perseverance on the Jewish front”. “In the summer months of the fateful year 1933 he tried with all means of journalistic persuasiveness to arouse the Jewish parents and community representatives again and again by showing them the dangers to which their children were exposed by staying in state schools. In addition, he developed his theory of a planned Jewish-German school education, which should positively replace the previous education and at the same time meet the practical requirements of emigration. ”In this context, Schachne quotes from an essay by Rosenthal that Rosenthal published on June 16, 1933 in the Jüdische Rundschau , for which he was responsible for the "educational supplement" created in the spring of 1933, had published:

“The synthesis of Judaism and general education, which has begun in the last century, has yet to be crowned. In the ghetto we limited ourselves to Jewish education; after emancipation the pendulum swung to the other side. Now, however, when a new period of German-Jewish life begins, it is a matter of uniting both and of conveying the incomparable legacy of the Jewish spirit to our youth in a modern form, as well as Jewish contemporary studies and future will, but at the same time with secular education and with the great Familiarize yourself with the culture in which our life is included. We don't want to lead our people back into a narrow space, but rather open up the vastness of the horizon for them. But this can only happen without damage if you stand on solid ground yourself. This task is not a "Zionist" one, but an all-Jewish one. "

Despite these different assessments, Anna Essinger and Hugo Rosenthal met a little later, which led to the founding of the Jewish rural school home in Herrlingen .

The Herrlinger Years

The period between 1933 and 1939 is only worth two brief sentences for Rosenthal in his résumé: founding the home, dissolving the home. He does not go into detail about his work there. He did not do this until many years later, in the mid-1970s, when he was busy writing the history of the Jewish rural school home in Herrlingen and also getting archive material from Germany. The handwritten manuscript of this planned but no longer realized publication is now in Yad Vashem (see sources). From it, the history of the Jewish country school home, the third alongside Caputh and Coburg, can be reconstructed.

It is not known when Anna Essinger, after she had made the decision to emigrate to England with her students, thought about a further use of her Herrlinger property. But according to Hugo Rosenthal, it was she (he always called "Fräulein Essinger") who got in touch with him during this process.

“We knew about each other, but didn't know each other. At the beginning of August 1933, on the same day on which the last moving van drove down the steep Wippinger Landstrasse, I arrived in Herrlingen for a 24-hour visit. [..] We discussed in general terms the requirements for taking over your property. But not the financial questions were in the foreground. They would be resolved or they would not be resolved.
How will the new home relate to the owner of the previous one, with whom I had to enter into a lease, will this result in a different kind of dependency? This and similar brooding vanished like Rauch at the beginning of our conversation. She intended to hand the property over to her brother in Ulm, who, as a Zionist, was no less interested than she was, that the home would serve the Jewish education in future.

Essinger and Rosenthal, for whom the prospect of a job in a country school home was what he had “viewed as the most perfect since his earliest educational work”, quickly agreed. After joint negotiations with the ministerial department for the secondary schools in Stuttgart, which led the authority and with a lot of benevolence for Anna Essinger Theodor Bracher (1876-1955), the father of the later political scientist Karl Dietrich Bracher , was by a decree of 20 September 1933 the continuation of the Herrlingen country school home in its previous form was approved. With reference to this decree, the ministerial department made it clear again on November 2, 1933 that “continuation in the previous form” did not mean conversion of the rural school home into a Jewish school and the use of the term “Jewish rural school home” should not be used have. Rosenthal adhered to this requirement, which resulted in the contradiction that he only ever advertised his "Landschulheim Herrlingen", while it was known to the Jewish public as the "Jüdisches Landschulheim Herrlingen".

The most important tasks that had to be tackled before and after the opening of the Landschulheim in October 1933 concerned the organizational and financial security of ongoing operations. In this context, Hugo Rosenthal mentions two people who have particularly helped him: his friend Hans Beyth and Otto Hirsch . Hirsch, President of the Upper Council of the Israelite Religious Community in Württemberg and Managing Director of the Reich Representation of German Jews , promised Rosenthal at their first meeting that they would procure the operating resources for the first half of the year.

The country school home developed positively at the beginning and was able to record steadily increasing numbers of students. However, it was also subject to high fluctuation at all levels - that of the students as well as that of the teachers. The reasons for this were always the same: emigration, professional preparation, reduced financial performance. The school year 1937-38 ended with full occupancy of the home, but with the school year 1938/39 there was a significant decrease in the number of pupils, which increased after the annexation of Austria. The school now only had 25 students, its closure was foreseeable and took place at Easter 1939. On April 1, 1939, Hugo Rosenthal informed the ministerial department for secondary schools in Stuttgart that the country school home had been closed and asked for support in his efforts to find furnishings to be able to take them abroad. By then, his children had already left the country. This ended after 28 years the history of the country school homes in Herrlingen . The buildings were then used as a Jewish forced retirement home.

Hugo Rosenthal spent the months leading up to his emigration in Herrlingen and Lautern (Blaustein) , where "he had occasionally withdrawn with his wife". The Yad Vashem Documentation belonging to Josef Hugo Rosenthal-Jashuvi show that Rosenthal had a long and close connection to this place, in which the country school home even rented a house that was used as a kind of school country home. Rosenthal's text, which was written much later, makes it clear how much he felt connected to this landscape and its history and confirms what his son Uriel reports about the time immediately before the emigration: that his father still wandered a lot in the area, “around himself , armed with the camera, to take many last memories with me ”.

Hugo Rosenthal and his wife left the German Reich for Palestine in August 1939 .

Life and work in Israel

In his curriculum vitae he notes: “1939 August 15th received by Hans Beyth and our three children in the port of Tel Aviv.” After arrival, the family lived for a few months in the children's and youth village Ben Shemen founded by Siegfried Lehmann . Rosenthal refreshed his knowledge of the Hebrew language here and also took on his Hebrew name during this time. From then on he called himself Josef Jashuvi . “'Yashuvi' - the one who has returned - he wanted to be called. His mistake, which he was of course not aware of at the time, was that this word actually means 'settler'. But the 'settlers' also corresponded to both his way of life and his attitude towards his new home. "

In 1941 Josef Jashuvi moved to Kirjat Bialik and became director of the “Ahava” (love) children's home in Haifa. This home was originally a Berlin orphanage that was able to emigrate to Palestine between 1934 and 1938 under the direction of Beate Berger . For his work there, he has been recognized by both the Alijah for children and young people and the FICE .

After his retirement in 1956, Josef Jashuvi and his wife moved to Kirjat Amal near Haifa. Here he wrote numerous theoretical papers on education and psychology, prepared lectures, wrote fairy tales and began working on an autobiography. His last entry in the curriculum vitae, which has already been quoted several times, relates to the year 1966 with the forthcoming publication of the book Education and tradition: forty years of education (see below).

His wife Betty, whom he called 'Judith', died in October 1976. He himself, who had spent the last years of his life in a home, died on December 6, 1980.

Zionism and Reform Education

Using the example of two essays ( Attempts with a New Upbringing in Palestine and Jewish Land and Jewish Fate ) that Hugo Rosenthal published after his return from his first visit to Palestine in the early 1930s, Peter WA Schmidt refers to Rosenthal's pride about “the creative further training of German educational reform concepts and practices ”in Palestine. At Rosenthal, however, this enthusiasm for educational reform always had a religious foundation, which not only led his first emigration to Palestine, but also the development of his educational ideas. Rosenthal was a socialist Zionist and a "religiously influenced Jewish educator". For Rosenthal it is a “basic fact” that “the Jewish population in all countries represents a historically, sociologically, socio-psychological and religiously differentiated ethnic group, whose peculiarities are not completely blurred even in the case of extensive assimilation In the event of a conscious affirmation, heightened awareness of this is his declared goal, and that means for him: “The Jewish school should re-create awareness of Israel on the ruins of emancipation. She has no other way for this than that which leads back to the sources of Judaism. This path is the eternally contemporary one for a Jewish school. [..] Hebrew must again become the center of the student's Jewish education . [..] The picture of the Jewish school that our time needs would be absolutely incomplete if it did not also emphasize the importance of physical and manual education for students. "

Even if there is also the demand to teach the history and meaning of Zionism as well as Palestine studies, according to Schachne there is no ostensible national-Jewish orientation behind it. Rather, the educational task for Rosenthal was “to familiarize the young Jews with an educational material that had developed from the culture and tradition of their own, centuries-old community. These were the elements that made up the intellectual equipment that should help them to make an independent decision about how to shape the future. "Feidel-Mertz sees in this the idea of ​​strengthening a Jewish school community with a targeted education to" a 'double identity' based on both the Jewish and another national culture, either the native German or a potential country of exile ”. And Peter WA Schmidt particularly emphasizes the demand for independence inherent in these ideas, which should be striven for “z. B. through as much independent activity of the children / adolescents as possible, especially in early childhood with the family. This enables a courageous attitude, again as a prerequisite for self-confidence. For Rosenthal / Jaschuwi, intensive promotion of body, soul and spirit always belonged together, hence the strong emphasis on sport, but everything with extensive freedom. Education always includes the consistent self-education of the educators and should particularly work through an exemplary life: Exempla trahunt! "

For the implementation of these ideas, which were not without controversy within the Jewish organizations of the time, Hugo Rosenthal found a suitable place of work in the Jewish school home in Herrlingen - despite the difficult political conditions. Even before his second emigration, in 1938, he had tried to anchor his educational ideas in Palestine as well. Through his friend Hans Beyth, he tried to find supporters for his plan for a “children's village province”; Three hundred children and young people each, mainly children rescued from Germany, were supposed to build a new home for themselves as autonomously as possible. With the help of only a few adults, they should make a living largely through their own work. This plan found little support in Zionist circles and failed due to financial and structural plans. Even in later years, after his emigration to Palestine, his work was not only met with approval. His educational reform concepts met with resistance, as did his adherence to a synthesis of Jewish faith and socialism. This was not particularly acceptable for socialist settlers who no longer had any ties to the Jewish religion. Nevertheless, on the occasion of his retirement in 1956, he said goodbye to his long-term workplace full of optimism.

“My brothers and friends, here are my three beliefs: in God, in human beings and in the progress of humanity. This belief has accompanied me on all my ways and guided all my actions. If I succeeded on my way, I was always aware that it was not my right to insist; and if I failed, I knew that he did not come from heaven alone ... The work is over, but not finished. There is no end to raising generations. "

Josef Jashuvi's last reading was Franz Rosenzweig's religious-philosophical work The Star of Redemption .

Appreciations

  • On February 28, 1957, Josef Jashuvi was awarded the Ordre De Mérite of the Union Internationale de Protection de l'Enfance in Geneva for his services to the protection and upbringing of children in Europe and Israel.
  • The memorial board of NS-Documentation Oberschwaben shows on its website a gallery of the upright , where so far “28 artists [..] have approached the people of resistance in their works in order to awaken empathy and the biographical complexity of the unadjusted to represent. [..] The gallery currently consists of around 60 portraits of people resisting the Nazi tyranny and of victims of the Nazi regime. " A portrait there is dedicated to Hugo Rosenthal (Joseph Jashuvi). It was painted by the artist Hermann Schenkel.

Works

  • The beginning of puberty in Jewish children. In: Journal for educational psychology and youth studies. 33, 1932, p. 63 ff. (Online)
  • The type contrast in the Jewish. History of religion. In: CG Jung: Reality of the Soul. Applications and Advances in Modern Psychology. Rascher, Zurich 1934.
  • Life memories. edited by Micheline Prüter-Müller and Peter Wilhelm A. Schmidt. Publishing house for regional history, Bielefeld 2000, ISBN 3-89534-378-1 . ("For the most part, it describes the author's childhood and youth in Westphalia, occasionally broken by reflections on the conflict-ridden coexistence of Jews and Palestinians at the time of writing in 1947." From the blurb of the publisher)
  • The tale. In: Iris Nölle-Hornkamp, ​​Hartmut Steinecke (Hrsg.): Westphalian life stations. Texts and testimonies by Jewish writers from Westphalia. Aisthesis, Bielefeld 2007, ISBN 978-3-89528-649-0 .
  • Education and tradition: forty years of education . Municipal Council, Dept. of Education and Culture, Haifa 1966. (The book is listed in WorldCat as an English title, but it was published in Hebrew and was a tribute to the city of Haifa on Jashuvi's 79th birthday. It contains a collection of essays)
  • Other books by him in Hebrew are listed in WorldCat.

swell

The document archive of the Digital Collections by Yad Vashem gives access to a large number of digitized original documents by Hugo Rosenthal / Josef Jashuvi. The documents are summarized in three files:

literature

  • Manfred Berger: Hugo Rosenthal - head of the Jewish country school home in Herrlingen. A biographical and educational sketch. In: Zeitschrift für Erlebnispädagogik (1997) / H. 9, pp. 76-81
  • Peter WA Schmidt : Education for courage. Life and work of the teacher and educator Hugo Rosenthal / Josef Jashuvi in ​​the German Empire, in British Palestine and in Israel. Self-published, 2016, ISBN 978-3-00-049859-6 .
  • Peter WA Schmidt: Hugo Rosenthal / Josef Jaschuwi as a German-Israeli educator. In: Sara Giebeler and others: Profiles of Jewish educators. (= Edition House under the Rainbow. 3). Klemm and Oelschläger, Ulm 2000, ISBN 3-932577-23-X , pp. 7-39.
  • Lucie Schachne: Education for Spiritual Resistance: The Jewish Landschulheim Herrlingen 1933–1939. dipa-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1986, ISBN 3-7638-0509-5 . There is also an English edition of the book: Education towards spiritual resistance: the Jewish Landschulheim Herrlingen, 1933 to 1939 , dipa-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1988, ISBN 978-3-7638-0510-5 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ester Golan: Review. 2005. to: Gudrun Maierhof, Chan Schütz, Herman Simon (eds.): Children became letters. The rescue of Jewish children from Nazi Germany. Ed. Berlin im Metropol-Verlag, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-936411-86-7 .
  2. ↑ Yad Vashem Documentation belonging to Josef Hugo Rosenthal-Jashuvi , File 66, Documents 253 and 254. Unless a different source is given, all further life data are taken from these two documents, pages 1 and 2 of the curriculum vitae. The typewritten curriculum vitae does not contain any place or date information that would allow conclusions to be drawn about its origin. A handwritten addition can be interpreted as “5 Nov”.
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g Hugo Rosenthal
  4. ↑ * September 28, 1893 - † 1976. Her parents came from Sterbfritz
  5. ↑ Lucie Schachne: Education for spiritual resistance. 1986, p. 38.
  6. ↑ Lucie Schachne: Education for spiritual resistance. 1986, p. 243.
  7. ^ Anna Essinger: The Bunce Court School (1933–1943). In: Hildegard Feidel-Mertz (Hrsg.): Schools in Exile. Repressed pedagogy after 1933 . rororo, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1983, ISBN 3-499-17789-7 , p. 72.
  8. ^ A b c Hugo Rosenthal: Otto Hirsch and the beginnings of the Jewish country school home in Herrlingen. In: Lucie Schachne: Education for spiritual resistance. 1986, pp. 40-49.
  9. ↑ Lucie Schachne: Education for spiritual resistance. 1986, p. 39.
  10. ^ Hugo Rosenthal: The Jewish School. quoted from: Lucie Schachne: Education for spiritual resistance. 1986, p. 39.
  11. ^ A b Yad Vashem Documentation belonging to Josef Hugo Rosenthal-Jashuvi , File 66, Document 73-75
  12. ↑ Lucie Schachne: Education for spiritual resistance. 1986, p. 62.
  13. ↑ Lucie Schachne: Education for spiritual resistance. 1986, p. 71.
  14. ↑ Lucie Schachne: Education for spiritual resistance. 1986, p. 86.
  15. ↑ Lucie Schachne: Education for spiritual resistance. 1986, pp. 90-93.
  16. ↑ Lucie Schachne: Education for spiritual resistance. 1986, p. 230.
  17. ^ Yad Vashem Documentation belonging to Josef Hugo Rosenthal-Jashuvi , File 66, Document 44-47
  18. ↑ Lucie Schachne: Education for spiritual resistance. 1986, p. 90.
  19. ↑ The two younger children, Uriel and Rachel, had arrived in Palestine some time before their parents, where their older brother Gabriel was already living. Gabriel was in training to become a naval officer and died on May 1, 1943 as a member of the British Navy. (Lucie Schachne: Education for Spiritual Resistance. 1986, p. 92)
  20. ↑ a b c Lucie Schachne: Education for spiritual resistance. 1986, pp. 90-93.
  21. ^ Ahava Village for Children & Youth
  22. ↑ Peter WA Schmidt: Hugo Rosenthal / Josef Jashuwi as a German-Israeli educator , p. 20
  23. ^ Peter WA Schmidt: Hugo Rosenthal / Josef Jaschuwi as a German-Israeli educator , p. 31
  24. ^ Hugo Rosenthal, quoted from Lucie Schachne: Education for Spiritual Resistance , p. 51
  25. ^ Hugo Rosenthal, quoted from Lucie Schachne: Education for Spiritual Resistance , pp. 53–54
  26. ↑ Lucie Schachne: Education for Spiritual Resistance , p. 55
  27. ↑ Hildegard Feidel-Mertz: The Pedagogy of the Landerziehungsheime im Exil, (updated version: Hermann Schnorbach) in: Inge Hansen-Schaberg (Ed.): Landerziehungsheim-Pädagogik, new edition, Reform pedagogical school concepts, Volume 2, Schneider Verlag Hohengehren GmbH, Baltmannsweiler, 2012, ISBN 978-3-8340-0962-3 , p. 166
  28. ↑ Peter WA Schmidt: Hugo Rosenthal / Josef Jaschuwi as a German-Israeli educator , p. 32
  29. ↑ Joseph Jashuvi, quoted by Peter Schmidt WA: Hugo Rosenthal / Josef Jaschuwi as a German-Israeli educator , pp 38-39.
  30. ^ Peter WA Schmidt: Hugo Rosenthal / Josef Jaschuwi as a German-Israeli pedagogue , p. 28
  31. ^ Yad Vashem Documentation belonging to Josef Hugo Rosenthal-Jashuvi , File 66, Document 48
  32. ^ Gallery of the upright
  33. ↑ Homepage Hermann Schenkel
  34. ^ Yad Vashem: Digital Collections
personal data
SURNAME Rosenthal, Hugo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Jashuvi, Josef
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Israeli educator
DATE OF BIRTH December 14, 1887
PLACE OF BIRTH Location (lip)
DATE OF DEATH December 6, 1980
Place of death Haifa