Ida Hohenemser

Ida Hohenemser (approx. 1910), archived in the Ida-Seele archive

Ida Hohenemser (born November 10, 1866 in Frankfurt am Main ; † July 9, 1920 in ibid.) Was a German Montessori educator and philanthropist . She founded the first Montessori kindergarten in Germany.

Live and act

Ida Hohenemser came from a wealthy and influential Jewish banking family who had family ties with the financial elite in Germany and Europe. Her aunt was Emma Guerrieri Gonzaga , wife of the Italian freedom fighter Carlo Guerrieri Gonzaga . The resistance fighter Elisabeth Schumacher was her niece. Ida Hohenemser received the usual training for girls of her class at the time, ie private tuition, secondary school for girls, followed by a girls' pension. She lived with her aunt in Italy for several years. There she met her friend Maria Montessori . Around 1913/1914 Ida Hohenemser lived for a short time in her parents' house in Frankfurt and then moved to Meiningen . There she supported her widowed sister-in-law in looking after her five children and also founded a small kindergarten in her apartment for “poor children who ran around hungry and neglected on the streets while their mothers worked in the factories ... their apartment and their beautiful one Gardens in Meiningen became the first German 'house for children'. She raised and taught the little ones using the Maria Montessori method ”.

In 1926 Maria Montessori's book Montessori Education for School Children was published in a translation by Ida Hohenemser. She committed suicide on July 9, 1920.

literature

• Clara Grunwald : About the Montessori movement in Germany. In: Axel Holtz: The child is the focus. Ulm 1995, pp. 77-87.
• Franz-Michael Konrad : Kindergarten or Kinderhaus? Montessori reception and educational discourse in Germany until 1939. Freiburg / Brsg. 1997.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Grunwald 1995, p. 80
2. ↑ Konrad 1997, p. 145

Web links

• Mosaico biografico, Emma Hohenemser Guerrieri Gonzaga . Rovereto (Trento), Tipolitografia Festini, 2013.