Jenny Heymann

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Jenny Heymann (born October 28, 1890 in Stuttgart ; † June 13, 1996 there ) was a German educator who had to leave the state school service in 1933 due to her Jewish faith. From 1933 to 1939 she taught at the Jüdisches Landschulheim Herrlingen and then emigrated to England. In 1947 she returned to Stuttgart and worked as a teacher for the next few years. After her retirement in 1956 she became managing director of the Society for Christian-Jewish Cooperation in Stuttgart .

Youth and education

Jenny Heymann is the daughter of the banker Heinrich Heymann (1849–1924) and his wife Helene (born Brüll, April 6, 1866 in Steinhart (Upper Bavaria) - April 9, 1941 in Stuttgart). She attended the secondary school for daughters at the Königin-Katharina-Stift in Stuttgart and after graduating there also the teachers ' seminar . After her examination in 1910, she taught as a lower school teacher in various positions. She caught up with the Latinum and from 1919 to 1922 she completed further studies in modern philology in Tübingen and Hamburg, which she completed with the state examination for a higher teaching post.

Her studies at the University of Tübingen, which were not very open and liberal during the German Empire and the Weimar Republic , remained rather poorly remembered well into old age. In an interview with her in 1995 on the occasion of her 100th birthday, she mentioned "that anti-Semitism at the university [..] was so painful and humiliating during her student days that she still does not talk about it today" wool.

After completing her studies, Jenny Heymann taught as a trainee teacher at schools in Stuttgart and Göppingen, and in 1929 she was appointed to the girls' high school in Ludwigsburg, today's Goethe-Gymnasium. Here she met the year before the first headmistress in Württemberg, Dr. Elisabeth Kranz (1887–1972), to whom she remained lifelong friends and with whom she moved in together after her return from emigration.

Jenny Heymann, who from 1929 to 1932 also worked as editor of the Württembergische Lehrerinnen-Zeitung of the Württemberg teachers' association, which was published from 1921 to 1933, was dismissed from school as a non-Aryan on September 6, 1933. It must have been particularly painful for her and her friend Elisabeth Kranz that it was Kranz of all people who had to hand her the certificate of discharge.

Jewish country school home in Herrlingen

At the beginning of August 1933, Anna Essinger and Hugo Rosenthal met for the first time to negotiate the continuation and conversion of the Herrlingen country school home into a Jewish country school home under Rosenthal's direction. They quickly came to an agreement, so the next step was to talk to the school inspectorate. Rosenthal remembered this appointment as follows: "A week or two later I was back in Herrlingen to be introduced by Anna Essinger to the President of the Ministry for Higher Education, Mr. Bracher." This visit to Bracher did not last long, but it did at the end of this, Rosenthal expected a surprise. “When we were about to leave, President Bracher held me back for a moment. 'According to the law, we had to dismiss one of our most valued teachers, Miss Jenny Heymann, from the service. I would be happy if you saw the opportunity to employ her in your country school home. ' I looked over at Miss Essinger, dismayed. She was no doubt surprised, but there was nothing disturbing in her expression. Apparently she knew the schoolteacher Heymann. So I replied calmly that I would be happy to meet Fraulein Heymann. "

The high ministerial official, who was so concerned about Jenny Heymann and also approved the continuation of the country school home by Hugo Rosenthal, was Theodor Bracher (1876–1955), the father of the later political scientist Karl Dietrich Bracher . Ultimately, it was thanks to Heymann that she was able to teach at the Jüdisches Landschulheim Herrlingen from October 1933 and remained associated with the school as a teacher until it closed in spring 1939. At the same time, the change from the state school service to the Jewish rural school home was not an easy step for her.

“In October 1933 I entered the Jewish school home in Herrlingen. I had moved away from Judaism. Because of my job, my best friends were Christians. Although my parents were conscious Jews, they belonged to that liberal group that had completely broken away from religion and its customs. I was already in the middle of life and looked forward to the future with great anxiety. How would I find my way around? Would the sentence prove itself that every beginning has a magic inherent in it? For the first time I got to know people who were rooted in Judaism, who loved it and knew about it. [..] Hugo Rosenthal was a staunch Zionist . I myself was an absolute believer in assimilation . I still believed that the rule of the Nazis would soon come to an end, while Hugo Rosenthal prophesied perfectly correctly, but not to the last extent. "

The school itself, the form of teaching, which she described as coming from an authoritarian time, felt much freer than at the state school and the completely different interaction between students and adults was initially new territory for her. But the changeover was successful, which is why a celebratory speech on the occasion of her 90th birthday on October 28, 1980 expressed a lot of sympathy for her.

“Even thrown off the beaten track in her professional work, she was, like her young colleagues, looking for new values ​​that should not break the relationship with those of the past, but which still had to be oriented towards a new future. It was a long and arduous journey - there were some students and adults who sought and found help from Jenny Heymann. It was her motherly warmth, constant willingness to help, her humor and her tolerance that contributed to a very special atmosphere in the school community and also in the school hours. Your small private room was a meeting point. "

Jenny Heymann was not only an important support for others in difficult times, but also received encouragement herself. Her friend Elisabeth Kranz, mentioned above, who rejected the National Socialist regime and who had retired early in 1937 at the age of 50 at her own request, showed moral courage “by standing by her Jewish colleague Jenny Heymann and her mother, whom she was even more open to Street and had to accept a 'strict discipline' and the blocking of part of their property. "

emigration

At the end of March 1939 there was no getting around the closure of the Jewish rural school home in Herrlingen . Jenny Heymann emigrated immediately and lived in London from July 1939 to December 1946. During her time in Herrlingen she had apparently also owned an apartment in Stuttgart. Elisabeth Kranz now moved into this.

Jenny Heymann worked in London as a teacher and gave, among other things, English courses for emigrants, but she also had to make ends meet as a housemaid and cleaning lady. During this time she made friends with Caroline Senator (1896–1994), an English teacher, with whom she built up the English-German student exchange between the North London Collegiate School and the Goethe-Gymnasium Ludwigsburg from 1949 .

There is hardly any further information about Jenny Heymann's years in emigration, but just as her private room in Herrlingen had already become a meeting point for many schoolchildren, in London, too, “her small apartment became a meeting place again, almost 'like at home' where you could get new strength to cope with loneliness and perplexity. That was the time when the kindergarten teacher became a friend. ”The former Herrlingers who also lived in London benefited from this collection point in London.

Return to Germany

The following anecdote is passed down from the Stuttgart City Archives about Jenny Heymann's decision about her life after the end of the Second World War: “After the end of the war, Jenny Heymann originally wanted to emigrate from London to the USA. However, Elisabeth Kranz persuaded them to come back to Stuttgart in the shared apartment, because allegedly they had so much coal. In the end it was a sack of coal. "

On January 1, 1947, Jenny Heymann returned to Stuttgart and was again a teacher in Ludwigsburg at the Goethe Gymnasium. Together with her English friend, Caroline Senator, she organized one of the first student exchanges with an English school here in 1949.

In 1948 Jenny Heymann was one of the first Stuttgarters who were contacted by the Allies about the establishment of a society for Christian-Jewish cooperation . In 1958 she took over the management of the company for half a year and also worked on its educational committee.

From 1950 until her retirement in 1955, Jenny Heymann taught as senior teacher at the Hölderlin-Gymnasium Stuttgart . She then gave private tuition and also took on a teaching assignment in a Catholic high school. Her long-time roommate and friend Elisabeth Kranz died in October 1972. A year later, in November 1973, Joan Brooks-Hill (a North Londoner, a former student of Caroline Senator) moved in with 82-year-old Jenny Heymann and lived with her until Jenny Heymann's death.

Jenny Heymann celebrated her 105th birthday in a serene atmosphere with former Herrlinger students: “The ten of us were now sitting at the oval table, and I almost felt like family. (...) It was more cheerful when we remembered the time 60 years ago. We pushed aside everything that was terrible. We survived ”.

Jenny Heymann lived in her Stuttgart apartment until her death in 1996. She was buried in the Israelite part of the Prague cemetery in Stuttgart .

One of her students at the Goethe-Gymnasium Ludwigsburg, who remained on friendly terms with her, was Margarete Dörr .

Appreciations

  • Jenny Heymann received the Otto Hirsch Award in 1990.
  • The Society for Christian-Jewish Cooperation (GCJZ) Stuttgart has awarded the Jenny Heymann Prize to upper school students since 2014 . The GCJZ honors student work on Christian-Jewish topics. The prize is awarded each year during the Week of Fraternity.

literature

  • Lucie Schachne: Education for Spiritual Resistance: The Jewish Landschulheim Herrlingen 1933–1939. dipa-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1986, ISBN 3-7638-0509-5 . In it also:
    • Jenny Heymann: From state school to country school home. Pp. 110-111.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ All of the following biographical information is based on two largely identical sources: a) Lucie Schachne's short biography in: Lucie Schachne: Education for spiritual resistance. P. 262, and b) on the short biography about the Jewish teacher Jenny Heymann (1890–1996) on the website on the history of Jewish institutions in Herrlingen . Individual references are only made if they do not refer to these two pages.
  2. ↑ a b c Mascha Riepl-Schmidt: Jenny Heymann (1890 to 1996)
  3. ↑ Christa Kersting: Pedagogy in post-war Germany. Science policy and discipline development 1945 to 1955. Verlag Julius Klinkhardt, Bad Heilbrunn, 2008, ISBN 978-3-7815-1581-9 , p. 225 (note 62)
  4. ↑ Marie Chiara Rehm: "She made us spiritually curious about our life" - The eventful life of the Jewish teacher Jenny Heymann
  5. ↑ a b c d Jenny Heymann in the Stuttgart City Archives
  6. ↑ History of the Goethe-Gymnasium - an overview
  7. ↑ File Number 66: Documentation belonging to Josef Hugo Rosenthal-Jashuvi, principal of the Jewish school in Herrlingen including an article regarding the history of the school, Hugo Rosenthal's identity card, brochures about the school and more , document (page) 74-75
  8. ↑ a b c d Jenny Heymann: From the state school to the country school home , in: Lucie Schachne: Education for spiritual resistance , pp. 110–111.
  9. ↑ Werner Beutelmeyer and Conrad Seidl: The ICH brand. This is how you develop your personal success strategy. Redline GmbH, Munich, 2003, ISBN 978-3-86881-520-7 , p. 134. Also in more detail: Heldin: Dr. Elisabeth Kranz (1887–1972)
  10. ↑ Misunderstood heroine: Dr. Elisabeth Kranz (1887–1972)
  11. ↑ a b c d History of the student exchange between the North London Collegiate School and the Goethe-Gymnasium Ludwigsburg
  12. ↑ Marie Chiara Rehm: "She made us spiritually curious about our lives". P. 10.
  13. ^ Jenny Heymann Prize of the Society for Christian-Jewish Cooperation (GCJZ) Stuttgart
personal data
SURNAME Heymann, Jenny
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German educator
DATE OF BIRTH October 28, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Stuttgart
DATE OF DEATH June 13, 1996
Place of death Stuttgart