Joseph Anton Sickinger

Joseph Anton Sickinger (born September 21, 1858 in Harpolingen ; † August 3, 1930 in Oberstdorf ), grammar school teacher , created the Mannheim school system around 1900 as a city ​​school board member and school reformer together with the doctor and educator Julius Moses . This was the forerunner of the tripartite school system in Germany.

Life

Joseph Anton Sickinger was the son of a teacher and attended Swiss schools. Later he dealt intensively with Pestalozzi's ideas . He studied classical philology at the University of Heidelberg and graduated with a doctorate . After his state examination, Sickinger first became a teacher at a Karlsruhe grammar school , then in Bruchsal . In 1895, Mannheim's Lord Mayor Otto Beck took the then 37-year-old head of the municipal primary school rectorate. 80 percent of all school-age children attended elementary school at the time, but only a third of boys and a fifth of girls reached the (eighth) final grade.

One of his goals was to encourage students according to their respective abilities. He wanted to achieve this through differentiation. The talented primary school students were divided into main and normal classes. The less gifted pupils came in remedial classes, those with poor performance in auxiliary classes. In 1901 the first auxiliary school was opened for this. With this, Sickinger laid the foundation for the multi-part school system. The manageable class size that he prescribed meant around 35 students in the special classes instead of 60 to 70 in the regular classes. Language lessons were offered for grades 6 to 8 in order to enable the later transfer to a higher school. He made the transition to the “Realanstalten” through the support classes. There were classes for the hard of hearing and school kindergartens for school-age but not yet schoolable children. In 1908 he introduced compulsory game afternoons for elementary school pupils, sponsored school sports festivals and had showers installed in schools. He prescribed swimming lessons in the municipal indoor swimming pool , introduced the school hiking day , handicraft and handicraft lessons , school concerts and school theater performances , school libraries and school gardens.

The Mannheim school system met with great interest in specialist circles after Sickinger first presented it in 1904 at an international school congress in Nuremberg . In the following period it was adopted by the states of Hesse and Saxony as well as by over 150 German and Austrian cities, and even in many places around the world such as Zurich , Vienna , Copenhagen , Moscow and Cincinnati .

Sickinger gained decisive influence in Germany at the Reichsschulkonferenz (1920), in whose committee for school development he participated. There he campaigned for a uniform elementary school . In addition, Sickinger appointed a school doctor for the first time in Mannheim in 1904 and, in 1922, Hans Lämmermann, Germany's first school psychologist to support the school reform. He retired in 1923. In 1935 the Mannheim school system was banned by the National Socialists.

Others

The journalist Karl Seyfried, a student of Sickinger, said in an article from 1958: “The city school councilor with his loosely combed back hair, the moderately long, well-groomed beard and the somewhat dark look was a dreaded personality among teachers and students. Nevertheless he was very respected and popular everywhere. "

The former Sickingerschule in Mannheim

In 1915 he introduced himself to the Landsturmleuten at the NCO School in Ettlingen with the words: “My name is Sickinger. In peacetime I can cope with 20,000 Mannheim school children, I will cope with you guys too! "

• The Sickingerschule, secondary school in T4, 5 in downtown Mannheim , which was closed in 2011 , was named after him.
• Bad Säckingen has a Josef Anton Sickinger primary school.
• In 1930 the Josef-Sickinger-Gasse in Vienna- Donaustadt (22nd district) was named after him.

Fonts

• Contribution to the understanding of the xenophontic anabasis and the ancient Greek elementary tactics. Bruchsal 1893 ( digitized version )
• Prussian or Badisches Schulturnen. Karlsruhe 1903.
• (with A. Sickinger): The Mannheim elementary school's special class system. In: Report on the 1st International Congress for School Hygiene, Nuremberg, 4. – 9. April 1904. Schrag, Nuremberg 1904, p. 192ff.
• Work lessons, unified school, Mannheim school system in the light of the Reich constitution. Quelle & Meyer, Leipzig 1920.
• Fifty years of the Baden Simultaneous School. Speech at the anniversary. Konkordia A.-G., Bühl (Baden) 1926.
• On the history of the support classes (25 years of the Mannheim school system). Beltz, Langensalza 1926.

literature

• Baden biographies . NF. Volume 3, p. 254.
• Theodor Bäuerle: Commitment to Education in Difficult - Anton Sickinger. In: Mannheimer Hefte. Issue 1, 1958, pp. 26-34.
• Guido Walz (Red.): The Brockhaus Mannheim. 400 years of the city of squares - The Lexicon. Brockhaus, Mannheim 2006, ISBN 3-7653-0181-7 , pp. 216 and 303f.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ City of Mannheim July 26, 2011

Web links

• About Anton Sickinger and the Mannheim school system City of Mannheim
• Literature by and about Joseph Anton Sickinger in the catalog of the German National Library