Karl Liebknecht School (Moscow)

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Karl Liebknecht School
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type of school primary school
founding 1924
closure 1938
place Moscow
City with subject status Moscow
Country Russia

The Karl Liebknecht School ( Russian: Немецкая школа им. К. Либкнехта ) was a German-language primary school for children of political emigrants in Moscow . It existed from 1924 to 1938 and was named in 1932 after Karl Liebknecht , the murdered co-founder of the Communist Party of Germany .

The beginnings of the school

In the 1920s, many German-speaking people moved to the Soviet Union to help build socialism there. For their children, a German school was founded in Moscow, which began work on March 15, 1924 under the name "German Labor School First Level No. 37". Classes took place in the afternoon because the school was temporarily housed in another school, "School No. 63", an institution for mentally retarded children. In October 1925, the company moved to another temporary facility, a large apartment, some of which was also used as an apartment.

In the early years the school shaped a rather middle-class western tradition. Under the reigning headmistress Elsa Weber from 1927, the school moved into its own school building on September 1, 1928. At the same time, under Weber's direction, the conceptual orientation changed towards a communist elite school, which was particularly evident in the changing social composition of the student body.

In September 1932, the "Uniform Labor School No. 37" became the "Karl Liebknecht School". For Soviet standards at the time, this was a great honor, as only very few schools were allowed to bear the names of deserving personalities. In the same year, the school leader was the reform pedagogue Helmut Schinkel, "who moved to the Soviet Union in 1929 and was arrested there in 1937". Even before his arrest, Schinkel had been replaced by the Hungarian Sophie Krammer in 1934/1935.

The school of the emigrant children

The school gained further growth when, after the nationalist seizure of power in Germany and the associated persecution, many communists emigrated to the Soviet Union. Their children were also taught in the Karl Liebknecht School, including Wolfgang Leonhard , who started school there at the beginning of the 1935 school year. His mother Susanne Leonhard describes the school's situation at this point in time:

“The new school year begins on September 1st in the Soviet Union. In 1935 a beautiful new building was built on Kropotkinstrasse for the German school [..], which was inaugurated on August 31, 1935. Every school year of the lower and middle school had at least three parallel classes, in total the school was attended by 750 students. There was co-education. "

In addition, the then fourteen-year-old Wolfgang Leonhard describes his first day at the Karl Liebknecht School:

“I reported to the director, Comrade Shelasko, to finish the schooling formalities. Starting school had not been easy because the structure of the Soviet school system differs considerably from that of other countries. In the Soviet Union, compulsory schooling does not begin until the age of 8, there is a single school, whereby the first 7 classes are compulsory for everyone, while the 8th, 9th and 10th grades are attended by those who are at a college or university want to study. "

The lessons, which were still held in German, were based on Russian textbooks that had been translated verbatim into German. It was based on the curriculum of the Soviet standard school for the first seven grades. The earlier approaches to progressive pedagogy were no longer tolerated, everyday school life was strictly regulated, the requirements were high, and there was a very clear political orientation in all subjects. In addition, there was paramilitary training, which had taken the place of gymnastics lessons, provided for mandatory target practice and the use of gas masks.

Susanne and Wolfgang Leonhard unanimously report on how the political climate of the Stalin era affected everyday school life, on the fear of students and teachers to say something that could trigger political misinterpretations, and on the sudden disappearance of individual teachers, which was never discussed. However, Wolfgang Leonhard and Markus Wolf also agree that they were not worried because of their previous socialization. And Wolf adds:

“At that time, indoctrination should in fact not be thought of as something inconvenient and unpleasant for us. The positives predominated. I remember, for example, how the writer Vsevolod Vishnevsky, a close friend of our father, a hero of the revolution and the civil war, took my brother Konrad and me to the stands on Red Square in his naval uniform. An incredible experience. The fact that Stalin was cheered on was simply part of it. "

The Karl Liebknecht School was closed in early 1938 because it was now said that schools for national minorities were no longer compatible with the official communist party line. The older children who attended grades seven to eight had already been allocated to Russian schools on September 1, 1937.

The same fate befell the children's home No. 6 , comfortably furnished by Soviet standards, in the summer of 1939 , in which many German-speaking children, mainly children of Austrian emigrants, lived. Most of them were the children of the "Schutzbündler", the participants in the Austrian uprising of February 1934.

Teacher at the Karl Liebknecht School

Many emigrated teachers worked at the school, including some who had previously attended the Karl Marx School founded by Fritz Karsen in Berlin-Neukölln. From March 1937 on, one after the other, the headmaster Shelasko and his successor Krammer were arrested. Only a few people know their further fate.

Natalia Mussienko and Alexander Vatlin report on 67 teachers who have taught at the Karl Liebknecht School. The following are said to have come from school reform circles or were practicing reform pedagogues:

  • Karl-August Strümpfel, formerly a free school and work community in Letzlingen;
  • Henry Friedag, formerly Rütli School in Berlin-Neukölln;
  • Helmut Schinkel (born October 14, 1902 in Kosten , † May 31, 1946 in an NKVD camp), also a former Rütli school in Berlin-Neukölln and before that teacher and educator at the Barkenhoff children's home . Schinkel, director of the Karl Liebknecht School in 1932, was sentenced to eight years in a labor camp in 1938 and died there in 1946. According to Natalia Mussienko and Alexander Vatlin, "the school under Schinkel's direction from 1932-1934 experienced its heyday".

Seven teachers had not acquired any practical pedagogical experience before their entry into the Soviet Union, but came from reform-oriented teaching institutions; five of them from the Karl Marx School in Berlin-Neukölln:

  • Otto Knobel,
  • Bruno Krömke, he was no longer able to complete a philosophical dissertation in Germany. After his arrest, Krömke was deported to Germany and imprisoned in Oranienburg-Sachsenhausen concentration camp, from which he was released in 1938. After various occupations he was drafted into the German armed forces and fell in 1945. In 1989 he was rehabilitated in the Soviet Union.
  • Heinz Woidtke,
  • Georg Gerschinski, German and history teacher,
  • Heinz Lüschen, history and geography teacher.

Margarete Buber-Neumann reports on the fate of the teachers Lüschen and Gerschinski , who met them on their transport to Karaganda. Both were charged in 1937 - together with Otto Knobel and Bruno Krömke - of "having formed and participated in a counter-revolutionary fascist-Trotskyist group". They were then sentenced to five years in a camp in Kolyma, northern Siberia. There she was denounced as a spy by a former director of the Karl Liebknecht School, who was also incarcerated in Kolyma, probably in the hope that this would give him relief from prison. The two were then returned to Moscow for further interrogations, where they spent seven months in the NKVD Burirka prison and were tortured. Then they were relocated to Kolyma, where they happened to meet Buber-Neumann. “Lüschen was twenty-seven years old. When I saw his face in daylight, I knew that he had given up ... "

  • Isolde Krömke came from the Käthe-Kollwitz-Aufbauschule in Berlin-Neukölln. After her husband, Bruno Krömke, was arrested, she was released and had to leave the Soviet Union. She first went to Berlin and later lived in Bavaria, where she died in 1963.
  • Lieselotte Strümpfel was a graduate of the Free School and Work Community in Letzlingen.

There is no or only sporadic information about most of the teaching staff:

  • Georg Stieben, a Volga German,
  • Alexander stickleback,
  • Emmanuel cord,
  • Erika Hoer,
  • Otto Volkart, 1880–1960, Swiss. His estate was originally given to the study library founded by Theo Pinkus on the history of the workers' movement . In 1999 it came into the possession of the Zurich Central Library together with the other archival material from this library: the estate of the writer Otto Volkart
  • Schnur, director of the school around 1926,
  • Elsa Weber, head of the German school from 1927, dismissed in 1931 and expelled from the Communist Party,
  • Hermann Stielke, 1931–1934 teacher of biology, chemistry and physics, sentenced to shoot in 1937,
  • Fritz Nobody, 1933–1934 teacher for military affairs at the school, shot in 1937,
  • Jolanta Kelen-Fried,
  • Karl Zehetner, former Austrian Schutzbund fighter;
  • Grete Birkenfeld,
  • Dr. Franz Kaufmann, teacher of mathematics and chemistry,
  • Shelasko, penultimate director,
  • Sophie Krammer, last director.

In the “short biographies of foreign teachers and educational staff at the Karl Liebknecht School” compiled by Natalia Mussienko and Alexander Vatlin, the words “arrested”, “shot” or “expelled from the Soviet Union” are often found. The latter often meant extradition to Nazi Germany, and arrests often resulted in exile in prison camps or were only the preliminary stage to shooting. The subsequent rehabilitation that some received was in most cases only symbolic.

Known students

The Stalinist terror did not stop at the students of the Karl Liebknecht School. Natalia Mussienko and Alexander Vatlin document 50 "victims of Stalinist repression among the schoolchildren", another 5 children were housed as "children of the enemies of the people" in NKVD children's homes and an unknown number were victims of deportations.

literature

  • Henry-Ralph Lewenstein: The Karl Liebknecht School in Moscow 1932-1937. A student's memories. Northeast German Cultural Work, Lüneburg 1991.
  • Natalia Mussienko, Alexander Vatlin: School of Dreams: The Karl Liebknecht School in Moscow (1924–1938). Klinkhardt, Bad Heilbrunn 2005, ISBN 3-7815-1368-8 .
  • Susanne Leonhard: Stolen Life. Fate of a political émigré in the Soviet Union. 4th edition. Steingrüben Verlag, Stuttgart 1959, p. 33.
  • Wolfgang Leonhard: The revolution dismisses its children . Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne / Berlin 1955.
  • Siegfried Jenkner: Memories of political prisoners of the GULAG. An annotated bibliography. Published by the Hannah Arendt Institute for Totalitarian Research e. V. at the Technical University of Dresden, Dresden 2003, ISBN 3-931648-45-1 , p. 38. The study can be viewed on the Internet: Siegfried Jenkner: Memories of political prisoners

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Natalia Mussienko, Alexander Vatlin: School of Dreams. Pp. 35-37.
  2. ↑ Natalia Mussienko, Alexander Vatlin: School of Dreams. P. 59.
  3. ↑ Natalia Mussienko, Alexander Vatlin: School of Dreams. P. 24
  4. ^ Siegfried Jenkner: Memories of political prisoners on the GULAG. P. 38. Schinkel died in 1946 in a North Russian penal camp.
  5. ^ Susanne Leonhard: Stolen Life. Fate of a political émigré in the Soviet Union. 4th edition. Steingrüben Verlag, Stuttgart 1959, p. 33.
  6. ^ Wolfgang Leonhard: The revolution dismisses its children . Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne / Berlin 1955, pp. 15-16.
  7. ↑ Hildegard Feidel-Mertz: Pedagogy in Exile after 1933. P. 177.
  8. ↑ Wolfgang Leonhard and Markus Wolf about their youth under Stalin and the fall of communism
  9. ^ Wolfgang Leonhard: The revolution dismisses its children. Pp. 26-30.
  10. ↑ Wolfgang Leonhard and Markus Wolf about their youth under Stalin and the fall of communism
  11. ^ Wolfgang Leonhard: The revolution dismisses its children. P. 34.
  12. ↑ On life in the home and its closure: Wolfgang Leonhard: The revolution dismisses its children. P. 19f. as well as p. 57f.
  13. ↑ Hildegard Feidel-Mertz: Pedagogy in Exile after 1933. P. 177.
  14. ↑ School of Dreams. Pp. 24-25.
  15. ↑ School of Dreams. P. 101. A detailed biography of Helmut Schinkel comes from Ulla Plener : Helmut Schinkel: Between Vogeler's Barkenhoff and Stalin's camp. Biography of a reform pedagogue (1902-1946) , Trafo-Verlag, 2nd edition, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-89626-142-8 & Helmut Schinkel , in: Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German communists. Biographical Handbook 1918 to 1945 . 2nd, revised and greatly expanded edition. Karl Dietz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 .
  16. ↑ Natalia Mussienko, Alexander Vatlin: School of Dreams. P. 97.
  17. ↑ Natalia Mussienko and Alexander Vatlin: School of Dreams. P. 244
  18. ↑ Natalia Mussienko and Alexander Vatlin: School of Dreams. P. 153
  19. ↑ Margarete Buber-Neumann: As prisoners with Stalin and Hitler. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 1962, pp. 53–55.
  20. ↑ Materials about this school are available in the Scripta Paedagogica Online SPO portal : Reports on the activities of the Käthe-Kollwitz-Schule for the school years 1928/29 to 1931/32
  21. ↑ Natalia Mussienko and Alexander Vatlin: School of Dreams. Pp. 244-245
  22. ^ Wolfgang Leonhard: The revolution dismisses its children. P. 46.
  23. ^ Wolfgang Leonhard: The revolution dismisses its children. P. 46. After Natalia Mussienko and Alexander Vatlin: School of Dreams. P. 98, he had studied social economy in Frankfurt.
  24. ↑ School of Dreams. Pp. 236-253.
  25. ↑ The previously mentioned Heinz Lüschen was rehabilitated twice, once in 1960 for his shooting in 1942 and 1989 for his arrest in 1937. Natalia Mussienko and Alexander Vatlin: School of Dreams. P. 245
  26. ↑ Natalia Mussienko and Alexander Vatlin: School of Dreams. Pp. 257-258.