Karl Marx School (Berlin-Neukölln)

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Karl Marx School
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type of school comprehensive school
founding 1923
closure 1933
address

Sonnenallee 79

place Berlin - Neukölln
country Berlin
Country Germany
Coordinates 52 ° 29 '1 "  N , 13 ° 26' 13"  E Coordinates: 52 ° 29 '1 "  N , 13 ° 26' 13"  E
management Fritz Karsen

The Karl Marx School in the Neukölln district of Berlin is one of the most famous reform school projects in Berlin from the Weimar period. It was initiated by the reform pedagogue Fritz Karsen , who was director of the Neukölln Kaiser-Friedrich-Realgymnasium from 1921 . In 1923 he added courses for high school graduates to this, which made it possible to make up for the high school diploma on the second educational path. In 1927 he added an eight-grade elementary school to the school . In 1929/30 this attempt at a unified school , which had the characteristics of today's comprehensive school , was renamed the Karl Marx School .

The way to an integrated comprehensive school

From the community school to the integrated school

In the Bund decided school reformers, which he co-founded, Karsen developed the idea of ​​a state uniform school in which productive community work should be carried out with the participation of the students. The education should result “from the structure of the developing society”. His first attempt to apply the ideas in practice failed in Berlin-Lichterfelde when the Prussian main cadet institute was converted into a civilian school.

Under the influence of the Berlin Upper City School Council Wilhelm Paulsen , Karsen developed a new comprehensive school concept. It was based on the Hamburg community schools that Paulsen had been promoting in Berlin since 1921. The basic idea of ​​the community schools was

“That they should be 'not an institution for teaching and education', but 'the living quarters of the youth'. In productive material and intellectual work, all the talents and inclinations of the pupils should be encouraged, and all 'creative powers in the child' should be released. The schools should be lifelike and open to life, permeated by the 'spirit of self-administration', not educating in a party-political way and free from any compulsion to confess. The pupils should mature into autonomous personalities, with the power to reflect and self-determination and with the ability to live together in solidarity, fair and civil. "

In 1922, Karsen founded a secondary school with two classes in the Kaiser-Friedrich-Realgymnasium located on Sonnenallee in Berlin's Neukölln district . It comprised six grades from the lower secondary to the upper primary . Now elementary school students after the seventh year could also attend a secondary school. In 1923 he opened courses for high school graduates for workers in which men and women who had long been employed but had only completed elementary school could complete their high school diploma within three years. This makes the worker high school graduate courses one of the oldest institutions in Germany for establishing a second educational path.

Sonnenallee 79: Kaiser-Friedrich-Realgymnasiums - Karl-Marx-Schule - Ernst-Abbe-Gymnasium
Entrance to the former Karl Marx School with a memorial plaque for Fritz Karsen
Memorial plaque on Haus Sonnenallee 79 in Berlin-Neukölln

An elementary school, the Kaiser-Friedrich-Realgymnasium and the advanced school were already part of Karsen's school complex on Sonnenallee when an eight-level elementary school was incorporated in 1927. Now he was able to develop and implement his overall didactic concept of a single school. He developed an overarching curriculum that was inspired by the schedule of the affiliated German Oberschule. Particular emphasis was placed on the German and cultural subjects and also on foreign languages ​​such as English and French.

The other reform pedagogy

Fritz Karsen was a school reformer. To call him a reform pedagogue would create an unjustified connection to the reform pedagogy , which determines the scientific discourse and public perception most sustainably through the theory and practice of the rural education centers . In his lecture Quo vadis Reformed Education? Jürgen Oelkers tries to prove that this very tradition played almost no role in the attempts at reform in the state school system of the Weimar Republic.

“This 'movement' was not necessary for the implementation of state school reforms. In the handbooks for the elementary school of the Weimar Republic (such as Kaestner 1927), the state education centers did not appear until 1933, which Carl Pretzel and Erich Hylla in 1923 described as the 'modern elementary school work' (Pretzel / Hylla 1923), could do without them and the Rural education centers were also not of interest as a particular 'methodological trend', comparable to, for example, the 'work school' or the 'comprehensive teaching' (Karstädt 1929). The course system in the teaching of the Odenwald School has been mentioned occasionally, but it did not seem to be transferable because of the small numbers and the high expenditure. The elementary school at that time had its own reformers, it was not dependent on the rural education centers for the further development of teaching or school life in any way. "

In this context, Oelkers refers to a six-day congress that opened on April 12, 1928 in the Great Drama Theater in Berlin and was entitled “The modern German elementary school”. In none of the congress lectures had the rural education centers played a role, instead the progress made in the development of the rural education system. Only Fritz Karsen referred to the rural education homes in his lecture.

“Karsen refers to the founding of Hermann Lietz , further to the free school community Wickersdorf , the Odenwald school , Martin Luserkes Schule am Meer on the North Sea island of Juist and the free school and work community Letzlingen (ibid., P. 292/293). According to Karsen, all of these schools create an “artificial milieu” for pupils who come from the most diverse areas and milieus and “create education in isolation from everyday life” (ibid., P. 293). That was the end of the matter, because nobody can learn anything from this artificial environment who has to find their way in everyday school life and wants to improve their field of work. No country education home provided evidence for this. "

Oelkers refers to the reform models presented and discussed at the congress, which also included the advanced school and the worker high school graduate courses, but which to this day hardly play a role in understanding reform pedagogy . Sonja Petra Karsen, on the other hand, makes it clear what was important to her father with the reforms he initiated.

“The opening of advanced classes was very much welcomed by the predominantly proletarian population of Neukölln. My father was convinced that `` the quality of work at a secondary school is basically nothing better than that in the elementary school, '' and that is why the teachers of the Kaiser-Friedrich-Realgymnasium should form a joint college with the teachers of an elementary school affiliated with the Realgymnasium Worked 'from the bottom up' in the same spirit and style and thereby symbolized the 'uniformity of the teaching profession' at the same time. The dualism of elementary and secondary schools should be overcome. In other words: after his biographer had established that my father had been convinced since 1927/28 that the mere advanced school did not yet meet the educational organizational needs of the democratic mass society. He therefore tried to get from the advanced school to the comprehensive school. "

The first integrated comprehensive school in Germany

By 1932, Karsen's vision of a single school had gradually taken shape. The Neukölln school complex, which previously consisted of a primary school, an upper level elementary school, a post-graduate school, high school graduate courses, a German high school and the secondary school, had been converted into a 13-stage overall system. At this comprehensive school, the pupils could obtain the elementary school certificate after the eighth or after a voluntary ninth school year, as well as the secondary school leaving certificate with simultaneous promotion to the upper secondary school or, ultimately, the school leaving certificate if the upper level was successfully completed with the Abitur. This made the Karl Marx School the first integrated comprehensive school in Germany that was quite similar to today's comprehensive schools. Karsen himself described his school model, which extends from kindergarten to high school, as follows:

“ The ... unified school collects the children of a large school district, but also accepts students from other districts in the secondary departments. Instead of separating into elementary and secondary school, after four years there is a separation into more practical or more theoretically qualified students who can be exchanged at any time within the same school if their talents change . In the eighth year, the practical branch forks further into a final class, a line determined by industrial and commercial interests. After ten years, the theoretical as well as the practical level of maturity is achieved. The path leads from practical trains to work or to higher vocational schools; from the theoretical to the upper level of the so-called higher school. This is the pre-vocational school for academic professions, which means that it does not provide vocational preparation, but is structured and its general educational material according to professional interests. "

Radde makes it clear, however, that Karsen's educational reform ideas were always shaped by educational economic rationalization ideas. With a rationalization of the school , Karsen means - in general terms and formulated in the understanding of our current terminology - the purposeful design of school work based on educational-economic criteria aimed at qualitative improvement under the aspects of the democratic mass society.

Students from the Karl Marx School wrote a small piece of literary history in connection with Bertolt Brecht's play Der Jasager . This opera was premiered on June 23, 1930 in the Berlin Central Institute for Teaching and Education. At the same time, the upper classes of the Karl Marx School planned a performance of the piece for the winter of 1930/31. In the course of the scholastic confrontation with the play, the students had doubts about the voluntary consent required of the protagonist of the play to his own execution. There was a conversation with Brecht, and based on these discussions with the students, he revised the piece. In the period that followed, a second "yes-man" text and the "naysayer" as a counterpart were created.

Pedagogy and Architecture

Karsen's idea of ​​a unified school still contradicted the external form of his Neukölln school complex, which presented itself only as an institution made up of individual school sections. Karsen therefore designed the concept of an integrated comprehensive school for 2500 to 3000 pupils together with the architect Bruno Taut . With this Dammwegschule project , Karsen's reform pedagogical ideas were to be given an adequate architectural form. The new building should not only open up new perspectives for the internal life of the school, it should also open up the school to the outside world:

“In addition to its pedagogical justification, the low-rise school has its main point in the fact that it is viewed as the edge of a park, which means that the greater use of building land is not only justified, but even more beneficial in terms of the public economy. Today, the school should no longer be a closed 'institution', but rather connect with the general life of the population in its gardens and playgrounds, just as the school itself has emerged from its isolation and seeks a lively connection with the parents and the wider population . "

The plans for the new school were determined on the one hand by rationalization ideas and educational considerations, but above all on a pedagogically founded reorganization of the internal school organization.

“The building should be the well-fitting dress of the new school program. Its disposition, its spatial sequence and finally its appearance should be the suitable shell for educational life and only derive its forms from it. "

Karsen and Taut planned - structurally and organisationally - a school without classes, which demanded a radical departure from the class community based on classroom and class teacher. They favored a room system that should be designed and equipped in a subject-specific manner. The students would be organized across ages in educational groups under the supervision of a teacher, would meet briefly in this educational group twice a day to discuss common problems, and otherwise would work in different specialist groups and subject rooms. School should become a social living space. Erich Hylla in his book Schule der Demokratie (School of Democracy) described the fact that behind this there is also an idea of ​​the school as a company and the adaptation of American models ( platoon system ) . While Hylla, who had been in the USA a year before Karsen, advised against “the American classroom system, in which the children would be 'not attached to the rolling belt ' [..], but similar Moving and imitating subject room to subject room through the school building ", Karsen and Taut would have" linked exactly to this rationalization model, of course without applying the idea of ​​series production to pedagogy as well ". According to Kemnitz, Karsen pursued three rationalization strategies in his concept for the new school:

“Karsen presented the institutional advantages of a permeable single school z. B. also found out that the accommodation in only one building, but also the elimination of the need to sit down and the transitions between the schools would mean time, money and energy savings. In terms of internal organization, he saw opportunities for rationalization in the clear separation of administrative work from pedagogical work on the one hand and the use of professional advisors on the other hand, who should relieve the teachers with regard to diagnostic and psychological tasks as well as questions of career counseling. The third approach to rationalization ultimately related entirely to space. The organization of the students in working groups required the subject room system for him. He rejected classrooms as they were common in conventional schools for didactic and educational reasons. [..] From the point of view of the best use of space and the avoidance of vacancies, the argument that the students would lose their 'home' with the classroom lost its persuasiveness for Karsen. "

Bruno Taut was the perfect partner in implementing these ideas in a completely new architecture for school buildings. He not only planned, but also experimented in order to find tailor-made solutions down to the last detail.

“Non-existent shower fittings, doors that do not need handles because they open and close automatically, banisters that are not there and consequently cannot slide down - this is part of the educational program of the rationalized school operation of the Dammweg School and shows them technological dimension of the concept. Taut was convinced that the facility, 'caused solely by the construction' [..], promises both teachers and students a better school life. "

A major sponsor of this project - and of Karsen's educational reforms as a whole - was Kurt Löwenstein , who was the city councilor for public education in Berlin-Neukölln from 1921 to 1933. He managed to overcome all political hurdles for the project and to get approval for its realization. However, it could not be realized. The resistance of conservative-opposing currents in the school administration and the economic crisis of 1929/30 led to delays, which then led to a final end to the project when the National Socialists came to power in 1933. Only one pavilion built by Taut in 1928 as a trial building, which was restored between 1998 and 2001, still bears witness to the plans of that time.

In 1936, when Fritz Karsen was living in exile in Colombia and working there as an educational advisor to the government, he met the architect Leopold Rother, who had also emigrated . Both worked together on the planning of a new campus for the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogotá, which incorporated both ideas from the Dammwegschule project and elements from the horseshoe settlement planned by Taut . The joint plans were then implemented by Rother alone, as Karsen moved to the USA in May 1938.

The fascination of the Karl Marx School

In retrospect, the name Karl-Marx-Schule has become synonymous with the entire reform project surrounding the former Kaiser-Friedrich-Realgymnasium , although the school was only given this name in 1929/30. The renaming probably goes back to a group of teachers sympathizing with the KPD, whose idea was taken up by the KPD faction in the Neukölln district assembly. The SPD parliamentary group agreed to a corresponding motion that was passed in the district assembly in autumn 1929, and the Prussian minister of education, Adolf Grimme , approved the renaming with a decree in May 1930. The majority of the teaching staff and Fritz Karsen had no preference for this naming, but they, like Kurt Löwenstein, supported it because at the same time the support of the KPD parliamentary group for the Dammweg project was necessary. For this reason, Karsen not only accepted the name, but actively promoted its acceptance. However, Sonja Petra Karsen describes her father's relationship to the naming in a somewhat more distant manner:

“That was a provocative name. The name change caused a sensation for all bourgeois educators and politicians, especially for those of the conservative nature. My father did not like this renaming at all, because he did not consider it right to expose the school to party-political attacks by giving it a name. With the name 'Karl-Marx-Schule' his school was stamped as the 'red school'. My father debated this proposal for a long time with friends, and he tried to change the mind of the minister of education because he was of the opinion that it would not be a good idea to give the school this name at this time of the worst political party struggle. But his advice was ignored. "

It is difficult to verify whether the Karl Marx School, as Dorothea Kolland claims, has become a place of longing for left-wing intellectual parents in Berlin who absolutely wanted their children to attend school there. But it was certainly a place of longing for progressive educators, who saw an everyday educational life there that corresponded to their ideal. Fritz Hoffmann, the head of the Rütli School at the time and the director of the Fritz Karsen School after the war, describes it in retrospect in 1965, one year after his retirement:

"In the frequent encounters with the Karl Marx students, especially those from the advanced school and the workers' high school graduate courses, we Rütli teachers found the same enthusiasm for school, [..] the awareness of the uniqueness of their school in the teaching style, in all work and ways of life and in the societal goals. And the relationship between students and teachers in the work process? One must have heard how and in what connections they spoke of them: of Karsen and Marquardt, of Sturm and Koppelmann, of Zwetz and Ziegler and Freese ... Where was the schoolboy? These students were different, very different. I hardly believe that there were a significant number of them who were "full" at the end of their school days; I believe that when most of them left school, they entered a phase of maximum excitement and life expectancy, not the sentimental or kitschy, the career-dreaming and ambitious, but the expectation of an effect, but above all of participation, which is meaningful in the social sense and was necessary. Studies or teaching were moved and directed years in advance by powerful impulses. I'm not grabbing anything out of thin air here; I am full of memories of conversations with the pupils and students of the twenties, especially those of the first grade. "

Teachers

Teachers at the Karl Marx School included:

  • Hans Alfken
  • Alfred Ehrentreich
  • Marie Torhorst
  • Walter Damus
  • Karl Linke
  • Karl Sturm (1892–1968). Together with Walter Damus, Karl Sturm helped Fritz Karsen in 1933 to prepare for his escape to Switzerland: “Nobody thought we would go away without taking anything with us. We stayed in the apartment for a few more days, spent the last two nights in the apartment of our family doctor in Tempelhof, as my father had been warned that he was in danger. He began to burn all files in which there was something about his colleagues at his school and which could be dangerous to them. The teachers Walter Damus and Karl Sturm helped him. Everything came into the three large tiled stoves. Then we left the apartment, which was deliberately brightly lit. ”From 1945, Sturm headed the Carl Orff Primary School in Berlin-Wilmersdorf and from 1949 became professor and director of the Greater Berlin University of Education .
  • In addition to the Alfken and Sturm already mentioned, Karsen “only allowed educators who were open to reform in his school [..]”. To name them all is impossible. Some examples:
    • Bernhard Schulz (1900–1987) became professor at the Pedagogical Academy in Frankfurt / Oder in 1930,
    • Otto Koppelmann (1898–1987) became a professor at the University of Education in Greater Berlin, later the PH Berlin, as well
    • Hans Freese; [..]
    • Hedda Korsch [..]
    • Erwin Marquardt became Vice President of the German Central Administration for National Education in the Soviet Occupation Zone in 1945 , [..] "
  • Kurt Schwedtke, who was a temporary teacher at the Karl Marx School in 1929, but failed there as a teacher and asked for his transfer, subsequently became one of the school's most bitter opponents and in 1933 Karsen's successor as headmaster. His diatribe, “Never again Karl Marx School!”, Published by Westermann Verlag , dates from the same year . A settlement with the Marxist education and school administration ”. “In the 13 months before January 30, 1930 alone, a total of 13 more or less polemically aggressive essays were written by this apparently apolitical but nationally conservative new philologist, who then became a member of the NS party and, in Karsen's place, senior director . [..] These articles culminated in the defamation of the Karl Marx School as a place of 'school Bolshevism' and as a 'maze of Marxist education'. "

Since 1929/30 the school has also had a study seminar for the training of trainee teachers.

  • Sophie Friedländer completed her legal clerkship here, was still a civil servant in 1933 and then put into temporary retirement with immediate effect.

Pupils

The more or less well-known students include (for those who have graduated from the worker high school graduate courses, see below):

The worker high school graduate courses

New people for a new society

As much as the workers' high school graduate courses fitted into Fritz Karsen's educational ideas, their origins were political in nature. According to a more recent study by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung , which in the twenties already sponsored 20 scholarship holders of the worker high school graduate courses, “the establishment of the first workers high school graduate course in 1923 had purely political reasons and was not stimulated by any pedagogical discourse ". Rather, after the assassination of the Reich Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau in June 1922, the background to this was the idea of ​​giving gifted young people from the lower classes access to the university. In them, the children from working-class and salaried families, because of their origins, one saw more reliable bearers of the republican idea of ​​the state than among young academics from the more privileged strata of society.

The three-year high school graduate courses for workers were intended to prepare young men and women with an elementary school diploma who had already been employed for the Abitur. The addressees of the training were people between the ages of 18 and around 30 who had to continue to work. The first course was put together by the young administrative clerk and later scholarship holder of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation Bruno Gleitze in close cooperation with Kurt Löwenstein , the then city councilor for public education in Berlin-Neukölln, and Fritz Karsen; he started work on June 1, 1923. The worker high school graduate courses were not an elementary component in Karsen's school reform concept. But they found in him an important supporter who was able to provide the spatial and human resources for the courses at the higher school he directed. Because the first two courses worked largely informally, although with the strong support of Kurt Löwenstein. It was not until December 1926 that the board of trustees for the course to prepare former elementary school students for the school leaving examination was founded with representatives from the most diverse hierarchical levels of the school administration. Its importance lay in the fact that "it let the Neukölln courses step out of their almost private business by making them public as non-profit and worthy of support."

In addition to the material pressure under which the high school graduate courses took place, there was also a moral and political one. It was Karsen's credo that the public funds used for further training were not primarily there to improve individual life chances; rather, they should serve to improve the common good. From this, the requirement was derived that course participants who were unable to meet the training requirements with their performance should voluntarily free up their training place for another aspirant. In some cases this led to severe psychological stress, and in at least one case to suicide.

Education on the verge of subsistence level

The problem was that the working-class high school graduates, even if some received a small scholarship, had to continue to work in order to finance their living. There was no financial support for them, which is why they were forced to take part-time jobs: They cleaned in schools, worked as stokers in municipal companies or as auxiliary caretakers. This only improved their material situation to a limited extent: “Even while attending the workers 'high school graduate course, the workers' student never reached the subsistence level. The burdens and complications of the study can hardly be shown. "

This double burden for the students also had to be taken into account in the organization of the lessons: “Initially, the courses were offered in the evenings between 6 and 9:30 pm. Later, however, it was moved to the early morning hours in order to be able to guarantee concentrated intellectual work and gainful employment. ”In the context of these high demands on the students, high drop-out rates were not surprising. Yet:

“From the first worker high school graduate course to 1927, eleven men and six women successfully passed their high school diplomas. The second course, which officially began at Easter 1926, showed similarly good results. By 1929, 22 high school graduates, including only 4 women, had passed their school-leaving exams. "

Graduates from high school graduate courses

The former high school graduates were not normal students in the traditional sense. “They had already dealt with and dealt with the required educational content in union evening courses, in socialist folk high schools and intensive training and further education courses for young workers. Her thirst for education was enormous. It consisted of young, highly motivated and gifted women and men with a corresponding personality structure. "

The short biographies reconstructed by Hättich of the workers' high school graduates supported by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, to which only a few women joined, although the proportion of women was particularly high in the first worker high school graduate course, very clearly shows their origin from the workforce. After the National Socialist seizure of power, some emigrated immediately, such as Heinz Guttfeld , others into the resistance, such as Elsa Delisch, who was sentenced to 15 years in prison in 1941 for preparation for high treason. After 1945, several of them held positions of responsibility in administration, business, politics, science and education. And this in both German states. Examples of this are the résumés of the following graduates:

Gretel Fuchs (* 1910), daughter of Martha Fuchs, also graduated from a high school graduate course for workers . She was previously active with the Kinderfreunde and had graduated from high school in 1930. Afterwards she studied educational science at the TH Braunschweig until 1932 and belonged to the socialist student group. Many of its members had to emigrate before 1933 because of the government participation of the NSDAP in Braunschweig, which had existed since 1930 , including Gretel Fuchs, who did this together with her comrade and later husband Hermann Ebeling . Her odyssey took her back to Germany via France and the USA in the 1970s.

Five teachers who had previously graduated from the Karl Marx School taught at the Karl Liebknecht School in Moscow:

  • Otto Knobel
  • Bruno Krömke
  • Heinz Woidtke
  • Georg Gerschinski
  • Heinz Lüschen

However, it is unclear whether they had completed an advanced course, a high school graduate course or the study seminar of the Karl Marx School.

A total of eight high school graduate courses for workers were organized by 1933, which led to around 150 high school graduation exams being passed. The seventh and eighth course, however, were dissolved in May 1933 by the new headmaster appointed by the National Socialists, which left only a few course participants the chance to take the final exam at the evening grammar school.

Class treason through education?

The graduates of the workers' high school graduate courses were not only shown benevolence. There was also criticism of the training of the young comrades from within the ranks of the labor movement. A possible alienation from one's own social origin was highlighted as a danger, as was the fear of becoming bourgeois because of the academic training. And in the aftermath of the global economic crisis, voices were heard warning of overcrowding in universities. The workers' high school graduate Wilhelm Tietgens recognized in such objections only the "fear of the bourgeoisie that the workers could advance to a large extent into academic functions and actually break the educational privilege of property". As the ongoing discussions about educational disadvantage in the Federal Republic of Germany show, Tietgen's claim has lost none of its topicality and underlines once again the educational and socio-political relevance of the school reforms initiated by Fritz Karsen.

The accusation of class treason also played a role from other sources. The school's work did not take place in an area that was not free from politics, and the growing contradictions between the SPD and KPD were also reflected within the Karl Marx School. Karsen was a socialist with a social democratic character, who supported the Weimar constitution but rejected the Bolshevik school, which was geared towards Lenin. So he came into the sights of the "Socialist Student Union (SSB)" and of communist workers' high school graduates. The view of a revolutionary-socialist school struggle, which the SSB had since the end of 1928, was explicitly understood as part of the revolutionary class struggle on the side of the KPD and was shaped by Edwin Hoernle's ideas . Very briefly: a fundamental school reform should only be possible after the proletariat had conquered political power. All previous school reforms only lead to the corruption of the proletarian children by the bourgeois capitalist system and to their alienation from their own class.

The SSB did everything to expose and expose Karsen as a pseudo-reformer, also with the help of its magazine “Schulkampf”. He didn't always act with professional distance. This was shown very clearly in the case of Gert Schneider, a high school graduate and head of the “school struggle”. He had defended an obviously unjustified accusation in the "school fight" as a successful conspiratorial work. Although Schneider at least withdrew the word "conspiratorial", Karsen was no longer impressed and operated Schneider's exclusion from school, which was communicated to him in writing on September 2, 1929 - almost six months before graduation.

This dispute caused a sensation far beyond Neukölln. Karsen was described as a "school fascist" who acted with the arbitrariness of a dictator. He rejected appeals to enable Schneider to return to school, including from circles close to the SPD, because a liberal attitude towards the SSB was just as wrong as a false tolerance. Karsen received political backing and support from the Socialist Student Community (SSG). In 1930, after three other communist high school graduates were not admitted to high school due to frequent absences, the school climate calmed down again. The political climate shaped by the social fascism thesis of the KPD had reached a reform school, which had long been branded by the National Socialists as the “nucleus of Bolshevism” and as a “playground of communist propaganda”, not least by Kurt Schwedtke, who from April 20, 1933 became her acting director.

"The sad irony [...] was then shown in 1933 when Hitler's power eliminated Karsen's 'new school' (externally), the activities of the communist opponents of Karsen also came to an abrupt end."

About 60 years later, a contemporary witness, Nathan Steinberger, a former student of the Karl Marx School and an activist of the SSB, remembers these clashes. In retrospect, he described it as a “dirty campaign against Karsen”, which was based on a line given by the KPD leadership, which in turn was eagerly implemented by Gert Schneider. Another contemporary witness, Felix Krolikowski, the communist chairman of the school community at the time, repeatedly orally confirmed the accusation of embezzlement of funds by Schneider in the 1990s.

From the Karl Marx School to the Fritz Karsen School

The end of the Karl Marx School

When the NSDAP and its German national alliance partners came to power in January 1933, the history of the Karl Marx School reform project ended . The concept of a metropolitan “unified and community school” was no longer acceptable for the National Socialists. The acting Prussian Minister of Education and Cultural Affairs Bernhard Rust , who had been in office since February 2, 1933, dismissed Fritz Karsen on February 21 - one day before the final exams at the Karl Marx School. Fritz Karsen emigrated with his relatives, first to Switzerland and Paris.

In 1936 the Karsen family moved to Colombia and in 1938 to the USA.

The Karl Marx School became the Kaiser Friedrich Realgymnasium again.

In 1946 Fritz Karsen returned to Berlin as an advisor to the American military government. He campaigned for the drafting of the Berlin School Act of 1947 and the introduction of a single school in Berlin. Together with his former board members in the former Bund Resolute School Reformer Paul Oestreich , Siegfried Kawerau and Arno Wagner , he wrote to the Prussian state assembly in April 1947 to make it easier for elementary school students to transition to higher schools by introducing an eight-year joint elementary school . Fritz Karsen participated in the reorganization of the higher education system, but could not make up his mind to continue his educational reform work in Berlin. He returned to the USA and died on August 25, 1951 in Guayaquil (Ecuador).

In 1956, in the anti-communist climate of West Berlin, the name of Karl Marx, which had been restored for a short time under Soviet administration in 1945, was replaced by that of the physicist Ernst Abbe . Since then, the school has been the Ernst-Abbe-Gymnasium on Sonnenallee. A plaque commemorates Fritz Karsen. The school's website does not provide sufficient information about the history of the school.

Small bonus in Neukölln

For a short time after 1945 in Berlin it looked as if the SPD and KPD would be able to agree to create a single school for all of Berlin. But already in October 1946 there were differences between the two parties, which together had the political majority in the city. The former KPD, now operating as the SED, insisted on a twelve-year unified school with a joint eight-year elementary school and a combination of core and course lessons in the 7th and 8th school years. The SPD advocated a six-year elementary school with easier transition options to grammar school in the two following years. Not least because of the great resistance of the Berlin teachers, who also rejected the admission of private schools and religious instruction, a school law was passed in November 1947 that largely corresponded to the SED concept. The Allies approved this law in their last joint consultation in May 1948 with minor changes.

Against this background, Fritz Hoffmann took over the management of 37/38 in 1948. School, the later Fritz-Karsen-Schule in Neukölln-Britz. From 1929 to 1933 he was head of the second major reform project in Berlin, one of the Rütli schools in Neukölln, and was supposed to set up a single reform school on the basis of the Berlin School Act that had just been passed. This development work had to be carried out at a time when political disputes were intensifying. Two German states had meanwhile been constituted, the East-West disputes shaped the climate in the divided city and also led to a final breakup of the cooperation between the SPD and SED. From now on, solutions for the whole of Berlin were no longer the goal, but special routes were followed in both parts of the divided city. In West Berlin, the CDU in particular fought against the unified school and for the introduction of religious education. Their campaigns, in which, among other things, the unified school was defamed as an institution for communist conformity, led to considerable loss of votes for the SPD in the 1950 elections.

Today's Fritz Karsen School, Onkel-Bräsig-Straße 76 / 78.12359 Berlin
Memorial plaque for Fritz Hoffmann

In the coalition agreements that followed, the SPD agreed to profound changes to the previous school system. She accepted the only six-year joint elementary school followed by a six-year high school with three branches. Religious instruction was allowed again. The word unified school disappeared from the school law passed in 1951, and the SPD gave up a senatorial post that had given the party almost identity in the 1920s: in early 1951, Joachim Tiburtius was elected Senator for Popular Education in Berlin. Until 1963 he headed this department under the ruling Berlin mayors Ernst Reuter (SPD), Walther Schreiber (CDU), Otto Suhr (SPD) and Willy Brandt (SPD).

But at one point the tradition of Fritz Karsen was upheld and resistance to the 1951 School Act was opposed. Teachers and parents of the 37th / 38th School successfully defended themselves against the conversion of their school in accordance with the new law. They fought for the unified school and were successful. As the only school in West Berlin, they were allowed to stick to the concept of a single school. From then on, it was regarded as a "school with a special educational character". In 1956 the school was renamed the Fritz Karsen School .

Works

  • Fritz Karsen : The school of the developing society. Stuttgart / Berlin, 1921.
  • Fritz Karsen, Bruno Taut: The Dammweg School Neukölln. Berlin 1928.

literature

  • Henriette Hättich (Ed.): Democracy needs democrats. Student funding as a socio-political task. Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Student Support Department, Bonn 2015, ISBN 978-3-89892-850-2 . ( Democracy needs democrats )
  • Gerd Radde : Fritz Karsen. A Berlin school reformer during the Weimar period. Extended new edition. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1999, ISBN 3-631-34896-7 .
  • Sonja Petra Karsen: Report about the father. In: Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen. A Berlin school reformer during the Weimar period. Pp. 391-415.
  • Gerd Radde, Werner Korthaase , Rudolf Rogler, Udo Gößwald (eds.): School reform, continuities and breaks: the test field Berlin-Neukölln. Leske + Budrich, Opladen 1993, ISBN 3-8100-1129-0 . The 400-page book was published as a companion volume to the exhibition The Ideal School , which took place in the Heimatmuseum Neukölln from May 1993 to April 1994, and contains, in addition to many essays on the Neukölln school history, contributions by several authors who deal directly with Fritz Karsen and Karl-Marx -School deal (which is also addressed in many other articles in the book):
    • Werner Korthaase: Neukölln school policy in the service of the workers - Dr. Kurt Löwenstein as a local politician. Pp. 130-145.
    • Werner Korthaase: The Neukölln worker high school graduate courses - the beginning of the second education path in Germany. Pp. 161-174.
    • Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen's reform work in Berlin-Neukölln. Pp. 175-187.
    • Fritz Karsen: The Karl Marx School - An enemy of the school in the Stammbuch (document: 1932), pp. 188-189. Karsen's polemic relates to Kurt Schwedtke, whom Ekkehard Meier portrays in more detail (see below).
    • Felix Krolikowski: The school community at the advanced school of the Kaiser-Friedrich-Realgymnasium. Pp. 190-205.
    • Werner Korthaase: "School of the future". Pp. 214-217.
    • Bruno Taut: Explanation of the design of the school complex on Dammweg (Document: 1927), pp. 218–222.
    • Nathan Steinberger: The socialist student union in the field of tension between school reform and school camp - report by a former Karsen student. Pp. 223-231.
    • Rudolf Rogler: With the wind behind his back - portrait of the reform pedagogue Alfred Lewinnek. Pp. 232-242.
    • Ekkehard Meier: Whoever tries hard ... Kurt Schwedtke - a German civil service career. Pp. 330-345.
    • Doris Mischon-Vosselmann: The end of the Karl Marx school. Pp. 346-357.
  • Ernesto Vendries Bray: Leopold Rother and the modern movement in Colombia. Dissertation at the Department of Architecture at the Technical University of Darmstadt , Darmstadt 2014. Available on the Internet under Dissertation on Leopold Rother
  • Heidemarie Kemnitz: thought patterns and formal language of educational architecture in the first third of the 20th century. In: Claudia Crotti, Fritz Osterwalder (ed.): The century of school reforms. International and National Perspectives, 1900–1950. Haupt Verlag, Bern / Stuttgart / Vienna 2008, ISBN 978-3-258-07384-2 .

Web links

Commons : Sonnenallee 79: Kaiser-Friedrich-Realgymnasiums - Karl-Marx-Schule - Ernst-Abbe-Gymnasium  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ cf. Karsen: The school of the developing society. Stuttgart / Berlin 1921.
  2. ↑ Paulsen was one of Karsen's supporters in realizing his reform work in Berlin-Neukölln.
  3. ^ Dietmar Haubfleisch: Berlin reform pedagogy in the Weimar Republic
  4. ↑ Today: Ernst-Abbe-Gymnasium
  5. ^ A b c Jürgen Oelkers: Quo vadis reform pedagogy?
  6. ↑ Sonja Petra Karsen: Report on the father. In: Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen. A Berlin school reformer during the Weimar period. P. 395.
  7. ^ Fritz Karsen, quoted from Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen. A Berlin school reformer during the Weimar period. P. 181.
  8. ^ Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen. A Berlin school reformer during the Weimar period. P. 183.
  9. ^ Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen. A Berlin school reformer during the Weimar period ... , p. 137ff. The minutes of the discussions with the students are printed in: Bertolt Brecht: Der Yesager and Der Neinsager - templates, versions, materials. (= edition suhrkamp. 171). Frankfurt am Main 1999, ISBN 3-518-10171-4 .
  10. ↑ Bruno Taut: Explanations on the design of the school complex on Dammweg. In: Gerd Radde, Werner Korthaase, Rudolf Rogler, Udo Gößwald (eds.): School reform, continuities and breaks: the test field Berlin-Neukölln. P. 218. Taut's explanations are accompanied by fantastic detailed views of the school model, which clearly show the size of the planned project. It is just as clear, however, that Taut was strongly guided by industrial construction
  11. ↑ Bruno Taut. quoted from: Dorothea Kolland: A school for the developing society
  12. ^ Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen. A Berlin school reformer during the Weimar period. Pp. 180-193.
  13. ^ Heidemarie Kemnitz: thought patterns and formal language of educational architecture in the first third of the 20th century. P. 257.
  14. ^ Heidemarie Kemnitz: thought patterns and formal language of educational architecture in the first third of the 20th century. Pp. 258-259.
  15. ^ Heidemarie Kemnitz: thought patterns and formal language of educational architecture in the first third of the 20th century. P. 264.
  16. ↑ Pictures of the restored Taut pavilion
  17. ↑ Fritz Karsen and the Karl-Marx-Schule in Berlin-Neukölln ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. The plans for the school and photos of the pavilion are well documented: EXPERIMENTAL PAVILION FOR A SCHOOL BY BRUNO TAUT ( Memento of the original from March 24, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Most informative, however, is the page created by Potsdam students: Bruno Taut's architectural implementation of Fritz Karsen's concept of the work, comprehensive and community school . The pavilion is now on the grounds of the Carl-Legien-Oberschule (Dammweg 216-226) in Berlin-Neukölln and was restored a few years ago. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.geschichte-erforschen.de @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / baugeschichte.a.tu-berlin.deWorld icon
  18. ↑ In detail on this: Ernesto Vendries Bray, Leopold Rother and the modern movement in Colombia. P. 188 ff.
  19. ^ Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen. A Berlin school reformer during the Weimar period. Pp. 89-90.
  20. ↑ Sonja Petra Karsen: Report on the father. P. 199. Following this quote, Sonja Petra Karsen reports how many years later, during the Second World War, when Fritz Karsen was already living in the USA and at "City College". today's City University of New York , taught that he was once again uncomfortably confronted with this naming. One day “there was someone in his class whom he didn't know. After the lecture was over, he came up to him and showed him an ID from the FBI: 'Are you the former director of the Karl Marx School in Berlin?' My father had no ID with him, just a New York Social Democratic Federation party card that he showed. The suspicion was that my father was a communist. Many Americans don't know the difference between communists and social democrats. You always have to explain the contrast to them first. "
  21. ^ Dorothea Kolland: A school for the developing society
  22. ^ Fritz Hoffmann: Memories of a school reformer
  23. ↑ Sonja Petra Karsen: Report on the father. In: Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen. A Berlin school reformer during the Weimar period. P. 401.
  24. ↑ School history of the Carl-Orff-Grundschule ( Memento of the original from September 24, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.cog.cidsnet.de
  25. ↑ Werner Korthaase: Neukölln school policy in the service of the workers - Kurt Löwenstein as a local politician. S. 137. In the WIKIPEDIA article he is not listed in the list of rectors, but this does not exclude the possibility that he could have worked there as institute director.
  26. ↑ Werner Korthaase: Neukölln school policy in the service of the workers - Kurt Löwenstein as a local politician. P. 137.
  27. ↑ Fritz Karsen: The Karl Marx School - An enemy of the school in the stud book. Pp. 188-189.
  28. ↑ Ekkehard Meier dealt extensively with Schwedtke in his essay "Whoever strives to strive ... Kurt Schwedtke - A German civil service career." (See literature). Further relevant writings by Kurt Schwenke can be found in the DNB catalog.
  29. ↑ Gerd Radde: Persecuted, suppressed and (almost) forgotten. In: Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen. A Berlin school reformer during the Weimar period. P. 367.
  30. ↑ Werner Röder and Herbert A. Strauss: Biographical Handbook of German-Speaking Emigration after 1933 , Volume I (with the participation of Dieter Marc Schneider and Louise Forsyth): Politics, Economy, Public Life , KG Saur, Munich - New York - London - Paris, 1980, ISBN 3-598-10087-6 , p. 455.
  31. ↑ Federal foundation under public law: Federal Foundation for processing: https://www.bundesstiftung-aufteilung.de/wer-war-wer-in-der-ddr-%2363%3B-1424.html?ID=2941
  32. ^ The Socialist Student Union in the Field of Tension Between School Reform and School Struggle - Report by a former student. In: Gerd Radde, Werner Korthaase, Rudolf Rogler, Udo Gößwald (eds.): School reform, continuities and breaks: the test field Berlin-Neukölln. S. 231. The book Berlin - Moscow - Kolyma and back comes from the economist Nathan Steinberger, * 1910 - † February 26, 2005, among other things . Nathan Steinberger in the DNB catalog
  33. ↑ Henriette Hättich (Ed.): Democracy needs democrats. P. 14.
  34. ↑ Henriette Hättich (Ed.): Democracy needs democrats. P. 18.
  35. ↑ Henriette Hättich (Ed.): Democracy needs democrats. P. 18. In the section “The worker high school graduate courses”, this assessment can also be found in Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen. A Berlin school reformer during the Weimar period. P. 160ff.
  36. ^ Dorothea Kolland: A school for the developing society. A tribute to Kurt Löwenstein.
  37. ↑ Henriette Hättich (Ed.): Democracy needs democrats. P. 18.
  38. ↑ Gaddes attests them a special position in the Neukölln school complex. Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen. A Berlin school reformer during the Weimar period. P. 160.
  39. ^ Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen. A Berlin school reformer during the Weimar period. P. 162.
  40. ^ Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen. A Berlin school reformer during the Weimar period. P. 166.
  41. ↑ Heinz Guttfeld , participant in the second high school graduate course, describes the living conditions during the time at school very impressively. His interview on this is documented by Anne Betten (Ed.): Language preservation after emigration. The German of the 1920s in Israel. Part 1: Transcripts and audio documents. Niemeyer, Tübingen 1995, ISBN 3-484-23142-4 . The transcript of an interview with him, who took the name Mordechai Gilead in Israel, can be found on pages 70 ff.
  42. ↑ Henriette Hättich (Ed.): Democracy needs democrats. P. 19.
  43. ↑ Willi Eimert (born 1902), worker high school graduate from 1924–1927, quoted from: Henriette Hättich (ed.): Democracy needs democrats. P. 15.
  44. ↑ Fritz Karsen and the Karl-Marx-Schule in Berlin-Neukölln ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.geschichte-erforschen.de
  45. ↑ Henriette Hättich (Ed.): Democracy needs democrats. P. 19.
  46. ↑ Henriette Hättich (Ed.): Democracy needs democrats. P. 18.
  47. ↑ Henriette Hättich (Ed.): Democracy needs democrats. P. 34.
  48. ↑ Elsa Delisch
  49. ↑ The fact that these are exclusively personalities who combine careers and SPD membership is solely due to the fact that there are no biographical articles in the German-language Wikipedia for communist graduates of the workers' high school graduate courses. A somewhat more comprehensive overview of the origins, the educational and professional paths of some of the high school graduates can be found at Radde: Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen. A Berlin school reformer during the Weimar period. Pp. 338-341.
  50. ↑ Hildegard Feidel-Mertz / Hermann Schnorbach: Teachers in Emigration , p. 229
  51. ^ Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen. A Berlin school reformer during the Weimar period. P. 163.
  52. ↑ Henriette Hättich (Ed.): Democracy needs democrats. P. 35.
  53. ^ Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen. A Berlin school reformer during the Weimar period. Pp. 151-159. The following illustration largely follows the explanations given there.
  54. ^ Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen. A Berlin school reformer during the Weimar period. P. 221.
  55. ↑ Nathan Steinberger: The socialist student union in the field of tension between school reform and school struggle - report by a former student. In: Gerd Radde, Werner Korthaase, Rudolf Rogler, Udo Gößwald (eds.): School reform, continuities and breaks: the test field Berlin-Neukölln. S. 231. The book Berlin - Moscow - Kolyma and back comes from the economist Nathan Steinberger, * 1910 - † February 26, 2005, among other things . Nathan Steinberger in the DNB catalog
  56. ↑ The end of a reform school ( Memento of the original from February 9, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.museum-neukoelln.de
  57. ^ Ralf Schmiedecke: Berlin-Neukölln. When there was still music in Rixdorf. Erfurt 2013, p. 46.
  58. ↑ Biography ( Memento of the original dated February 9, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Under the tab "Biography", Fritz Karsen and the Karl Marx School are remembered in one sentence, whereby it is assumed that the school has had this name since 1921 (correct: since 1929/30). @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ernst-abbe.de
  59. ↑ Compare this: Bühlow-Hopf-Nagel-Preuss-Lausitz: Comprehensive School between School Trial and Structural Reform. Beltz Verlag, Weinheim / Basel 1972, ISBN 3-407-19008-5 , p. 30ff.
  60. ^ Fritz Hoffmann - School reformer
  61. ^ History of the Fritz Karsen School