Karl Fischer (Wandervogel)

Honorary grave for Karl Fischer at the Steglitz cemetery in Bergstrasse

Karl Fischer (born March 21, 1881 in Berlin ; † June 13, 1941 ibid) was the founder of the Wandervogel movement .

Fischer, a student at the Steglitz grammar school in the 1890s , took part in hikes from 1896 onwards that the young shorthand teacher Hermann Hoffmann organized for his class. This motivated him so much that he decided to start a migration movement for young people. In 1901 he founded the Wandervogel - Committee for School Trips eV in the Ratskeller of the Steglitz town hall

The movement quickly found numerous followers who saw it as a means to escape the bourgeois narrowness of the Wilhelmine era and to fulfill romantic desires for real experiences of nature.

Fischer himself separated from the "Wandervogel" in 1904, where he was accused of being overly authoritarian, and instead founded a new group, the Alt-Wandervogel . He also parted ways two years later and finally went to China as a soldier in the German colony of Tsingtao. From 1920 he lived in Berlin again. He spent the last years of his life isolated in poor circumstances. He never married. Under the National Socialists he was provided with an "honorary salary" from the Hitler Youth. He died forgotten in 1941 but was rediscovered in the 1960s; since then, the Steglitz district has been adorned with him and his wandering bird. In the Steglitz city park on Albrechtstrasse there is a memorial stone (in the part of the park between Sedan and Klingsorstrasse) for the Wandervogel movement, and a room in the Steglitz grammar school was given the name “Karl Fischer Room”.

literature

Werner Helwig : The blue flower of the wandering bird . About the rise, splendor and purpose of a youth movement . Revised new edition with a picture attachment, editor: Walter Sauer . Deutscher Spurbuchverlag, Baunach 1998, ISBN 3-88778-208-9 .
Arnold Stenzel: Fischer, Karl. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 5, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1961, ISBN 3-428-00186-9 , p. 196 f. ( Digitized version ).

Individual evidence

↑ "Weltanschauung und Schule", October 10, 1941, p. 230: "Until his death he received an honorary salary from the Hitler Youth, who thereby showed their special respect for a man to whom they, too, as a formation of the National Socialist movement, gave essential things has to thank. " (Walther Jantzen)

personal data
SURNAME	Fischer, Karl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Founder of the Wandervogel movement
DATE OF BIRTH	March 21, 1881
PLACE OF BIRTH	Berlin
DATE OF DEATH	June 13, 1941
Place of death	Berlin

[1] "Weltanschauung und Schule", October 10, 1941, p. 230: "Until his death he received an honorary salary from the Hitler Youth, who thereby showed their special respect for a man to whom they, too, as a formation of the National Socialist movement, gave essential things has to thank. " (Walther Jantzen)