Karl Georg Haldenwang

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Karl Georg Haldenwang (2nd from the right, with headgear and stick) - already health-impaired - with his family; Studio photography around 1860

Karl Georg Haldenwang , also Carl Georg Haldenwang (born on October 16, 1803 in Simmozheim , Duchy of Württemberg ; died on August 30, 1862 in Heilbronn , Kingdom of Württemberg ) was a Protestant pastor and at times editor of various Württemberg newspapers of the 19th century. He became known to a wider public primarily as an early pioneer of modern disability assistance in German-speaking countries.

With the opening of a "rescue house for feeble-minded children" in the Württemberg Black Forest community of Wildberg near Calw in 1838 , he founded - influenced by the neo-Pietist revival movement in the 19th century - the first school facility for mentally handicapped children in the state structures of the then German Federation Young people with a pioneering educational concept for their time, which exerted a significant influence on subsequent developments in special education and education for the mentally handicapped .

Live and act

Youth, training and first professional experience (1803–1833)

Karl Georg Haldenwang was a son of Johann Martin Haldenwang, who was initially rector of the Simmozheim village school and from 1805 mayor on site. The mother Susanne Kathrina Müller (1775-1859) came from a Simmozheim farming family. The politically active and journalist father was an important concern of the higher education and training of his children.

While attending the Latin school in Tübingen , the young Karl Georg, like his older brother, developed the career aspiration of the pastor. In 1818 he switched to the Protestant theological seminary in Urach . There he finished first in his year in 1822 and began studying Protestant theology at the Tübingen monastery . In Urach as well as in Tübingen he was a fellow student of Eduard Mörike , who would later study the same subject, as a poet .

Haldenwang completed his vicariate in the Ostalb community of Gschwend . After the pastor died there, he temporarily filled the pastoral position alone. After passing the second service examination, he was appointed teacher at the Urach seminar in 1827, where he had only obtained his official school leaving certificate five years earlier.

In 1829, in view of his outstanding achievements, he received a scholarship for one year of study in Switzerland . Back in Württemberg , he then took up a pastor's position in Welzheim for almost a year , before taking leave from pastoral work in 1831 and taking a position as an editor at the then most renowned Württemberg daily newspaper Schwäbischer Merkur in Stuttgart .

City pastor in Wildberg, establishment of the "rescue house" (1833–1845)

In 1833 Haldenwang, now 30 years old, continued his pastoral work. In the Black Forest community of Wildberg in Württemberg, which at that time was highly indebted, he was appointed city pastor and thus received his first permanent pastor's position. The supervision of the local schools was also connected with the church office. In order to counter the social problems, especially the high unemployment in Wildberg and the surrounding area, he founded a training facility for teachers and a workshop for poor young people with an attached school. He received support in his social commitment from his wife Marie Luise, née Pfähler, whom he married at the beginning of his time in Wildberg. During the course of their marriage, she gave birth to seven children, three of whom did not survive childhood.

Haldenwang paid special attention to mentally handicapped children who - often isolated, cast out and harassed - lived in mostly inhumane conditions in the catchment area of ​​his community. Haldenwang made it his goal to open up development prospects for these children too. He was convinced that " every child (...) has a right to upbringing and education through lessons, regardless of their individual possibilities ". In 1838 he founded the “Rescue House for Insane Children” in Wildberg, so to speak, the first “ special educational ” educational institution for the mentally handicapped in German-speaking countries. This “rescue house”, in which 15 children considered to be “ cretins ” were educated, was housed in a rented apartment in the first year of its existence. In the following year, due to the double increase in the number of schoolchildren including disabled children from abroad, the company moved to a larger house, for the purchase of which the Württemberg state contributed a grant of 1500 guilders . In addition to the school, it housed a boarding school, in which the children received educational support that went beyond general education (in the subjects religion , reading, writing, arithmetic and “ physical education ”). The facility was managed by Mine Härther, a sister of Haldenwang.

Karl Georg Haldenwang's "Rescue House" aroused public interest far beyond Wildberg. In particular, the Urach senior medical officer Carl Heinrich Rösch became aware of Haldenwang's work as part of the research work on " cretinism " in Württemberg, commissioned by King Wilhelm I of Württemberg and published in 1844 . In view of such an impact, Haldenwang planned to expand his boarding school and also to provide adequate care for older disabled people. However, health problems caused him to limit his personal commitment on medical advice. After the preliminary consolidation of the Wildberg “rescue house”, in 1845, following his application, he was transferred to a parish in Giengen an der Brenz .

Despite the efforts to secure his facility in Wildberg, there was a lack of competence and personal stamina of his successors against economic problems and local sensitivities after his departure. The Wildberg “rescue house” had to be closed in 1847. The students who remained there last could be taken over in the "Heil und Pflegeeanstalt Mariaberg" (as an institution for youth and handicapped people known under the name Mariaberg eV ), which was founded shortly afterwards by Carl Heinrich Rösch in the same year .

Some of Haldenwang's relatives worked in other facilities for the disabled. His cousin Georg Friedrich Müller (1804-1892) was the director of the respective homes in Riet and Winterbach , the forerunners of the Diakonie Stetten , cousins ​​von Haldenwang were employed in various institutions, some of which were in leading positions, which later also became part of the Diakonie Stetten: Regina Magdalena Müller (1808–1895) worked in the “private insane asylum” in Grunbach , Karoline Müller (1810–1891) was first a housemaid in Riet and then in Grunbach, Regine Müller (1817–1904) worked as a “housemother” in Winterbach and Stetten, Luise Müller (1824–1906) as a teacher and nurse in Riet.

Last years, pastor in Giengen and Böckingen (1845–1862)

In Giengen an der Brenz, Karl Georg Haldenwang held the Protestant pastoral office from 1845 for four years. There he also published the newspaper Der Grenzbote .

In 1849, at a time when, with the revolutionary upheavals of 1848/49 in the states of the German Confederation, new political possibilities seemed to be open and wide-ranging freedom of the press was promising journalistic development, and many new, if often not long-existing press organs were founded, Haldenwang changed his profession again and became editor-in-chief of the Württembergische Zeitung in Stuttgart. After about a year, however, he returned to pastoral work.

In Böckingen he took up his last pastor's position in the summer of 1850. This independent community at the time (today a district of Heilbronn) was characterized by strong population growth in the course of the rapid industrialization of the neighboring city of Heilbronn in the course of the 19th century (see industrial revolution in Germany ). It was mainly workers or job seekers who, as a result of the effects of pauperism , often lived in poor conditions without social security in Böckingen. With these people Haldenwang found new fields of social activity in addition to his pastoral office. So he founded a charity and opened several facilities for the disadvantaged population of the community: a soup kitchen for the elderly and poor, a kindergarten , a sewing and knitting school for girls. Furthermore, he tried to counteract the widespread unemployment locally by creating new jobs through publicly financed afforestation work on his initiative .

The social challenges that Haldenwang tried to overcome in Böckingen became exhausting over time. From the late 1850s onwards, his health problems increased. In 1862 he was retired at his own request and moved with his family to Heilbronn, where he died just a few weeks after his retirement on August 30, 1862 at the age of 58.

Posthumous appreciation

In Germany, especially in Baden-Württemberg , various schools for schoolchildren with special needs for support and supervision - namely special schools for the mentally handicapped or learning disabled - are named after Karl Georg Haldenwang, including (alphabetically sorted by place) the

literature

  • Kilian Mosemann: A pastor from Böckingen as a pioneer in education for the disabled, Karl Georg Haldenwang (1803–1862). In: Christhard Schrenk (Hrsg.): Heilbronner Köpfe, life pictures from three centuries - 3rd part. Heilbronn City Archives, 2001, ISBN 3-928990-78-0 . Pp. 107-120.
  • Andreas Möckel : The Mariaberg sanatorium in the 19th century between medicine and education , there on pages 16-25 a biographical treatise on Karl Georg Haldenwang (1803-1862) , in Karl Rudolf Eder (ed.): 150 years Mariaberger Homes - contributions to the history of mentally handicapped people . Gammertingen, Mariaberger Heime 1997.
  • Hans König: Literary diversity: Gschwender authors. 26 images of life ; Einhorn-Verlag Schwäbisch Gmünd 2005, ISBN 3-936373-07-8 (on Karl Georg Haldenwang: pp. 62–67)

Web links

Single receipts

  1. ^ History of special education at www.sonderpaed-online.de
  2. ↑ Karl Georg Haldenwang quoted from Haldenwang's chronological curriculum vitae, which is available online, documented at www.kghschule.de
  3. ↑ Carl Heinrich Rösch: Investigations on cretinism in Württemberg. With comments by Johann Jakob Guggenbühl and a foreword by Georg Jäger (= new studies on cretinism or human degeneration in their various degrees and forms. Ed. By Karl Maffei, Karl Heinrich Rösch. Vol. 1). F. Enke, Erlangen 1844 ( digitized version )
  4. ↑ Service to the helpless people. 100 years of sanatorium and nursing home for the feeble-minded and epileptic in Stetten i. R. , Stuttgart 1949, Appendix 6: The "institution people" of the Müller-Landenberger family.
  5. ↑ The Böckinger Chronik (Peter Wanner (Red.): Böckingen am See. A district of Heilbronn - yesterday and today . Heilbronn City Archives, Heilbronn 1998, ISBN 3-928990-65-9 (Publications of the Heilbronn City Archives. Volume 37, p . 335, on the further work of Haldenwang in Böckingen p. 335 f. P. 338 ff. Etc.)
  6. ^ Karl-Georg-Haldenwang-School in Bad Teinach-Zavelstein
  7. ^ Haldenwangschule ( Memento from April 21, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) in Dorsten
  8. ↑ Presentation of the Karl-Georg-Haldenwang vocational school in Gammertingen-Mariaberg (www.mariaberg.de)
  9. ↑ online presence of the Haldenwangschule in Leonberg (haldenwangschule-leonberg.de)
  10. ↑ online presence of the Karl-Georg-Haldenwang-Schule in Münsingen (www.haldenwang-schule.de)
personal data
SURNAME Haldenwang, Karl Georg
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Haldenwang, Carl Georg
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Protestant pastor and social reformer
DATE OF BIRTH October 16, 1803
PLACE OF BIRTH Simmozheim
DATE OF DEATH August 30, 1862
Place of death Heilbronn