Karl König (curative teacher)

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Karl König (born September 25, 1902 in Vienna , Austria-Hungary ; † March 27, 1966 in Überlingen- Brachenreuthe) was an Austrian pediatrician , curative educator , anthroposophist and author . He founded the international Camphill movement.

life and work

Karl König grew up as the only child of the Jewish shoe retailer couple Aron Ber König and Bertha, nee. Fischer in Vienna. There he went to school and studied medicine with a focus on embryology . After graduating, he met the anthroposophic doctor Ita Wegman in 1927 , who invited him to her Clinical-Therapeutic Institute in Arlesheim (Switzerland) and brought him into contact with curative education. In 1929, for example, he joined the curative educational home Schloß Pilgramsheim near Striegau in Lower Silesia as a pediatrician . In the same year he married Mathilde Elisabeth (Tilla) Maasberg from the Moravian Brethren . The marriage had four children. In 1936 the family returned to Vienna, where Dr. König opened his own pediatric practice.

Karl König had planned a curative education facility based on anthroposophy in Vienna and discussed it intensively in a youth group there. The annexation of Austria in 1938 thwarted this project; the König family fled - like many Jewish members of the group - via Switzerland and Italy to Scotland , where they arrived in March 1939. After the attack on Poland on September 1, 1939, Karl König was interned with the other men ; the women moved into the house in Camphill near Aberdeen , which was named for the later movement . After his release, the first Camphill Community for Children in Need of Special Care was established there in June 1940 as a working and living community for children “in need of soul care”. For Hildegard Feidel-Mertz, the Aberdeen Camphill School is one of the 20 schools in exile she researched that were founded worldwide after 1933 by teachers and educators who had to leave Germany for political reasons or because of their Jewish descent .

From 1955, with the help of Karl König, the first Camphill village community, Botton Village, was set up in Yorkshire, Northern England, for people beyond school age.

Many of the Viennese youth group worked in and around Scotland. Karl König developed a lively scientific publication and lecturing activity and conducted a worldwide specialist correspondence. He coordinated the early founding of communities and the independence of the institutions in "regions" and the Camphill Village Trust , introduced grassroots decision-making and approaches to social threefolding , initiated training courses for employees and maintained a structured coexistence characterized by simple Christian rituals . He was particularly committed to the people with Down syndrome , of whose beneficial influence on their environment he was convinced.

Companions describe Karl König as being very small, with a lively, turned-on look, sympathetic, but also argumentative and idiosyncratic. In 1964 he founded the Lehenhof as the first Camphill village community in Germany. In the same year he moved from Scotland to the Brachenreuthe village community in Überlingen on Lake Constance, where he died two years later.

The way of life promoted by Karl König, which is typical of a Camphill community, is based on the close relationship to nature through joint work in agriculture, the garden, the bakery, kitchen and craft workshops. Living in families of choice and sharing cultural life are part of the therapeutic program. In spite of their mostly multiple, severe disabilities , the “villagers” are generally considered capable of making their real, serious contribution to social life. The work performed should be of such high quality that it can survive on the market.

The ideal attitude of those active in curative education, according to Karl König, "only comes about when a new humility begins to grow in the heart, which sees the brother in every human face."

criticism

Critical objections to König's work go in different directions.

On the one accusing him of Swiss theologian Ekkehard Stegemann ago, (1965) Jews have assigned a subordinate Christianity role in a (blank) Presentation: The Holocaust perished had "by their sacrificial witness" filed "for the coming of Christ [... ] in the etheric space of the earth. " . On the other hand, it was also controversial in anthroposophical circles. In 1935, for example, he was temporarily excluded from the Anthroposophical Society in the course of internal quarrels .

Fonts (in German)

  • The child's first three years . Free Spiritual Life, Stuttgart 1957
    • New edition: Free Spiritual Life (Praxis Anthroposophie 29), Stuttgart 1994: ISBN 3-7725-1229-1
  • Embryology and the Origin of the World . Three lectures. The coming ones, Freiburg im Breisgau 1958
  • Mongolism. Appearance and origin . Hippocrates, Stuttgart 1959
  • The human soul , Aberdeen 1959
    • German as About the human soul : Free Spiritual Life (curative education from anthroposophical human studies 9), Stuttgart 1989
  • The fate of Sigmund Freud and Josef Breuer . Free Spiritual Life (Studies and Experiments 3), Stuttgart 1962
  • The Wanderer into Dawn (poetry). Camphill House, Milltimber 1962
  • The two disciples Johannes . Free spiritual life (suggestions for anthroposophical work 3), Stuttgart 1963
  • The thalidomide disaster. The question of lives lost and found again . The coming ones, Freiburg im Breisgau 1963
  • Brothers and sisters. Birth order as fate . Klotz, Stuttgart 1964
  • Curative education diagnostics (2 parts with six or three lectures "for curative teachers and social workers"). Typescript Berlin 1965
  • Brother animal. Human and animal in myth and evolution . Free Spiritual Life, Stuttgart 1967
  • About Rudolf Steiner's soul calendar . Free Spiritual Life, Stuttgart 1970
  • Sensory development and body experience. Remedial educational aspects of Rudolf Steiner's doctrine of the senses . Free Spiritual Life, Stuttgart 1971
  • Ghosts under the zeitgeist. Biographical information on the phenomenology of the 19th century . Free Spiritual Life, Stuttgart 1973
  • Language comprehension and language treatment (with Georg von Arnim and Ursula Herberg). Free spiritual life (curative education from anthroposophical understanding of the human being 4), Stuttgart 1978
  • The mission of conscience . Five lectures. Free Spiritual Life, Stuttgart 1992, ISBN 3-7725-0906-1
  • The impulse of the village community. Anthropological basics for the coexistence of adults with and without disabilities . Free Spiritual Life, Stuttgart 1994, ISBN 3-7725-1176-7
  • The inner path . Seven lectures on meditation and spiritual training. Free Spiritual Life, Stuttgart 1995, ISBN 3-7725-1532-0
  • Raising and resurrection . Four Easter lectures. Free Spiritual Life, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-7725-1624-6
  • Also a Christmas story . Free Spiritual Life, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-7725-1764-1
  • The circle of the twelve senses and the seven life processes . Free Spiritual Life, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-7725-1858-3
  • Lectures on Rudolf Steiner's “curative education course” . Free Spiritual Life, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-7725-1968-7

literature

  • Frieda Margarete Reuschle: Karl König , in: In the sign of humanity, ten images of life . Urachhaus, Stuttgart 1968, p. 152ff
  • Godhard M. Husemann: The curative teacher Karl König . Hippocrates, Stuttgart 1971
  • Hans Müller-Wiedemann : Karl König. A Central European Biography in the 20th Century . Free Spiritual Life, Stuttgart 1992, ISBN 3-7725-1153-8
  • Peter Selg : Beginnings of the anthroposophical healing art. Ita Wegman, Friedrich Husemann, Eugen Kolisko, Frederik Willem Zeylmans van Emmichoven, Karl König, Gerhard Kienle . Verlag am Goetheanum (Pioneers of Anthroposophy 18), Dornach 2000, ISBN 3-7235-1088-4
  • Bernhard Schmalenbach: King, Karl . In: Plato, Bodo von (Ed.): Anthroposophy in the 20th century. A cultural impulse in biographical portraits . Verlag am Goetheanum, Dornach 2003, ISBN 3-7235-1199-6 ( see below links )
  • Peter Selg: Karl König and anthroposophy. On the spirituality of an esoteric Christian in the 20th century . Verlag am Goetheanum, Dornach 2006, ISBN 3-7235-1270-4
  • Peter Selg: Ita Wegman and Karl König. A biographical documentation . Verlag am Goetheanum, Dornach 2007, ISBN 3-7235-1293-3
  • Manfred Berger : "Remedial education is a practical art". In memory of Karl König, who died 50 years ago, in: heilpaedagogik.de 2016 / H. 2, pp. 23-24
  • Maximilian Buchka: König, Karl , in: Hugo Maier (Hrsg.): Who is who of social work . Freiburg: Lambertus, 1998 ISBN 3-7841-1036-3 , p. 318f.

Proof of citation

  1. Hildegard Feidel-Mertz: Pedagogy in exile after 1933. Education for survival. Pictures at an exhibition . dipa publishing house, Frankfurt am Main, 1990, ISBN 3-7638-0520-6 , p. 144
  2. Lehenhof. Retrieved October 24, 2019 .
  3. ^ Camphill letter 1965
  4. ^ Reformed News (Switzerland), September 8, 1999

Web links