Karl Reinhardt (school reformer)

Karl Paul Friedrich Reinhardt (born July 12, 1849 in Puderbach in the Westerwald , † October 4, 1923 in Salem ) was a German teacher and school reformer.

life and work

As the son of Karl Andreas Reinhardt and nephew of Carl Johann Freudenberg , he attended grammar school in Weilburg . He then studied in Basel , Bonn and Berlin . In 1873 he completed his studies with a doctorate and became a teacher in Bielefeld . Reinhardt taught at the municipal high school in Frankfurt am Main from 1880 to 1884 . After two years as a grammar school director in Detmold , he returned to Frankfurt to succeed Tycho Mommsen in 1886 to take over the management of the Frankfurt grammar school. In Prussia there was heated discussion about reforming the grammar schools . With the support of the then mayor of Frankfurt, Franz Adickes , he prepared a fundamental reform of the municipal grammar school. In his memorandum, Die Frankfurter Reformplanes , published in 1892 , he presented the Frankfurt curriculum with French as the first foreign language , Latin as the second and Greek or English as the third.

In the same year, the Frankfurt grammar school was divided into two branches, one of which stayed with the traditional old-language model, while the other introduced the reform model. In 1897 the school was divided:

• The Lessing grammar school continued the tradition of the humanistic grammar school at the old location in Junghofstrasse.
• The Goethe-Gymnasium was newly founded as a reform high school and worked according to Reinhardt's reform curriculum. It moved into a new building on Bahnstrasse (today Friedrich-Ebert-Anlage ).

Reinhardt took over the management of the Goethe-Gymnasium, whose director he remained until 1904. It became the model for all reform schools in Prussia . In 1904 Reinhardt became a ministerial director and real secret councilor in the Prussian Ministry of Education, where he stayed until 1919.

Reinhardt was personally friends with Prince Max von Baden , who was the owner of Salem Castle. Both are considered to be the founders of the Schloss Salem boarding school. Kurt Hahn was called in. On Reinhardt's initiative, Prince Max von Baden made this property available for the new Salem boarding school. Reinhardt's reforms should be implemented there. From 1920 to 1923 he became the first director of the Schloss Salem boarding school , where he died on October 4, 1923.

Reinhardt was from 1888 to 1902 on the administrative committee of the Free German Hochstift , including 1888 to 1890 and 1899 to 1900 as its chairman. His sons were the classical philologist Karl Reinhardt (1886–1958) and the entrepreneur Herbert Reinhardt .

Reinhardt married Auguste Freudenberg , the daughter of Carl Johann Freudenberg , the founder of the Carl Freudenberg Group Freudenberg, which is still active today .

His contacts with Prince Max von Baden came about as a family, as the Reinhardts u. a. by the bank Reinhardt u. a. of Johann Wilhelm Reinhardt financed the Hessian and Baden nobility.

Furthermore, the Reinhardts are also connected to the industrialists Freudenberg via their mother Catharina Freudenberg, nee. Reinhardt of the company's founder, Carl Johann Freudenberg, and with the manufacturing and industrial families as well as the banking families Bassermann , Fries , Ladenburg and Thorbecke . These also financed the nobility and cities, while the friezes also financed the Austrian imperial family.

literature

• Wolfgang Klötzer (Hrsg.): Frankfurter Biographie . Personal history lexicon . Second volume. M – Z (=  publications of the Frankfurt Historical Commission . Volume XIX , no. 2 ). Waldemar Kramer, Frankfurt am Main 1996, ISBN 3-7829-0459-1 .

Web links

• Reinhardt, Karl Paul Friedrich. Hessian biography. (As of July 7, 2020). In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).
• Reinhardt, Karl (1849–1923) in the Frankfurt dictionary of persons