Kurt Hahn

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Initiatives founded by Kurt Hahn on a plaque at Atlantic College

Kurt Matthias Robert Martin Hahn (born June 5, 1886 in Berlin , † December 14, 1974 in Hermannsberg / Hattenweiler not far from the boarding school he founded in Salem ) was a German politician and educator and is considered one of the founders of experiential education . He was a younger and close friend of the last Chancellor of the German Empire, Max von Baden .

Life

Paternal family

His parents were the large Jewish industrialist Oskar Hahn (* May 1, 1860 in Berlin, † October 28, 1907 there) and Charlotte Hahn, born from a wealthy Jewish family. Landau (1865-1934). His grandfather was Albert Hahn , who founded Hahnschen Werke AG , had production sites in Düsseldorf- Oberbilk , Duisburg- Großenbaum , Moscow , Saint Petersburg , in the Austrian-Silesian Oderberg (today Bohumín in the Czech Republic ) and in Jekaterinoslaw ( Ukraine ). His uncles were the industrialist Georg Hahn and the microbiologist Martin Hahn ; his aunts were married to the neurologist Ernst Julius Remak and the mathematician Kurt Hensel .

Hahn's niece - the daughter of his brother Franz - Cornelia Hahn Oberlander , b. June 20, 1921 in Mülheim an der Ruhr , who emigrated to England at the age of 18 and to America in 1939, is a well-known landscape architect in Canada .

Child, pupil, student

The Oskar Hahn family lived in a villa on the left bank of the Wannsee near Berlin. She had four sons. The eldest son died early. Kurt as the second born had two much younger brothers. Two of his brothers were Rudolf Hahn (1897–1964) and Franz Hahn , who died in an avalanche accident in 1933. After the death of his father in October 1907 at the age of only 47, Kurt's share of the inheritance was placed in trust by one sixth - half of the inheritance was bequeathed to the mother and half to the sons - so that Kurt was able to live on capital gains. The brother of the deceased, Georg Hahn, became the head of the company until the takeover in 1938.

Kurt Hahn passed his Abitur at the French Gymnasium in Berlin and studied philosophy, classical studies, psychology, pedagogy and economics at Christ Church College in Oxford from 1904 to 1906 . From 1906 to 1910 he continued his studies in Berlin, Heidelberg, Freiburg i.Br. and Göttingen and attended courses with Wilhelm Windelband , Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff , Edmund Husserl , Jaffe, Gerhart von Schulze-Gaevernitz and Leonard Nelson . From 1911 to 1914 Hahn studied again at Oxford. Here he learned to appreciate cosmopolitanism, a preference for outdoor and sports education and the culture of debate promoted there, and was a member of the Hanover Club , a German-British debate club that existed from 1911 to 1913 and was intended to promote mutual understanding.

The outbreak of World War I ended the almost thirty year old's stay in England; He returned to his mother's parents' house on Wannsee, which was an integral part of Berlin salon culture until the World War II. Charlotte Hahn maintained a “big house”, whose visitors included the young Arthur Rubinstein , Walther Rathenau , Lina and Raoul Richter . In his early publication, Frau Else's promise , Hahn describes situations in his mother's salon, among other things. The book is dedicated to his mother.

Employment

First World War

During the First World War, Hahn worked in the Foreign Office in Berlin from 1914 to 1919 , initially as a lecturer under the freelance journalist Paul Rohrbach . In particular, he was responsible for evaluating British newspapers and publications. Hahn was private secretary, close friend and confidante of Prince Max von Baden , who was appointed the last Chancellor of the German Empire for about a month on October 3, 1918 . In his biography of the heir to the throne of Baden, Lothar Machtan referred to the bustling Hahn as a chancellor-maker.

In February 1918, Kurt Hahn and other influential personalities such as Robert Bosch , Alfred Weber , Friedrich Naumann and, shortly before, Rudolf Steiner, submitted a memorandum to Prince Max von Baden. In it the politicians are called upon to immediately negotiate peace and then reorganize the society.

Weimar Republic

In 1919 he founded the Schloss Salem boarding school together with Max von Baden , initially as a country school home. He was considered a reform teacher who tried to combine education and upbringing. In 1932 the Birklehof was founded in Hinterzarten in the Black Forest , a sister school of Salem.

Third Reich

When Adolf Hitler publicly justified this crime in 1932 shortly after the murder of a young communist in Potempa by five SA men , out of indignation, Kurt Hahn wrote a letter to the former students of the Schloss Salem school and demanded that they either reject the National Socialist movement or to cut off contact with the school. A short time later it came on 30 January 1933 with the takeover of the Nazis . As a result, Hahn, like thousands of other opponents of Hitler and Jews after the Reichstag fire , was arrested. In Salem he was picked up from among his students by the Nazi authorities and " arrested " from March 11th to 16th . Hahn was released shortly afterwards. This was due to direct intervention by British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald and Berthold Margrave von Baden . Hahn emigrated after his discharge from school in July 1933 and settled in Scotland , where he founded the British Salem School in Gordonstoun in 1934 . Kurt Hahn brought in his experiential educational “ Outward Bound ” concept; Courses of this kind lasting several weeks were the model for many later adventure educators.

post war period

In the post-war period, he helped found the Louisenlund Foundation in 1949 .

When Hahn was invited to speak at the NATO Defense College in 1956 , there he experienced the cooperation and friendship of people from countries that had recently been enemies in World War II . Hahn had the idea of ​​bringing young people together in a similar way in order to overcome the hostilities of the Cold War . This gave rise to the concept of the United World Colleges (UWC), a group of international schools in which young people between the ages of 16 and 18 from practically every country in the world live, learn and take part in social activities. The first of its kind, Atlantic College at St Donat's Castle in Wales , opened in 1962 and described by The Times as "the most exciting experiment in education since World War II." At this school, for example, training in sea ​​rescue is an integral part of school life - as is the case at the Schloss Salem school, which later named a DLRG lifeboat after Kurt Hahn.

Together with Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh , he founded the "Duke of Edinburgh's Award", whose sister programs (including the International Youth Program in Germany ) are today supposed to open up opportunities for young people in more than 80 countries around the world.

Pedagogical principles

This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.

Hahn was certain that upbringing would have failed if every young person did not find their personal passion (in the sense of passion ). He wanted to help the young people by offering social services and other “inner” talent searches. The experiential approached for their activities (sleep outdoors, camp , etc.) quickly to the methods of education in National Socialism , and despite all the efforts of the reply it is this sometimes blamed for today. Hahn's sports teacher in Gordonstoun , Bernhard Zimmermann , as director of the institute for physical exercise at the University of Göttingen, had led courses in National Socialist military education across the Reich until he emigrated in 1938 and brought this technique with him to Great Britain. Hahn, however, only wanted to show opportunities so that every young person could possibly promote previously undiscovered skills in themselves.

In his Seven Laws of Salem , Kurt Hahn formulated his holistic educational concept, which was intended to convey far more than just academic knowledge to the students of the institutions he founded. Even today, these commandments form the basis of education in the Schloss Salem and Gordonstoun boarding schools as well as in the United World Colleges (UWC):

  1. Give the children the opportunity to discover themselves.
  2. Let the children experience triumph and defeat.
  3. Give the children the opportunity to give themselves to the common cause.
  4. Provides times of silence.
  5. Exercise the imagination.
  6. Let competitions play an important but not a dominant role.
  7. Relieves the sons and daughters of rich and powerful parents from the "enervating" (= softening) feeling of privilege.

criticism

Hahn's experiential pedagogy approach is sometimes criticized because the founding of the first Kurt Hahn School can be traced back to a politically conservative motivation: The school should produce a new national leadership elite that is characterized by a sense of responsibility, willingness to act and the ability to cooperate.

Fonts

  • Mrs. Else's promise. A story . Albert Langen, Munich 1910.
  • Education for responsibility. Speeches and essays . Klett, Stuttgart n.d. [1958].
  • Education and the crisis of democracy. Speeches, essays, letters from a political educator. Published by Michael Knoll. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1986.
  • Reform with a sense of proportion. Selected writings by a politician and educator. Published by Michael Knoll. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1998.

literature

  • Lothar Machtan : Prince Max of Baden. The last chancellor of the emperor . Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-518-42407-0 . The book contains a twelve-page biographical chapter on Kurt Hahn under the heading: Spin Doctor Kurt Hahn .
  • Hellmut Becker: Kurt Hahn, the educator. In: New Collection . 1975, pp. 109-113; reprinted in: Hellmut Becker: On the way to a learning society. People, analyzes, suggestions for the future . Stuttgart 1980, pp. 89-94.
  • Peter Friese: Kurt Hahn. The life and work of a controversial educator . Dorum 2000.
  • Wilhelm Henze (ed.): Bernhard Zimmermann - Hermann Nohl - Kurt Hahn. A contribution to reform pedagogy. 1991, ISBN 978-3-932423-95-6 (= series of publications Lower Saxony Institute for Sports History , Vol. 9).
  • Michael Knoll (Ed.): Kurt Hahn: Reform with a sense of proportion. Selected writings by a politician and educator . With a foreword by Hartmut von Hentig. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1998.
  • Michael Knoll: School reform through experiential education. Kurt Hahn - a powerful educator. In: Pedagogical Action. Wissenschaft und Praxis im Dialog 5 (2001), 2, pp. 65–76.
  • Michael Lausberg : Children should discover themselves. Kurt Hahn's experiential education . Marburg 2007.
  • Elly von Reventlow (Ed.): Albrecht Bernstorff to the memory. Self-published, Düsseldorf 1952.
  • Hermann Röhrs (Ed.): Education as a risk and probation. A representation of Kurt Hahn's life's work . Heidelberg 1966.
  • Sandra Roscher: Education through experiences. The reform pedagogue Kurt Hahn in the light of contemporary witnesses . Augsburg 2005.
  • Hildegard Thiesen: Kurt Hahn. Pedagogical environments between construction and connection . Jena 2006.
  • Michael Birnthaler : Kurt Hahn and Rudolf Steiner. In: Zeitschrift für Erlebnispädagogik. Lueneburg 2008.
  • David Sutcliffe: Kurt Hahn and the United World Colleges with other Founding Figures. 2012, ISBN 978-0-9576458-0-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Lothar Machtan: Prince Max of Baden. The last chancellor of the emperor . Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin 2013, p. 308.
  2. ↑ Short biography of grandfather Albert Hahn in the Neue Deutsche Biographie
  3. ↑ https://tclf.org/pioneer/oral-history/cornelia-hahn-oberlander
  4. ^ Lothar Machtan: Prince Max of Baden. The last chancellor of the emperor . Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin 2013, p. 309.
  5. ↑ Kurt Hahn biography in leo-bw . In 1909 Hahn was one of the first students of Leonard Nelson, who had just completed his habilitation, in Göttingen. His contribution “Aim and Possibility of Education” held in the seminar is printed in Hahn's book Education for Responsibility . Compare: Erna Blencke: Leonard Nelson's life and work as reflected in the letters to his parents, 1891-1915 . In: Hellmut Becker , Willi Eichler , Gustav Heckmann (eds.): Education and politics. Minna Specht on her 80th birthday . Public Life Publishing House, Frankfurt am Main 1960, p. 35.
  6. ^ Reventlow (Ed.), Contribution by Harald Mandt, p. 26.
  7. ^ Karsten Plöger: The Hanover Club, Oxford (1911-13): Student Paradiplomacy and the Coming of the Great War . In: German History , Vol. 27 (2009), pp. 196-214.
  8. ^ Lothar Machtan: Prince Max of Baden. The last chancellor of the emperor . Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin 2013, p. 310.
  9. ^ Lothar Machtan: Prince Max of Baden. The last chancellor of the emperor . Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin 2013, pp. 310-311.
  10. ^ Lothar Machtan: Prince Max of Baden. The last chancellor of the emperor . Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin 2013, p. 486.
  11. ^ Michael Birnthaler: Adventure education and Waldorf schools. Stuttgart 2008, p. 23.
  12. ↑ BBC News Magazine February 20, 2016 .
  13. ↑ See sit down, six! - School stories from Germany (1/3). Lost childhood . Documentary by Dora Heinze on behalf of SWR. German premiere on December 8, 2005
  14. ↑ Arnd Krüger : "Basically there was no sports lesson that, apart from gestures, would have been different from before and after." Reality and reception of National Socialist sport. In: Mechthild von Schoenebeck (Ed.): From dealing with the subject of music education with its history. Verlag Die Blaue Eule, Essen 2001, pp. 19–41; here especially p. 22 ( PDF ).
  15. ↑ See Torsten Fischer, Jörg W. Ziegenspeck: Erlebnispädagogik. Basics of experiential learning. Experiential learning in the continuity of the historical educational movement. Bad Heilbrunn 2008, p. 227ff.
personal data
SURNAME Hahn, Kurt
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hahn, Kurt Matthias Robert Martin (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician and educator
DATE OF BIRTH June 5, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH December 14, 1974
Place of death Hermannsberg near Salem (Baden)