Kurt Lowenstein

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Kurt Löwenstein (before 1926)

Kurt Lowenstein (also Kurt Kerlöw-Lowenstein , pseudonym Curt Falk * 18th May 1885 in Bleckede on the Elbe , † 8. May 1939 in Paris ) was a German SPD - politician .

education

Löwenstein was a son of the Bleckeder merchant Bernhard Löwenstein. After attending the "David Meyer'schen Stiftschule" in Hanover, he studied theology and philosophy in Halberstadt between 1904 and 1907 . He then entered the orthodox rabbinical seminary in Berlin , but broke off the training there due to religious doubts. In Berlin, Löwenstein also heard philosophical and educational lectures at the Friedrich Wilhelm University . Further stations of his studies were Erlangen and Hanover . In 1910 Löwenstein received his doctorate with the work of JM Guyau's pedagogical views .

family

Kurt Löwenstein had been married to the chemist Mara Kerwel (1891–1962) since 1911, who actively accompanied her husband's many political activities. In 1930 she received her doctorate with a dissertation on a new series of substituted chromenyl radicals . From this marriage, the son Dyno Löwenstein (1914–1996) emerged, who graduated from the Karl Marx School (Berlin-Neukölln) in 1933 . He took part in the illegal work of his parents when he emigrated and was later a leading head of Operation Greenup .

Political career

Memorial plaque on Geygerstrasse 3 in Berlin-Neukölln

As an opponent of the war, Löwenstein reported to the Red Cross in 1914 , which deployed him in war hospitals until 1918. During the November Revolution he became a member of a soldiers' council . He also joined the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) at that time . During this time he participated in the drafting of the organizational statute of the USPD Berlin-Brandenburg and the school and education program of his party.

From March 1919 Kurt Löwenstein was city and district councilor of Charlottenburg and from 1920 city councilor of Greater Berlin. In the Reichstag election of June 1920 , Löwenstein was elected to the Reichstag , to which he initially belonged as a member of the USPD until 1922. At that time he returned to the SPD. For this he continued to sit in the Reichstag, to which he was a member without interruption until April 1933. He left parliament two months earlier than most of the other SPD MPs, so Fritz Schröder continued his mandate for these remaining months . In the parliament of the Weimar Republic, Löwenstein devoted himself primarily to educational policy.

In 1920 Löwenstein was appointed by the USPD / SPD majority of the city council of Greater Berlin as the upper city school council to head the city education system. Due to pressure from clerical and conservative circles, however, his position was not confirmed by the Chief President Adolf Maier (DDP). Löwenstein was city councilor for public education in Berlin- Neukölln from 1921 to 1933 . During this time, he and his employees were able to implement essential social measures such as income-related school fees and the expansion of school meals .

Löwenstein was one of the most important supporters of the school reformer Fritz Karsen , who had become director of the Neukölln Kaiser-Friedrich-Realgymnasium at the same time as Löwenstein took office in 1921. Both campaigned for the conversion of the Kaiser-Friedrich-Realgymnasium into a single school and for the establishment of courses for high school graduates. The result of this cooperation was the transformation of the Kaiser-Friedrich-Realgymnasium into the first integrated comprehensive school in Germany, which has been called the Karl-Marx-Schule since 1930 . Löwenstein was also the political pioneer of a new school center planned for the Karl Marx School by Fritz Karsen and the architect Bruno Taut for up to 3,000 pupils, the school on Dammweg . Due to political resistance from conservative forces, the global economic crisis and the National Socialist seizure of power, the project could no longer be realized, apart from a pavilion that was restored from 1998–2001.

From 1922 to 1934 Löwenstein was vice-president of the Socialist Education International and from August 1924 to 1933 chairman of the Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft der Kinderfreunde . At the same time he was chairman of the working group of social democratic teachers in Germany , member of the board of the Socialist Cultural Association and the Reich Committee for Socialist Educational Work .

exile

After Löwenstein suffered drastic reprisals by the SA in 1933 , which also completely destroyed his apartment, he left Berlin and first went to Saxony , later to Prague and finally to Draveil near Paris . In exile in Paris he worked in the Lutetia circle , also known as the “Popular Front Committee”. There Löwenstein continued to work for the Socialist Education International , for which he edited the SEI service together with his wife Mara and his son Dyno . Löwenstein was a co-organizer of the international falcon republics and from 1934 on the board of the French children's friends movement. At the same time he also worked on the boards of the Paris Workers' Welfare Association , the Association of German Emigrant Teachers , the Board of the Central Association of German Emigration and the Working Committee of the German Victims Aid in Paris.

In 1937 the Löwenstein family was stripped of their German citizenship . On May 8, 1939 Kurt Löwenstein died of a heart attack. He was buried on May 13, 1939 in the Père Lachaise cemetery (Division 87, 2nd UG, 24719) in Paris. Mara Löwenstein and son Dyno were able to emigrate to the USA in March 1941 with the support of Varian Fry on the ship Capitaine Paul Lemerle . Mara Löwenstein worked as a chemist in New York from 1954 to 1964; her son, who was a trained statistician, founded his own company after his military service and became a member of the Democratic Party .

Honors

  • Kurt Löwenstein's youth education center of the Socialist Youth in Germany - The Falcons in Werneuchen - Hirschfelde
  • In Löwenstein's hometown Bleckede on the Elbe, the special needs school bears his name.
  • The Falken hostel in Schwangau is named after him as the "Kurt Löwenstein House".
  • The Neukölln district association of falcons calls itself in its memory "Kreisverband Kurt Löwenstein".
  • In the north of Neukölln, a secondary school was named "Kurt Löwenstein Oberschule"; this was merged in the course of the merger of the secondary and secondary schools in Berlin in 2010 with the then named Röntgen Realschule to form the integrated Röntgen Secondary School (iRSS). Since the 80th anniversary of the reform pedagogue's death, a permanent exhibition in the entrance to the school auditorium has been a reminder of the life, work and work of Löwenstein. The school's sponsorship association (a recognized independent youth welfare organization) knows that it is connected to Löwenstein's ideas and continues to bear the name of the school politician. In addition, a branch of the adult education center in Berlin-Neukölln bears his name.
  • Also in Neukölln, Karlsgartenstr. 6, the house of the adult education center bears the name Kurt-Löwenstein-Haus .
  • In the Langwasser district of Nuremberg, a street in the so-called pedagogical district is named after him.

Fonts (selection)

  • Kurt Kerlöw-Löwenstein: War echo. Bright spots and shadows . In: Ethical Culture . 1914, pp. 146-147. Digitized
  • Kurt Kerlöw-Löwenstein: Socialist school and education issues . Verlagsgenossenschaft Freiheit, Berlin 1919. (2nd amended edition 1922)
  • Kurt Kerlöw-Löwenstein: The parents' council. Guidelines for its activity . Freedom Publishing Cooperative, Berlin 1920.
  • The child as the carrier of the developing society . Jungbrunnen, Vienna 1924. (2nd improved edition 1928)
  • The tasks of children's friends Presentation at the 1st Reich Conference of Children's Friends on 2/3. August 1924 . JHW Dietz Nachf., Berlin 1924.
  • Rudolf Schröter, Kurt Löwenstein: Speaker material for the parent council elections . Forward printing and publishing house, Berlin 1925.
  • To the struggle for the Reich School Law on Article 146 of the Reich Constitution . ; Laub'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Berlin 1925. Digitized
  • Marie Juchacz , Kurt Löwenstein: Relief measures in labor disputes . In: Arbeiterwohlfahrt . 3 (1928), issue 24, p. 763. Digitized
  • The tasks of the child friends movement . In: Socialist monthly books . 35 (1929), No. 12, pp. 1116-1120. Digitized
  • The children's republics and their critics . In: Arbeiterwohlfahrt . 4 (1929), No. 19, pp. 592-596. Digitized
  • Socialist education as a social demand of the present. Lecture given at the education conference in Braunschweig on October 12, 1930 . Free school publisher, Berlin 1930.
  • Free path for the children's friends . Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft der Kinderfreunde Deutschlands, Berlin 1931.
  • Social Democracy and School. Compiled for lectures and courses . Edited by the Reich Committee for Socialist Educational Work. Berlin 1931. Digitized
  • Socialist education as a demand and an act . JHW Dietz Nachf., Berlin 1932.
  • Let us be comrades! A youth dedication , presented by Max Sievers , Trude Wiechert , Anna Siemsen , Kurt Löwenstein; Julius Schaxel et al. a. Urania Freidenker Verlag, Jena 1933.
  • Curt Falk: Karl Marx . Told for our youth . North Bohemian printing and publishing company, Bodenbach ad Elbe 1935.
  • Land of youth. The book of the children's review . Verlag Jüdische Rundschau, Berlin 1936.
  • School and education . Bollwerk-Verlag, Offenbach / Main 1947 (= school and education )
  • Kurt Lowenstein. Socialism and education. A selection from the writings 1919–1933 . New ed. by Ferdinand Brandecker and Hildegard Feidel-Mertz . JHW Dietz Nachf., Berlin, Bonn – Bad Godesberg 1976. ISBN 3-8012-1091-X

literature

  • Kurt Löwenstein - Life and Achievement . Arani, Berlin 1957 (= heads of the times)
  • Kurt Lowenstein . In: Franz Osterroth : Biographical Lexicon of Socialism. Volume I. Deceased personalities . JHW Dietz Nachf., Hanover 1960, pp. 202-203.
  • Ferdinand Brandecker:  Löwenstein, Kurt. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 15, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-428-00196-6 , pp. 104-106 ( digitized version ).
  • Heinrich Eppe: Kurt Löwenstein. A pioneer of modern experiential education? Neubauer, Lüneburg 1991, ISBN 3-88456-081-6 .
  • Heinrich Eppe: Education for a future that never came? On the importance and topicality of Kurt Löwenstein's political pedagogy . 3. Edition. Archives of the Workers' Youth Movement, Oer-Erkenschwick 1993, ISBN 3-926734-04-3 .
  • Gerd Radde (Ed.): School reform - continuities and breaks. The Berlin-Neukölln test field. Volume 1: 1912 to 1945 . Leske + Budrich, Opladen 1993, ISBN 3-8100-1129-0 . (In it: Werner Korthaase: Neuköllner school policy in the service of the workers. Dr. Kurt Löwenstein as local politician . Pp. 130–145. Dorothea Kolland: Kurt Löwenstein's concept of cultural education using the example of music . Pp. 153–160.)
  • Edgar Weiß: Radically democratically engaged and brutally persecuted, repeatedly suppressed and remarkably topical - the socialist educator Kurt Löwenstein . In: Martin Dust (Ed.): Pedagogy against forgetting. Festschrift for Wolfgang Keim . Götzelmann, Kiel 2000, ISBN 3-9805016-8-X , pp. 469-489.
  • Roland Gröschel (Ed.): On the way to a socialist upbringing - contributions to the prehistory and early history of the social-democratic “child friends” in the Weimar Republic. Festschrift for Heinrich Eppe . Klartext, Essen 2006, ISBN 3-89861-650-9 .
  • Martin Schumacher (Hrsg.): MdR The Reichstag members of the Weimar Republic in the time of National Socialism. Political persecution, emigration and expatriation, 1933–1945. A biographical documentation . 3rd, considerably expanded and revised edition. Droste, Düsseldorf 1994, ISBN 3-7700-5183-1 .
  • Lowenstein, Kurt. In: Lexicon of German-Jewish Authors . Volume 16: Lewi – Mehr. Edited by the Bibliographia Judaica archive. Saur, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-598-22696-0 , pp. 121-124.
  • Kay Schweigmann-Greve: Kurt Löwenstein. Democratic education and counter-world experience. Jewish miniatures vol. 187. Hentrich and Hentrich, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-95565-153-4 .
  • Esriel Hildesheimer, Mordechai Eliav: The Berlin Rabbinical Seminar 1873-1938. Berlin 2008, ISBN 9783938485460 , p. 182.
  • Hildegard Feidel-Mertz : Löwenstein, Kurt , in: Hugo Maier (Hrsg.): Who is who of social work . Freiburg: Lambertus, 1998 ISBN 3-7841-1036-3 , p. 370f.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ute Schötteldreyer: Bleckeder Heimatbuch. From the history of the city of Bleckede and its districts . Bleckede 1983, p. 59
  2. ↑ a b Kurt Löwenstein , at Archives of Social Democracy
  3. ^ Catalog of the German National Library (DNB) : Mara Löwenstein
  4. ^ DNB catalog: Dissertation by Mara Löwenstein
  5. ^ Jewish hostages in Dachau. Blackmail letter from the camp management to the "New Forward" , signed Kurt Eisner . In: Neuer Vorwärts , Vol. 5, No. 235, December 12, 1937, p. 1, columns 2–4; Continued on p. 2, column 1.
  6. ↑ Hildegard Feidel-Mertz / Hermann Schnorbach : teachers in emigration. The Association of German Teacher Emigrants (1933–39) in the traditional context of the democratic teachers' movement , Beltz Verlag, Weinheim and Basel, 1981, ISBN 3-407-54114-7 , p. 232
  7. ↑ More details and background information on this crossing can be found in the article about Minna Flake .
  8. ↑ Werner Röder and Herbert A. Strauss : Biographical Handbook of German-Speaking Emigration after 1933 , Volume I (with the participation of Dieter Marc Schneider and Louise Forsyth): Politics, Economy, Public Life , KG Saur, Munich - New York - London - Paris, 1980, ISBN 3-598-10087-6 , pp. 455-456
  9. ^ Sebastian Engelmann: Kay Schweigmann-Greve: Kurt Löwenstein , socialnet reviews, June 27, 2016
personal data
SURNAME Lowenstein, Kurt
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Loewenstein, Kurt; Curt Falk (pseudonym); Kerlöw (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (SPD), MdR
DATE OF BIRTH May 18, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH Bleckede
DATE OF DEATH May 8, 1939
Place of death Paris , France