Kurt Schumann (pedagogue)

Kurt Schumann (also Curt Schumann ; born November 20, 1885 in Dresden , † February 12, 1970 in Korbach ) was a German reform pedagogue and Saxon homeland researcher.

His father was Hugo Schumann (born 1858), a typesetter, cashier and book printer owner by profession, his mother Hedwig, (born Bock, 1857–1917). On August 31, 1914, he married Martha Schnabel (1888–1968) in Leipzig, with her he had two sons, Karl (1919–1944) and Karsten (born 1923).

Live and act

From 1892 to 1896 Schumann attended the 18th district school in Dresden, then the Ehrlich pen school. From 1901 to 1907 he graduated from the Freiherrlich von Fletcher teacher seminar in Dresden. He gained his first pedagogical practical experience in Freiberg until 1910. Then he entered the Dresden school service for three years. From 1908 he made several trips abroad - repeatedly to France and Great Britain - to Switzerland and Algeria. In February 1913 he passed the final exams in Zittau as an external student. From the summer semester he studied German, geography, French, English and pedagogy at the University of Leipzig . After only five semesters, he registered for the examination for the higher teaching post and completed it after another two semesters in 1916 with the state examination (summa cum laude). Then followed in 1917 the doctorate with Eduard Spranger (1882-1963) on the educational views of the English Count Chesterfield (1694-1773). From 1916 Schumann taught at the König-Georg-Gymnasium in Dresden- Johannstadt , in 1918 he switched to the Wettiner Gymnasium in Dresden. In the initial phase of the Weimar Republic (until the end of 1923) he promoted the Saxon school reform efforts as an educational policy expert of the SPD , in the working group of social democratic teachers and as a committed member of the state association of Saxony of the federal government decided school reformers . In 1919 he was a co-founder of the Dresden Adult Education Center and in 1921 of the Dürerversuchsschule . In 1922 it was the only higher experimental school in Saxony to begin its educational reform work, Schumann moved there in 1925 as an experimental school teacher and headmaster.

In close cooperation with the Hamburg Lichtwark School , the Dürerversuchsschule was respected nationwide, especially through its national (since 1923) and international (since 1929) student exchange program. From 1921 he was a member of the World Association for Renewal of Education (WEE), from 1928 in the German Peace Society , in the League of Nations Union , the World Brotherhood Federation and the Holiday Fellowship . At the World Federation Conference in 1929 in Helsingör , Denmark , Schumann was one of the founders of the German section of the New Education Fellowship. After propaganda programs since 1930 against the Dürerschule and Schumann's commitment to peace education by German national and Christian circles with reactions as far as the Saxon state parliament, he was removed from school service in 1933 by Wilhelm Hartnacke, the Reich Commissioner for the Ministry of Education . In 1934 he was forced to move to Zschopau. The Dürer Trial School was converted into a normal school. His teaching activity from 1934 to 1945 at the Oberschule Zschopau proves that adherence to humanistic elements of reform pedagogy was possible to a limited extent even in the Nazi era. After the end of the Nazi regime, Schumann was appointed head of the department for urban school matters at the commandant's office in Zschopau and head of the Zschopau secondary school as senior director of studies.

He was committed to ensuring that his secondary school should become a democratic school based on the model of the former Dresden Dürerschule and that it received the status of an experimental school. These initiatives fail after the state decreed abandonment of reform pedagogy in 1948 in favor of Stalinist didactic principles based on the Soviet model.

Schumann stood up for technical and educational competence; He rejected ideological propaganda, especially in the form of party-political narrowing. With his aversion to the narrow-mindedness of civil servants, technical incompetence and arrogance of power, he often drew the anger of functionaries. As a result, he resigned from the director's office in 1950 against the background of the increasing party-political orientation of the East German school landscape. In 1954 Schumann was removed from school again.

The double relegation and exclusion by two dictatorships makes Schumann's biography an impressive example of a life in resistance to ideology and injustice.

Since 1952 he has been writing for the hiking booklet “Around the Augustusburg”. His essay on the central Ore Mountains in the Saxon Homeland Papers in 1961 met with a remarkable response from experts. Schumann's most important work for geographical research, the explanations on the measuring table sheet Zschopau and the surrounding area from 1956, did not appear until 1977 in the standard work "The Middle Zschopau region". In 1968 he moved to live with his son in Hesse. Schumann died in February 1970.

literature

swell

• Saxon Main State Archives Dresden, Ministry for National Education, No. 12881/240 to 245
• Dresden City Archives , Schulamt, Dürerschule, March 9, 1976, No. 1 to 10;
• State Archives Chemnitz , District Council & District Council Flöha, 30405, No. 410, 437, 440, 948, 951, 955, 1018, 1024, 1025, 1028, 1029, 1034, 1040;
• Marienberg district archive, PA Kurt Schumann.

Works

• The educational views of Earl Chesterfield , Langensalza 1917.
• Collaboration with “Sächsische Wanderbücher”, Vol. 2, 5 and 6, Dresden 1922, 1923 and 1935.
• Articles in the "Mitteilungen des Landesverein Sächsischer Heimatschutz", Vol. XI, Issue 7 / 9-1922, Vol. XII, Issue 1 / 3-1923, Vol. XIII, Issue 7 / 8-1924 & Issue 11/12, Vol . XX, issue 1 / 2-1931.
• Around the Augustusburg (Our little hiking booklet, No. 5), Dresden 1952.
• The middle Erzgebirge - a forgotten hiking area, in: Sächsische Heimatblätter 7 (1961) 5, pp. 263-270.
• The central Zschopau area, results of the local history inventory in the areas of Flöha, Augustusburg and Zschopau ( values ​​of our homeland : local history inventory in the GDR, published by the Academy of Sciences of the GDR, vol. 28), Berlin 1977.

literature

• The Dürerschule, state higher experimental school Dresden , report 1926 & 1929, ed. from the teaching staff, Dresden 1926 & 1929.
• Also at home in a foreign country, A book from the exchange of the Dürerschule in Dresden , ed. from the teaching staff, Leipzig 1927.
• B. Poste: School reform in Saxony, A forgotten tradition of German school history , Frankfurt am Main [et al.] 1993.
• Andreas Pehnke : “I belong on the zone border!”, The Saxon reform pedagogue and local researcher Kurt Schumann, Beucha 2004.

Private

• Historical documents on Saxon reform pedagogy. Collection owned by Andreas Pehnke

Web links

• Literature by and about Kurt Schumann in the catalog of the German National Library
• Andreas Pehnke: Kurt Schumann (1885-1970) . In: Institute for Saxon History and Folklore (Ed.): Saxon Biography .