Lisa Niebank
Lisa Catharina Niebank (born July 22, 1913 in Hamburg ; † April 4, 1980 in Beijing ) was a German educator and anti-fascist .
Live and act
Lisa Niebank was the daughter of Gerd Niebank and his wife Anna, née Schoof. The socialist father taught as a reform pedagogue in the elementary school Ludwigstrasse in Hamburg-St. Pauli . From 1926 to 1929 he was chairman of the Society of Friends of the Patriotic Schools and Education .
After attending the Telemannstrasse elementary school from 1920 to 1927, Lisa Niebank switched to a secondary school in Hamburg, where she stayed for six years. Both educational institutions were considered to be oriented towards reform education . In February 1933 she passed the school leaving examination and then studied education, philosophy, psychology and zoology at the University of Hamburg until 1936 . During this time she volunteered for the vulnerable groups at the Hamburg Youth Welfare Office. In 1935, the authority emphasized in a certificate that Niebank had a “calm demeanor” and understood “the peculiarities of children”.
A traffic accident in late 1935 delayed Niebank's training. She therefore passed the examination as a primary school teacher only in April 1937. A month later she started at the primary school ABC-Straße in Wedel and in 1940/41 switched to the primary school at Hübbesweg 9 in Hamburg-Hamm . In 1942 she was officially appointed teacher. She passed the second teaching examination in 1944 with distinction. Ursel Hochmuth later said that Niebank was active in the anti-Nazi "Telemann Group" named after the school. A former schoolgirl described that she supported people persecuted politically and racially and, for example, enabled them to travel to Switzerland.
After the end of the war, Niebank initially taught at the Spadenland elementary school. In 1949 she received lifelong civil servant status. A year later she moved to the Luisenschule Bergedorf , whose elementary school train she directed. In 1954 she moved from Bergedorf to Habichtsplatz in Hamburg-Barmbek . At the same time she switched to the schools at Beim Pachthof and Stengelestrasse , where she taught until 1965. In 1959, the responsible school council stated that Niebank was "one of the most capable, above all most conscientious teachers in Hamburg". In her classes she tried to portray the crimes during the Nazi era , which was rare at the time. She emphasized the importance of democracy, peace and international understanding.
In addition to her work as a teacher, Niebank did volunteer work: around 1950 she was involved in the “school policy main office” of the General German Teachers' Association . From 1951 to 1953 she worked on the Hamburg state board of the education and science union . Niebank was in contact with the so-called "Schwelmer Kreis", which as an anti-fascist association of educators supported the understanding between East and West from 1952. Events of the organization, where educators from several nations met, took place in the Sonnenberg-Haus in the Harz Mountains.
In 1958 Niebank traveled to Israel for two months, where she cultivated contacts from her youth. In 1952 she traveled to the USA for study purposes, the Soviet Union in 1959 and Egypt and other Arab countries in 1960/61. For this she waived her salary. Niebank's particular interest, however, was in China and the change there from a semi-feudal society to a socialist order, combined with improved nutrition, education and health care. She traveled there for the first time in 1964. Since the socio-political developments in Germany did not meet her expectations, Niebank accepted a teaching position at the Foreign Language School No. 2 at Peking University in 1956. On July 14, 1965, during the Hamburg school holidays, she left Hamburg. Since she had left school at short notice during the current school year, the Senate Personnel Office terminated her civil service. The Senate cited the reason for termination that Niebank had changed his place of residence "without the approval of the highest service authority".
In Beijing, Niebank witnessed the beginning of the Cultural Revolution . In 1966 she worked for a Chinese foreign language publisher and supported a working group that translated the words of Chairman Mao Tsetung into German. Niebank considered Mao a "brilliant" leader and believed that China was on the way to a classless society where people could self-actualize. Although there were violent clashes in the course of the Cultural Revolution, Niebank always portrayed China positively. She wrote about this in particular in the weekly Neue Politik , which Wolf Schenke published in Hamburg. In 1968 the Marxist-Leninist monthly Roter Morgen published a private letter from Niebank, in which she stated that she was happy "to live in a country in which one is in the process of building a world in the sense of unadulterated Marxism - that is, real humanism" . In 1969, in an "open letter" that appeared in the Neue Politik , she criticized the Hamburg mayor Herbert Weichmann , who had called for German Mao supporters to be exported to China "so that they can learn what they have about democracy there" .
In 1970 Niebank lived again in Hamburg for a short time, but returned to China a little later. There she worked as a renowned language teacher and after her death in 1980 she was buried in the Babaoshan Cemetery in Beijing. In 2001 she was honored several times: her former student Rita Schöffler. which was strongly influenced by Lisa Niebank's moral courage, published the Lisa Niebank memorial as a collection of materials . She also campaigned for an 850 meter long section of the European hiking trail near the Hamburg-Horn to be renamed “Lisa-Niebank-Weg”. This took place on September 1, 2001 by the then Justice and District Senator Lore Maria Peschel-Gutzeit . Since then, there are memorial plaques in her honor at the schools at Beim Pachthof and Stengelestrasse .
A former student who had learned German with her and who later became Consul General of China (1997-2003) in Hamburg, Chen Jianfu, was present at the naming of the Lisa-Niebank-Weg and described that she had herself in the "chaotic time of the Cultural Revolution always used for their students ". Incidentally, the library of the Beijing Foreign Language School was named Lisa Niebank.
On December 19, 2019, the Urn Square in Beijing was dissolved. The urn, the ashes and the facing plate came to Niebank's hometown of Hamburg. The ashes were buried on March 30, 2020 at the Hamburg cemetery Ohlsdorf and covered with the facing plate (grave system AE38 164 - 165). The wooden urn is in the Hamburg-Ohlsdorf cemetery museum.
literature
- Hans Walden: Niebank, Lisa . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 5 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-8353-0640-0 , p. 274-276 .
Web links
History workshop Horn for the inauguration of the Lisa Niebank Weg
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Niebank, Lisa |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Niebank, Lisa Catharina (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German educator and anti-fascist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 22, 1913 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Hamburg |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 4, 1980 |
| Place of death | Beijing |