Magda Kelber

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Mathilde Maria Magda Kelber (born June 7, 1908 in Aufseß ; † August 7, 1987 in Wiesbaden ) was a German Quaker , philanthropist , social worker and social worker. In addition to Gisela Konopka , Heinrich Schiller , Herbert Lattke , Dora von Caemmerer , to name just a few, she is one of the pioneers of social group pedagogy and work.

Live and act

Dissertation by Magda Kelber

Mathilde Maria Magda was the sixth of seven children of the Evangelical Lutheran pastor Julius Kelber and his wife Pauline Kelber, née Ostertag. Kelber grew up in Nuremberg , where she also graduated from the Lyceum and the municipal high school. After graduating from high school , she studied in Erlangen, Vienna, Königsberg and Munich. In the latter city she did her doctorate in economics in 1932 with Otto von Zwiedineck-Südhorst . The topic of her dissertation was: Derived Income . The aim of her doctoral thesis was "in addition to the presentation and criticism of what is available, the elaboration of a theoretically sound socio-economic concept of derived income and the development of a theory of derived income, ie the highlighting of the socio-economic problems associated with the phenomenon of derived income".

In 1933 Kelber went to England. There, with the help of Antonie Nopitsch , she received a one-year scholarship at the Quaker College Woodbrooke. As a result, she worked as a German teacher at the Educational Settlement in Seaham Harbor until 1936 . She then founded an evening school for adults in Sunderland. As a member of an enemy state, Kelber was arrested in 1940 and interned in Port Erin on the Isle of Man until 1941 . There she met the educator Minna Specht , with whom she had a lifelong friendship. After her release, she worked as a freelance journalist.

In 1946 Kelber returned to post-war Germany and took over the management of the Quaker Relief Organization in the British zone of occupation . She had prepared for this in the German Educational Reconstruction Committee group , which was committed to the denazification and democratization of German society. From 1949 to 1963 she was the director of Haus Schwalbach im Taunus , a renowned educational institution that was founded by the American military government and dealt in particular with the theory and practice of group education. The facility was initially intended as a leadership training center for informal and formal multipliers in the Hessian communities. A considerable number of educators, social workers and similar professional groups “attended training or further education courses in Haus Schwalbach and were made familiar with modern social work and social psychology here, and not at the backward and desolate universities after 1945”.

Kelber also adopted Method 66 from the USA. This procedure divided the people attending an event to deal with a discussion or a question into subgroups of six so that “they did not have to leave the negotiating room, and indeed could stay in their place. They just had to turn to each other. As a rule, they were allowed to devote themselves to their task for six minutes ”.

On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of Haus Schwalbach, Kelber wrote about the successful work of her institution:

“From 1949 to 1959, 711 courses were held in the houses, 1294 outside; from 1949–1959, 21,574 participants were in-house and 64,516 outside; from 1949 to 1964 there were 784 “in-house” and 2302 “outside” events; From 1949 to 1964, 24,073 participants in “in-house” and 92,845 participants in “outside” events were registered ”.

In the last years of his life, Kelber was involved in founding and building up the neighborhood house Wiesbaden e. V., of which she was first chairman until 1967.

Kelber was extremely active as a journalist. Her main work, the Primer of Conversation , became a classic of social work / social pedagogy.

Kelber was unmarried. She lived with her friend, the teacher and psychagogue Christa von Schenck .

Group pedagogy

In Kelber's understanding of group pedagogy two poles emerge, namely the group and the individual. She wrote briefly and succinctly: “Healthy work is based on a right relationship between the individual and the group”. Elsewhere she stated the same fact: "As a social being, in addition to the I-you relationship, humans need the I-we relationship, in many different groups in order to try out different roles and develop different skills". Group pedagogy is a method that consciously uses the small, manageable group as the center and means of education. As a result, Kelber added another dimension: the “group as a space and means of education”. This results in the goal of group pedagogy, namely the “individual and social maturation of people. It arises from the moral maxims of reverence for man and his responsibility for the community ”. The group pedagogy and process are determined by pedagogical principles which determine the work of the group leader and which are:

  • Customize ...
  • Working with the strength of each individual ...
  • Start where the group is and move with it - at your own pace ...
  • Giving space for decisions ...
  • Set necessary limits and use them positively ...
  • Make yourself superfluous as a group educator ...
  • Cultivating cooperation more than individual competition ...
  • Help through program design ... .

Honors

1976: Federal Cross of Merit, 1st class.

Works (selection)

  • The derived income , Munich 1932
  • British Zone Quaker Aid 1945–1948 , Bad Pyrmont 1949
  • What do we mean by group pedagogy? An introduction to group pedagogy, in: Haisschwalbach (Ed.): Selection from the Schwalbacher Blätter 1949–1959, Wiesbaden 1959
  • My group. A group pedagogy and methodology , Düsseldorf 1960
  • Thinking - having a say - doing something. Group work with women , Wiesbaden 1969
  • Conversation primer , Opladen 1972
  • Conversation , Opladen 1977
  • 25 years "Haus Schwalbach" June 26, 1949 to June 29, 1974 , in: Haus Schwalbach (Ed.): Selection Four . Volume one. Group pedagogical fundamentals, Wiesbaden 1978, pp. 10-16

swell

  • Rudolph Bauer : Kelber, Magda , in: Hugo Maier (ed.): Who is who der Sozialen Arbeit , Freiburg / Brsg. 1998, pp. 292-293
  • Claus Bernet : Kelber, Magda , in: Trautgott Bautz (Hrsg.): Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon . XXVI. Tape. Supplements XIII, Nordhausen 2006, Col. 751-764
  • Ders .: Quakers from politics, science and art. A biographical lexicon , Nordhausen 2008, pp. 90–93.
  • Ders .: Magda Kelber (1908–1987), in: Erich Schneider: Fränkische Lebensbilder. Twenty-third volume, Würzburg 2012, pp. 227–240.
  • Beate Bussiek: Between two cultures. A portrait of the border crosser Magda Kelber, in: JM Ritchie (Hrsg.): German-speaking. Exiles in Great Britain , Amsterdam 2001, pp. 163-175
  • Manfred Berger : Women in Social Responsibility: Magda Kelber , in: Christ and Education 2000 / H. 7, p. 35
  • Manfred Berger: Magda Kelber - pioneer of group education in Germany. A biographical-pedagogical sketch , in: Zeitschrift für Erlebnispädagogik 2006 / H. 4, pp. 36-50
  • Kurt Frey: The group as the human in the plural. The group pedagogy Magda Kelbers, Frankfurt / Main 2003

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kelber 1932, p. 3
  2. ↑ a b c Magda Kelber: social pedagogue, social worker and inventor of group pedagogy
  3. ↑ Bernet 2006, Col. 752
  4. ↑ Erl 1967, p. 65
  5. ↑ Kelber 1978, p. 15
  6. ↑ Kelber 1949, p. 54
  7. ↑ Kelber 1978, p. 36
  8. ↑ Kelber 1978, p. 25
  9. ↑ Kelber 1959, p. 13
  10. ↑ cit. n. Berger 2006, p. 43 ff. cf. Kelber 1978, p. 26 ff
personal data
SURNAME Kelber, Magda
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kelber, Mathilde Maria Magda (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Quaker, philanthropist, social worker and social pedagogue
DATE OF BIRTH June 7, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Aufseß
DATE OF DEATH August 7, 1987
Place of death Wiesbaden