Manumit School

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The Manumit School was founded in 1924 by William Mann Fincke (born January 1, 1878 in New York City , † May 31, 1927 in New York City ) and his wife, Helen Hamlin, as a Christian-socialist (but non-denominational) and co-educational boarding school in Pawling Founded in New York State and run as an elementary school on a farm. The name Manumit comes from Latin and means "to free from slavery". The school played a role in caring for Jewish children who had come to the United States as refugees from Europe in the second half of the 1930s.

William Mann Fincke (Senior)

Fincke graduated from Yale University and was a well-known football player . In 1901 he finished his studies and then worked for several years for his father's shipping company and in the transport industry. On January 8, 1902, he married Helen Hamlin. The couple had three children, including the eldest William Mann Fincke, Jr., a 1902 Columbia University graduate who later succeeded his father.

From 1908 to 1911 Fincke completed a theological training and worked from 1912 to 1917 as a Presbyterian pastor in a church in Greenwich (New York). In 1917 he was fired from his community after speaking out in a pacifist sermon against viewing the First World War, which the United States had previously joined, as a struggle for freedom and democracy.

Fincke, despite his pacifist convictions still 1,917 private convened in the Medical Corps of the US Army and sent to Europe. In January 1918 he retired from military service.

From April 1918 to June 1919 Fincke worked as director of Labor Temple in New York. He then got involved in setting up Brookwood Labor College , the first workers' college in the USA. The school was supported by the union, the American Federation of Labor . Parallels to the Akademie der Arbeit , founded in Frankfurt am Main in 1921, can hardly be overlooked.

Fincke's engagement in Brookwood only lasted until 1922. From then on, he and his wife devoted themselves to building up the Manumit School , which opened in 1924. However, he had to retire from the school administration in 1926 and died of leukemia in 1927 after a two-year illness. He was buried on the grounds of the Manumit School.

Brief history of the Manumit School

The two Finckes founded the school on farmland they had acquired. From the very beginning, it distinguished itself through its close proximity to the American labor movement and officially operated as the “Manumit School for Workers' Children”. The instruction was intended to ensure "progressive" "workers' education" in a time of growing socialist optimism in America. Scott Walter describes it similarly:

“Manumit has been described by its supporters as an alliance between progressive work and progressive education. The school was rooted in the traditions and practices of advanced upbringing and workers' education. Manumit shared several characteristics with other alternative schools of the Progressive Era, but differs from them in its open alliance with the labor movement and its early commitment to what later became known as Critical Education . "

With reference to the historian Katherine Moos Campell, Walker describes the experimental and communitarian nature of many of the "progressive schools" founded in the USA in the early 20th century, which - including Manumit - were educational on the Dalton Plan by Helen Parkhurst , the Project method and oriented towards John Dewey . Although there are no references to German sources or models in this description, one could easily draw connections to German reform pedagogy and the rural education center that it shaped . This is certainly one of the reasons why Ingrid Warburg Spinelli , as will be shown, got in touch with the Manumit School of all places. However, there were also accents that were rather alien in shape to the German rural education centers. This becomes clear in a statement by Nellie Marguerite Seeds (1886-1946), who was director of the Manumit School from 1928 to 1933:

“The Manumit School ... is different from other creative and active schools in one important aspect. It aims to equip individuals with the knowledge, inspiration, and strength necessary to create a social order based on a fair appraisal of work, to explain the new educational movement of the American labor movement and to promote it Interested in raising children. In other words, it aims to become an experimental school for the American labor movement. "

This means that the Manumit School in Germany would only have been able to connect to the Walkemühle educational home .

The proximity of the Manumit School to the labor movement was evident not only from the fact that union leaders and representatives of the American left were strongly represented on its administrative bodies, but that the students were also very close to the workers. Seeds clearly expresses this once again, in contrast to other "alternative" schools, as Scott Walter reports:

“Seeds addressed widespread criticism of progressive alternative schools when it stated that '[most] experimental schools started out as schools for the children of the wealthy,' but, as she otherwise wrote, 'was [it] Bill Fincke's vision that the Manumit School should offer these free forms of instruction to the children of the workers at a price that everyone could afford. ' Presumably alone among all contemporary alternative schools, only in the Manumit during the first decade of its existence did the student body consist largely of children from the working class: of 28 students who were enrolled in spring 1925, 20 were from working-class families, of 32 students who were enrolled in the In spring 1928, 25 came from working-class families, and of 56 students enrolled in spring 1931, 41 came from working-class families. "

To make this possible, a very differentiated payment system had to be used. Fincke assumed $ 665 annual tuition, but union members' children were only $ 270, or less, unless otherwise possible. Other parents volunteered to pay $ 1,000, so by 1930 the majority of students had a tuition fee of $ 500. In addition, there was also support from the trade unions, which further reduced the school fees.

Another special feature of the school was that it should not only be open to working-class children, but also encourage both its students and their teachers to actively fight for social change. In the case of students, it could look like they donated part of their weekly food allowance to social activists, while teachers actively interfered in social struggles outside of school. They supported progressive summer schools for the children of striking workers or tried to establish their pedagogical approach in afternoon classes for working-class children in New York.

In summary, Scott Walter describes the educational-political concept of the Manumit School as follows:

“By familiarizing children with pressing social issues and enabling them to work on them through academic projects, by giving children access to the political perspectives of work and the left, and by structuring community life through democratic participation in both educational policy and in caring for the community, Seeds concluded that Manumit is preparing a generation of children who, as adults, would be able to contribute to supporting social change.
The Manumit School was founded in a critical pedagogy environment that opposed the one-sided social class system of the public school system and the way that system mirrored and helped reproduce similar structures in American society. Manumit practiced social reconstructionism long before progressive educators began to wonder whether the school could help bring about a new social order. An early flyer for the school asked parents if they wanted their children to grow up 'to become men and women who think for themselves, stand on their own two feet and fight injustice and oppression?' By providing an atmosphere in which students could identify (and even act accordingly) the social issues of the day, the Manumit founders hoped to contribute to the larger struggles waged by the labor movement and other leftist organizations. "

The Progressive School Committee for Refugees' Children

In 1933, after Nellie Marguerite Seeds was director of the Manumit School, William Mann Fincke jr. together with his wife Mildred the school management. Both were "experienced with 'experimental / progressive' education in NYC", but the school doesn't seem to have been in particularly good shape at the time: It was heavily in debt and there were only half a dozen students left. To what extent it recovered in the following years is not mentioned in the school chronicle, and the next entry concerns the year 1938: Progressive Schools' Committee for Refugee Children formed under the leadership of Mildred and William Fincke. At least 23 Jewish refugee children visited Manumit. (See: Time Magazine, 03/27/1939). [..] Manumit's 'contacts with European underground and resistance groups and with Jewish groups, both going back to 1935, and later contacts with British groups (during the Blitz of 1940), greatly increased the number of registrations from interesting evacuated children.'

At this point Ingrid Warburg Spinelli comes into play, who in her book Memories. The urgency of compassion and the loneliness to say no. goes into detail about the work of the Progressive School Committee for Refugees' Children as one of its ideally and financially supported aid organization for Jewish children who were brought out of Germany, Poland and Czechoslovakia and brought to safety in the USA. What is very interesting about this committee is that with Warburg Spinelli, who has been in the USA since 1936, his work deliberately differs from that of the German Jewish Children's Aid , which can be considered the “official” Jewish aid organization. Warburg Spinelli criticized what was later described as a negative development in the Kindertransport to England: the complete "break [...] with their origins and their cultural environment", which was often brought about at the expense of the children.

Warburg Spinelli criticized the conviction of many helpers "that in order to really assimilate in America, the children should give up as much as possible of their European past and, above all, the contact with friends and relatives in Europe". What she saw and experienced against this background, she describes very vividly:

“I was horrified at how these children, who came from the most varied of social classes, were suddenly combined into a unit, the“ refugees ”. Regardless of their origins from liberal or orthodox, middle-class or working-class families, American social workers placed them in families at random. On my visits to these families I found children of assimilated parents in Yiddish-speaking, Orthodox-Zionist houses or children from poor backgrounds with very rich people, whose own children were often unimaginably cruel to the "intruders."

Warburg Spinelli sees the reason for this in the social workers who take care of the children, who would have practiced rigid and immobile social work, who normally dealt with underprivileged children and “therefore did not show much understanding for these children who came from middle-class parents”. Following on from her own experiences with country school homes in Germany - she had been a student at the Schloss Salem school - and with the youth Alijah homes , she instead looked for a way for the refugees that would give them a "break and enough time to learn the language and for job search ”.

The path that Warburg Spinelli sought led her to William Mann Fincke, Jr. and the Manumit School. She does not describe how the connection came about, but she said that she had informed him about her problems with caring for the Jewish refugee children so far, and that he had agreed to “bring a group of children to his school with relatively large scholarships record. The annual cost of $ 500 per child meant that teachers' salaries had to be cut. With Fink's help, we got a number of other progressive farm schools interested in the project and thus created the Progressive School Committee for Refugees' Children. I raised the necessary money for this committee for several years on my own. "

If you start from the 23 refugee children mentioned above who temporarily attended the Manumit School, you can estimate the considerable sums involved in this project. The fact that Warburg Spinelli says that she raised this money largely on her own was only possible because of her involvement in the wealthy and widely ramified Warburg family of bankers , so that she could easily say of herself: I had "no economic problems, but enjoyed great financial independence ”. And she also describes very impressively how these two worlds, being a member of a wealthy family versus working for needy refugee children, sometimes unexpectedly collide:

“One Saturday morning, Uncle Felix came into my room while I was still in bed and asked me if I wanted to take him to Aunt Frieda's house in the Woodlands. I said I was a little tired and couldn't come because I had about $ 300 to come by the evening. For several years I was the sole source of funding for the Progressive School's Committee for Refugee Children, which we founded. Then Uncle Felix took his wallet and strewed dollar bills on my bed until there was $ 300. He said: "Sometimes you can do something without thinking twice, just for your own pleasure. Now you can come with me. ""

Little information is available about the work of the Progressive School Committee for Refugees' Children . Whether it looked after more than the 23 children mentioned above must remain open, as does the question of which other farm schools were supposed to have been involved in the project. There is also only vague information about the people who, besides Warburg Spinelli, supported the work of the committee. Warburg Spinelli mentions Trude Pratt and Lotte Kaliski , whom she met in 1938. With Kaliski she shared “a similar idea of ​​possible help for the» refugees «”, which is not surprising in view of Kaliski's own past as the founder of the private forest school Kaliski . In conclusion, there is only one reference left to what the Manumit School was able to and has done for the refugee children:

“Placing the children in a neutral but pedagogically trained environment was crucial and worked wonders. Children at particular risk were often "left alone" for months and only given responsibility for the animals. In the rhythm of nature and with the feeling that a living being, a sheep, a calf, depended on them, these children, some of whom had experienced unimaginable horrors and refused any contact with the outside world, regained their trust in other people. "

According to Warburg Spinelli, the Progressive School Committee for Refugees' Children worked non-stop from 1937 to 1945. In 1942 a "board" was set up, which included not only the aforementioned Trude Platt, but also her prominent friend Eleanor Roosevelt . Other members were Mrs. David Heyman, Bethsabée de Rothschild and Mary Jayne Gold; Levi Hollingsworth Wood, a lawyer and Quaker, became treasurer. For Warburg Spinelli himself, however, the focus of her work gradually shifted:

“I haven't been able to look after the committee as intensively since I joined the Emergency Rescue Committee in 1941 . In June 1945 we practically dissolved the organization and only looked after a few children with whom there were still problems. Most of the children we care for have made an exceptionally successful existence in the USA. In the last years of the war it was mainly children of anti-fascists who died in battle. If even one of these children has used his legacy of fighting courage and will to fight, of which Mrs. Roosevelt spoke, to build a better Europe to which many wanted to return, then our work has really paid off. "

To the further history of the Manumit School

In the historical overview of the Manumit School, the Progressive School Committee for Refugees' Children is no longer mentioned after the entry for 1938. There is also nothing to do with this in the document collection or the expanded historical representations. Based on the "Brief Chronology of Manumit School", the following is a summary overview of the further history of the school:

  • 1942: The elementary school is expanded to include the first two grades of a high school .
  • 1943: William I. Stephenson becomes director, while William Mann Fincke Jr. at the Yale University is going to obtain a PhD there.
  • 1943: On October 25th, a fire destroyed the main building of the school and destroyed most of the documents.
  • 1944: Together with his wife, William Mann Fincke takes over the school management again. The school is relocated to Bristol , Pennsylvania . Fincke paints a very positive picture of the school: “The staff is as cosmopolitan as the student body. It… has included Chinese, Nisei, American Negro, American Indian, English, Czechoslovakian, Scandinavian… German and Austrian anti-nazis [sic.] Along with many members of the so-called old American group…. Judaism, Catholicism, Quakerism and Ethical Agnosticism as well as Protestantism are stimulatingly included in the backgrounds… ”
  • 1947: Benjamin Green Clark Fincke, son of William Mann Fincke Sen., and his wife Magdalene (“Magda”) Joslyn become co-directors.
  • 1949: The high school is expanded to include the upper grade.
  • 1950: Inspired by a dissertation, the school community decides on a long-term “work project” to further develop the school.
  • 1951: First high school graduation takes place.
  • 1954: Benjamin Green Clark Fincke retires from the school administration. John A. Lindlof, who had already been a student in Pawling and a teacher in Bristol, will become co-director.
    In the mid-1950s, the school is well on its way to becoming a multiracial school, with 14% black students.
  • 1956: Open attacks on the school from outside begin: There are inspections for alleged fire hazards. There is a suspicion that local political machinations are behind this, because the school is located in an environment in which new housing projects have been realized and the school grounds could be interesting for project developers. There is also displeasure among part of the population because of the multiracial orientation of the school.
  • 1957/1958: The school's license is withdrawn, but it is renewed again by a higher authority in 1958.
    The chronicle leaves open whether the school has resumed its work. It is only noted that the property was sold in August 1968.
  • 1963: William Mann Fincke Jr. dies on April 1, 1968 in Stonington.
  • 2005: Since that year many former Manumit students have been in contact with one another via the web.
  • 2007: On September 26th there was a meeting of former students.

The Manumit School Alumni Foundation has owned the copyright for the Manumit School website since 2013. More recent activities are not known.

literature

  • Katherine Moos Campbell: An experiment in education: the Hessian Hills School, 1925-1952 , Boston University, 1984 (dissertation)
  • Ingrid Warburg Spinelli: Memories. The urgency of compassion and the loneliness to say no. Luchterhand Literaturverlag, Hamburg and Zurich, 1991, ISBN 978-3-630-71013-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c William Fincke in the OBITUARY OF YALE GRADUATES 1926-1927 , pp. 255-256
  2. ^ Labor Temple : "Labor Temple was founded in 1910 by the Rev. Charles L. Stelze of the Presbyterian Home Mission Board. The first Labor Temple occupied the former Fourteenth Street Presbyterian Church, located at 225 Second Avenue near Union Square, and built in 1851. Under Stelze's leadership, Labor Temple would be entirely unsectarian, where every man, if he have a message, may give it expression, and if it be good it will receive attention. ' On its opening day, Labor Temple was attended by five hundred members of labor unions, Socialist, Anarchists, and persons who took interest in labor matters and sociologists. "
  3. ↑ At Diether Döring: A forgotten piece of university history , there is, however, no indication of the extent to which Brookwod ​​could have been a model for German start-ups.
  4. ↑ a b c d Manumit School: Brief Chronology of Manumit School
  5. ↑ Walter does not use the term “critical educational science” or its English counterpart “critical pedagogy”, but “social reconstructionism”. Walter's original text: “Manumit was described by its supporters as representing an alliance of progressive labor and progressive education. The school was rooted in the traditions and practices of progressive education and workers' education. Manumit shared several characteristics with other Progressive-era alternative schools, but was distinguished by the open alliance with the labor movement and by its early commitment to what was later referred to as social reconstructionism. " Scott Walter: Labor's Demonstration School: The Manumit School for Workers' Children, 1924-1932. Walter's text is a paper for a meeting of the "History of Education Society (Chicago, 1998)"
  6. ↑ Nellie Marguerite Seeds, quoted from Scott Walker (see web links): “Manumit School ... is to be distinguished from other creative activity schools in one important respect. It aims to equip individuals with the knowledge, inspiration; and power necessary to establish a social order based on a proper appreciation of labor, to interpret the new education movement to the American labor movement, and to interest ity in a revaluation of child education. In other words, it aims to become a laboratory school of the American labor movement. "
  7. ^ Scott Walker (see web links): "Seeds touched on a common criticism of progressive alternative schools when she noted that '[most] experimental schools have been started for the children of the well-to-do,' but, as she had written elsewhere, '[it] was Bill Fincke's vision that Manumit School should offer this free type of education to the children of the workers, at a price which all could afford to pay.' Perhaps alone among contemporary alternative schools, Manumit's student body was largely drawn from the children of the working class during its first decade: of 28 students enrolled in the Spring of 1925, 20 were from working-class families; of 32 students emolled in the Spring of 1928, 25 were from working-class families; and, of S6 students enrolled in the Spring of 1931, 41 were from working-class families. "
  8. ↑ Scott Walker (see web links)
  9. ↑ Scott Walker (see web links): “By acquainting children with pressing social issues and allowing them to address them through academic projects, by providing children with access to the political perspectives of labor and the left, and by structuring the life of the community around democratic participation both in educational governance and community maintenance, she concluded, Manumit was preparing a generation of children who would be capable of acting in support of social change as adults.
    The Manumit School had been founded in an environment of educational criticism that focused on the social class bias endemic to the public school system and to the ways in which the bias of that system reflected and helped to reproduce similar biases in American society. Long before progressive educators began asking if the school could help bring about a new social order, Manumit was practicing social reconstructionism. An early promotional flyer for the school asked parents if they wanted their children to grow up "to become men and women who can think for themselves, stand on their own two feet, and fight injustice and oppression?" By providing an atmosphere in which students could address (and even act upon) the social issues of the day, Manumifs founders hoped to contribute to the larger struggles being conducted by the labor movement and by other organizations on the left. "
  10. ^ Brief Chronology of Manumit School : "Progressive Schools' Committee for Refugee Children formed under leadership of Mildred and William Fincke. At least 23 Jewish refugee children attended Manumit. (See: Time Magazine, 3/27/1939). [..] Manumit 'contacts with European underground and resistance groups, and with Jewish groups, both dating back to 1935, later contacts with British groups (during the blitz of 1940) greatly enriched the enrollment with interesting evacuee children'. "
  11. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Ingrid Warburg Spinelli: Memories , pp. 128-136
  12. ↑ There is very little information about the Progressive School Committee for Refugees' Children other than Warburg Spinelli's book. The website Unknown Story Of American Rescues Of Children Of The Holocaust provides detailed information about the work of German Jewish Children's Aid .
  13. ↑ Inge Hansen-Scharberg: Childhood and Youth , in: Claus-Dieter Krohn, Patrik von zur Mühlen, Gerhard Paul and Lutz Winkler (eds.): Handbuch der Deutschensprachigen Emigration 1933–1945 , p. 84. This subject was dealt with literarily by Ursula Krechel in her novel Landgericht am fate of the two Kornitzer children sent to England (Ursula Krechel: Landgericht , Jung und Jung, Salzburg, 2012, ISBN 978-3-99027-024-0 ).
  14. ↑ She writes William Mann “Fink” instead of Fincke. (Ingrid Warburg Spinelli: Memories , p. 133)
  15. ^ Biographical notes about Levi Hollingsworth Wood
  16. ^ Website of the Manumit School