Margherita Zoebeli

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Holiday camp Mösli der Roten Falken Zürich from 1931. Two study weeks for Italian kindergarten teachers, organized by Zöbeli, took place here.

Margherita Zoebeli , also Margrit Zöbeli , (born June 7, 1912 in Zurich ; † February 25, 1996 in Rimini ); was a Swiss educator, refugee worker and humanitarian activist. She was the founder and director of the Centro educativo italo-svizzero (CEIS) in Rimini.

Life

Margit Zöbeli was the daughter of a worker and trade unionist who was politically and socially involved. As a teenager she was responsible for summer camps and Saturday afternoon excursions with the Rote Falken . The first falcon group was founded in 1929 in Zurich's urban district 9 ( Altstetten , Albisrieden ) by the Zöbeli siblings.

During her high school years she started for the workers' children help of Switzerland (AKH) (from 1936 Swiss Labor Assistance (SAH) to work). The rise in unemployment led to the establishment of the Workers' Children's Aid (Proletarian Children's Aid) in 1932 to take care of the children of the unemployed, and young people who were willing to look after the children were looked for. The workers' welfare organization organized seminars on psychology and pedagogy, where they discussed how a community could be organized to make a place for each child and how to use the skills of each child. Zöbeli immersed himself in the individual psychological pedagogy of Alfred Adler , which played an important role in the social democratic Viennese school reform at the time of Red Vienna (1918–1934).

After graduating from high school, she began to study political science at the University of Zurich . Because she had to look for a job because of family problems, she dropped out of college. Due to a request from a teacher from the Austrian industrial city of Steyr , the AKH secretary Regina Kägi-Fuchsmann started inviting working-class children from abroad to Switzerland. In 1934 Zoebeli helped care for refugee children of Austrian anti-fascists ( February fights in Vienna ) in Switzerland.

At the end of 1938 she organized from France the evacuation, papers and accommodation for around one hundred refugee children from Barcelona affected by the Spanish civil war , some of whom had lost their parents while fleeing the bombings. It was in this context that she met Célestin Freinet for the first time . After obtaining her diploma as a primary school teacher in Zurich , she taught there from 1940 to 1944 as a teacher at the primary school in Zurich's urban district 9 .

When the resistance of the Italian partisan republic of Ossola collapsed during the Second World War, the workers' welfare organization sent it to the upper Val d'Ossola (Val Formazza ) on October 9, 1944 to organize the crossing of the border for the fleeing partisans and civilians into Switzerland.

In July 1945 she took part in the relief operation (Swiss donation milk, food, clothes, furniture, etc.) of the Swiss donation and the workers' relief organization in the French city of Saint-Étienne , which was triggered on May 26, 1944 by the US air bombardment ( Transportation Plan ). , was badly damaged and where many refugees from the Spanish Civil War found refuge. In December 1945 she drove for the Swiss workers' relief organization to Rimini , which was badly damaged by bombs , where she founded the Centro educativo italo-svizzero (CEIS) on behalf of the Swiss donation for the war victims (Dono svizzero per le vittime di guerra), initially as an orphanage with a kindergarten , from 1947 with primary school. She had committed herself to lead the campaign for six months.

In addition to the scheduled opening of the CEIS on May 1, 1946, the seven-strong Swiss team began distributing clothes, food, furniture, tools, blankets, etc., a people's kitchen was set up and sewing courses were held for Riminese women. Under Zoebeli's direction from 1946 to 1978, the CEIS became a pioneering educational reform school with an international reputation.

In 1948 she took part in the founding of the International Society for Educational Aid FICE ( Fédération Internationale Communautés d'Enfants ) in Trogen under the auspices of UNESCO and opened up international contacts for the CEIS. There was a close exchange of experience and children and joint educational courses with the Pestalozzi Children's Village in Trogen. One of their common concerns was to work against the marginalization of the weaker and for their full acceptance.

After the earthquake in Friuli in 1976 , the workers' relief organization asked her to organize the construction of a kindergarten and teacher training there. After she relinquished the management of the CEIS in 1978, she continued to live and work closely with the village and was responsible as a technical supervisor and for educational projects. In 1982/83, at the age of seventy, she traveled to Nicaragua in response to a government request to organize further training for special education teachers. After her return she founded a committee to collect donations for the construction of schools in the coffee region and organized advanced training courses for teachers from Nicaragua at the CEIS.

Her concern to help the children of the poorest countries led her to Zimbabwe in April 1988 . In the last years of her life she campaigned intensively for initiatives for the benefit of the war-damaged peoples of the former Yugoslavia . With the Brandenberger Prize she received in 1995, she set up a foundation that bears her name and whose purpose is to financially support the multicultural and innovative educational efforts of the CEIS.

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Margherita Zoebeli's educational life's work was not based on the experiences of everyday school life, but on war and emergency situations that awakened her humanitarian commitment even in her youth.

Among the many aid organizations, she dedicated most of her life to the Centro educativo italo-svizzero (CEIS) . Here, however, she did not want to stop at care, but also set educational goals. Those in need should be encouraged to help themselves and be familiarized with the values ​​of a “normal” world without war. In addition to the intellectual activity, the practical occupation should help to process the war experiences. The target group of this education were the children and their mothers.

The educators of the CEIS formulated their goals as follows: One of the most important goals of the kindergarten is to spread the principles of a modern education in Italy. The children, used to fascist discipline and obedience, should grow up to be free, critical, not bound by authority . They used Swiss educational methods and the values ​​of democratic upbringing as a model. They were based on the principles of école active ( action- oriented teaching ) of the Geneva reform pedagogues Adolphe Ferrière and Pierre Bovet from the Jean-Jacques Rousseau Institute . They placed practical, experimental activities at the center of their upbringing, included the environment in their lessons and encouraged the children to take responsibility and be independent.

After the opening of the first school class in 1947, suitable teaching aids, such as those developed by Celestin Freinet , had to be produced in-house and kindergarten teachers trained. By 1951, all five elementary classes could be completed in the CEIS.

In the 1950s, the first house was built and international summer colonies were carried out, which led to CEIS membership in the Centers d'Entrainement aux Méthodes d'Education Active CEMEA. In 1953 the first educational-psychological medical center in the area was opened at CEIS.

Margherita Zöbeli's collaboration and advisory work for the municipality of Rimini led to the construction of the first kindergartens (scuola materna) in Rimini and to inquiries from other interested municipalities. In cooperation with the CEMEA, numerous annual further training courses for the teachers of these schools were offered at the CEIS.

The CEIS was able to successfully defend itself against the merger with the Asilo Baldini and became a private school. It has been a state-approved primary school ( scuola elementare parificata ) since 1973 , financed by parental contributions, the “Pro Rimini” group of patrons founded in Zurich in 1950, and the Ministero della Publica Istruzione .

The international educational community was impressed by the contributions of the CEIS to a new school and welfare system in post-war Italy. As early as 1947 and 1948, the International Study Weeks for the war- damaged child SEPEG ( Semaines Internationales d'Etudes pour l'Enfance victime de la Guerre ) , founded by Oscar Forel , took place with the international educational avant-garde in the CEIS. In 1952, well-known educators such as Celestin Freinet took part in the first convention of the movement for educational cooperation ( Movimento di Cooperazione Educativa ) in the CEIS.

In the 1960s, the CEIS was the subject of research at Italian universities. It took on a pioneering role in the integration of disabled children when disabled children were accepted into regular classes for the first time in the 1973/74 school year.

Honors

  • 1963 Rimini became an honorary citizen in recognition of the educational work carried out in favor of the city.
  • In 1989 the University of Bologna together with Mario Lodi and Paulo Freire awarded her an honorary doctorate in education.
  • 1993 Medaglia d'oro con diploma di benemerenza di prima classe of the Italian Republic.
  • 1995 Prize of the Dr. JE Brandenberger , in recognition of her selfless work in post-war aid and for the promotion of modern educational methods.

Publications

  • with I. Pescioli: il bambino e la scuola materna . Scuola e Città n.2, Centro Educativo Italo Svizzero di Rimini, Rimini 1965
  • Educazione e linguaggio per gli handícappati ; IEI Roma 1987

Literature (selection)

  • Antonia Schmidlin: A pioneering educational act as part of Swiss post-war aid . in Traverse 2002, H. 3, 101-111.
  • F. De Bartolomeís: Il Villaggio di Rimini . Scuola e Città n.5, Centro Educativo Italo Svizzero di Rimini, Rimini 1952.
  • G. Honegger Fresco: Margherita Zoebeli al CEIS di Rimini . Quaderno Montessori n.15, 1987.
  • A. Canevaro, M. Spadaro, G. Boccaccini: Freíre, Lodi, Zoebeli: lauree ad honorem ; Cooperazione Educativa n.5 maggio 1989.
  • Assessorato alla Pubblica Istruzione Comune di Rimini: Margherita Zoebeli e il CEIS. Dalla cronaca alla storia ; Scuola e Territorio n.24 - Documenti 1989.
  • Emanuela Cocever (a cura di) Margherita Zoebeli. Il Centro Educativo Italo Svizzero: storia, pedagogia, attività formativa . Infanzia n.7 - March 1996.
  • Raffaele Laporta: In morte dì Margherita Zoebeli . Scuola e città n.3, Centro Educativo Italo Svizzero di Rimini, Rimini marzo 1996.
  • Fondazione Margherita Zoebeli (a cura di): Paesaggio con figura. Margherita Zoebeli al Ceis. Documenti di una utopia . Edizioni Chiamami Città, Rimini 1998.
  • Giorgio Pecorini: Per esempio: Margherita Zoebeli e l'asilo svizzero di Rimini . Lo Straniero - rivista trimestrale - numero 5 - inverno 1998/99.
  • Carlo De Maria (a cura di): Intervento sociale e azione educativa. Margherita Zoebeli in Italy del secondo dopoguerra . Bologna, Clueb, 2012 ( Online ( Memento from December 3, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ))
  • Regina Kägi-Fuchsmann: Help across borders 1930–1934 , in: Post-War Aid , separate print from the Swiss Journal for Charity, Issue 7, Swiss Charitable Society, Zurich 1944.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Alt-Züri: Ernst Zöbeli (1888-1963), promoter of neighborhood life in Altstetten
  2. ^ Zurich Social Archives: Rote Falken Zurich 3/9
  3. ↑ Regina Kägi-Fuchsmann: Help across borders 1930–1934: A teacher who could no longer bear teaching half-starved children
  4. ↑ State Archives of the Canton of Zurich: Class photos from 1927 to 1990: Margrit Zöbeli with her class in the Triemli school in September 1942
  5. ↑ In October there was fighting between German troops and partisans in the Val d'Ossola. 6,500 civilians and 3,000 partisans who had fled to Switzerland were temporarily housed. Report to the Federal Council for submission to the federal councils by Prof. Dr. Carl Ludwig, March 7, 1957
  6. ↑ Arthur Bill : Helpers on the way. Stories of a country schoolmaster, children's village director and disaster relief worker . Stämpfli, Bern 2002, ISBN 3-7272-1323-X , page 69
  7. ^ Foundation of the Movement for Pedagogical Cooperation
personal data
SURNAME Zoebeli, Margherita
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Zöbeli, Margit
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss women's rights activist, refugee worker and humanitarian activist
DATE OF BIRTH June 7, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Zurich
DATE OF DEATH February 25, 1996
Place of death Rimini