Marie Gruhl

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Marie Gruhl (born May 25, 1881 in Barmen ; † February 21, 1929 ) was a German teacher and teacher. As a co-founder of the self-help association of the physically handicapped ( Otto-Perl-Bund ), she was a pioneer in the work of the handicapped, especially with regard to the common upbringing and teaching of handicapped and non-handicapped children and young people.

Life

Gruhl was born on May 25, 1881 in Barmen as the daughter of the director of the secondary school in her hometown without feet. She had a brother twelve years older than her and was always motivated by her father and mother to be as self-sufficient as possible and brought up a public school, which in view of her disability was a special feature for the circumstances of her time, which she considered an important privilege for her in later years remembered. She was mobile with prostheses and a wheelchair. Her father held his office as director from 1878 until he became a provincial school councilor in Berlin in 1882, where the family moved to Frobenstrasse 15.

In 1901 Gruhl passed the teacher examination, in 1907 the senior teacher examination; from 1911 she worked at the city's Charlottenlyzeum in Berlin, that is the school she had attended herself. When the family friend and grammar school director Hermann Rassow informed them of the impending establishment of the self-help association for the physically handicapped in 1919, she joined the founders Hans Förster , Otto Perl , Friedrich Malikowski and Hermann Rassow. In the course of time, Hedwig Randow , Hilde Wulff , Irma Dresdner , Inge Fehr and Else Schulz became her colleagues in her club . From 1919 to 1922 Gruhl was secretary of the self-help association and its managing director from 1922 after Hans Försters and until her own death.

Gruhl made an outstanding contribution to child and youth work; Her main concern was the fight against the exclusion of the handicapped and the advocacy of the common upbringing and teaching of handicapped and non-handicapped children, just as she herself could experience through the efforts of her parents. The self-help association of the physically handicapped understood its goal to be the “promotion of the crippled at a young age or from birth”. Gruhl published several lectures and essays in the club magazine and in educational journals in which she advocated the above-mentioned goals and that parents of disabled people should send their children to public schools. Gruhl was astonished to see their separate upbringing in the sense of mere custody with the consequences of mental and spiritual stuntedness. Gruhl called for support for the environment, especially for the families of the disabled, for example in the form of a release from paid work for the educators and the preparation of teachers for joint lessons.

Marie Gruhl visited German children's, orphanages, old people's and infirmary homes and clinics in order to sound out the situation of disabled children and young people. In 1920 she discovered that a number of handicapped children and young people were housed in old people's homes and that more were being kept than cared for. She put them in touch with the self-help association and tried to motivate their parents to do more for them and to enable them to attend a public school. In 1928 Gruhl was released from school to visit institutions in Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia and to collect material for a documentation on training opportunities for the physically handicapped. She traveled to Pomerania, East Prussia, Silesia, Prague and Vienna, where she caught a severe cold, of which she died on February 21, 1929.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Petra Fuchs: Marie GRUHL (1881–1929). Commitment to the common upbringing of “healthy” and “crippled” children and young people in the Weimar Republic . In: Die neue Sonderschule 44 (1999a), H. 2, 161–164.
  2. ↑ Otto Perl: advertising leaflet, 1919.
personal data
SURNAME Gruhl, Marie
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Otto Perl Bund, Marie
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German pedagogue and student councilor
DATE OF BIRTH May 25, 1881
PLACE OF BIRTH Barmen
DATE OF DEATH February 21, 1929