Martha von Grot

Martha von Grot (born October 26, 1867 in Hasenpot , Kurland Governorate , Russian Empire , today Aizpute, Latvia ; † December 28, 1962 in Vielbach im Westerwald ) was a Baltic German school principal and reform pedagogue.

Live and act

Their ancestors, who called themselves Grote, immigrated from the former Verden Abbey to the Baltic States at the beginning of the 18th century . The family was raised to the hereditary imperial nobility in 1775 and enrolled in the Livonian knighthood in 1797 . Martha von Grot's father was a successful lawyer. Very early on, she felt the desire to become a teacher, especially since she suffered greatly from the authoritarian school system at the time. She later criticized:

“The teachers, who know how to think and work, they themselves know how to do essays, learn French, think in arithmetic and in history - but all this, this most important thing, they don't show us poor children, the possibility of it do not give it to us! "

After Martha von Grot had completed the then usual schooling for girls of her class, she completed the teachers' seminar in Dorpat in Estonia ( Tartu ). She was very dissatisfied with her teacher training, especially with the prevailing form of teaching at the time, the heuristic method, which leads the students step by step to the result, but the most important thing, being able to walk to work independently, does not teach her . Martha von Grot later criticized: "The teachers teach subjects - and not students". After completing her training in the teachers' seminar, she worked as a tutor in Mitau , u. a. For a long time in the large family of Pastor von Raison.

Since for Martha von Grot the question of the education and upbringing of the female youth became more and more a burning question, she traveled through Germany from institution to institution and made contacts with well-known teachers. The encounter with Hugo Gaudig and his teaching method, which was based on work school pedagogy, was groundbreaking for her . She also attended lectures on psychology in Würzburg with Oswald Külpe . The noblewoman then returned as a teacher to the teachers' seminar in Dorpat, which she was appointed to lead in 1904. The private German teacher training college she runs was established in 1892 by the Baltic knighthood without official approval, as a result of the prohibition of German-speaking schools as part of Tsar Alexander III's Russification policy. Oskar Masing , the author of the unfinished Baltic German dictionary, which the Finnish German scholar Valentin Kiparsky described as the greatest connoisseur of Baltic German today, taught at the Grotesche Schule as a teacher of German . The seminar leader reformed the teacher training, especially regarding the education of the graduates:

“She recognized that the good and ugly character traits of the students express themselves in the community, that they reveal themselves involuntarily, even in a certain way compulsorily, by working together on a task; that consequently the field of his pedagogical effectiveness is only fully opened up for the teacher through the community of work. - She further recognized that the teacher, in order to cultivate this field, must on the one hand maintain a strict teaching discipline, on the other hand, exploiting the interrelationships between the students, must make each individual student jointly responsible for the work of his classmates and for the spirit of the class. "

With the beginning of the First World War , a difficult time began for the Baltic Germans, who mostly belonged to the upper class. Noble people, large landowners and professing Christians in particular were persecuted and exposed to brutal violence. Martha von Grot was not spared from this either. She was arrested several times, deported into inner Russia and thrown into prisons, only with bread and water - and torture again and again, and finally sentenced to death. Like a miracle and because rooted in a firm belief, she survived the terrible times. She was released and initially moved to Seewald near Reval together with a tribe of Baltic teachers who had trained her , where she worked in the local mental institution of Dr. Ernst von Kügelgen set up an emergency school. But Martha von Grot soon went to Germany because she no longer saw the possibility of working successfully in her Baltic homeland. After a stopover at the Neuendettelsau Deaconesses and their girls 'school on Zeltnerstrasse in Nuremberg, she took over the private six-class denominational higher girls' school in Pasing in 1920 (at that time still an independent town). Under her leadership and in close cooperation with Georg Kerschensteiner , long-time City School Councilor of Munich and since 1918 honorary professor for education at the Munich University as well as Marie Freiin von Gebsattel , advisor for secondary girls' education at the Bavarian Ministry for Education and Culture , the evangelical educational institution developed ( since 1924 a girls' lyceum ) to a school of educational instruction that is famous far beyond the boundaries of the city and Bavaria , respectfully called the Grotschule (today the primary school on Oselstrasse ). In a report to the Prussian Ministry of Education, Georg Kerschensteiner described the educational institution as a “model institute in the experimental educational sense”, as he saw what he had written about work school pedagogy in his many publications in practice. Martha Grot's biographer, Marie Freiin von Gebsattel, wrote about the school of educational teaching :

“First of all: what does the name school of educational teaching mean? - It says that it is a school, not a home, an educational institution, the real task of which is teaching, imparting and acquiring knowledge. The epithet “educating”, however, means that in this school the lessons take place in forms which in themselves have an educational effect. In this way, the educational moments that have so far been inherent in our lessons, the morally valuable and therefore opinion-forming content of many substances, the emotional influence of the lecture, and above all the element of the educator's personality, which is ultimately always decisive for pedagogy, should neither theoretically negate nor diminish, can still practically be turned off. On the contrary, all of these moments experience an increase in their effectiveness through the new element that is added, through the forms of educational teaching ... What does the educational teaching school now represent itself as? - 1. As a work group for the development of knowledge and work paths, at the same time work group for the education of the students; 2. as a living community in mutual service and mutual responsibility; 3. as a Christian community, d. H. as an organic community in the sense of the Pauline word: members of a body whose head is Christ. "

Former Grotschule today

The method of educational teaching , which was also adopted at the A. B. von Stetten Institute in Augsburg and the Deaconess School on Zeltnerstrasse in Nuremberg , led to surprisingly good final examination results. This prompted the Bavarian State Ministry for Education and Culture to hold introductory courses in educational classes in 1930 and 1931, initially on the basis of German lessons:

“The participation, especially on the part of the Catholic religious schools, was very large; The Grot's school reform began to become known in Catholic school circles. "

In accordance with her reform pedagogical convictions, Martha von Grot introduced gymnastics lessons for her students, which were given by a teacher trained in Loheland . These lessons broke the essence, goals, and methods of traditional physical education. New forms of gymnastics lessons were: artistic expression (rhythmic gymnastics) and Swedish gymnastics. The lessons assumed “spontaneous free movement and made it vibrate in natural expression. Movement was an expression of the inside. "

In 1927 Martha von Groth and five other teachers left Pasing. The director of the girls 'institution of the Moravian Brethren Community in Neuwied am Rhein, Brother Walter Wedemann, was able to win over the headmistress and her staff for the development of the girls' school there, which, according to the Grot method, which, in the sense of Georg Kerschensteiner , promotes community education in put the center of school life, worked. Martha von Grot also “attached great importance to the Christian character of the school, because religion is not a subject, but determines all of life. She sought contact with the congregation ... The management hoped that Ms. von Grot's method would give positive impetus to the fraternal school work and organized educational conferences ”.

View of the Dora house on Quirnbacher Strasse in Vielbach

The Nazis forced Martha von Grot into retirement in 1936, especially since the noblewoman was not prepared to convey the Nazi ideology to her students. In addition, all denominational schools had to shut down anyway. The now 69-year-old followed a former student who was the rector of a small secondary school in the Osnabrück district. She no longer worked as a director or teacher, but "as the spiritual mother of the teaching staff there ... until this pupil also succumbed to the claims to power of National Socialism".

The pedagogue died very old at the age of 95 on December 28, 1962 in Vielbach, where she spent the last years of her life in the Dora house .

literature

• Fritz Blum: The Zinzendorf School in Neuwied. A new way to Christian school education . Munich 1932.
• Marie Freiin von Gebsattel: School of educational teaching (Grotschule) . Paderborn 1949.
• Hans Pfeil: School and Education . Altötting 1978.
• Erna Schwertberger: Martha von Grot. Life and work of a reform pedagogue . Munich 1998.
• Dietrich Meyer: Zinzendorf and the Moravian Brethren 1700–2000 . Göttingen 2000.
• Gertrud Marchand, Irmgard Schmidt: The Grotschule . In: Landeshauptstadt München (Hrsg.): On the history of education in Munich . Munich 2001, pp. 78-87.
• Manfred Berger :  Grot, Martha von. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 30, Bautz, Nordhausen 2009, ISBN 978-3-88309-478-6 .
• Manfred Berger: Martha von Grot - life and work of a forgotten reform pedagogue . In: Zeitschrift für Erlebnispädagogik 2009 / H. 4, pp. 20-27.
• Bender Rett: Oskar Masing and the history of the German dictionary . Tartu 2009

Web links

• Baltic Historical Commission (ed.): Entry on Martha von Grot. In: BBLD - Baltic Biographical Lexicon digital
• Villa colony I

Individual evidence

1. ↑ cit. n. Blum 1932, p. 3
2. ↑ Gebsattel, 1949, p. 15
3. ↑ Schwertberger, 1998, p. 45
4. ↑ Schwertberger, 1998, p. 62
5. ↑ cit. n. Bender, 2009, p. 8
6. ↑ Gebsattel 1949, p. 17
7. ↑ Schwertberger, 1998, pp. 70 ff.
8. ↑ Gebsattel 1949, p. 20 f.
9. ↑ Pfeil, 1978, p. 15
10. ↑ Schwertberger, 1998, p. 78
11. ↑ Meyer, 2000, p. 141
12. ↑ Gebsattel, 1949, p. 14