Max Kirmsse

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Max Bruno Kirmsse (born June 1, 1877 in Markranstädt , † September 17, 1946 in Idstein ) was a German educator , politician and historian . The main work is his educational research, his findings as a historian of special education / curative education and his library collection.

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Max's parents were the inn owner Max Bruno Kirmsse and his wife Auguste Mathilde, nee. Fisherman. His childhood was marked by his mother's two unhappy marriages. He decided to become a missionary. From 1898 he attended the Hermannsburg Missionary Institution as a missionary and studied in 1899 at the "Collegium Orientale" in Berlin-Westend with Pastor Faber. It was Faber who gave his life a new direction when he suggested that he devote himself to the education and care of the mentally handicapped. From 1901 to 1910 he learned how to deal with disabled children as a teacher at various institutions. He worked at the institutions in Neinstedt , Oldenburg , Munich-Gladbach , Hermannsfeld , Neuerkerode , Ketschendorf , Trier and Heidelberg .

In 1910 Kirmsse came to the Kalmenhof in Idstein and found permanent employment here. He married Anna Rosenboom in 1910, she died four years later. In his second marriage, he married the Jewish writer from Vienna and later Spain fighter Marietta (Etta) Federn . The marriage ended in divorce before the birth of a son in autumn 1917. After the First World War he joined the SPD . In 1920 he was elected a city councilor, an office he held until 1932. In 1922 there was a falling out with the management of the Kalmenhof, which is why he lost his job here. From 1922 he also worked as a local parliament member. From now on he worked mainly as a writer, but in 1925 still initiated the Museum for the Education of the Idiot . In 1929 he married Elisabeth Wiggi (n) ghaus, who has been a teacher at Kalmenhof since 1919 and who ran the home school from 1945 to 1949.

After the seizure of power of the Nazis in 1933 Kirmsse get as a member of the SPD trouble with the new rulers. Urs Haeberlin writes that he had [had] a certain distance from the National Socialist doctrine of the "life unworthy of life" of disabled people. He stood up relatively clearly for the right to life and upbringing of the mentally handicapped . Hans Würtz , who was also a member of the SPD and was in close contact with the Kirmsse, wrote the following lines in a letter to his friend and colleague on February 27, 1932, which clearly illustrates the socialist attitude of the two curative educators:

With the advocacy of socialism, I think, the worldview of curative educators is rounded on the political side. Just as the socialist politician stands up for the economically weak, so the socialist pedagogue stands up for the intellectually weak, whom he - as far as their strength can reach - led up to the existence of a free, social human life .

From 1933 to 1945 Kirmsse did not publish any more articles in any specialist journal. His last contributions, which he had written well before 1933, appeared in the “Encyclopedia Manual of Curative Education”, which came onto the market in 1934. During the Nazi dictatorship, Kirmse's life was marked by insults, threats, house searches and arrests. He devotes himself increasingly to family research.

After the end of the Third Reich , he briefly took over the provisional management of the Kalmenhof . He died unexpectedly in 1946 on the stairs of the Idstein town hall.

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Max Kirmsse is considered to be one of the most profound "connoisseurs of the history of curative education in the first half of the 20th century". In doing so, he achieved great merits within the history of the “feeble-minded being”, but also “paid homage to” the “custom”, “the same related areas, e.g. B. to pay attention to children's soul studies, care for cripples, etc. ”. Kirmsse published articles in the then most renowned specialist journals in special education / curative education such as B. “Journal for Child Research”, “Special Education School and Parents Journal”, “The Aid School”, “Journal for Cripple Care”, “EOS. Quarterly publication for the knowledge and treatment of adolescent abnormalities "or" Journal for the treatment of the feeble-minded ". He had written numerous articles (over 150) for the specialist book “Encyclopaedic Handbook of Curative Education” (1st edition 1911, 2nd edition 1934), which was then and still highly valued. The institution teacher wrote articles on important pedagogues, doctors, curative / special / mentally ill educators at home and abroad (e.g. Carl Barthold , Edouard Séguin , Karl Ferdinand Kern , Maria Montessori , Friedrich Fröbel , Hans Jakob Guggenbühl , Salomon Krenberger ) , Ill-minded pedagogy and their history, morons in cultural life, auxiliary schools , blind and deaf-mute beings, disabled care, child psychology, youth protection, etc. Richard von Premerstein sums up his diverse scientific legacy, which takes into account the most diverse specialist disciplines, as follows:

In his work, Max Kirmsse not only limited himself to the field of education for the feeble-minded, but also took into account the pedagogy of the blind, deaf-mute, deaf-mute-blind, physically disabled, etc. All the educational efforts for the injured child show certain common basic lines, despite the difference in the individual subjects. The teacher of the mentally handicapped child, Kirmsse demanded, must know about all areas of special education ... Max Kirmsse also consulted the viewpoints of medicine, education, law, theology and philosophy about special education and the mentally and physically damaged child . Medicine researches the physical causes of the damage, pedagogy deals with the methodology for teaching the injured child, jurisprudence defines rights and obligations towards the injured party, theology and philosophy inquire into the meaning, purpose and value of illness and suffering in the World. Through these varied considerations, Kirmsses work contributes a lot to understanding special education as a whole and as an independent one .

Library

Max Kirmsse's legacy includes the largest private library in the field of curative education. Richard von Premerstein writes about it:

The library for special needs is perhaps the best-known piece from Kirmsse's estate. He was a great book lover and the first to put together a specialist library on this subject from private funds. He collected the books with zeal, enthusiasm and resourcefulness. In addition to the literature on the education of the feeble-minded, the library also included the pedagogy of the blind, deaf and mute, the physically handicapped, the difficult to educate and the speech impaired, as well as child psychology, child psychiatry and the like. at the

Today the collection is in the University Library of Marburg and in the curative education archive of the Humboldt University in Berlin.

Honors

Kirmsseweg in Idstein

In Idstein, both a street and the Max-Kirmsse-Schule were named after him.

Publications (selection)

  • The history of the weak-minded being, in: Journal for the treatment of weak-minded people 1906, pp. 76-77
  • Corporal punishment and its use in psychologically abnormal children, in: EOS 1908, pp. 283-294
  • The cripple in fiction, in: Zeitschrift für Krüppelfürsorge 1909, pp. 144–155
  • On the history of the auxiliary school, in: Die Hilfsschule 1910, pp. 201–207
  • Wise reflections on mentally weak children, Langensalza 1911a
  • On the history of the earliest Krüppelfürsorge, in: Zeitschrift für Krüppelfürsorge 1911, pp. 3-18
  • A museum for the education of the feeble-minded (PDF; 16 kB), in: Eos. Vol. 1912, pp. 155-157
  • Die Schwachsinnigenfürsorge in Nassau, in: Journal for the treatment of weak-minded people 1913, pp. 208-212
  • History and Museum of the Ill-Minded Being (PDF; 38 kB), in: Die Hilfsschule, pp. 23–28
  • The writings of the Froebel researcher Dr. Johannes Prüfer, in: EOS 1917, pp. 226–236
  • An encyclopedia of abnormal treatment from the first half of the 18th century, in: EOS 1917, pp. 79-85
  • The development periods of the auxiliary school, in: Die Hilfsschule 1918, pp. 193–200
  • The priority in the formation of the term “word blindness”, in: Zeitschrift für Kinderforschung 1918, pp. 119–211
  • Pestalozzi and the weak-minded, in: Journal for the treatment of weak-minded people 1927, pp. 1-14 u. 23-29
  • Froebel's relationships with curative education, in: Journal for the treatment of anomalous people 1930, pp. 65–85

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Etta Federn in the database Women in Motion 1848–1938 of the Austrian National Library
  2. ↑ cf. Schrapper / Sengling 1988, p. 181
  3. ↑ Haeberlin 1996, p. 85
  4. ↑ cit. n. Buchka u. a. 2000, p. 389
  5. ↑ Ellger-Rüttgardt 2008, p. 87
  6. ↑ Kirmsse 1911a, p. VI
  7. ^ Premerstein 1963, p. 692
  8. ^ In Memoriam Max Kirmsse - Idsteiner Zeitung from June 1, 1957
  9. ^ Premerstein 1963, p. 694
  10. ↑ cf. Pampuch 2013
personal data
SURNAME Fairground, Max
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kirmsse, Max Bruno (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German educator, local politician and historian
DATE OF BIRTH June 1, 1877
PLACE OF BIRTH Markranstädt
DATE OF DEATH September 17, 1946
Place of death Idstein