Meier Spaniard

Meier Spanier (1907)

Stumbling stone in front of the house at Jenaer Strasse 20, in Berlin-Wilmersdorf

Meier Spanier (born November 1, 1864 in Wunstorf ; † September 28, 1942 in Berlin ) was a German educator and Germanist .

Life

Meier Spanier, born in 1864 as the son of the master plumber Lesser Moses Spanier and his wife Elise b. Meier, born in rural Judaism in Lower Saxony , attended the one-class Jewish school in Wunstorf. His brother, who was 11 years older, was the educator and author Moritz Spanier . The two brothers had three sisters. He later describes his youth as "happy". The parish priest recognized him as a particularly talented boy and suggested that he be sent to the teacher training college in Hanover . He attended this until his enrollment at the University of Heidelberg , where he studied German and then taught at a private school in Hamburg. During this time he made close friendships with Detlev von Liliencron and Alfred Lichtwark . From 1900 to 1911 Spanier was the head of the teachers' seminar of the Marks Haindorf Foundation in Münster. The guiding principle of the foundation was precisely the view that Spaniards also supported throughout his life: to recognize the “united dual nature” of German Jewry, to integrate into society as a patriotic German and a Prussian loyal to the king, and yet continue the Jewish tradition. This concern was also reflected in Spanier's speech to the 75-year-old of the Marks-Haindorf Foundation, in which he quoted Jakob Loewenberg :

“You cannot rob me of the feeling that
my chest swells with joy;
Despite your: Germany above everything,
yes, above everything in the world. "

From 1911 until his retirement he served as the rector of the girls 'school of the Jewish community in Berlin and from 1921–1930 as the rector of the girls' middle school of the Jewish community in Berlin. During this time he published some well-known works on German and art-pedagogical topics. Immediately before his planned deportation , he and his wife Charlotte committed suicide.

Works

• Thomas Murner 's conjuration of fools . Hall, 1894.
• From the old and the modern Sturm und Drang . Berlin, 1896.
• Artistic picture decorations for schools . Leipzig, 1897.
• Gustav Falke as a poet . Hamburg, 1900.
• The Wunstorf Spaniards . In: Yearbook for Jewish History and Literature. Volume 30 (1937), pp. 187-203. Compact memory

literature

• Diethard Aschoff: Unpublished Westphalian-Jewish Memoirs. In: Westfälische Forschungen , Vol. 38 (1988), pp. 257-265
• Gisela Möllenhoff u. Rita Schlautmann-Overmeyer: Jewish families in Münster 1918-1945 - treatises and documents . Münster 1998. p. 30ff.
• Susanne Freund: Jewish educational history between emancipation and exclusion - the example of the Marks Haindorf Foundation in Münster (1825 - 1942) . Verlag Schöningh. Münster u. Paderborn 1997. ISBN 3-506-79595-3
• Spaniards, Meier. In: Lexicon of German-Jewish Authors . Volume 19: Sand – Stri. Edited by the Bibliographia Judaica archive. De Gruyter, Berlin a. a. 2012, ISBN 978-3-598-22699-1 .

Web links

Wikisource: Meier Spanier  - Sources and full texts

• Literature by and about Meier Spanier in the catalog of the German National Library
• Meier Spanier, pedagogue et germaniste originaire de Wunstorf frz.
• Jewish community of Wunstorf