Mimi Scheiblauer

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Mimi Scheiblauer (actually Marie-Elisabeth Scheiblauer ; * May 7, 1891 in Lucerne ; † November 13, 1968 in Zurich ) was a Swiss pioneer of rhythm as an educational tool in curative education . Until shortly before her death, the rhythmist took part in seminars, courses and international congresses.

Live and act

Marie-Elisabeth Scheiblauer, called Mimi from early childhood, was the only child of the Viennese engineer Franz Scheiblauer and his wife Marie, nee. Hiltbrunner. In 1897 the family moved from Lucerne to Basel and in 1901 they were naturalized. After completing the compulsory schooling for girls of the upper middle class, she trained as a pianist at the Basel Conservatory . In 1908 she visited the rhythm summer school of Émile Jaques-Dalcroze in Geneva. She immediately felt deeply touched by the revolutionary view of the music teacher at the Geneva Conservatory , who was appointed to Dresden in 1910 . Mimi Scheiblauer followed this and completed her training as a teacher of rhythmic gymnastics in Dresden and Hellerau (that was the title at the time), which she graduated with a diploma in 1911. The composer Friedrich Hegar appointed her to the Zurich Conservatory in 1912 as a lecturer in rhythm, solfége and piano. From 1922 she worked increasingly with disabled children. Mimi Scheiblauer wrote about it:

These children actually belonged in an institution. Their educational ability is minimal. They come from the poor and the poorest classes of the population, they are poor creatures who have become abnormal people through hereditary stress, through unfavorable circumstances, through illness and accidents. There are among them: I. First and second degree idiots. II. Cretins. III. Educationally retarded (passive, insubordinate). IV. Children with hearing loss and speech disorders (Scheiblauer 1926, p. 100).

Due to her curative pedagogical work, her fruitful collaboration with the curative teacher Heinrich Hanselmann began . The latter wrote in his standard work Introduction to Curative Education , in which he devoted a separate chapter to rhythmic gymnastics :

I am convinced that this chapter will later take up a lot of space in a curative education textbook. We give the title especially, just to be able to express this opinion emphatically ... The most effective proponents of rhythmic gymnastics, especially in curative education, are the children themselves. Anyone who has seen how blind, deaf, hard of hearing, mentally weak and difficult to educate are among them how they become happy and fresh, how they join in, wake up, whoever has seen all of this for himself will recognize that this method brings new and important things (Hanselmann 1930, p. 522 ff.).

Mimi Scheiblauer taught from 1924 as a lecturer for rhythmic gymnastics at the newly founded seminar for curative education in Zurich, which was co-founded and headed by Heinrich Hanselmann. A year later she gave lessons in rhythmic gymnastics for children, educators and employees of the Albisbrunn educational home.

As rhythm was gaining increasing recognition, in 1926 she founded the seminar for musical-rhythmic education as an independent department at the Zurich Conservatory. Rhythmics teachers with state diplomas were trained.

From 1927 to 1947 Mimi Scheiblauer was responsible for countless rhythmic performances and dance choreographies for festivals and folk festivals. In collaboration with the director at the Zurich City Theater, Hans Zimmermann , she choreographed the movement choirs in operas by Christoph Willibald Gluck , Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , Arthur Honegger and Arnold Schönberg .

In 1942 Mimi Scheiblauer founded the Sämann-Verlag in Zurich , which published essays on rhythms and small song and music books. She also published the paper Praise of Music , which was published in 27 years and was the specialist journal for rhythm education at the time .

In 1955 René Burri created one of his first photo reports about the work of the Zurich music teacher with deaf and dumb children, which he then submitted to the Magnum photo agency and was accepted.

Mimi Scheiblauer founded the Swiss Professional Association of Musical and Rhythmic Educators in 1964 . In recognition of her services, she was awarded the title of professor and honorary doctorate from the University of Zurich . The City of Zurich awarded her the Hans Georg Nägeli Medal .

Principles of the Scheiblau rhythm

Mimi Scheiblauer had illustrated her theory and practice of rhythm for many years, especially in the magazine Lobpreisung der Musik , which she launched . For them, rhythm is above all a dialogue between music and movement, or to put it another way: rhythm is education that comes from movement and is supported by music that guides and organizes movements. No child is indifferent to music. It will adapt to the rhythm to the extent that it is ready and approachable

  • indulge
  • fit in and
  • can be made to vibrate.

Mimi Scheiblauer saw rhythm as an important educational tool, as it teaches people to concentrate and not to forget to enjoy. Music and movement are based on four basic elements. In this regard, she balanced:

How can music and movement educate people? Music consists of four elements: the elements of time, force, sound and form. Each has a special educational meaning. With the temporal in music we train the motor nervous system, with the dynamic (force) we stimulate the expressive powers, i.e. the creative. The sound affects the soul, and the form influences and orders the spiritual in people. It is immediately clear that the elements of time, force and form can also be found in movement. What is difficult to understand for outsiders, however, is the relationship between movement and sound. It should therefore be pointed out in a few words that the sound level corresponds to the position of the movement (e.g. deep sound - deep movement). - So music and movement have the same elements. If we put them in mutual relation, we thereby increase their effect (quoted in Brunner-Danuser 1984, p. 47).

The rhythmist structured the content of rhythmic-musical education into five large groups:

  • Order exercises
  • Social exercises
  • Concept formation exercises
  • Sensory exercises
  • Imagination exercises

Mimi Scheiblauer chose special materials for her rhythmic lessons, which experience has shown to have a strong stimulating character and whose handling is not specified in advance: simple play equipment (e.g. balls, ropes, cloths, tires, sticks, sandbags, etc.) and music equipment (e.g. B. wooden sticks, tambourines, rattle boxes, triangles, homemade noise and sound generators, etc.). These materials are now known as Scheiblauer material and can be found in almost every (special) educational / therapeutic facility. The diversity of the Scheiblauer material in terms of shape, weight, color, noise generation and size stimulates the child to occupy himself with it and to move around. In this way it is led to creative creation (or, in other words, seduced ). The simplicity of their developed and adopted material is clearly documented in the documentary Ursula or the unworthy life (1966).

Fonts

  • Rhythm as an aid in raising abnormal children. In: Elfriede Feudel : Rhythmics. Theory and practice of physical and musical education. Munich 1926, pp. 100-104.
  • Praise to the music. Sheets for music education and for general education. 1942-1968. The 27 volumes contain innumerable contributions by Mimi Scheiblauer.

Movies

Films by Reni Mertens and Walter Marti with and about Mimi Scheiblauer:

  • Rhythm (1956)
  • Nativity Scene II (1962)
  • Ursula or the unworthy life (1966) (archived in the Ida-Seele-Archiv )

literature

  • Heinrich Hanselmann: Introduction to curative education. Zurich 1946.
  • Frida Brunner-Danuser: Mimi Scheiblauer - Music and Movement. Zurich 1984.
  • Manfred Berger : Mimi Scheiblauer - her life and work: In: info. Quarterly publication of the professional association of curative teachers. H. 3, 1997, pp. 19-22.
  • Sigrid Köck-Hatzmann: Development in dialogue. The principle of the rhythmic work of Marie Elisabeth Scheiblauer. Unpublished dissertation. Innsbruck 2000.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Magnum Photos, 1955: The Mimi Scheiblauer School for the Deaf
  2. ↑ Ursula or the unworthy life
  3. ↑ a b c Rhythmics - Tuning up for Life
personal data
SURNAME Scheiblauer, Mimi
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss rhythmist
DATE OF BIRTH May 7, 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH Lucerne
DATE OF DEATH November 13, 1968
Place of death Zurich