Minna Woodpecker

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Minna Specht (born December 22, 1879 in Reinbek Castle ; † February 3, 1961 in Bremen ) was a German educator and socialist .

Life

Minna Specht was the seventh child of the couple Wilhelm Specht († 1882) and Mathilde Specht. The family lived in Reinbek Castle , which they acquired in 1874 from the proceeds of the Friedrichsruh hunting lodge and had it converted into a hotel. After her seminar training as a teacher from 1896 to 1899, Minna Specht worked from 1902 to 1906 as a teacher at a secondary school for girls in Hamburg. From 1906 to 1909 she studied geography , history , geology and philosophy at the universities in Göttingen and Munich . Afterwards she worked as a teacher at the same school in Hamburg from 1909 to 1914 .

In 1914 Minna Specht began studying mathematics in Göttingen , where she met the philosopher Leonard Nelson in 1915 , with whom she entered into a work and life partnership. Nelson and Specht founded the International Youth Association (IJB) together with Max Hodann and his wife Maria Hodann in 1917 .

In 1918 she worked for a short time as a mathematics teacher in the Haubinda Landerziehungsheim in Thuringia , in 1924 she took over the management of the Walkemühle Landerziehungsheim founded by Nelson in Adelshausen near Melsungen in northern Hesse and moved to Berlin in 1931 after the International Socialist Combat Federation (ISK) had closed the Walkemühle's adult department where the ISK, under the direction of Willi Eichler , published its own daily newspaper, “Der Funke”, from January 1932 to February 1933. Minna Specht worked on the foreign policy department and was involved in the attempts of the ISK to bring about a united front of the workers' parties against National Socialism. Also in 1932, along with well-known artists, scientists and politicians, she signed the ISK's urgent appeal to form a united front of communists and socialists in the fight against National Socialism.

According to Birgit S. Nielsen, in autumn 1932 Minna Specht “faced the choice between political and educational work. She went back to the fulling mill to resume working with children after a break of several years ”.

Minna Specht and other teachers fled to Denmark with some of the students at the “Walkemühle” in 1933 , where they once again built a country education home for the children of German emigrants . From 1937, plans were made there to relocate the school to another country. Obviously, a collaboration with the Carmelcourt School founded by Naomi Birnberg, Norman Bentwich's sister in 1936, was under discussion, where two close colleagues and political companions had just gone: “Minna Specht temporarily thought of joining a Jewish school in England thought, on which Hedwig Urbann and Martha Friedländer worked for a while. ”But Minna Specht ultimately decided in favor of the more proletarian milieu in Wales and cooperation with a Quaker project for unemployed miners. This move took place in several stages, and in November 1938 Minna Specht began the second stage of her emigration in Wales . But after she had been interrogated in November 1939 after the German invasion of France, she was interned on the Isle of Man with other German teachers shortly after the school moved again to the vicinity of Bristol . She lived there from 1940 to 1941 as an " enemy foreigner " in a camp in which she was given the management of the school and kindergarten for children of interned mothers founded on her initiative. The children of the schools she ran before their internment were placed with Quaker families, socialist friends and also in homes. After her release, Minna Specht did educational work in the German Educational Reconstruction Committee .

Minna Specht returned to Germany after the end of the war and was in charge of the Odenwald School from 1946 to 1951 . She was a member of the German UNESCO Commission and an employee of the UNESCO Pedagogical Institute in Hamburg . She was also the inspector of the state educational homes in Hesse . Together with the aforementioned Martha Friedländer, she was the editor of the pedagogical series of children's books . The individual booklets in the series should help parents raise their children. The child troubles were a counterbalance to the authoritarian notions of upbringing inherited from the Nazi era and set "on an upbringing based on love and self-esteem."

Estate and aftermath

Minna Specht's estate is in the archive of social democracy of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung in Bonn. It includes extensive correspondence, files and records on the history of the fulling mill, the schools in Denmark and England, manuscripts and publications by Minna Specht on educational and political issues as well as photo albums.

The teacher couple Pitt and Yvès Krüger , who fled Germany in 1933 and from 1933 onwards set up a facility for young people who had fled Germany, La Coûme , referred to Minna Specht several times in their educational reform approach.

In Germany - as of 2020 - two schools bear the name of Minna Specht:

  • The Minna Specht School has existed in Frankfurt's Schwanheim district since 1964.
  • There is the Minna Specht Community School in Reutlingen .

Publications

Publications
  • Jakob Friedrich Fries. The founder of our political worldview. Talk. Public Life Publishing House, Stuttgart 1927.
  • About the meaning of youth consecration . Speech. Public Life Publishing House, Göttingen 1930.
  • Education in Post-War Germany. International Publishing Company, London 1944.
  • Child distress . Edited together with Martha Friedländer. Public Life Publishing House, Frankfurt am Main 1950.
  • Leonard Nelson. In memory. Public Life Publishing House, Frankfurt am Main 1953.
  • Minna Woodpecker. Change of mind. Contributions to pedagogy in exile and to the renewal of upbringing and education in post-war Germany . Edited and introduced by Inge Hansen-Schaberg with the assistance of Sigrid Rathgens. Frankfurt 2005 (Writings of Exile on the History of Education and Education Policy, 2).
Editing
  • A comprehensive overview of the Kinderöte series published by Minna Specht and Martha Friedländer can be found in the inventory catalog of the German National Library : The Kinderöte series in the DNB catalog .

literature

  • Hellmut Becker, Willi Eichler and Gustav Heckmann (eds.): Education and politics. Minna Specht on her 80th birthday. Frankfurt 1960.
  • Antje Dertinger : women from the very beginning. From the founding years of the Federal Republic. J. Latka Verlag, Bonn 1989, ISBN 3-925068-11-2 . (P. 203ff)
  • Sebastian Engelmann: Pedagogy of Social Freedom - An Introduction to the Thinking of Minna Specht. Schöningh, Paderborn, 2018, ISBN 978-3-506-72849-4 .
  • Inge Hansen-Schaberg : Minna Specht - A Socialist in the Rural Education Movement (1918 to 1951). Research into the educational biography of a reform pedagogue. Studies on educational reform, 22. Frankfurt 1992.
  • Inge Hansen-Schaberg:  Specht, Minna. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 24, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-428-11205-0 , pp. 635-637 ( digitized version ).
  • Birgit S. Nielsen: Education for self-confidence. A socialist school experiment in Danish exile 1933–1938. Foreword by Hellmut Becker. Wuppertal 1985. - 2nd edition: Foreword by Hellmut Becker and further foreword to the 2nd edition by Hermann Röhrs. Weinheim 1999.
  • Inge Hansen-Schaberg : Specht, Minna , in: Hugo Maier (Ed.): Who is who of social work . Freiburg: Lambertus, 1998 ISBN 3-7841-1036-3 , pp. 559f.
  • Hildegard Feidel-Mertz (Hrsg.): Schools in exile. Repressed pedagogy after 1933 . rororo, Reinbek, 1983, ISBN 3-499-17789-7 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Minna Specht - a political educator
  2. ↑ Birgit S. Nielsen: Education for self-confidence. P. 40. That Minna Specht was one of the study assistants of the Karl Marx School (Berlin-Neukölln) who were dismissed after the National Socialist seizure of power on April 1, 1933 , as Doris Mischon-Vosselmann did in her essay on the end of Karl Marx -School with reference to Gerd Radde claims (Doris Mischon-Vosselmann: Das Ende der Karl-Marx-Schule , in: Gerd Radde, Werner Korthaase, Rudolf Rogler, Udo Gößwald (eds.): School reform, continuities and breaks: das Versuchsfeld Berlin -Neukölln , Leske and Budrich, Opladen, 1993, ISBN 3-8100-1129-0 , p. 357, note 8), is obviously based on an error: Radde only mentions Minna Specht in connection with the dismissed study assessor “Alfons Rosenberg , who emigrated to England in 1939, worked for the BBC and - together with Minna Specht - wrote a brochure about German school experiments ”. (Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen. A Berlin school reformer from the Weimar period , p. 200) Since Specht was mentioned here in connection with the listing of the dismissed teachers, Mischon-Vosselmann wrongly assigned them to them.
  3. ↑ Minna Specht worked closely with Mary Saran during this time ; see. Mary Saran, Never give up. Memoirs. Preface: W. Arthur Lewis . Oswald Wolff Ltd., London 1976; German translation by Susanne Miller : Never give up. Memories . Private printing, Bonn 1979, as well as Mary Saran's contribution Pause before a new beginning , in: Hellmut Becker , Willi Eichler and Gustav Heckmann (eds.): Education and Politics. Minna Specht on her 80th birthday. Frankfurt 1960, pp. 327-329. Birgit S. Nielsen's book, Education for Self- Confidence, contains a further description of activities in Denmark . A socialist school experiment in Danish exile 1933–1938. Wuppertal: Peter Hammer Verlag 1985, passim.
  4. ↑ Birgit S. Nielsen: Education for Self-Confidence , p. 131. The reference that Martha Friedländer went to the Carmelcourt School can be found in Feidel-Mertz: Hildegard Feidel-Mertz (ed.): Schools in Exil , p. 237 (biography Martha Friedländer)
  5. ↑ For the English years compare: Inge Hansen-Schaberg: Minna Specht - A socialist in the rural education home movement. Pp. 88-109
  6. ^ Sigrid Schuer: When obedience was beaten into the children , Weser-Kurier, June 16, 2014
  7. ^ Homepage of the Minna Specht School in Frankfurt
  8. ^ Homepage of the Minna Specht Community School
personal data
SURNAME Woodpecker, Minna
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German educator and co-founder and chairwoman of the ISK
DATE OF BIRTH December 22, 1879
PLACE OF BIRTH Reinbek Castle , Schleswig-Holstein
DATE OF DEATH 3rd February 1961
Place of death Bremen