Felix von Kunowski

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Georg Richard Felix von Kunowski (born April 10, 1868 in Wilkau , Namslau district , † December 1, 1942 in Dresden ) was a German stenographer and, together with his brother Albrecht von Kunowski, invented the so-called "national stenography ". Felix von Kunowski is also the inventor of the "root script" or "speaking trace".

Life

Grave in the old Annenfriedhof in Dresden

Felix von Kunowski was the son of the Rittmeister and landowner of Oberwilkau Georg Friedrich Conrad von Kunowski (1833-1907) and the Englishwoman Grace Alcock (1839-1870). His grandfather was the Prussian infantry general Eduard von Kunowski (1795–1870), a brother of the class reformer Georg Carl Friedrich Kunowski . Felix von Kunowski also embarked on a military career. In October 1888 he joined the 4th Guards Regiment on foot in Spandau, became a second lieutenant in 1890 and graduated from the War Academy in 1896/99 . In April 1900 he began his career in the General Staff . He was promoted to captain in 1902 and major in 1908 . During the First World War, his battalion was initially deployed on the Western Front . After being transferred to the Eastern Front and promoted to lieutenant colonel , Kunowski was wounded (concussed) in the battle of Łódź . As a result of this wounding, he was unfit for the front. In April 1917 he was promoted to colonel . Most recently, he was commander of the military training area Lamsdorf before it on May 26, 1919 his farewell from the military under presentation of the character as a major general received.

His marriage to Julie Helene Marie Pauline (Paula) von Ramm on September 23, 1896 resulted in two sons, Georg Konrad Karl and Felix Wilhelm Georg.

His brother Albrecht von Kunowski (* July 4, 1864 in Potsdam ; † April 5, 1933 there) was a doctor (since 1891 at the "Provincial Insane Asylum" in Leubus ), then senior physician (1893 in Kreuzburg , 1899 in Roda and 1902 in Leubus) and since 1922 director of the Provincial Sanatorium in Rybnik , Upper Silesia. He died in 1942 and was buried in the Old Annenfriedhof in Dresden.

plant

National stenography

The brothers Felix and Albrecht von Kunowski dealt with shorthand since 1882. Felix first learned the Gabelsberger stenography system within six months , before devoting himself to the study of all newly developed and most of the older systems. This also included a thorough study of phonetics . In 1893 the brothers jointly invented a new shorthand ( course of German shorthand , 1st edition 1893, 2nd revised edition Berlin 1897). This was soon followed by the great work Die Kurzschrift als Wissenschaft und Kunst (Berlin 1895), the most extensive and profound system-theoretical treatise in the shorthand field to date.

Postcard in national stenography from 1900
The vowel signs of the national stenography around 1900. All vowel signs are written from top to bottom.
The simple consonant characters of the national stenography around 1900. All consonant characters are written from bottom to top or from left to right.

After the shorthand schools of Stolze and Schrey merged in 1897, the vowel-writing German stenography schools wanted to unite in 1898. The Unification Committee adopted on January 2, 1898 the system of the von Kunowski brothers under the name "National Stenography". On April 9, 1898, the Bund für Nationalstenographie was founded under the chairmanship of Albrecht von Kunowski. However, only a part of the shorthand clubs of Arends and Roller joined this system (77 clubs with around 2,000 members). The schools of Julius Brauns and Karl Scheithauer stayed away from the Federation; the complete unification of the German vowel writing shorthands was not achieved.

The national stenography of the von Kunowski brothers is a so-called vowel writing shorthand. This means that the vowels are always expressed by their own symbols and not represented by the position of the consonant symbols in relation to one another. In contrast to the most important vowel writing systems by Leopold Arends and Heinrich Roller up to that point, the Kunowski brothers' shorthand displays the vowels with smears and the consonants with smears and horizontal lines. In national stenography - in contrast to the Gabelsberger and Stolze-Schrey systems - as a rule no distinction is made between smears with pressure and without pressure, as this distinction slows down the flow of writing and makes rereading difficult.

In principle, every character in national stenography consists of a line or bar. The characters only come in two sizes. All signs in themselves just run out; but the end is modified by the head of the following character. The head of a rod can be straight, curved to the right, or to the left.

National stenography has characters for the five vowels a, e, i, o, and u . The characters for ö and ü are modified versions of the characters for e and i . In addition, it has its own characters for the three diphthongs ei, au and eu / äu . As a rule, no distinction is made between e and ä . If necessary, ä can be identified by a period above the symbol. Unstressed vowels before consonants are not written in endings.

The symbols for the consonants are structured according to a consistent principle: Voiced sounds are indicated by oblique strokes, unvoiced by steep strokes. Dental sounds are indicated by a straight drawing head, labial sounds by a paint bent from the left, velar sounds by a paint bent from the right. Plosives are expressed by a one-step symbol, fricatives by a two -step symbol .

For the sound sequence s + consonant there are abbreviated characters in which the leading s is represented by a left-handed point loop or by a left- or right-handed large circle. The dot loop is used when the following consonant sign begins with a straight line (signs for t, d ), the circle when the following consonant sign begins with a curved line (left-handed with the signs for b, p, f, w, m, r clockwise for the characters for k, g, ch, j, ng, l ).

The words "According to your wishes", written in national stenography on January 24, 1900

The small loops resulting from the combination of characters, such as in the first word of the second line on the postcard shown on the right, are peculiar to national stenography. The first character of the word is a smear, i.e. a vowel, in this case the vowel i . The actually straight end of the character is modified here to a curve to the right, which represents the character for r . The end of the character for r goes straight into the head of the following character and forms a small circle with it. The circle is followed by a long horizontal line, the symbol for m . So the whole word is irm , i.e. H. "Your".

The following word starts with a spread, i.e. a consonant. The long sloping upstroke with the head curved from the left is the symbol for w . This sign goes straight into a smear that indicates a vowel. The long smear with the head bent from the right is the symbol for u . This is followed by the small wavy line, the symbol for n . This is followed by a long, steep upstroke, the line of which, curved in from the right, is enlarged to a large (here slightly compressed) circle and thus represents the sequence s + ch . Finally, there is a short straight smear that represents the toneless -e . Overall, the word wunsche results ("wish").

The third word begins with an oblique single-step upstroke curved in from the right - g , which merges into a single-step downstroke curved from the left - e . The smear merges directly with the curve of the head of the next character, a long horizontal line - m . This is followed by an e . The last character is a long, steep straight upstroke - ss . So the whole word is measured (“according to”).

From around the middle of 1900 Felix von Kunowski withdrew from public stenographic life as a result of personal attacks by opponents of the system that had endangered his military career. In his private life, however, he continued to work in shorthand, including the translation of national stenography into foreign languages.

Albrecht von Kunowski subsequently published several papers on national stenography and in 1902 worked out a national stenographic "express script" (ie particularly fast shorthand). For about two decades he took over the organization of the federal government before he almost completely withdrew from shorthand for health reasons in the early 1920s. By 1913, the Kunowski brothers' national stenographic school had formed 382 associations with over 12,000 members. After Gabelsberger and Stolze-Schrey, national stenography took third place among German shorthands. After the First World War, Felix von Kunowski appeared again in public, for example by taking over the management of the publishing house for national stenography from his brother and intensifying his work on the transfer of national stenography to foreign languages ​​("international stenography"). By 1933 translations had appeared in 28 languages; "Intersteno" was particularly widespread at that time in Palestine , Greece , Spain and Japan .

On September 20, 1924, the German Standard Shorthand (DEK) was introduced by law. All shorthand schools in Germany had to deal with this new situation. As a result, attempts were made to fight against the new system by means of pamphlets, submissions and requests for comparable exchange rates. However, from 1933 onwards, the National Socialists only allowed DEK as German shorthand. In September 1933 the Reichsbund für Deutsche Kurzschrift (National Stenography ) , as it was called for some time, was dissolved or incorporated into the German Stenographers' Association ; no lessons in national stenography have taken place since then.

Speech trace

Representatives of the Reichsbund, above all its long-time chairman Fritz Höke, conducted experimental stenography lessons with preschool children from 1927 onwards. Felix von Kunowski's “Kurzschrift für Kinder” (shorthand for children) was given the new name Wurzelschrift in 1934 , whereby the research group “Der neue Weg zur Schrift” (root script) was founded. As a result, intensive efforts were made to set up root script test classes for school beginners. From Easter 1935 the first test classes started with the “shorthand as the first script”. In 1942 the root script was renamed Speakspur . Shortly before his death, Felix von Kunowski had his last major work “High Language with the Help of Speech Traces. A Contribution to Speech Education ” , published posthumously in 1962 by his son Wilhelm Georg von Kunowski, completed. After the Second World War, Professor Gottfried Rahn's voice was resumed in Hanover and researched further. In the speech track, the human sounds are reproduced with a simple phonetic code (straight or curved lines). In the 1950s and 1960s, some children tried the speaking track as the first alphabet ("articulation writing"). It was found that six-year-olds with average talent who had started to write with the speaking track first were able to read and write it fluently and quickly in just a few weeks. Switching to the Latin alphabet also posed no problems. With children with learning difficulties amazing results could be achieved with the speaking track.

In 1968 Felix von Kunowski's 100th birthday was celebrated with a conference at the University of Education in Hanover. In the wake of the 1968 movement , however, German pedagogy soon turned to other topics and the speaking track came more and more out of use. The Hanoverian research group for the speaking track published until the 1990s.

Kunowski Archive

The written estate of Felix von Kunowski is part of the so-called Kunowski Archive , which was officially handed over to the shorthand collection of the Saxon State and University Library Dresden (SLUB) in 2000 by the International Talking Society, the Tutmonda-Parolspuro-Asocio . This archive also contains the partial estate of stenographer Arnold Joseph Christoffels, who managed Kunowski's writings from 1933 to 1958 and continuously added his own records to the archive, as well as the partial estate of Prof. Dr. Gottfried Rahns ( research group for the speaking track and Tutmonda-Parolspuro-Asocio ). From 1958 to 1970 the son Felix von Kunowskis, Wilhelm Georg von Kunowski, looked after the archive and then, until it was handed over to the SLUB Dresden, the Lower Saxony State Library in Hanover .

In addition to books and magazines, the holdings primarily include letters and transcripts of letters, manuscripts of works, files, system overviews and photographs. Over a period of 100 years (around 1880 to 1980), they document not only the development of Kunowski's stenography system, but also almost all other German and numerous foreign systems.

The archive was completely opened up. Its individual documents are recorded in the handwriting database (HANS) of the SLUB Dresden and are therefore accessible for use.

Works (selection)

  • Extensive, scientifically based course in national stenography (Kunowski's system) for school and self-teaching . Published by the office for national stenography K. Konscholky. Wroclaw 1900.
  • with Albrecht von Kunowski: Course in German shorthand. Instructional and traffic literature. Berlin 1893.
  • with Albrecht von Kunowski: Course in German shorthand for school and self-teaching. Traffic writing. Revised 2nd edition. Berlin 1897.
  • with Albrecht von Kunowski: Brief Course in National Stenography . Published by the office for national stenography K. Konscholky. Wroclaw 1899.
  • with Albrecht von Kunowski: The shorthand as science and art. Volume 1: The theory of shorthand. Berlin 1895.
  • with Albrecht von Kunowski: The shorthand as science and art. Volume 2: The shorthand design. Leipzig 1923.
  • My “shorthand” résumé . In: Festival magazine for the 2nd Bundestag of the Federation for National Stenography in Magdeburg, September 16-18, 1899 . [Breslau 1899].
  • 25 years of national stenography. Speech for the 25th anniversary of the Reichsbund for National Stenography. Berlin 1923.
  • International shorthand applicable to all cultural languages. English. Brief instruction for national stenographers. 2nd Edition. Essen-Ruhr [1925].
  • Internacionalstenografio. Sistemo de stenografio internacia por ĉiuj lingvoj. Essen-Ruhr [1927].
  • Artistic feeling in language and writing. Elberfeld 1927.
  • My CV. Machine manuscript. [2. Half of 1927]. 14 sheets - see manuscript database (HANS) of the SLUB Dresden under the signature Q.Kun.Hs.7 (3) of the Kunowski archive
  • The shorthand development. Karlsruhe 1928.
  • The miracle of the writing. Duisburg [1932].
  • Root script. Basic idea and structure. Bochum 1936.
  • High-level language with the help of the speech track. A contribution to speech training. Published by Wilhelm Georg von Kunowski. Detmold 1962.
  • The speaking track as a higher working script. The speech trace as shorthand: 1. Announcement. 2. Speech . Published by Wilhelm Georg von Kunowski. Detmold (self-published) 1963.
  • Speech track for all languages ​​and dialects . Published by Wilhelm Georg von Kunowski. Detmold (self-published) 1963.

literature

  • Rudolf Bonnet: Men of Shorthand. 572 Outlines of the lives of pioneers and leaders of the shorthand movement. Darmstadt 1935, p. 114f.
  • Arnold Joseph Christoffels: Our master Felix von Kunowski for his 60th birthday on April 10, 1928. In: German shorthand. 7 (1928) 4, pp. 70-73.
  • Arnold Joseph Christoffels: Felix von Kunowski 60 years old. In: Elbwart Stolze-Schrey. 3 (1928) 4, pp. 58f.
  • Arnold Joseph Christoffels: Meaning and essence of the root script: Thoughts in the development of a new time. Bochum (Kamp) 1935.
  • Arnold Joseph Christoffels: root script. Bochum (Kamp) 1936.
  • Arnold Joseph Christoffels: Felix von Kunowski in memory. In: Archives for shorthand and typing. (1943) 1/3, pp. 1-4.
  • Arnold Joseph Christoffels: The Kunowski Archive. In: Speaking and Tracing. 9 (1958) 2, pp. 145-148.
  • Arnold Joseph Christoffels: From the workshop of a creative genius. In: Speaking and Tracing. 11 (1960) 1, pp. 2-9.
  • To the creator of the voice on his 100th birthday. In: Speaking and Tracing. 19 (1968) 1 (special issue), pp. 198-263.
  • Heinz Eckermann: The new writing and reading lessons in root script on the holistic path. Bochum (Kamp) 1936.
  • Heinz Eckermann: From root script to print and cursive script. Transitional and reading primer. Bochum (Kamp) 1938.
  • Heinz Eckermann: Root script: the new writing and reading lessons in root script on the holistic path. Bochum (Kamp) 1936.
  • General Felix von Kunowski. In: The yellow notebooks. 1 (1928) 5, pp. 76f.
  • Gothaisches Genealogisches Taschenbuch der Briefadeligen houses. Gotha 1908, pp. 623-627.
  • Fritz Höke (Ed.): Handbook of the speaking track. Bochum (Kamp) 1951.
  • Wilhelm Hüls: root script and new cursive script. In: New ways. 14/1947.
  • Christian Johnen : General history of shorthand. 4th completely revised edition Berlin 1940, therein pp. 172–176: § 18,3: Die Nationalstenografie.
  • Rolf Knappek: Writing and reading lessons with the speaking track in the auxiliary school: With several speaking track examples and three pictures. Berlin-Charlottenburg (Marhold) 1962.
  • Wilhelm Georg von Kunowski: The "Kunowskiarchiv" in state care. Documentation of an extensive correspondence. In: Speaking and Tracing. 21 (1970) 3/4, pp. 39-44.
  • Hans Lambrich, Aloys Kennerknecht: History of the development of the German shorthand. Darmstadt 1962.
  • Hans Lambrich: Felix v. Kunowski - on the 50th anniversary of his death. In: KMI office management. (1992) 4, pp. 5f.
  • W. Otto, T. Voss: What we experienced at home and outside. Narrated for the second year children in the root script. Bochum (Kamp) 1936.
  • Ingeborg Pomp: He invented the speaking track. In: Deutsche Stenografen-Zeitung. 107 (1999) 1, pp. 27f.
  • Gottfried Rahn: Kunowski archive in the new home. In: Speaking and Tracing. 28 (1977) 1, pp. 189f.
  • Gottfried Rahn: Supplement and expansion of the Kunowski archive. In: Speaking and Tracing. 28 (1977) 2, pp. 241-243.
  • Gottfried Rahn: Wilh. Georg v. Kunowski, the keeper and editor of his father's writings on his 75th birthday. In: Speaking and Tracing. 30 (1979) 1, pp. 337-339.
  • Gottfried Rahn: Is there a computer-compatible measuring instrument for assessing primary school essays? At the same time, an overview of the entire "Kunowski Archive" of the Lower Saxony State Library. Hamburg 1994.
  • Laurenz Schneider, Georg Blauert: History of the German shorthand. Wolfenbüttel 1936.
  • Elfriede Wedegärtner: Albrecht and Felix von Kunowski. A section of German shorthand history. In: Theory and Practice. 8 (1964) 4, pp. 101-106.
  • Elfriede Wedegärtner: On the fiftieth anniversary of Felix von Kunowski's death. In: Deutsche Stenografen-Zeitung. 100 (1992) 12, pp. 265f.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Manuscripts, autographs, bequests - Kunowski, Felix von . Saxon State Library - State and University Library Dresden. Retrieved April 6, 2019.
personal data
SURNAME Kunowski, Felix von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kunowski, Georg Richard Felix von (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German stenographer and system inventor
DATE OF BIRTH April 10, 1868
PLACE OF BIRTH Wilkau , Namslau district
DATE OF DEATH December 1, 1942
Place of death Dresden