Nelly Wolffheim

Nelly Wolffheim (born March 29, 1879 in Berlin , † April 2, 1965 in London ) was a German educator, founder of the first psychoanalytic kindergarten in Germany and a specialist journalist.

Live and act

Nelly Wolffheim's standard work: Psychoanaylse und Kindergarten

She was the youngest of two children in a Jewish merchant family. The father was the owner of a so-called wholesaler that supplied large clothing companies in Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne, Frankfurt, Dresden, Leipzig and Munich with haberdashery, braid, braids and trimmings. From early childhood on, the girl suffered from predominantly psychosomatic illnesses. Regarding this she wrote in her autobiography: There can hardly be any doubt that I was a severely neurotic child. The many physical complaints I had were considered 'nervous' if medical examinations could not prove any physical causes (Wolffheim 1964, p. 3).

Because of her frequent illnesses, she was withdrawn from public school and given private tuition. At the age of 17, against her parents' wishes, Nelly Wolffheim decided to train as a kindergarten teacher, which she completed at the renowned Pestalozzi-Froebel-Haus in Berlin . The young kindergarten teacher then worked on a voluntary basis in a Jewish kindergarten, then in a seminar kindergarten at her former training center. But soon new serious diseases set in. She spent nearly ten years in a state of illness and traveled with her mother from one sanatorium to another without finding a cure. During this time she began to work as a writer and attended philosophical and psychological courses for personal training.

In 1910, Nelly Wolffheim began to work in education again. At first she gave handicraft lessons to children she knew. This activity encouraged her to open a private kindergarten in her parents' apartment in 1914. Eight years later, after Nelly Wolffheim came into contact with psychoanalysis (she herself was in psychotherapeutic treatment with Karl Abraham and later with Karen Horney ), it was based on ideas of psychoanalytic pedagogy.

In 1930 she closed her psychoanalytic kindergarten, the first in Germany, and devoted herself only to her writing. Her work Psychoanalysis and Kindergarten , which was published in 1930, was widely recognized. In it the author stated about the intentions of a psychoanalytically oriented (kindergarten) pedagogy: Above all, psychoanalytic upbringing reckons with the child's desire for pleasure and recognizes the magnitude of the task given to him to adapt to reality. Therefore we only suppress the child's strivings of will when it is absolutely necessary due to external factors. This does not appear to us as a softening, but as the way to free development. For the psychoanalytic educator, oppression means inhibition, which leads to repressive rebellion, the accumulation of affects and the formation of hatred, all of which have a detrimental influence on mental life (Wolffheim 1930, p. 24).

Stamp of the retraining courses of the Jewish community in Berlin

In 1934, at the suggestion and with the support of the Jewish Community of Berlin, Nelly Wolffheim founded a kindergarten teachers' seminar because Jewish girls and young women were not allowed to attend state education. Tolerated by the Nazi authorities, she headed the educational institution until she emigrated to England in 1939. In the end, this was only allowed to prepare more young girls and women for emigration in so-called “retraining courses for educational work in Jewish private households and home businesses”.

After 1945 Nelly Wolffheim did not return to her homeland, but published again in her mother tongue in various magazines. Among other things, she dealt with the situation of traumatized children from concentration camps who were looked after / analyzed at the time in London in the Hampstead Clinic under the direction of Anna Freud . In the process, mental deviations and behavioral disorders came to light which, in their multidimensionality, were not known in any previously known nomenclature. For her investigation, Nelly Wolffheim tried in vain to come into contact with Anna Freud, whom she held in high esteem as a scientist and practitioner of psychoanalytic pedagogy. On the other hand, Sigmund Freud's daughter did not consider the lay child analyst to be worthy enough as a scientific interlocutor (cf. Hoffer 1999, p. 34 ff.). Regarding the relationship between the two women, Gerd Biermann , who worked with them and knew them well, said that Nelly Wolffheim, in a kind of love-hate relationship, did not feel recognized by Anna Freud as a child psychologist , and that was probably also true (quoted in Berger 1995, p. 199). Karl-Heinz Hoffer (1999) also documents in his master's thesis that the two women were neither privately nor scientifically in contact, although they lived in the immediate vicinity .

Works (selection)

Literature by and about Nelly Wolffheim in the catalog of the German National Library
On the history of corporal punishment in school and at home. An educational study, Berlin 1905
Should I send my child to kindergarten ?, Nuremberg 1910
Psychoanalysis and Kindergarten, Leipzig 1930
Child play and child labor. Letters from kindergarten to a mother, Stuttgart 1930
Children from concentration camps, in: Praxis der Kinderpsychologie und Kinderpsychiatrie, 7 1958, pp. 302–312; 8 1959, pp. 20-27 and 59-71
The mystery of human life, Munich 1964
Psychoanalysis and kindergarten and other work on child psychology, Munich / Basel 1966

Literature (selection)

Manfred Berger : Women in the history of kindergarten. Ein Handbuch, Frankfurt 1995, pp. 194-199
Manfred Berger: Nelly Wolffheim. A trailblazer in experiential education ?, Lüneburg 1996
Gerd Biermann : Nelly Woffheim and psychoanalytic pedagogy, Giessen 1998
Astrid Kerl-Wienecke: Nelly Wolffheim - Life and Work, Giessen 2000
Hoffer Karl-Heinz: Anna Freud and Nelly Wolffheim - two important child analysts and rivals (?). Searching for traces in the history of child psychology, Deggendorf 1999 (unpublished master's thesis)
Bettina Wrede: Origin and Development of 'Psychoanalytic Pedagogy' - shown using the example of Anna Freud and Nelly Wolffheim, Munich 2000 (unpublished diploma thesis)
Wilma Grossmann: Wolffheim, Nelly , in: Hugo Maier (Ed.): Who is who of social work . Freiburg: Lambertus, 1998 ISBN 3-7841-1036-3 , pp. 640f.

Web links

Commons : Nelly Wolffheim - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

personal data
SURNAME	Wolffheim, Nelly
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German educator, publicist
DATE OF BIRTH	March 29, 1879
PLACE OF BIRTH	Berlin
DATE OF DEATH	April 2, 1965
Place of death	London