New direction

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The new direction was a movement that in view of the social situation of Germany after the First World War with public education to public education wanted to contribute. New methods should contribute to this in the public library and in the adult education center , which are based on the individual needs and abilities of the readers and participants.
The period after the First World War was a time of change and prosperity for adult education . Many adult education centers were established in 1919.

Walter Hofmann , who introduced a lecture at the end of September 1919 with the following words, put it particularly clearly :

“Popular education is the watchword of the day! It is almost impossible to open a newspaper or a magazine without reading about new foundations, new plans, new demands for popular education. [...] Popular education should heal the terrible wounds that the war has inflicted on us. "

The Society for the Dissemination of Popular Education

In Germany there were, among other things, workers' education associations since the 1830s, some of which were self-help groups and tried to provide information and expand knowledge "in order to enable them to fight for life in a practical way". Institutionalization entered a new phase in 1871 with the establishment of the Society for the Dissemination of Popular Education . Johannes Tews was the managing director and general secretary from 1891 to 1933 . Society's educational work should "encompass all areas" and "apply to all people".

Individualization of educational work

The criticism of the New Direction was directed against Tews and society . With the keyword "individualization" of the educational work on the part of the New Direction, the central difference to the lectures of the society is still aptly described, although there are also doubts about the clarity of this picture. The individual should be at the forefront of educational efforts, as opposed to a dissemination of culture and knowledge that did not ask about individual needs and abilities. Another aspect was the "neutrality" in the sense of an "abstinence from problems and values", which society was accused of. "One wanted to offer, and indeed 'without any tendency'."

The public library

Walter Hofmann had built a library in Dresden-Plauen in 1906 according to his ideas, in which "the right book should be brought to the right man". The origin of the "New Direction" can be seen here. Hofmann first used this phrase in 1913, at the height of the dispute with his main opponent in librarianship, Eugen Sulz . With the catchphrase "creative popular education", the title of a publication by Hofmann (1925), another characteristic was created compared to the "spreading", old direction. With his empirical research, Hofmann underpinned the demand for individualizing methods: There is no such thing as the proletarian, was his result. Hofmann pursued "a conscious selection policy in the purchase of books, and thus also towards the readers, in order to eliminate the mere frequent readers and to be able to dedicate himself all the more to the 'quality readers'." "Freeloaders" who use the library "in an excessive way" as a "pure entertainment institution" should keep away. In 1917 he estimated the number of "receptive" and "library mature" people at 6% of the population of a city.

Robert von Erdberg

Walter Hofmann and Robert von Erdberg met in 1908 and were, up to v. Erdberg's death (1929), on friendly terms. R. v. Erdberg, later one of the leading personalities in the Hohenrodter Bund alongside Theodor Bäuerle , was head of the department for popular education in the Ministry of Science, Art and Education in Berlin . In the Reichsschulkonferenz of 1920 he was deputy chairman of the committee for adult education centers and free popular education . His division of the history of adult education into three phases became famous: "from the state", "from the culture" (old direction) and "from the people" (new direction). In this essay there is also the remark: "Popular education must not work with mass resources if it wants to count on success". Jürgen Henningsen saw in him "the most important personality of the German popular education movement." v. Erdberg and his colleague Werner Picht represented the Berlin position of the New Direction.

On the part of the state, in Prussia, with the participation of Picht and v. Erdbergs, supported the flourishing of popular education. The interest was expressed in a brochure published in 1919 by the Prussian Ministry for Science, Art and Education. Henningsen notes that in the official documents, "the basic ideas of the New Direction are reflected in a pleasantly clear and decisive form". The rejection of the old, "spreading" direction is clear. In the "Guidelines" it says:

“The adult education center is not a training or technical school. Nor does it serve for entertainment and popularizing instruction in the manner of the usual events of the free educational system. Your ultimate goal is not to impart knowledge, of educational raw material, but to develop the ability to think and judge [...]. The teaching method [...] must strive for the closest possible contact between teacher and listener. [...] Adult education courses must take place in a scientific spirit and with the strictest objectivity. [...] The number of listeners must be limited. The adult education center may not [...] try to attract visitors. [...] mass influx [is] to be prevented [...] only in [...] working groups the peculiar task of the adult education center can be completely solved. "

One reason for the lack of ethnic unity was seen in the separation of the people into "head workers and manual workers", and for many the community college was the means to overcome this separation. In the mentioned brochure there is a decree of the then Minister of Education Haenisch, who addresses this problem: "We have to build bridges between the smaller part of the people who work intellectually and the ever larger part of our people who create by hand but is spiritually hungry . "

A little later, this fact should be expressed in the catchphrase "Volksbildung = Volkbildung" (A. Mann). The goal was the national community, and the way was seen in the small working groups of national education.

Criticism of the New Direction by Hermann Herrigel

In a Tat pamphlet from 1916, Hermann Herrigel - at that time a librarian with Walter Hofmann - fundamentally questions the project "people education through people education". Herrigel does not criticize the popular educators because they patronize or patronize "want to instill" their "culture into the" uneducated "people, but rather he wants to show the futility of their efforts: one cannot (and should) make an" educated "out of an" uneducated ". The educated person in Herrigel's sense is also the "ruler". Herrigel wants to show that popular education with its means cannot counteract a "fragmentation" of the people:

  • The spread of culture is futile and harmful.
  • An individualizing popular education leads to more individualization.
  • Unless we succeed in re-educating people to "awe".

On the path of Enlightenment , only a few "receptive" people managed to reach the heights of an education that could integrate them into a metaphysical / religious unit. With all others, one might say "godless", who do not recognize the "supra-individual" values, there is a risk that they will persist in their egoistic individual interests. This situation is almost hopeless for Herrigel.

This results in his rather diffuse criticism of the Enlightenment, but with this Herrigel is very close to the opinion of many German scholars of this time (see Ringer 1983). "Enlightenment" is not only criticized by Herrigel in the sense of "mere intellectual education", but it is clearly in direct contrast to a tradition that guarantees national unity through "rule and service".

Experience and naivety

In the November issue of the Neue Rundschau from 1919, Hermann Herrigel's essay appears, which will trigger an extensive debate: "Experience and naivety and the problem of popular education".

In 1959 Jürgen Henningsen emphasized in his studies "On the theory of popular education" the importance of the "difficult theoretical" essay, which "forced the attention of all responsible persons" (p. 25) and to a "intellectually superior dialogue" (p . 26) have led.

Herrigel shows opposites: On the one hand the present, subjective civilization and experience; on the other hand, the Middle Ages, objective culture and naivety. "The need to experience is a disease of people without tradition [...] But this experience is an overexploitation of naivety" (p. 1304). After an epistemological digression, Herrigel turns to the subject of education and thus his core message.

“But if our entire education [...] strives towards the experience of form [...] then our educational care [...] becomes a highly questionable company. This is especially true of adult or popular education. The promise of popular education to form a national unity is too great; Their task can only be to maintain the connection that is still present [...] and its powers as much as possible. These forces lie in the naivety of the individual. [...] The democratic ideal of the public is not compatible with the fact that there are closely guarded secrets [...] But folk culture is not that everyone has the same experience-based share in cultural goods, but, conversely, that one of the Experience untouched remains reverently preserved. (P. 1307f) "

Popular education through popular education is therefore impossible for Herrigel. Herrigel's remarks lead to the question: So what should happen in practice? Should one cultivate naivety instead of experiences? The answer is, as expected, unequivocal: "At least the demand seems to be that all public education [...] has to stop, that everything should be allowed to go as it will, just to say yes to spare the naivete. " (P. 1315)

The representatives of the new direction Walter Hofmann, Eugen Rosenstock , Werner Picht and Wilhelm Flitner react to Herrigel. But the most astonishing fact of the entire discussion is that nothing is opposed to the anti-democratic stance that lies in Herrigel's thinking - apart from a contribution by Kurt Sternberg - and it tellingly does not belong to the "New Direction". No one else has emphasized Sternberg's clear statement that this is a question of heteronomy or autonomy. At least Rosenstock mentions Herrigel's attitude, but his ironic criticism is invalidated.

Flitner, Hofmann, and Picht will found the Hohenrodter Bund with others in 1923 , where the discussion about popular education will continue. And Hermann Herrigel will report on the annual meetings in the Frankfurter Zeitung .

literature

  • Robert v. Erdberg: The basic concepts of popular education. Culture (civilization) - education - popular education. From: Volksbildungsarchiv. 2, 1911, pp. 357-388.
  • Wilhelm Flitner: lay education. 1921. In: Flitner 1982, pp. 29-80.
    • Wilhelm Flitner: Adult Education. Vol. 1 of the collected writings. Edited by Karl Erlinghagen. Paderborn: Schöningh 1982, ISBN 3-506-72561-0 .
    • Wilhelm Flitner: Memories. Vol. 11 of the Collected Writings. Edited by Karl Erlinghagen. Paderborn: Schöningh 1986, ISBN 3-506-72571-8 .
  • Edith Glaser: What is new about the “New Direction”? For adult education after the First World War. In: Anette Schmidt (Red.): 75 years of Volkshochschule Jena: 1919 to 1994. Hain Verlag, Jena 1994, ISBN 3-930215-05-5 .
  • Jürgen Henningsen: The Hohenrodter Bund. For adult education during the Weimar period. Quelle & Meyer, Heidelberg 1958.
    • Jürgen Henningsen: On the theory of popular education. Historical - critical studies of the Weimar period. Carl Heymanns, Berlin / Cologne 1959.
    • Jürgen Henningsen: The New Direction in the Weimar Period. Documents and texts by Erdberg, Flitner, Hofmann, Rosenstock-Huessey. Klett, Stuttgart 1960.
  • Hermann Herrigel: Public Education and Public Library. A settlement. Diederichs, Jena 1916. (Tat pamphlets 14)
    • Hermann Herrigel: Experience and naivety and the problem of popular education. From: The new Rundschau. 30th year of the free stage. 1919 pp. 1303-1316.
    • Hermann Herrigel: On the criticism of idealistic popular education. From: Volksbildungsarchiv 8, 1921 pp. 237–267.
  • Walter Hofmann: The organization of the lending service in the modern educational library. Part II. On the psychology of the proletariat. From: Volksbildungsarchiv. 1, 1910, pp. 227-290.
    • Walter Hofmann: The conditional reading allowance. From: Leaves for public libraries and reading halls vol. 10, 1910b, pp. 169–172.
  • Werner Picht: Pessimistic educational romanticism. A reply. From: The working group. Monthly magazine for the entire adult education system, vol. 5, 1921, pp. 125–133.
  • Fritz K. Ringer: The scholars: The decline of the German mandarin 1890-1933 . Klett, Stuttgart 1983, ISBN 3-12-912030-0 .
  • Eugen Rosenstock: The triumvirate of education. 1920. Again in: Henningsen 1960.
  • Wolfgang Seitter (eds.): Walter Hofmann and Robert von Erdberg. The New Direction as reflected in the autobiographical evidence of its two main representatives. Klinkhardt, Bad Heilbrunn 1996, ISBN 3-7815-1114-6 .
  • Kurt Sternberg: "We'll start thinking"! An examination of the latest pessimism in the question of popular education. From: Volksbildungsarchiv 7, 1920, pp. 225-252.
  • Hans Tietgens (ed.): Adult education between romance and enlightenment. Goettingen 1969.
  • Hans Tietgens: Ideas and Realities of Adult Education in the Weimar Republic. Another look. Klartext-Verlag, Essen 2001, ISBN 3-88474-962-5 .
  • Eduard Weitsch: What should a German adult education center be and achieve? A program. Diederichs, Jena 1918 (Tat leaflet). Reprint of the first part in: Tietgens 1969.
  • Ingeborg Wirth (Ed.): Concise dictionary of adult education. Schöningh, Paderborn 1978, ISBN 3-506-73441-5 .

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ On the terminology: The term "adult education" is used here as a generic term. "People's education" was used in the Weimar period in the sense of "adult education", but also meant "education for the people". The term "further training" denotes professional further training. The subject here is the "free" or "neutral" popular education work of the "New Direction". Thereby a thematic delimitation has been made compared to ideological (e.g. confessional) "bound" adult education.
  2. ↑ Later there was also talk of the "Volkshochschulrummel" ( Wilhelm Stapel )
  3. ↑ In the following time, the Central Office for Workers' Welfare of the Prussian Government was converted in 1906 into the Central Office for People's Welfare with a department for popular education headed by Robert von Erdberg . One of its tasks was to unite the popular education associations. There was little public recognition of popular education; the cause was seen in the persistent "fragmentation of the movement in different directions". (cf. Henningsen 1958, p. 14f) It was not until 1916 that at least an attempt at cooperation in the committee of the German national education associations succeeded .
  4. ↑ Hofmann called Robert v. Erdberg: "the baron, the prince from exotic species" (cf. Seitter 1998)
  5. ↑ Hans Tietgens - 40 years later - comes to a different conclusion: "Art. 148.4 [Promotion of popular education] of the Reich constitution remained an empty formula, an unused possibility, like a state official with an unusual mixture of hyper-idealistic stubbornness and almost charismatic effectiveness gave him an elitist interpretation that did not do justice to reality. Erdberg has thus become a hindrance, not to say destroyer, of adult education centers as an institution. " (Tietgens 2001 p. 22)
  6. ↑ During the Weimar period, different currents of the NR emerged: the Leipzig ( Gertrud Hermes , Paul Hermberg ) and the Thuringian direction ( Wilhelm Flitner , Reinhard Buchwald ).
  7. ↑ Herrigel is now the editor of the Frankfurter Zeitung
  8. ↑ A catchphrase of the time was experience and it was widespread in the youth movement and in popular education. In a leaflet of the Prussian Ministry for Science, Art and Public Education from 1919, the formulation of which is attributed to Werner Picht, it says: "The adult education center ... has to lead from knowledge to comprehension, from impression to experience". In a Tat pamphlet in 1918 Eduard Weitsch wrote: "Not literary history but experience of poetry" (p. 11).
  9. ↑ Cf. on this cultural pessimism : Between the world wars
  10. ↑ In the "Recollections" (1986, p. 274), Flitner notes that he wanted to react to two writings "with paradoxical theses": In relation to the criticism of the times by R. Benz "I had to admit that the gap between the educational levels (those with and without Latin) really existed and was bad. The other attack on our cultural consciousness came from Hermann Herrigel ". ... "both theses ... were suitable for putting our work to a halt" (275). In 1921 Flitner then presented the much-acclaimed publication entitled "Lay Education".
  11. ↑ The entire debate covers 150 magazine pages
  12. ↑ "Very clever men, I only mention Hermann Herrigel with his essays against the adult education center, rather still draw the opposite conclusion today: The masses are unconscious and should remain so - for their well-understood salvation -. Therefore, away with the adult education center and its enlightening popular education Aim." (1920, p. 74)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Limits of popular education work. From: Volksbildungsarchiv 7, pp. 81–99.
  2. ↑ cf. Wirth, 1978, p. 679.
  3. ↑ Henningsen, 1959, p. 16. ??
  4. ↑ cf. v. Erdberg 1911, p. 382.
  5. ↑ See on this W. Scheibe in: Pöggeler 1975, p. 62ff; Wirth 1978, p. 202ff and D. Langewiesche 1989, p. 338f.
  6. ↑ Tietgens 1969, p. 127.
  7. ↑ Henningsen, 1959, p. 19.
  8. ↑ Hofmann 1909; quoted n. Henningsen, p. 87.
  9. ↑ cf. Henningsen, 88f and ders. 1960, p. 163. But: "This term was originally introduced by Eugen Sulz in his article Progress and Reaction in the German Book Hall Movement with a polemical intention." Peter Vodosek: Innovation and Ideology, Walter Hofmann and his library in Dresden-Plauen and Leipzig. In: Lifelong Education and Libraries 6 (2006), March, p. 12.
  10. ↑ Eugen Sulz: A declaration of war against the modern public library. From: Sheets for public libraries and reading rooms. Vol. 18, 1917, pp. 92-96. From this text it can be seen that the librarians of the old direction also wanted to provide individual counseling - only more cautiously and without examining the reader "with an expert eye on educational ability" (p. 96).
  11. ↑ Hofmann 1910, pp. 288f.
  12. ^ Herrigel in the FZ of May 5, 1917
  13. ↑ Hofmann (1910b): The "parasitic elements", the "frequent readers" came mainly from "bourgeois circles ... Because to be able to read a lot, it takes a lot of time" (169).
  14. ↑ Lecture at the First German People's Library Conference on September 27, 1917 In: Volksbildungsarchiv Vol. 5, p. 417.
  15. ↑ cf. Laack 1984, 571ff.
  16. ↑ v. Erdberg 1911 p. 382.
  17. ↑ Henningsen 1960, 155; There also the print of the documents, p. 133ff.
  18. ↑ Quotation from Henningsen, 133
  19. ↑ Herrigel 1916, p. 13.
  20. ↑ Herrigel 1916, p. 31.