Oswald Kroh

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Oswald Kroh (born December 15, 1887 in Beddelhausen , † September 11, 1955 in Berlin ) was a German educator and psychologist.

Life

Kroh came from a family of teachers. After elementary school, he attended the preparatory institute in Laasphe from 1902 to 1905 , after which he attended the Kgl for three years. Teachers' college in Hilchenbach and worked for five years as a primary school teacher in Erndtebrück before taking his Abitur in 1913. Kroh completed a degree in mathematics and natural sciences for higher education in Munich and Marburg, including philosophy, psychology and pedagogy. His teachers in these subjects include Aloys Fischer , Oswald Külpe (Munich), Paul Natorp and Erich Rudolf Jaensch (Marburg). In 1918 he passed both service examinations for the higher teaching post in Marburg and received his doctorate from Jaensch in 1919 (“Color constancy and color transformation”). Kroh became Georg Elias Müller's assistant at the University of Göttingen , where he acquired the Venia legendi in 1921 with the study “Subjective visual images in young people”, an investigation into the phenomenon of eidetics .

In 1922 he was appointed to the newly created extraordinary professorship for philosophy, psychology and education at the Technical University of Braunschweig , in 1923 he followed a call to the University of Tübingen as professor for educational sciences . Kroh, who was a member of the NSDAP , had been a member of the university's “Führer Council” since 1933. In 1934 his treatise Völkische Anthropologie appeared as the basis of German education . In accordance with the Nazi regime, in 1936 he headed the course Völkische Menschenkunde as the basis of German education - exercises for racial soul studies . Kroh was involved in the journal for human inheritance and constitutional doctrine published by Günther Just and Karl Heinrich Bauer from 1935 onwards .

In 1938 he was appointed to the University of Munich , where he became full professor of education and psychology (with special emphasis on army psychology). From 1942 Kroh was professor and director of the Psychological Institute at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin. In addition, he took part as a division manager in the Nazi war mission of the humanities and was editor of the magazine for psychology .

From 1940 until its dissolution in 1945, Kroh was chairman of the German Society for Psychology .

In 1945 he was dismissed as a university lecturer because of his membership in the NSDAP, but in 1948 he was given a teaching position at the newly founded Free University of Berlin . In 1950 he was appointed full professor of psychology there. He died five years later.

Scientific importance

From the second half of the twenties onwards, Kroh had a significant influence on teacher training with his "phase theory of youth development". From the collaboration with Ernst Kretschmer in 1928 papers on psychological type theory emerged. In the “ Third Reich ”, Kroh made no secret of his support for National Socialism . That didn't save him from conflicts - with his teacher Jaensch, among others. From 1936 Kroh was on the board of the German Society for Psychology , chaired by Jaensch. After Jaensch's death in 1940, Kroh temporarily headed the German Society for Psychology until the end of the war. He was the most influential university psychologist in the German Reich during the Second World War. The diploma examination for psychologists, which came into force in 1941 and established psychology as an academic discipline and the profession of qualified psychologists in Germany, goes back to him.

In 1940 Kroh became a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and in 1942 a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences .

Kroh had numerous students, including Heinrich Roth from his time in Tübingen . At the Free University of Berlin, Kroh's students included the later psychology professors Klaus Holzkamp , Rudolf Bergius and Gerhard Kaminski .

Publications (selection)

  • A unique talent and its psychological analysis , Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1922.
  • Developmental Psychology of Elementary School Children. 13-22 Langensalza 1944, (first edition 1928)
  • High School Psychology. 7-10 Langensalza 1944 edition (first edition 1932)
  • Revision of education. 7th edition Heidelberg 1966 (first edition 1952)

literature

  • Hein Retter : The pedagogy of Oswald Kroh. Oberursel 1969.
  • Hein Retter:  Kroh, Oswald. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 13, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1982, ISBN 3-428-00194-X , p. 68 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Ulfried Geuter: The professionalization of German psychology under National Socialism . Frankfurt am Main 1984.
  • Rudolf Bergius, in: Ernst G. Wehner (Ed.): Psychology in self-portrayals . Vol. 3. Huber, Bern 1992.
  • Gudrun Storm: Oswald Kroh and the National Socialist ideologization of his pedagogy . Braunschweig 1998.
  • Hein Retter: Oswald Kroh and National Socialism. Reconstruction and documentation of a repressed relationship . Weinheim 2001.
  • Lothar Sprung, Wolfgang Schönpflug (Ed.): On the history of psychology in Berlin . 2nd Edition. Frankfurt am Main 2003.
  • Gerhard Kaminski. In: Helmut E. Lück (Ed.): Psychology in self-portrayals. Vol. 4. Pabst Science Publishers, Lengerich 2004.
  • Paul Friedrich: Oswald Kroh (1887–1955) . In: Wittgenstein. Leaves of the Wittgensteiner Heimatverein eV , year 56, vol. 32, no. 2, Laasphe 1968, pp. 81-85.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Second updated edition, Frankfurt am Main 2005, p. 342.
personal data
SURNAME Kroh, Oswald
BRIEF DESCRIPTION psychologist
DATE OF BIRTH December 15, 1887
PLACE OF BIRTH Beddelhausen
DATE OF DEATH September 11, 1955
Place of death Berlin