Otto Hermann Steche

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Otto Hermann Steche (1909)

Otto Hermann Steche (born October 12, 1879 in Plagwitz (Leipzig) , † August 30, 1945 in Treysa ) was a German physician and zoologist. As an educator and author, he wrote racial biology teaching texts that linked heredity and racial anthropology and contained all of the racial and anti-Semitic stereotypes and invectives that were common at the time.

Life

Otto Hermann came from a wealthy family. He was the son of the industrialist Otto Steche (1834–1908) and his wife Johanna geb. Have not. His grandmother was the concert singer, Leipzig Salonnière and Liszt friend Lidy Steche . His uncle was the art historian Richard Steche . The entrepreneur Albert Steche was one of his brothers . A brother-in-law was the church historian Friedrich Loofs .

School and medical studies

After attending the 4th public school , he was a student at the Thomas School in Leipzig from 1889 . Even as a high school student, he showed a particular interest in the natural sciences . He read Darwin's and Ernst Haeckel's books with enthusiasm . After passing the school leaving examination, he first studied medicine at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg from 1898 . In 1899 he was in the Corps Hasso Borussia Freiburg recipiert . After passing the Physikum , he moved to the Philipps University of Marburg , where he devoted himself in particular to studying pathology under the direction of Hugo Ribbert . In 1903 he passed the medical state examination. He then studied natural sciences, philosophy and art history at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich . In the summer of 1903 he was promoted to Dr. med. PhD .

zoology

He then began his zoological studies in Freiburg, which he completed in July 1906 at the University of Leipzig with a second doctorate. A trip around the world then took him via North America, Japan to China. On a group of islands in the Malay Archipelago , he researched the glow of tropical fireflies . After his return in the spring of 1907, Steche worked as an assistant at the Zoological Institute of the University of Leipzig. He completed his habilitation on February 6, 1909 and was appointed private lecturer at the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Leipzig. From 1914 he was deputy director of the institute. From 1915 to 1919 he was the deputy head of the Zoological Institute of the new Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main . At the same time he received a teaching position as a private lecturer in zoology and comparative anatomy. In 1916 he became a professor. After the end of the First World War , Steche remained an associate professor in teaching at the University of Frankfurt. In 1928 he received a new teaching position for zoology at the mathematics and natural sciences department of the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Leipzig. In 1934 he finally ended his academic teaching.

Educational activity

The time of political and social upheaval after the First World War, as well as private strokes of fate - his wife died of the Spanish flu in 1918 - and general dissatisfaction with the progress of his academic career led to a professional reorientation at Steche. In 1921 he founded the Hochwaldhausen Mountain School , a country education home that Klaus Mann and Erika Mann also visited for a short time . In 1924 he passed the state examination for a higher teaching post in Giessen . Steche's teaching was characterized by academic training. Based on the practice of the Odenwald School and his friend Paul Geheeb , he lifted the fixed classes and introduced free course systems. He let the children work independently in free groups. He saw a stronger educational factor in community life than in the classroom itself. For him, the most important task of a school principal was "to put his own personality in the background as much as possible and to restrict students and staff as little as possible in the development of their own strengths". Due to difficulties caused by the German inflation from 1914 to 1923 , he had to close the school in 1927. He was employed as a teacher at the reform educationally oriented Gaudigschule in Leipzig, where he taught the subjects of zoology, botany, chemistry and French.

Nazi era

With the onset of National Socialism , Steche joined the National Socialist Teachers' Association and published several textbooks in which he prepared the National Socialist racial ideology for teaching at middle and high school levels. Steche came to racial studies primarily in the context of his editing of the third volume of Brehms Tierleben published in 1925 and the work on his popular science book Vom Zellverband zum Individuum (1929). In November 1933 the German professors signed the confession of Adolf Hitler . In April 1934 he was appointed by the Prussian Ministry for Popular Education as acting director of the Protestant monastery school in Ilfeld , which he was to convert into a national political educational institution . On January 1, 1936, he took up the post of director of studies at the Domgymnasium Naumburg . From April 12, 1937 he was appointed headmaster of this venerable educational institution. After the end of the Second World War , Otto Steche was dismissed from school due to his work for the National Socialists and interned. He died of complications from sepsis in the Hephata POW Hospital in Treysa, Political Prisoner Division.

Marriages

Otto Hermann Steche married Anna von Hase (1887–1918), daughter of the Leipzig publisher and owner of Breitkopf & Härtel Oskar von Hase (1846–1921), his first marriage in 1907 . Since 1920, Steche was married to Caroline Remelé (* 1893), a daughter of the Imperial Court Councilor Ernst Remelé , for the second time . Both marriages had six children.

Memberships

Publications

Monographs and textbooks

  • Hydra and the Hydroids. An introduction to the experimental treatment of biological problems in lower animals. Private print, Werner Klinkhardt, Leipzig 1911.
  • Outline of zoology. An introduction to the teaching of the structure and the phenomena of life in animals for students of natural sciences and medicine. Veit, Leipzig 1919.
  • From the cell group to the individual. Julius Springer, Berlin 1929 (= Understandable Science. Volume 10).
  • Healthy people, healthy race. Outline of race theory. Quelle & Meyer, Leipzig 1933 (= The Third Reich. Building blocks for the new state and people. Volume 5).
  • Racial Study Book. Heredity and race care for the upper levels of higher educational institutions. Quelle & Meyer, Leipzig 1933.
  • Guide to Racial Studies and Heredity, Hereditary Health Care and Family Studies for Middle School. Quelle & Meyer, Leipzig 1934; 6th edition, ibid. 1937.
  • with Erich Stengel and Maximilian Wagner: Textbook of biology for high schools and high schools. 4 volumes, Quelle & Meyer, Leipzig 1939–1943.

Essays

  • Memorandum for the 25th foundation festival of the Johannisloge Goethe on the large fireball in Leipzig. Leipzig 1909.
  • in collaboration with Percy Waentig : Studies on the biological importance and the kinetics of catalase. E. Schweizerbart'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Stuttgart 1912 (= Zoologica. Volume 67).
  • The position of Darwinism towards the mechanistic and vitalistic worldview. Blazeck & Bergmann, Frankfurt am Main 1915.
  • Hochwaldhausen Mountain School. In: Franz Hilker (Ed.): German School Trials. CA Schwetschke, Berlin 1924.
  • School camp at the Auensee near Leipzig. In: Theodor Breckling (Hrsg.): The Reichsbund der deutschen Schullandheime. Illustrated manual. Art & Publishing Office, Kiel 1930, p. 263.

Edits

  • Alfred Edmund Brehm : Brehms animal life. 4th completely revised edition. Edited by Otto zur Strassen . Vol. 3: The fish. , revised by Otto Steche with the assistance of Victor Franz. Bibliographisches Institut , Leipzig 1914.
  • Otto Steche: Predators to odd ungulates. (= Brehms Tierleben. Volume 3), edition 1925.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hans Christian Harten, Uwe Neirich, Matthias Schwerendt: Rassehygiene as an educational ideology of the Third Reich. Bio-Bibliographisches Handbuch , Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 2006, pp. 199f.
  2. ↑ Kösener Corpslisten 1960, 31/180
  3. ^ Medical dissertation: Contributions to the knowledge of congenital muscle defects .
  4. ^ Philosophical dissertation: The genital systems of the rhizophysals .
  5. ↑ Habilitation thesis: The luminous organs of Anomalops katoptron and Photoblepharon palpebratus, two surface fish from the Malay archipelago . Yearbook for Anatomy and Ontogenesis of Animals, Vol. XIII, 1st Issue, Leipzig 1909
  6. ↑ In his prose piece The Young , Klaus Mann processed impressions and experiences from his time at the Hochwaldhausen mountain school (cf. Friedrich Albrecht: Klaus Mann der Mittler. Studies from four decades , Peter Lang AG, Bern 2009, p. 88f).
  7. ↑ See: Pädagogische Rundschau , Volume 27, Issues 1–6, A. Henn, Kastellaun 1973, pp. 183ff.
  8. ↑ Quoted from: Peter Dudek, p. 173.
  9. ^ Karl Otto Sauerbeck: Didactics in the Third Reich using the example of the biology textbook by Steche-Stengel-Wagner. In: Specialized prose research - Crossing borders. Volume 8/9, 2012/2013 (2014), pp. 391-412.
personal data
SURNAME Steche, Otto Hermann
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Steche, Otto jun.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German physician, zoologist, educator
DATE OF BIRTH October 12, 1879
PLACE OF BIRTH Plagwitz (Leipzig)
DATE OF DEATH August 30, 1945
Place of death Treysa