Otto Perl

Otto Perl (born October 19, 1882 in Wildenhain ; † October 17, 1951 in Wittenberg ) was one of the founders of the self-help federation for the physically handicapped , which was named after him as Perl-Bund.

Life

Perl was born as the son of Gottlob Perl (farmer and owner of a house) and Rosine Perl, b. Born in Münch. At the age of 13, Perl developed joint inflammation that stiffened his joints completely. After the death of his mother in 1898, who had been caring for him until then, Perl was first admitted to the municipal “infirmary” in Halle . He then spent the years from 1901 to 1908 in the Kaiser-Friedrich-Infirmary in Wittenberg. In order to be able to finance the subsidies for the shelter, his father sold his farm.

Describes Petra Fuchs that at that time in the Verwahranstalten of poor relief accommodated poor and needy concentrated off the society and were provided with the barest, with children and young people, the elderly and the dying, the sick, alcohol and morphine addicts and people with different Disabilities were housed together. The people who were dependent on poor relief measures were left to their own devices. According to Simon, Otto Perl managed to "free himself again and again from unreasonable and humiliating surroundings and create living conditions for himself that could enable him to lead a humane life appropriate to his condition ." During his stay at the Kaiser-Friedrich-Siechenhaus Wittenberg, Perl continued his autodidactic training and passed on his knowledge to children and young people within the institutions: “In 1902, through private studies and a lively exchange of ideas with my friends, I encouraged myself to such an extent that I taught sick people Children who could not attend the public school could take over in the institution, and this despite my severe physical handicap. ” From 1908 to 1919 Perl lived in the cripple home of the Oberlinverein founded in 1894 in Nowawes (today Potsdam-Babelsberg). In 1906 he met his future sponsor and friend Hermann Rassow during a lecture .

The high school director Rassow supported Perl ideally and materially. At the beginning of their acquaintance, he took on Perl's maintenance costs and other payments and made gifts for him. With his help, Perl passed his Abitur exam as an external student at the age of 37 in 1918 with the approval of the provincial school board . After a few cures, Perl was "able to move forward a little with the help of two crutches if he was helped to stand" . Three operations at the University Clinic in Leipzig led to a mobilization of his right elbow joint. Thanks to the financial support from Rassow and a helper who accompanied him, Perl was able to begin studying at the philosophical faculty of Berlin's Friedrich Wilhelms University in 1922 . He followed the lectures on philosophy and economics standing against a pillar because he could not sit due to his physical disability . Gerhard Simon's detailed studies of Otto Perl's life show that Perl was largely unable to write himself, despite the operations. Fuchs therefore notes that it has not yet been clarified in which way he wrote the large number of his publications. During his studies Perl lived in an old people's home . The inflation limited Rassow financial possibilities and graduated after 4 without whose support had Perl semesters cancel.

He lived in the Lichtenfeld retirement home until 1926, in which he did not feel comfortable, however, and then moved again to the Wichernhaus in Altdorf near Nuremberg . At the age of 44, Perl lived there in his first room and continued his private studies undisturbed in the understanding environment that he found there. He

"In a few months he read and wrote more than in the years in the general nursing home," reports Perl himself about the time in Altdorf.

In the same year his monograph “Krüppeltum und Gesellschaft im Wandel der Zeit” was published . In addition, he devoted himself to the development of the Bavarian regional association of the self-help association for the physically disabled and gave lectures on welfare problems. Otto Perl already reports from this time of spying and attacks by Nazi supporters, who were also among the directors of the institution and the nursing staff.

On August 1, 1934, at the instigation of the Governor of the Province of Saxony , he was relocated against his will to the Bethanien nursing home of the Pfeiffer Foundation in Magdeburg-Cracau . Nothing is known about his life from August 1934 to the destruction of the institution by air raids in late 1943. In January 1944 Perl moved to his brother in Zschorna near Wurzen , but in 1946 applied for his resumption in the Pfeiffer Foundations in Magdeburg. However, due to the severe destruction of the institution, he was not given any space. He was taken back to the Kaiser-Friedrich-Siechenhaus in Wittenberg, where he died in 1951.

plant

Petra Fuchs (2001) describes the Perl-Bund (1919–1931) as the first emancipatory attempt at a self-help movement in the Weimar Republic . At the beginning of the 20th century, Otto Perl fought together with Friedrich Malikowski , Hans Förster , Irma Dresdner , Marie Gruhl and other members of the self-help association for the physically handicapped (Perl-Bund) to improve living conditions for people with physical disabilities , but above all for “mentally normal “ physically handicapped people, for whom he demanded the right of self-determination . Unlike, for example, the representatives of the state care for cripples , Hans Würtz and Konrad Biesalski , Perl did not see the physically handicapped as an inferior way of life, but as a person worthy of support who can contribute his special part to the community . In this context, Perl says that personality development is only possible there

"Where the form of life lets the cripple be active, where it gives him the consciousness that it is an order that treats the cripple not as a means but as an end, which leaves all freedom of higher development of his being and will in his hand."

Otto Perl advocates treating the physically handicapped not only as a “means to an end”, but as a “sense and purpose in itself”, since every person is a master of himself, unique and irreplaceable. Perl's attitude is contrary to that of professional cripple educators and cripple psychologists . Where Biesalski, for example , wants to turn the cripple “from alms recipient to taxpayer”, i.e. sees him only as an object of his work, but in no way as a subject , Perl speaks of free personal development without pointing to a specific goal to be achieved.

Perl's work was characterized by constant setbacks and great difficulties, as the traditional carers of the Inner Mission and the cripple welfare feared that they would lose their work base to the Perl-Bund. Typical of this is a letter from which, according to Fuchs, the vehemence in the rejection of the Perl-Bund speaks as well as the arrogance in the attitude of those used to power towards their clientele . The director of the Pfeiffer establishments in Magdeburg-Cracau, Pastor D. Ulbricht, wrote to the director of the Central Committee of the Inner Mission, Gerhard Füllkrug:

“The Perlbund is the foundation of two cripples Perl and Förster, of whom the first pupil is Mr. D. Hoppe in Nowawes, to whom he owes everything good. The other is a subject teacher in the Oskar-Helene-Heim zu Zehlendorf. Both are vague fantasies with a vain streak who would like to play a role. Not without talent, they use their and other cripples for sensational advertising and want to make the whole of Germany, which they view from the perspective of the cripple, their domain (...). I'm waiting to see what will crawl out of the cuckoo's egg that is laid in the nest of our cripples. If sober people with a clear view in the federal government gain the upper hand, something good may come of it. [...] At first I don't like the name “pearl waistband”. The naming is significant and shows that the people are far removed from everything IM likes to promote. " )

After the dissolution of the Perl-Bund in August 1931, the successor organization Reichsbund physically handicapped was founded, which, however, did not represent any real opposition to the efforts of professional cripple welfare. As part of the harmonization processes in the Third Reich , the Reichsbund finally lost its independence and was incorporated into the National Socialist People's Welfare . Petra Fuchs states that the Reichsbund of the physically handicapped in the " hierarchical structure of the National Socialist system of rule .... a rather insignificant marginal phenomenon" .

For a better understanding of the consequences that resulted from the fact that only the professionals now had the power to decide over the lives of physically disabled people, the following quote from Perl should be mentioned:

“At the conference of the German Cripple Welfare Service in Frankfurt a. M. In 1937 the advisor of the "Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft zur Combat des Krüppeltums" in the main office of the NSV [National Socialist People's Welfare], the Nazist Dr. Eckhardt, against any collective self-help of the physically handicapped. He felt called to complete the legacy of his masters Biesalski and Würtz in the spirit of Nazi welfare policy. He and his like-minded colleague Dr. Walter, also in the main office of the NSV, we the physically handicapped primarily owe our complete disqualification in the "Third Reich", the smashing of our economic and cultural efforts in 1933, the robbery of our sourly saved money by the Nazis and the brutal exploitation of our fellow fate in the armaments factories and the offices of the Nazis. Thousands of these frail people have perished miserably from overwork and malnutrition. Therefore it is high time that we physically handicapped ourselves from the "carers" of the type of Dr. Eckhardt and Dr. To finally set Walter free. For these Nazi doctors, the fight against crippling was just a propagandistic phrase without inner truthfulness. Rather, it was more important to them to multiply the frail misery in the German people and to secure the broadest possible seat at this richly laid table. "

However, it should be noted critically that within the group of more capable physically handicapped people who had organized themselves in the Otto Perl Bund, the usual social behavior pattern of hierarchization and exclusion towards the weaker fellow fate was not overcome. As Wilken explains, Perl advocates appropriately differentiated support for the physically handicapped, but the positive characteristics of these “really needy and intellectually valuable elements” are constantly contrasted against the negative background of those physically handicapped who he considers mentally abnormal, idiots and Psychopaths are stigmatized. As a consequence, Perl speaks to a hereditary biology selective training care and prevents the necessary solidarity of those affected as a whole group by the formation of stigmatized subgroups.

Fonts

• Crippling and society through the ages. With e. Preface v. Dr. Hermann Rassow , Gotha 1926 (reprint in: Heiden, H.-G. - Simon, G. - Wilken, U .: Otto Perl and the development of self-determination and self-control in the self-help movement for the physically handicapped. Self-published by the Federal Association of Self-Help for the Physically Disabled 74238 Krautheim / Jagst 1993)
• Pictures from the Kaiser-Friedrich-Infirmary in Wittenberg , Wittenberg o. J .: self-published
• The cripple working group. In: Federal Intelligence Service for Self-Help for the Physically Disabled 2 , 1921
• Care and self-help. In: Federal Intelligence Service for Self-Help for the Physically Disabled 2 , 1921
• The care of the cripples in need of care. In: Federal intelligence service for the self-help of the physically disabled 3 , 1922
• Frail youth - agile youth. (To the 6th Bundestag). In: Federal intelligence service for the self-help of the physically disabled 6 , 1925
• Bavaria: From work for work. In: The Physically Handicapped 2 , 1932
• Art among the people. In: Ethik 11 , 1936
• Selective cripple care. In: Ethik 12 , 1936

See also

• Konrad Biesalski
• Hans Würtz

literature

• Hans Stadler, Udo Wilken: Pedagogy for physical disabilities. Study texts on the history of disabled education . (= Study texts on the history of disabled education; vol. 4 / UTB; vol. 2378). Beltz, Weinheim et al. 2004, ISBN 3-407-57206-9 / ISBN 3-8252-2378-7
• Petra Fuchs: "Physically handicapped" between self-abandonment and emancipation. Self-help - integration - segregation . Luchterhand, Neuwied and Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-472-04450-0
• Simon, Gerhard: "Otto Perl - the remarkable life of a physically disabled person". In: Heiden, H. Günter / Simon, Gerhard / Wilken, Udo: Otto Perl and the development of self-determination and self-control in the self-help movement for the disabled. With a reprint of the main work by Otto Perl: Krüppeltum and Society through the ages (Gotha 1926) Krautheim / Jagst 1993, ISBN 3-930011-12-3
• Wilken, Udo: Pedagogy for the physically handicapped . In: Solarová, S. (ed.): History of special education. Kohlhammer-Verlag, Stuttgart 1983, ISBN 3-17-007307-9
• Wilken, Udo: Self-help association for the physically disabled . In: Stadler, H./Wilken,U .: Pedagogy for physical disabilities. Study texts on the history of disabled education Volume 4. Beltz-Verlag UTB, Weinheim 2004
• Hans-Joachim Böttcher : "Perl, Otto", in: Important historical personalities of the Düben Heath, AMF - No. 237, 2012, pp. 77–78.
• Peter Reinicke : Perl, Otto , in: Hugo Maier (Ed.): Who is who of social work . Freiburg: Lambertus, 1998 ISBN 3-7841-1036-3 , p. 464f.

Web links

• "Saxon Disabled Self-Help Foundation - Otto Perl"
• The right to self-determination for "the mentally normal cripple" (some statements by Petra Fuchs)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://www.inklusion-als-menschenrecht.de/nationalsozialismus/biografien/otto-perl/
2. ↑ Petra Fuchs: "Physically handicapped" between self-abandonment and emancipation. Self-help - integration - segregation . Luchterhand, Neuwied and Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-472-04450-0
3. ↑ Simon, Gerhard: "Otto Perl - the remarkable life of a physically disabled person"
4. ↑ ^{a b} (Perl 1946)
5. ↑ II. List of cripple children no. 477 - 970 of the Oberlinhaus
6. ↑ (Perl 1926)
7. ↑ (Perl 1926, p. 53)
8. ↑ (Letter from Pastor D. Ulbrich of October 9, 1919 to Director Füllkrug (Central Committee of the Inner Mission)
9. ↑ (2004, p. 267)
10. ↑ (Perl 1926, page 21)
11. ↑ (Perl 1926, 40; Wilken 1983, 219 f.)
12. ↑ (Perl 1936)
13. ↑ (Wilken 2004, 267 ff.)