Otto Stamfort

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Otto Stamfort (born November 26, 1901 in Stemmen , † April 14, 1981 in Jena ) was a German educator and university professor. As a persecuted Jew, he emigrated to France in 1933. After the end of the Second World War he became a teacher in Ludwigshafen and was one of Helmut Kohl's teachers for some time . In 1948 he moved to the Soviet occupation zone , where he first worked in the Ministry of Public Education of the State of Thuringia and then was appointed professor at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena .

Life

Otto Stamfort's parents, the Jewish businessman Bernhard Stamfort (* March 9, 1865 in Stemmen - † January 27, 1943) and his wife Ida (* February 19, 1868 in Bad Driburg - † November 23, 1942) were both on July 23 In 1942 he was deported from Hanover to the Theresienstadt ghetto and died there. In addition to Otto, the family also had other siblings. Brother Paul (* 1904), a trained printer and member of the Internationaler Sozialistischer Kampfbund (ISK), emigrated to Italy in 1934 and from here to France via Switzerland in 1936. He was arrested here in April 1938 together with Willi Eichler . The two were accused of sabotaging the French national defense and should be expelled. In 1939 Paul Stamfort was able to enter England, where he was interned from 1939 to 1941. He then served in the British Army until 1947 and became a member of the Labor Party . Another brother is reported in the Biographical Handbook that he emigrated to France, his subsequent fate is unknown. There is also talk of sisters who did not survive the Holocaust .

Otto Stamfort completed his Abitur in 1922 in Rinteln, Lower Saxony . He then studied mathematics and physics in Würzburg and Göttingen, completing the state examination and then taking the pedagogical examination in Hanover . From 1927 he taught mathematics at various schools in Göttingen, Hanover, Linden and Aurich . In 1931 he was in Braunschweig with the scripture "The philosophical and pedagogical fundamental views Erhard Weigel " to Dr. phil. PhD .

In April 1933, Stamfort was dismissed from civil service without notice due to the law to restore the civil service and emigrated to France , as he claimed in 1963, to avoid imminent arrest by the Gestapo . In Paris, Stamfort joined the Association of German Migrant Teachers and, like his brother Paul, became a member of the ISK. From 1935 he completed an apprenticeship as a precision mechanic in Paris and then worked as an assistant fitter on the railroad and in the material distribution department of a factory. In November 1940 he was obliged to serve in a French work company, whose members were later extradited to the Germans. Stamfort managed to escape in early 1943 and lived underground until France was liberated in 1944 . During this time he married Hilde Ahrens, who had worked in Marseille as a translator in the office of the Unitarian Service Committee headed by Noel Field and in Toulouse also in the office of Hertha Jurr-Tempi (born Sommerfeld, 1907-198?), The former secretary of Willi Munzenberg .

Otto Stamfort still worked during the occupation of France in the Committee Free Germany (CALPO) and after its official recognition as a movement of the French resistance by the French Committee for National Liberation in September 1944 in Toulouse, he became a member of its presidium. On the side he taught as a tutor.

In 1946 Stamfort returned to Germany. He was teacher in Ludwigshafen . After Helmut Kohl, he initiated the Free German Youth (FDJ) in the French occupation zone and from 1947 was their country manager in Rhineland-Palatinate . Hilde Stamfort was a member of the Palatinate district leadership of the KPD. Helmut Kohl, who was Stamfort's student at the time, remembers him very benevolently.

“One of the strangest experiences of my life is that in this post-war period, when everything seemed upside down, one day a new teacher appeared in our high school who made a big impression on me: Dr. Otto Stamfort, Jew and communist, mathematician and physicist. From 1946, when he came to Germany from exile, until 1948, when he moved to the Soviet occupation zone, he lived only a hundred meters away from my parents' house, next to the long garden. I visited my math teacher, the staunch Marxist, in his apartment every week to discuss politics and philosophy with him and a small group of other students - parallel to my visits to Finck's parsonage. At Stamfort I got to know Max Reimann , the chairman of the KPD. "

- Helmut Kohl : Memories: 1930 to 1982

In May 1948, Stamfort became senior clerk in Weimar in the Ministry of Public Education of the State of Thuringia and from 1949 head of the school department. Even before the state was dissolved, he was transferred from January 15, 1951, with his consent, as a lecturer in mathematics and physics to the Workers and Peasants Faculty (ABF) of the Friedrich Schiller University. Until its dissolution in 1963, he was a member of the ABF, most recently as its second director of studies. In 1959 he was appointed professor with a teaching position for the subject “Methodology of Mathematics Lessons”, and in 1961 he was appointed director of the department for teaching methodology at the Institute for Pedagogy. At the same time he was also one of the prorectors of the university during this time . In 1967 he retired , but continued to teach until the 1970s, especially on the history of mathematics and philosophy. He also campaigned for the establishment of the Mathematics Olympiads in schools.

After his death, Stamfort was buried in the north cemetery in Jena. His widow, Hilde Stamfort, then moved to live with the adopted daughter who lived in Leipzig.

Honors and honors

Otto Stamfort was a member of the SED , a member of the Society for German-Soviet Friendship , carried the title of "Honored Teacher of the People" and had been the recipient of the Patriotic Order of Merit since 1961 . In New Germany , congratulations from the Central Committee of the SED on milestone birthdays could be found again and again. In a speech on July 21, 2015, however, Ludwig Elm regretted that "the authors of the university history of 2009 no longer considered it necessary or appropriate" to mention Stamfort at all. In retrospect, the fact that he referred to Stamfort's participation in a memorial event in the auditorium of the University of Jena in 1963 on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the murder of the Scholl siblings seems rather embarrassing in retrospect. Stamfort is said to have said at the time that “the legacy of the siblings was fulfilled in the GDR”.

Publications

  • The philosophical and pedagogical basic views of Erhard Weigel , dissertation, Wettig Verlag, Gelnhausen, 1931.
  • Civic and ideological education and upbringing through mathematics lessons , mathematical and natural science series of the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, Department of Didactics of Mathematics and Computer Science Lessons, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Volume 16 (1967), Issue 1, p. 425 -432.

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Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Commemorative book victims of the persecution of the Jews under the Nazi tyranny in Germany 1933-1945
  2. ↑ In the journal Sozialistische Warte he wrote under the name Paul Stamford and also used various pseudonyms: including GIOV-, GIOVA, P. Giova, PG In the online library there are several articles by Paul Stamford without it being possible to track whether it is it is about Paul Stamfort, Otto's brother.
  3. ↑ a b c d e f Otto Stamfort , in: Biographisches Handbuch der Deutschensprachigen Emigration nach 1933
  4. ↑ Ursula Langkau-Alex: History of the Preparation of a German Popular Front (Volume 2 of German Popular Front 1932-1939. Between Berlin, Paris, Prague and Moscow ), Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-05-004032-7 , p. 271
  5. ↑ The following description of Stamfort's life is based, as far as no other sources are named, on Barbara Glasser's article Portrait of the former Prorector Otto Stamfort in Jena (see: Sources ).
  6. ↑ The year of entry 1933 is marked with a question mark in the Biographical Handbook , which does not guarantee whether Stamfort became an ISK member before or after his emigration.
  7. ↑ Mario Keßler: The SED and the Jews - between repression and tolerance. Political developments until 1967 , Akademie Verlag, Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-05-003007-0 , p. 77, & Ursula Langkau-Alex: The Woman in the Background. In Search of Babette Gross and the Others in Münzenberg's Networks in the 1930s , in: Bernhard H. Bayerlein, Kasper Braskén and Uwe Sonnenberg (eds.): Global spaces for radical transnational solidarity. Contributions to the First International Willi Munzenberg Congress 2015 in Berlin , International Willi Munzenberg Forum, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-00-059381-9 , pp. 396 and 484. More details on Jurr-Tempi, which also includes the first name Johanna and its abbreviation Jo led: Bernd-Rainer Barth and Werner Schweizer: The case of Noel Field. Key figure in the show trials in Eastern Europe. Prison years 1949-1954 , BasisDruck, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-86163-102-4 , p. 410 ff.
  8. ↑ a b Helmut Kohl: Memories: 1930 to 1982 , online edition on Google Books, no page numbers given.
  9. ^ Speech by Ludwig Elm on the Magnus Poser commemoration in 2015
  10. ^ Gregor Pelger: Reception of the White Rose in the Soviet Occupation Zone and the early GDR. Between prescribed memory and role model for resistance , in: Bavarian State Center for Political Education: Insights + Perspectives. Bavarian Journal for Politics and History , Munich, Issue 3/16, p. 72

Category: Person (resistance to National Socialism)

personal data
SURNAME Stamfort, Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German educator
DATE OF BIRTH November 26, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH To stem
DATE OF DEATH April 14, 1981
Place of death Jena