Paul Geheeb

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Paul Geheeb ca.1906

Paul ("Paulus") Geheeb (born October 10, 1870 in Geisa / Rhön; † May 1, 1961 in Hasliberg -Goldern / Switzerland ) was a German reform pedagogue . As the founder of the Odenwald School and the Ecole d'Humanité , he is an important person in the rural education center movement .

Life

Childhood and Adolescence (1870–1889)

Geheeb's birthplace in Geisa

Paul Geheeb was the second of five children of the pharmacist and moss researcher Adalbert Geheeb (1842-1909) and his wife Adolphine, née Calmberg (1841-1884). Paul Geheeb attended high schools in Fulda and Eisenach , where his aunt lived and looked after him. When he was 14 years old, his mother died - unexpectedly for him. As a nearly 90-year-old, Geheeb said:

“I had rather made the end of the world possible than that the good, heavenly Father, to whom I prayed every day, would have let my mother die… Even today I have to describe death as the greatest catastrophe of my catastrophic life. For a number of years later I was mentally ill, so that today I would have been put in a psychopathic home, and was often on the point of ending my life. […] While my interests had been exclusively in the natural sciences, especially in the botanical area, until my mother's death, I now turned to philosophical and religious questions and, under the influence of an excellent religion teacher at the Eisenach grammar school, (he was later transferred to the University in Tokyo called) the first very violent clash with the personality of Jesus of Nazareth. From then on, all of my longing was directed towards helping poor, unhappy people to become better and happier. "

Studies and educational apprenticeship and traveling years (1889–1909)

In 1889/90 Geheeb completed his military service as a one-year volunteer in Giessen. He then studied in Berlin and Jena. His teachers included u. a. the theologians Otto Pfleiderer , Richard Adelbert Lipsius and the young leader of the theological left Otto Baumgarten .

From March 1889 to October 1890 Geheeb was a member of the Giessener Burschenschaft Arminia and the Burschenschaft Neogermania Berlin . In a brochure published in 1891 under the pseudonym Paul Freimut, Geheeb criticized the nonsense of dueling and excessive alcohol consumption as well as the empty sociability of the fraternities and - especially striking in his time - the disrespectful treatment of women, which was apparently good form among academic youth . It is not only sad to hear, but also a sign of great danger, “when the German sons of the Muses call woman the most wretched and wretched of all creatures, describe the female sex as the merely passive one, and more and more indulge the view that woman has no higher destiny than that it would serve the man to satisfy his sensual desires and as a machine for human reproduction. "

In April 1893, Geheeb passed the first theological exam before the Saxony-Weimar church authorities. His liberal interpretation of the healing of the blind through Jesus Christ met with criticism from some church officials. This experience increased his doubts about the sense of the path he was taking, so that he turned to medical, psychological, educational and philological subjects. He continued his theology studies alternately in Jena and Berlin, but did not complete it after twelve semesters in 1899 with the second church examination, but with the senior teacher examination.

Since his family could not finance his studies and maintenance, Geheeb worked from April 1893 to June 1894 alongside his studies as a teacher and educator in Johannes Trüper's institution for psychopathic children on the Sophienhöhe near Jena and then looked after a boy from Jena with epilepsy for another year and a half Citizen family - activities through which he u. a. also came into contact with Otto Binswanger, the head of the Psychiatric University Clinic in Jena at the time, and his senior physician Theodor Draw , whose patient at the time also included Friedrich Nietzsche . During his entire student days Geheeb was also involved in the fight against alcoholism; he was a member of the Guttempler and frequented the German Society for Ethical Culture and in the circle of Moritz von Egidys . For a man of his generation, Geheeb's strong interest in the concerns of the women's movement , with which he was personally connected during the 1890s due to his friendship with Minna Cauer , Anita Augspurg , Lily Braun , and Jeannette Schwerin, was particularly striking .

In 1892 Geheeb became friends with Hermann Lietz (1868-1919), who, after a thorough pedagogical training with Wilhelm Rein in Jena and some school experience (including a year at Cecil Reddie 's New School of Abbotsholme, founded in 1889 ), opened the first German rural education home in Ilsenburg am Harz in 1898 opened. In 1930 Geheeb wrote about this meeting, which was central to his further development:

“An intimate and extremely fruitful friendship soon developed between Lietz and me; Together we delved into Fichte's philosophy and developed our pedagogical ideas. We had lived a lot in cities, spent part of our study time in Berlin, where the social misery of the big city filled us with horror; and imbued with the conviction that it was not just a hundred years ago that the world was more or less depraved, we became enthusiastic disciples of Fichte in our strong feeling for the antagonism between true humanity and the evils of civilization. So we were not really concerned with the questions of school reform, which were gradually coming into flux at the time [...] We were rather interested in human beings in their totality; We followed with warm interest, in contact with August Bebel and other socialist leaders, the then increasingly powerful social-democratic movement, and it was mainly the unpleasant party-political goings-on that prevented us from joining it. We were concerned with the problem of putting people's entire lives on a completely new, healthier basis, by means of a fundamentally new upbringing, as Fichte preached in his speeches to the German nation . "

Although Lietz would have liked to have his friend Geheeb in Ilsenburg, he initially accepted a position as a teacher in the newly opened sanatorium of Carl Gmelin in Wyk auf Föhr in 1899 . In 1902 he finally followed the urging of his friend Lietz and went to Haubinda as a teacher , Lietzen's second school founded in 1901. After the establishment of a third educational home in Schloss Bieberstein (Hesse) near Fulda, Geheeb took over the management of Haubinda in 1904, but separated June 1906 in the dispute between Lietz and in September of the same year, together with Gustav Wyneken , Martin Luserke and some other employees and students from Haubinda , opened the free school community of Wickersdorf , located near Saalfeld in Thuringia .

In spite of the success of the new school, Geheeb left Wickersdorf in February 1909, because he was nervous because of the stressful years at Lietz and because of an unhappy first marriage - he could not get along with his co-director Wyneken. When looking for a location for his own school, Geheeb negotiated over the next few months. a. with Wolf Dohrn , the managing director of the Gartenstadtgesellschaft Hellerau , about the takeover of the planned school there; He briefly considered the establishment of a rural education home together with Ludwig Gurlitt (1855-1931) and unsuccessfully asked in Bavaria for the concession to run a private boarding school.

Foundation of the Odenwald School - national and international fame (1910–1934)

Edith and Paul Geheeb, 1909
The school grounds with the school buildings erected around 1911 on the edge of the forest, from left: “Humboldt”, “Fichte”, “Schiller” and “Herderhaus”, to the right: “Max-Cassirer-Haus” and “Pestalozzihaus”. Contemporary postcard, 1918.
Text side of the postcard above: Paul Geheeb to Jenny Casewitz, Mannheim, dated January 1, 1918.

After the divorce from his first wife Helene Merck, Geheeb married Edith Cassirer (1885–1982), whom he had met as an intern in Wickersdorf, in October 1909 , and in April 1910 he and Edith Geheeb opened the Odenwald School in Ober-Hambach , nearby from Heppenheim .

Through the co-education of boys and girls practiced in it , the organization of lessons within the framework of a flexible course system and through the student participation implemented in it, the Odenwald School aroused considerable interest among pedagogically committed people from the start. During the time of the Weimar Republic , the school, which was generously supported by Geheeb's father-in-law, the Charlottenburg local politician and industrialist Max Cassirer , was one of the most internationally known reform schools in Germany. As early as 1911/12, the school was able to be significantly expanded with the construction of four new houses designed by the Bensheim architect Heinrich Metzendorf . The houses bore the names of the “heroes” of the school: Goethe , Fichte , Herder , Humboldt and Schiller . These names also mark Geheeb's spiritual roots.

The First World War and the first years of the Weimar Republic were materially difficult times for the Odenwald School. In contrast to the majority of German intellectuals, Geheeb was hostile to the First World War from the start. Geheeb refused to celebrate the German victories or the birthday of the German Kaiser; instead, the birthdays of the heroes of the school and other eminent people were celebrated. This indifference to the symbol of German power and the apparent lack of national enthusiasm regularly led to friction with authorities and patriotically-minded friends during the course of the war. At the beginning of 1918 the school was threatened with closure for a short time.

Although Geheeb regretted the end of the independent German principalities in the prewar period with their individual character and their sometimes great cultural charisma and did not immediately find his way into the new era, he soon made friends with the Weimar Republic . In the course of the following years, as a participant in numerous conferences, he made many connections that were extremely valuable for the development of the school. He got involved - albeit often with considerable reluctance because of the purely material objectives of this association - in the framework of the Association of Free Schools and Rural Education Centers in Germany , which was founded in October 1924 in the Odenwald School , to whose "left wing" the Odenwald School was one. From 1925 onwards, he and his wife took part - with much more joy - in the major New Education Fellowship conferences that take place every few years and helped set up the German section of this international educational movement.

The (educational) circle of friends and acquaintances of the Geheebs included Hermann Hesse , Romain Rolland , Martin Buber , Georg Kerschensteiner , Elisabeth Rotten , Adolphe Ferrière and Pierre Bovet , Peter Petersen and Eduard Spranger , Alexander Neill , Bernhard Uffrecht , Beatrice Ensor , Kuniyoshi Obara and Charleton W. Washburn . Among the prominent students of the Odenwald school from the Hebrew were u. a. Klaus Mann , Geno and Felix Hartlaub , Wolfgang Hildesheimer , Wolfgang Porsche and Beate Uhse . A highlight of the international recognition of the Geheebs was a three-day visit by the Indian politician, poet and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore in early August 1930 to the Odenwald School, which had around 200 students at the time. This visit was also an expression of the diverse relationships that the Geheebs had with India since the early 1920s.

Emigration to Switzerland and establishment of the Ecole d'Humanité (1934–1961)

After the seizure of power by the National Socialists, the Odenwald School was assaulted twice by local SA groups. There was violence against Jewish employees. Although Geheeb had called the new government in Berlin a “gang of criminals” in front of the assembled school and Edith Geheeb came from a Jewish home, the Geheebs themselves were left alone. In contrast to the free school and work community of his friend Bernhard Uffrecht , which was closed by the Nazis in April 1933, in the case of the Geheebs - not least because of the high international prestige of the Odenwald School - they limited themselves to the largest part to replace the previous employees of the school with politically reliable young assessors. In addition, boys and girls, who until then had always lived together in the same houses, were to be housed in separate houses from April 1933. After further clashes with the new rulers and after further interventions in their school, the Geheebs finally decided to close their school and move to Switzerland.

In order to avoid unpleasant repression against former and future Odenwald school graduates and against the owner of the school, Edith Geheeb's father Max Cassirer , they disguised the school closure as an economic necessity by asking trustworthy parents to deregister their children during the summer and autumn of 1933. Finally, with the blessing of the Berlin rulers, Paul and Edith Geheeb moved with two or three employees and two dozen students to Switzerland in April 1934, where they initially continued their work as guests of the virtually bankrupt Institute Monnier , located above Versoix near Geneva Heinrich Sachs and Werner Meyer , two former employees, opened the Odenwald School community on the premises of the "old" Odenwald School .

Although Geheeb had expressly agreed to the project - not least because of the economic interests of his father-in-law - and Meyer and Sachs tried to run the new school in the spirit of the old Odenwald School, Geheeb viewed the rapidly growing community of the Odenwald School with suspicion from the start. Meyer also became a member of the NSDAP after the party's ban on membership in 1937 . After the school was closed by the Americans in the summer of 1945, Sachs tried in vain to re-establish contact with Geheeb. Geheeb refused any attempt to communicate. At that time, its harshness contributed significantly to the division of the people associated with the Odenwald school into a pro and an anti-Sachs camp, which made it difficult to come to terms with the history of the second Odenwald school for a long time.

On the occasion of the opening of his new school in April 1934, Geheeb emphasized that it was not simply a matter of continuing the previous work. In view of the political situation, it is more important than ever to strengthen the connection between people. The new school should therefore not be a German, French or Swiss school, but a supranational school, a “school of humanity”.

“In the modest setting of our small school on Lake Geneva, French, Swiss and German, and hopefully soon also English culture want to interact in a fruitful, mutually enriching discussion, the West and East want to meet; and if we succeed in realizing what I have in mind, in a few years we will be neither a French, nor a German, nor an English nor a Swiss school, but the school of humanity, ”said Geheeb on the occasion of the school opening on April 17, 1934.

After initial success, however, it became increasingly difficult from 1936/37 to materially keep the school afloat, which was now largely attended by Jewish and half-Jewish children from Germany and children of emigrated Germans. More and more parents were dependent on generous school fee reductions due to their own financial situation, and the transfer of funds from abroad became more and more difficult because of increasing restrictions, even where parents could still have paid. In addition to these problems, there were conflicts with the owner of the Institut Monnier and with the Association of Swiss Private Schools , which, in view of the fact that its own schools were suffering from the economic crisis, were anything but enthusiastic about the prominent competitor from Germany.

After two more or less involuntary changes of location, the Geheebs settled in October 1939 with the remains of their meanwhile impoverished school in Schwarzsee , a small village in the Freiburg Pre-Alps , where they survived the war in extremely cramped conditions.

On October 7, 1941, the Deutsche Reichsanzeiger published expatriation decisions by the Reich Ministry of the Interior in the form of the German Reich's expatriation list 257, through which Paul Geheeb and his wife were legally expatriated from the German Reich .

After the number of pupils had decreased from around 60 in 1936 to 25 in 1939 and to 7 in 1940 and the closure of the school seemed inevitable, the Geheebs began working more closely with the Swiss aid agencies that were becoming active at the time, especially the Swiss aid agency for émigré children , to work together. At the end of the war, the number of students at the Ecole d'Humanité had increased again to around 40. Most of the new students were traumatized war victims, refugee children from France and other European countries and a few children from the liberated concentration camps. The social situation of the school had changed radically compared to before. From an educational institution for the children of the left and liberal bourgeoisie and an avant-garde bohemian artist, it had become a basin for social emergencies of all kinds.

Asked after the end of the war whether they wanted to return to Germany to take over the management of the newly opened Odenwaldschule, the Geheebs refused despite their difficult situation and instead recommended Minna Specht , Leonhard Nelson's former employee who emigrated to England , who until 1933 Walkemühle Landerziehungsheim had headed the task. Forced to give up their domicile at Schwarzsee, the Geheebs moved again in May 1946. It was her fifth move in Switzerland. They settled in Hasliberg-Goldern in the Bernese Oberland, the current location of the Ecole d'Humanité . The conditions there were initially extremely difficult, but Geheeb did not give up hope of finally being able to realize his idea of ​​a school of mankind encompassing all cultural communities on a large scale. During two or three years, he actually met with a certain amount of interest in Switzerland for the first time. For a while, Geheeb and Walter Robert Corti , the founders of the Pestalozzi Children's Village , opened in 1948 , and there were other, similar plans, but ultimately they lacked the determination and the money to do more than cope with the difficult everyday life in the real school .

Thanks to the drive of Edith Geheeb and a few new employees, the school gradually stabilized over the course of the 1950s.

Geheeb, who on the occasion of his 90th birthday received an honorary doctorate from the University of Tübingen and the Visva-Bharati University founded by Tagore in Shantiniketan, India, and who had been honored in all forms by the Conference of Ministers of Education of the Federal Republic of Germany, died on May 1, 1961 in his School.

Despite the honors from all over the world, Geheeb did not seem to have made the connection to the new era with its apparently new questions after the war. The attempt at a critical-self-critical dialogue between Geheeb and the Odenwald School, which was newly opened in 1946 under the direction of Minna Specht, which it undertook on the occasion of its 40th anniversary in the summer of 1950, had basically failed, and Geheeb also withdrew from international work after the War back more and more. His ideals seemed out of date and his language was no longer understood.

After Geheeb's death, Armin and Natalie Lüthi-Peterson, supported by the now 76-year-old Edith Geheeb, took over the management of the school. Edith Geheeb, the strong woman behind Geheeb, who had taken care of the economic survival of his schools over the years, died on April 29, 1982, almost 21 years to the day after her husband.

There are some educators who have gone through Geheeb's “school” and have carried his principles from there to other places. There is also evidence of individual school foundations that were directly inspired by Geheeb, in particular the Childrens Garden School in Madras, India, founded in 1937 by two former employees of the Geheebs . In addition, of course, there are the schools that Paul and Edith Geheeb themselves founded.

Geheeb's educational position

General information on the movement of the German rural education centers

The movement of the German rural education centers or the New Schools or Ecoles Nouvelles à la Campagne, as the same movement was called in the English and French-speaking areas, was part of the culture-critical and life-reforming protest movements with which the late 19th century in Europe and the USA hit the Industrialization and the accompanying social changes responded. The education home movement wanted to absorb and overcome the diagnosed crisis “by means of a completely new upbringing”. With this in mind, Geheeb wrote in 1930:

"The youth should be raised to be brave fighters who do not fit into the world, which is always corrupt in many respects, not cowardly, but have learned to swim against the current, to fashion and convention in external and spiritual areas and everything, to confidently face what is called "modern" [...] Every young man, every girl learns in the rural education home to live as a responsible member of a small community in order to later serve the well-being of the nation with full devotion as a citizen. In this way, the new youth should work far beyond the framework of their homes to completely transform human society! "

- Paul Geheeb : The Odenwald School in the light of the educational tasks of the present. 1930.

Instead of urban day schools, the youth should grow up in manageable rural educational communities based on a partnership between young and old. In spite of this common starting point, one can basically speak of the education of the rural education homes as little as of a uniform reform education: During physical performance - long bike tours, work in the woods and fields or sporting engagement in the service of society - with Hermann Lietz or Kurt Hahn played a major role, the softer Geheeb, Martin Luserke , Max Bondy and other founders of rural education centers, for example, placed more emphasis on musical and manual activities and on a more contemplative relationship with nature. There were similar, more or less large differences in the area of ​​student participation and the organization of lessons or in the question of co-education.

The question of co-education

Here Geheeb was perhaps more of a pioneer than in any other area, because the Odenwald School was the first coeducational (boarding school) school in Germany that really deserved this name. Geheeb, who experienced a mixed (curative education) boarding school with Johannes Trüper and had further experiences with co-education in Wyk auf Föhr in 1899/1900, felt the separation of the sexes prevailing in the state and non-state schools at that time as a deeply non-educational reduction of the natural World. While Lietz found no understanding for his concerns and the co-education was only half-heartedly carried out in Wickersdorf, where it was part of the school program from 1906, it became the real trademark of the Odenwald School from 1910. Fritz Karsen writes about his impressions of the Odenwald School after a short visit in 1921:

“The personal-human environment has the greatest possible wealth. All ages from the small child who still needs a nanny and the child in play age (kindergarten) to the adult pupils and finally also teachers of all ages live together here. Both genders, among the students and among the teachers, have equal rights and are equally committed. This means that the attempt has been made here to abolish the complete separation of the sexes that is customary in state schools and to allow the youth to lead a natural community life. - The Odenwald School is undoubtedly the only school in Germany that has real co-education. One could still think of Wickersdorf, but when comparing the two institutions, one difference catches the eye. […] As beautiful as the coexistence of the sexes has developed there, a certain external separation has always been preserved. The girls have their own building, the so-called “mansion”, which is no longer open to the boys after a certain time of the day. It is also asserted by the most exacting connoisseurs of Wickersdorf that boys and girls in Wickersdorf have equal rights, but are not equally decisive, that it is the boys who essentially set the tone and style. There are no external divorces in the Odenwald School. Boys and girls live room by room in the individual houses and visit each other whenever they want without any petty supervision being exercised. [...] As far as I could observe in the short time, the relationship between the sexes is simple and natural, like in a family, and I have the impression that co-education is the characteristic feature of the Odenwaldschule and its pupils. "

Even if the common upbringing of boys and girls after the First World War was not as new and exotic as it was in 1910, it remained in many cases an exception in the German-speaking area until the 1960s. (The Nazi regime even forced previous coeducational schools to have separate classes.) The Odenwaldschule was therefore considered the coeducational school par excellence even during the Weimar Republic. Until the Nazis came to power, Geheeb was one of the most prominent experts on this subject. He was convinced that raising boys and girls together not only had a positive effect on their individual development and their later relationship with one another. He also saw co-education as an important means of "overcoming the one-sided male culture". For him, it was precisely here, in this political and cultural area, that the real importance of co-education lay.

Flexible courses instead of rigid year classes

The special work organization of the Odenwald School, developed during the first three years of its existence under the leadership of a young employee of the school, Otto Erdmann, and first publicly presented in 1914, was a second reason for the great interest in Geheeb's work among domestic and foreign specialists soon after Opening of the school. In this area, too, the Odenwald School went further than most of the reform schools of those years, including the Lietzsche Landerziehungsheim and the colorful crowd of their successors. After experimenting with various forms of organization, a system of freely selectable, flexible courses was established in January 1913, which replaced the traditional year classes. Advised by adults, the children chose (with the exception of continued supervised as a group elementary school students), two or three courses that during a course month or so called. Course period visited every morning. At the end of each month of the course, a course-closing school community reported on the work in the various courses. A new election was then made, although a course could occasionally be continued over two or more course months. The grades were obtained through written course reports and through periodic discussions about one's own performance, the climate in a course and the like. replaced. The afternoons - that was an integral part of the new structure - were reserved for handicraft and musical activities and own projects in order to, as Geheeb wrote in his first school brochure, “the most serious diseases of our time, one-sided intellectualism and the unethical overestimation that goes with it to counteract technology [...] ”. -

While the Odenwaldschule returned to conventional structures after 1934 under the pressure of National Socialism, school work in the Ecole d'Humanité continued to take place within the framework of this course system.

School community

The Odenwaldschule finally became known through Geheeb's style in dealing with the "school community". The "school community", d. H. the assembly of the entire school, which takes place every one to three weeks - at least almost 200 children and young people and around 100 adults at the beginning of the 1930s - was the real heart of his school for Geheeb. In these meetings large and small incidents were informed and discussed, here fundamental questions related to the school or the outside world were discussed and resolutions passed or revoked. This assembly was basically the only structure that Geheeb had given his school in 1910 as a driving force and a living center. All other facilities were secondary and were in principle available at any time. “Become who you are”, this phrase borrowed from Pindar, was for Geheeb “the highest maxim of human development” and the “epitome of the highest educational wisdom”. The sentence was an invitation to everyone. But it also applied to the school as a whole. In this sense, Geheeb wrote in 1924: “In fact, we subject the manifold forms in which the community comes to real expression and effects to a revision again and again from the point of view of that supreme maxim, so that the forms and institutions of the social life of our community are in constant flux ”. Although Näf 2006 pointed out some major shortcomings in the theoretical conception of the school community - so u. a. the lack of clearly defined competencies or the fact that the "staff" of the Odenwaldschule, d. H. the employees in the office, kitchen etc. - it goes without saying that they were never counted as part of the school community - they are still judged very positively by the majority to this day.

Developing instead of educating, Geheeb's criticism of the conventional understanding of education and upbringing

Geheeb recognizes the value of good, i.e. H. human-friendly structures, but ultimately it is about more. What he wants is to change the relationship between adults and children. Instead of submission, command and obedience as before, this should be based on mutual respect and dialogue. Any attempt to raise people according to a certain plan is ultimately an illusory undertaking for Geheeb, in the course of which people develop "into poor caricatures of what they should have become according to their individual destiny".

For Geheeb it is clear that real education cannot be created and conveyed, but that it is and must be the result of one's own experiences and engagement. In this context he likes to go back to the concise sentences of Fichte, who wrote in 1793:

“No one is cultivated; everyone has to cultivate themselves. Any behavior that is merely suffering is just the opposite of culture! Education takes place through self-activity and aims at self-activity. "

In a lecture given in Holland in 1936, Geheeb added: “I would like to stop using the expressions 'education' and 'educate' at all, but prefer to speak of human development. [...] What is reasonably sustainable about the process of 'upbringing' is the developmental process in which every person finds himself from birth to death - and hopefully far beyond that - the process of ongoing, at first unconscious, gradually becoming conscious confrontation , in which every individual finds himself with his environment, with people and things, with nature and culture, the impressions received are partly fruitful and assimilating as educational materials for building their own individuality, but partly rejecting. ”- The distinction between teachers and pupils belongs as well as the educational museum like the cane that landed there long ago. Instead, the adults should live with the children and adolescents as some kind of older friends: “You really have to live together; The adults not only have to play, work, hike with the children and share all the interests and small and large joys and sorrows of the child, but also allow the latter, depending on their maturity, to participate in their own experiences and work, so that more or less intimate ones personal relationships arise. ”In doing so, adults should never appear as superior legislators or leaders. The adolescents should "learn to walk independently", and the adult must always be aware that one's own path can never be that of the other, that it can "ideally" help a young person to find his own path. From these considerations, Geheeb demands “to convert all schools into communities in which people of all ages [...] live naturally and freely with one another.” This demand corresponds to what Hartmut von Hentig and others have since called “school de-schooling “Have described. The development of one's own interests and the pursuit of one's own goals and projects take the place of the centrally organized teaching of a given school material. Teachers become learning companions in the sense of Carl Rogers or Paolo Freire .

For Geheeb, the transformation of the school is part of a comprehensive social change that seemed increasingly urgent to him in the course of his life. He wrote about this in 1936: “A huge and complete disarmament must take place in the adult camp, a disarmament of the enormous physical and intellectual, economic and technical superiority that the adult has taken as a matter of course against the child, the most malleable and suppressible creature on God's mutilated earth to use, so used to abuse. "

For Geheeb, this “disarmament” is not an end in itself. Rather, it forms an important, if not the central prerequisite for ensuring that mankind does not perish from the crises it has created itself. In this sense Geheeb warns in 1939: “Salvation comes from the children [...] If today's mankind understood and applied this ancient wisdom in all its greatness and depth, it would mean redemption for countless millions of tormented people all over the world who today, with more or less clear consciousness, are at the end of their adult wisdom. Humanity is seriously ill. [...] Where are we going? there is utter confusion about this. Apparently insoluble political, economic, cultural problems everywhere; new catastrophes threaten from all sides; As far as the responsible state leaders, the politicians and economists, the generals and even the philosophers are still honest, they confess that they are at the end of their wisdom. "Geheeb is therefore not just about" that our time can finally give the child, what is of the child ", but also about the fact that" from the children, from the youth come streams of new life that save us adults from misery, who we are helpless and desperate before chaos. "

criticism

In 1999 and 2010 it became known that numerous students at the Odenwald School had been subjected to sexual abuse by their teachers. There were also signs of abuse by educators during Geheeb's time. Letters from parents to boarding school directors received in the school archive were evaluated in a dissertation from 1998. From this dissertation it appears that Paul Geheeb seems to have ignored or not taken seriously sexual assaults that were brought to his attention.

Assessment and timeliness

Experts such as Adolphe Ferrière or Peter Petersen , the founder of Jenaplan pedagogy , described the Odenwald School in the 1920s as the most successful version of the German rural education home type, an assessment that Fritz Karsen , a co-founder of the Association of Resolute School Reformers , and other educators agreed with . Karsen wrote in 1921: “This is where the external compulsion to learn about all kinds of science, which does not awaken the forces, but in many cases almost suppresses them, ceases completely. Individual plants can awaken and develop; the senseless variety of knowledge and the unnatural change from subject to subject (five to six times in one morning) ends in favor of a meaningful concentration of the tasks to be mastered at once. In addition, the surrounding community world, to which the individual is obliged, protects against boundless individualism and mentally one-sided aberration. " Even in Herder's Lexicon of Contemporary Pedagogy , which was rather critical of Geheeb's pedagogy due to its Catholic standpoint, it said in 1930: " What is to be recognized is G.'s trust in the healthy spirit of our youth, the seriousness with which he takes them seriously, etc. his courageous, consistent action, which perhaps makes his work the most comprehensive and made the boldest attempt at school in Germany, perhaps all of Europe, which has become a place of pilgrimage for seekers from all over the world . ” In 1995, Johannes Martin Kamp finally came to the conclusion in a broad study of the theory and practice of child and youth self-determination that the Geheebs' Odenwaldschule was rightly considered "the most modern, educationally progressive and radical new school in Germany".

In recent years, Näf in particular has pointed out the explosive political nature of Geheeb's pedagogy. In his thinking, Geheeb anticipated a lot that has since been taken up by anti-education , the children's rights movement or the secular liberal part of the home or non-school movement. His position of "nobody is cultivated, everyone has to cultivate himself" corresponds not only to the learning psychology of humanistic psychology developed in the 1950s . For some time now it has also been confirmed by natural scientists such as the Swiss pediatrician Remo H. Largo or the brain researcher Gerald Hüther . Geheeb's skepticism towards the "adult wisdom" of the West and the matter-of-factness and tenacity with which it is being passed on is similarly topical.

Despite their explosiveness and topicality, Geheeb's theoretical statements, according to Näf in an overview of the relevant secondary literature, have hardly been discussed by research until recently. Instead, Geheeb is generally only perceived as the head of a well-known reform school and as a prominent advocate of co-education. This means a reduction and trivialization of the secret pedagogy, which does not do justice to it.

Fonts

  • The Odenwald School 1909–1934. Text by Paul Geheeb. Reports and discussions from staff and students. ed. by Ulrich Herrmann. Jena 2010, ISBN 978-3-941854-15-4 .
  • Speech at the opening of the Odenwald School . 1910. (published in: D. Benner, H. Kemper (ed.): Source texts for the theory and history of reform pedagogy. Part two: The pedagogical movement from the turn of the century to the end of the Weimar Republic. Weinheim et al. 2001, p. 159 -160)
  • The Odenwald School (program and promotional leaflet) . Darmstadt, spring 1911. (Reprinted in: W. Flitner et al. (Ed.): Die Deutsche Reformpädagogik. Volume 1, Düsseldorf / Munich 1961, pp. 88–93)
  • The Odenwald School. Your spiritual foundations. In: Franz Hilker (Ed.): German School Trials. Berlin 1924, pp. 91-101. (Reprinted in: Eva Cassirer (Ed.) 1960, 154–165)
  • with Edith Geheeb: The Odenwald School . 1925. (Prospectus. Reprinted in: Inge Hansen-Schaberg , Bruno Schonig (Ed.): Landerziehungsheim-Pädagogik. (= Reformpaedagogische Schulkonzepte. Volume 2). Baltmannsweiler 2002, pp. 142–150.
  • Co-education and female education. A problem. In: The new education. 8th vol. H. 2, Berlin, February 1926, pp. 107-110. (Reprinted in: Inge Hansen-Schaberg, Bruno Schonig (eds.): Landerziehungsheim-Pädagogik. (= Reformpaedagogische Schulkonzepte. Volume 2). Baltmannsweiler 2002, pp. 26–31.
  • The Odenwald School in the light of the educational tasks of the present . Lecture at the adult education center in Halle a. S. on June 2, 1930. (Reprinted in: D. Benner, H. Kemper (Hrsg.): Source texts for the theory and history of reform pedagogy. Part two: The pedagogical movement from the turn of the century to the end of the Weimar Republic. Weinheim et al. 2001, pp. 153–157)
  • Address by Paul Geheeb to his employees and pupils on the occasion of the start of his educational work in Versoix on April 17, 1934 . (Among other things, published in: Hans Näf (Hrsg.): A human school. The Ecole d'Humanité seen from the inside. Zytglogge, Oberhofen bei Thun 2009, pp. 32–37)
  • Living and working with children . Lecture in Utrecht, April 18, 1936 on the occasion of the conference of the Dutch section of the New Education Fellowship on the topic How do we learn to live together? Private print 1936. (Copy, inter alia, in the Geheeb archive of the Ecole d'Humanité)
  • Unpublished manuscript in response to Hans Stricker's essay The Century of the Child - a wrong way in the national newspaper of February 16, 1939. First published in: Walter Schäfer (Ed.): Paul Geheeb. Letters. Stuttgart 1970, pp. 195-197.
  • Mental hygiene in the Odenwald School and in the Ecole d'Humanité. In: Maria Pfister-Ammende (Ed.): Geistige Hygiene. Research and practice. Benno Schwabe and Co. Verlag, Basel 1955, pp. 73–82.
  • Letters . Edited by Walter Schäfer. Stuttgart 1970.

literature

  • Elisabeth Badry: Pedagogical genius in an upbringing for non-adaptation and for commitment. Studies on the founders of the early German Landerziehungsheim movement: Hermann Lietz and Gustav Wyneken. Bonn 1976.
  • Roland Bast: cultural criticism and education. Demands and Limits of Reform Education. Dortmund 1996.
  • Otto Friedrich Bollnow:  Geheeb, Paul Hermann Albert Heinrich. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 6, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1964, ISBN 3-428-00187-7 , p. 131 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Judith Büschel: Edith Geheeb. A reform pedagogue between the pedagogical ideal and practical school management. Berlin 2004.
  • Eva Cassirer et al. a. (Ed.): The idea of ​​a school in the mirror of the times. 40 years of the Odenwald School . Heidelberg 1950.
  • Eva Cassirer et al. a. (Ed.): Education for humanity. Paul Geheeb on his 90th birthday. Heidelberg 1960.
  • Henry R. Cassirer: And everything turned out differently ... A journalist remembers . Constance 1992.
  • Theo Dietrich (ed.): The country education home movement. Klinkhardt's educational source texts, Bad Heilbrunn 1967.
  • Inge Hansen-Schaberg: Minna Specht. A socialist in the education home movement 1918 to 1951. Frankfurt am Main 1992.
  • Inge Hansen-Schaberg, Bruno Schonig (Ed.): Landerziehungsheim pedagogy. (= Reform pedagogical school concepts. Volume 2). Baltmannsweiler 2002.
  • Barbara Hanusa: The religious dimension of Paul Geheeb's reform pedagogy. The question of religion in reform pedagogy. Leipzig 2006.
  • Johannes-Martin Kamp: Children's Republics. History, practice and theory of radical self-government in children's and youth homes. Opladen 1995.
  • Wolfgang Keim (Ed.): Course teaching. Justifications, models, experiences. Darmstadt 1997.
  • Friedrich Koch : The dawn of pedagogy. Worlds in your head: Bettelheim, Freinet, Geheeb, Korczak, Montessori, Neill, Petersen, Zulliger. Hamburg 2000, ISBN 3-434-53026-6 .
  • Birte Lembke-Ibold: Paul Geheeb: Community and family in the rural education home. Hamburg 2010.
  • Armin Lüthi, Margot Schiller (ed.): Edith Geheeb-Cassirer on her 90th birthday . Meiringen 1975.
  • Martin Näf: Paul Geheeb. Its development up to the founding of the Odenwald School . Weinheim 1998, ISBN 3-89271-730-3 .
  • Martin Näf: Paul and Edith Geheeb-Cassirer. Founder of the Odenwald School and the Ecole d'Humanité. German, international and Swiss reform pedagogy 1910–1961. Weinheim 2006, ISBN 3-407-32071-X .
  • Martin Näf: Reform education is not just reform education. Online version of Wyneken and Geheeb: Common beginnings - separate paths - contrary goals. From Wyneken's Free School Community of Wickersdorf to Geheeb's Odenwaldschule Oberhambach and the Ecole d'Humanite in Goldern CH. In: Yearbook of the Archives of the German Youth Movement. 3/2006, Schwalbach / Ts 2007, pp. 119–146.
  • Martin Näf: The Liberation of Children. Paul Geheeb's Pedagogical Ideas in Our Time. A fictional letter. In: Hans Näf (Ed.): A human school. The Ecole d'Humanite seen from the inside. Zytglogge, 2009, pp. 291-303.
  • Thomas Nitschke: The garden city of Hellerau as an educational province. Dresden 2003.
  • Walter Schäfer: Education in an emergency. The Odenwald School 1946–1972. Frankfurt am Main 1979.
  • Walter Schäfer: Paul Geheeb. Human being and educator. (= From the German Landerziehungsheimen. Issue 4). Stuttgart around 1960.
  • Ulrich Schwert: Country Education Home Movement. In: Handbook of German Reform Movements 1880 to 1933. Wuppertal 1998, pp. 395–409.
  • Ellen Schwitalski: Become who you are - pioneers of reform pedagogy. The Odenwald School in the German Empire and in the Weimar Republic. Bielefeld 2004.
  • Dennis Shirley: The politics of progressive education. The Odenwald School in Nazi Germany. Harvard University Press, Cambridge Mass. 1992. (2010 under the title "Reform pedagogy in National Socialism: the Odenwald School 1910 to 1945" in German published by Juventa-Verlag Weinheim).
  • Ehrenhard Skiera: Reform Education in Past and Present. A critical introduction. Munich / Vienna 2003.
  • Christel Stark: Idea and design of a school in the judgment of the parents. A documentation about the Odenwald School at the time of its founder and director Paul Geheeb - 1910–34 . Dissertation. Heidelberg 1998.
  • Martin Wagenschein: memories for tomorrow. Weinheim / Basel 1983.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ This refers to Otto Schmiedel (1858–1926), who went to Japan for about 7 years on behalf of the General Evangelical Protestant Missions Association in the fall of 1887 and then worked again as a teacher at the Eisenach grammar school until 1924. See the corresponding correspondence in the Geheeb archive of the Ecole d'Humanité. as well as in relation to Schmiedel's work in Japan: Heyo Erke Hamer: Mission und Politik. Mainz 2002.
  2. ↑ Paul Geheeb dictates Ida Harth from his life. Bayrisch Zell 1958; in the correspondence Geheeb / Philipp and Ida Harth in the Geheeb archive of the Ecole d'Humanité; unpublished.
  3. ↑ Paul Freimut: The meaning of the student corporation and the real task of the German student. Ideas for assessing the student situation. Herm. Rifel & Cie., Hagen iW 1891, quote p. 34.
  4. ↑ On Geheeb's relationship to church and religion see next to the corresponding sections in Näf 1998 and 2006 especially Barbara Hanusa: The religious dimension of the reform pedagogy Paul Geheebs ; Leipzig 2006.
  5. ↑ zeno.org
  6. ^ A b Paul Geheeb: The Odenwald School in the light of the educational tasks of the Gegenwahrt . 1930.
  7. ↑ On the conflict with Wyneken see also Heinrich Kupffer: Gustav Wyneken in addition to Näf 1998 . Stuttgart 1970, p. 55 ff. And Martin Näf: Wyneken and Geheeb: Common beginnings - separate paths - contrary goals. In: Yearbook of the Archives of the German Youth Movement. 3/2006, Schwalbach / Ts 2007, pp. 119–146, available online under the title Reform pedagogy is not the same as reform pedagogy
  8. ↑ See on this Näf 1998 and on Hellerau especially Thomas Nitschke: Die pädagogische Provinz. Schools and school trials in Hellerau. In: Dresdner Hefte. 15 Jg., H. 3 1997, pp. 65–72 and this: The garden city of Hellerau as an educational province. Dresden 2003.
  9. ↑ From the "Haubinder Judenkrach" about the Odenwald school. accessed on January 11, 2015.
  10. ↑ Walter Schäfer (Ed.): The Association of German Landerziehungsheime. In: Reports from the Odenwald School. 6th vol. 2, July 1960, pp. 70-84. Walter Schäfer (Ed.): Paul Geheeb letters. Stuttgart 1970; especially p. 119 ff.
  11. ↑ See on this
    • Hartmut Alphei (Ed.): Reader with sources on the history of the Odenwald School in the period from 1933 to 1946. In: Archives of the Odenwald School. Unpublished documentation, September 1993, unpaginated
    • Hartmut Alphei: The Odenwald School in Transition (1945/46). In: Reiner Lehberger (Ed.): Schools of reform pedagogy after 1945. Hamburg 1995, pp. 95–116.
    • Hartmut Alphei: Education with responsibility for history. The Odenwald School under National Socialism. In: Helmut Arndt, Henner Müller-Holtz (eds.): School experiences - life experiences. Demand and reality of education and upbringing today. Reform pedagogy put to the test. Frankfurt u. a. 1996, pp. 99-118. (online) ( Memento from May 1, 2006 in the web archive archive.today )
  12. ↑ Paul Geheeb: Address on the occasion of the start of educational work in Switzerland on April 17, 1934. In: Hans Näf (Ed.): A human school. The Ecole d'Humanité seen from the inside. Zytgloggeverlag, Oberhoven am Thunersee 2009, p. 32 ff., Citation p. 34–35.
  13. ↑ Michael Hepp (Ed.): The expatriation of German citizens 1933-45 according to the lists published in the Reichsanzeiger . tape 1 : Lists in chronological order . de Gruyter Saur, Munich / New York / London / Paris 2010, ISBN 978-3-11-095062-5 , pp. 575 (reprint of 1985 edition).
  14. ↑ See also the memories of Rosemarie Varga and Armin and Natalie Lüthi-Peterson in Hans Näf (ed.): A human school. The Ecole d'Humanité seen from the inside. Zytgloggeverlag, Oberhoven am Thunersee 2009.
  15. ↑ They include e.g. B. Otto Friedrich Bollnow and especially Martin Wagenschein , who worked in Geheeb's Odenwald School from 1924 to 1933 and who has been known in the German-speaking area since the 1950s for his work on an exemplary Socratic-genetic teaching and learning method.
  16. ↑ otto-friedrich-bollnow.de , accessed on October 18, 2015.
  17. ^ A b Fritz Karsen: A visit to the Odenwald School. In: The Parents' Council. 2, Berlin 1921, p. 457 ff.
  18. ↑ See u. a. the (sources) texts on the subject of coeducation in Inge Hansen-Schaberg, Bruno Schonig (Hrsg.): Landerziehungsheim-Pädagogik. (= Reform pedagogical school concepts. Volume 2). Baltmannsweiler 2002; Edith Glumpler (Ed.): Coeducation. Developments and Perspectives. Bad Heilbrunn 1994; Inge Hansen-Schaberg: The educational reform movement and how it deals with coeducation. In: E. Kleinau, C. Opitz (Hrsg.): History of girls and women education in Germany. Volume 2, Frankfurt am Main 1996, pp. 219-229; As well as Marianne Horstkemper: The coeducational debate at the turn of the century. In: E. Kleinau, C. Opitz (Hrsg.): History of girls and women education in Germany. Volume 2, Frankfurt am Main 1996, pp. 203-218.
  19. ↑ Paul Geheeb: Coeducation as a view of life. First published in Die Tat . Quoted here after the reprint in: Eva Cassirer (Ed.): Education for Humanity. Heidelberg 1960, p. 116 ff., Quotation p. 122.
  20. ^ Otto Erdmann: The work organization of the Odenwald school. In: The deed. 5, 1914, pp. 1284–1288, reprinted in: Wolfgang Keim (Hrsg.): Kursunterricht. Justifications, models, experiences. Darmstadt 1997, pp. 151-159.
  21. ^ Paul Geheeb: Prospectus of the Odenwald School. 3. Edition. March 1911.
  22. ^ Paul Geheeb: The Odenwald School. Your spiritual foundations. In: Franz Hilker (Ed.): German School Trials. Berlin 1924, pp. 91-101, quoted on p. 97.
  23. ↑ Näf 2006, p. 150 ff.
  24. ↑ See for example Helmwart Hierdeis: The "school community" in the Odenwald school under Paul Geheeb. In: Lenz Kriss-Rettenbeck, Max Liedtke (ed.): Regional school development in the 19th and 20th centuries. Bad Heilbrunn 1984, pp. 273-283; Franz-Michael Konrad: The school community: A reform pedagogical model to promote socio-moral learning in schools and youth welfare. In: Pedagogical Forum. No. 4, 1995, pp. 181-193.
  25. ↑ These sentences, often quoted by Geheeb, can be found in Fichte's contribution to the correction of the public's judgments on the French Revolution , published in Danzig in 1793 .
  26. ↑ Paul Geheeb: Living and Working with Children. Lecture given in Utrecht on April 18, 1936, pp. 6-7.
  27. ↑ Paul Geheeb: Living and Working with Children. Lecture given in Utrecht on April 18, 1936, p. 8.
  28. ↑ Paul Geheeb: Unpublished manuscript in response to Hans Stricker's essay The Century of the Child - a wrong way. first in the national newspaper of February 16, 1939; First published in: W. Schäfer: Paul Geheeb. Letters. Stuttgart 1970, pp. 195–197, citations 195f.
  29. ↑ Christl Stark: Idea and shape of a school in the judgment of the parental home. Dissertation. Heidelberg University of Education, 1998.
  30. ↑ Matthias Bartsch, Markus Verbeet: The roots of abuse . Spiegel Online , July 19, 2010.
  31. ↑ Josef Spieler u. a. (Ed.): Lexicon of contemporary pedagogy. Herder, Freiburg i. B. 1930, pp. 890-891.
  32. ^ Johannes-Martin Kamp: Children's Republics. History, practice and theory of radical self-government in children's and youth homes. Opladen 1995, p. 345.
  33. ↑ Näf 2006, p. 48.
personal data
SURNAME Geheeb, Paul
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Geheeb, Paul
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German reform pedagogue
DATE OF BIRTH October 10, 1870
PLACE OF BIRTH Geisa
DATE OF DEATH May 1, 1961
Place of death Hasliberg-Goldern , Switzerland