Robert Birley

Sir Robert Birley , KCGM , nickname Red Robert (born July 14, 1903 in Medinipur , Bengal , British India , † July 22, 1982 in Somerton , United Kingdom ), was a British teacher , university teacher and reform educator as well as a prominent opponent of apartheid . As Educational Advisor of the Control Commission for Germany / British element , he was responsible from 1947 to 1949 under the British Military Governor Brian Robertson implementing the Reeducation and structure of the education system in the German states of the British occupation zone .

Life

Birley received an academic education at Rugby School and Balliol College . In 1926 he began his career as a Masters in History at Eton College . In 1930 he married Elinor Margaret Frere (1904-1992), with whom he had two children. In 1935 he was named Headmaster of the Charterhouse School . In 1944 he was a lead author of the Fleming Report , which illuminated the role of public schools in the British school system and made recommendations to the government for school reform .

In the spring of 1947 he became an educational advisor in the British occupation zone of Germany . In this function he was directly subordinate to the British Military Governor and after him the highest authority for educational issues. In this task, which he at first from Berlin and then from Dusseldorf pursued out, it was for him that the Allies predetermined concept of re-education to implement and foundations for a democratic education in British-ruled part of post-war Germany to develop. The approach that Birley helped to develop, also known as reconstruction , consisted of inviting German politicians, experts and administrators of the zone advisory board to “informal discussions”, joint theater visits and cocktail parties, to get to know the actors and their mentality, to appeal to their sense of responsibility to have the necessary school reform developed by the German states they founded themselves and to ensure that teaching staff and material exposed to the Nazis are exchanged . In addition, Birley - inspired by the Worker's Educational Association in his home country - supported civil society education initiatives and the founding of adult education centers with liberal, social science-oriented curricula and methods that give freedom to individual opinion formation and expression. An important example of this support is his contribution to the creation of a society for cultural exchange with England , which was founded in Düsseldorf in 1949 under the leadership of Lilo Milchsack . Today's German-British Society emerged from this initiative .

In August 1949 he returned to England and was appointed Headmaster of Eton College. He held this office until 1963. Also in 1949, at the invitation of the BBC radio station, he held so-called "Reith Lectures", which, based on an idea by John Reith , were intended to stimulate the intellectual and cultural life of the nation. Under the title Britain in Europe: Reflections on the Development of a European Society , Birley dealt with the history and future of Great Britain's influences and growing interdependencies in Europe in four contributions . From 1964 to 1967 he was visiting professor at the Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg ( South Africa ). From 1967 to 1971 he was Professor and Dean of the Department of Social Science and Humanities at City University London . During this time he wrote and read extensively on subjects such as upbringing and education, apartheid and human rights. To this day, this commitment is honored there by Sir Robert Birley Memorial Lectures . From 1968 to 1982 Birley was Professor of Rhetoric at Gresham College . From 1979 to 1980 he was President of the Bibliographical Society of London .

Fonts (selection)

• The English Jacobins from 1789 to 1802. Milford, London 1924.
• as editor: Speeches and documents in American history . Three volumes, Oxford University Press 1943–1951.
• The German problem and the responsibility of Britain . SCM Press, London 1947.
• Sunk without trace. Some forgotten masterpieces reconsidered . Hart-Davis, London 1962.
• The history of Eton College Library . Provost & Fellows, Eton 1970, ISBN 0-902154-01-X .
• The concept of Europe. An historical survey . TEAM, Exeter 1974, ISBN 0-85450-003-0 .
• History and idealism. Essays, addresses and letters . Murray, London 1990, ISBN 0-7195-4837-3 .

literature

• Arthur Hearnden: Red Robert: The Life of Robert Birley . David & Charles, 1984, ISBN 978-0-24111-158-1 .
• Brian Rees (Ed.): History and Idealism: Essays, Lectures, Sermons and Letters of Robert Birley . John Murray Publishers Ltd, 1990, ISBN 978-0-71954-837-6 .

Web links

• Newspaper article about Robert Birley in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Individual evidence

1. ^ The Fleming Report (1944): The Public Schools and the General Educational System . London 1944 , accessed on the educationengland.org.uk portal on June 15, 2015
2. ^ Kai Burkhardt: Adolf Grimme. A biography . Böhlau Verlag, Cologne 2007, ISBN 978-3-412-20025-1 , p. 241 ff. ( Google Books )
3. ^ Marion Countess Dönhoff : A friend of the Germans . Article of July 30, 1982 in the journal Die Zeit , No. 31/1982, accessed on July 15, 2015
4. ↑ Cf. Robert Birley: All learning is not yet a judgment . In: Baussteine , Hamburg 1948, pp. 50–55 - Also carried out in: Günter Blümer, Wolfgang Natonek: “The noble endeavor to benefit the broad masses”. Contributions to the history of the Volkshochschule Göttingen . Universitätsverlag Göttingen, Göttingen 2013, ISBN 978-3-86395-125-2 , p. 273 ( Google Books )
5. ^ Karl-Günther von Hase : Lilo Milchsack (1905–1992) and the German-English Society. A personal review . Lecture at Industrieclub Düsseldorf, October 14, 1999, on the occasion of an event organized by the working group there on the occasion of the company's 50th anniversary, edited by Barbara Suchy ( PDF ( Memento of the original from December 31, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this note. ) 
6. ^ Robert Birley: Britain in Europe: Reflections on the Development of a European Society: 1949. The Reith Lectures . Website in the bbc.co.uk portal , accessed on June 15, 2015