Ruth von der Leyen

Ruth von der Leyen (born January 4, 1888 in Charlottenburg , † July 10, 1935 in Berlin ) was a reformer of psychopath care in Germany .

Live and act

Ruth Ida came from the von der Leyen family , who founded the silk industry in Krefeld. She was the youngest child of the Prussian Real Secret Higher Government Council and honorary professor for railway law at the Berlin Friedrich Wilhelms University Alfred Friedrich von der Leyen (1844-1934) and his wife Luise Isabella, née Kapp, daughter of Friedrich Kapp . Education, music care, theater visits and travel were the focus of family life. She was taught by private tutors and attended a posh girls' boarding school. She actually wanted to be an opera, lied, oratorio and concert singer. During her seven-year musical training, she discovered her inclination for social aid work and was active in the girls' and women's groups for social aid work in Berlin . From 1912 to 1913 she graduated from the women's social school , which was directed and started by Alice Salomon . With this decision , she differed from other young women from well-to-do families who were usually not allowed to start an apprenticeship .

As a trained welfare worker, she worked at the German Center for Youth Welfare , headed by Frieda Duensing . There she was assigned the youth justice department in personal union with Elsa von Liszt . In this function, she dealt in particular with the question of the extent to which an 'abnormal disposition' is to be regarded as the cause of juvenile delinquency, behavioral problems and educational difficulties and to what extent educational measures are suitable for their prevention or elimination .

With her participation and in close cooperation with the psychiatrist Franz Max Albert Kramer , the German Association for Welfare for Adolescent Psychopaths was founded in 1918 , and she was the managing director of the German Center for Youth Welfare from 1921 until her death . In addition, in 1923, after the death of Johannes Trüper , Ruth von der Leyen took over the editing of the renowned journal for children's research . She also taught psychiatry at her former social training center.

In May 1925 she founded the Recreation Home Kinderkaten in Niehagen on the Baltic Sea, which mainly took in psychopathic children in need of recovery , who were attacked by school and in the big city and who therefore deteriorated in their performance and caused difficulties in raising their children at home (Dötsch 1998, p. 87).

Ruth von der Leyen was active in writing and speaking within the Psychopathenfürsoge. She advocated the integration of psychopath education into the larger framework of curative education (Leyen 1931, p. 668) and called for adolescent psychopaths a . a. Special educational boarding schools , Heilpädagogische play afternoons , observation stations in psychiatric hospitals and a Heilpädagogische recovery care .

The welfare nurse gave many lectures all over Germany and called for close cooperation between the various specialist disciplines within psychopath care :

At that time Ruth von der Leyen was a stimulus in Germany on a grand scale, who, as a self-taught academic, with her passionate interests, her tirelessness and persuasiveness, succeeded in becoming university professors, including well-known doctors, in particular psychiatrists, criminal lawyers, guardianship and juvenile judges, members of the General Welfare Education Day '( AFET ) and the' German Association for Juvenile Courts and Judicial Aid 'to make their allies (Siegel 1981, p. 37).

Ruth von der Leyen passed away voluntarily. There is no reliable information about the reason for their suicide . The latest research speaks of a depression from which Ruth von der Leyen suffered for years as well as an unhappy (unrequited) love. She was buried in the Wilmersdorf cemetery .

Works

• Paths and tasks of psychopath care, in: ZfK, (1923), pp. 37–49.
• Ways and tasks of psychopath care II, in: Report on the third conference on psychopath care 1924, Berlin: Julius Springer 1925, pp. 46–56.
• Paths and tasks of psychopath care III, in: ZfK (1926), 448–463
• Paths and tasks of psychopath care - IV, in: ZfK (1927), 527-541
• Expert conference of the German Association for Care for Adolescent Psychopaths eV on November 13 and 14, 1925 in Berlin, in: ZfK (1926), 394–414
• The exhibition “Care for psychopathic children and adolescents at the Gesolei” Düsseldorf 1926; ZfK (1926), 81-92
• Places for counseling, observation and accommodation for psychopathic children and adolescents, in: ZfK (1927), 311–328
• Protective supervision of psychopathic children, Langensalza 1927
• Leyen, Ruth vd; Marcuse, Dora: Places for counseling, observation and accommodation for psychopathic children and adolescents, in: ZfK (1928), 468–492
• Care for adolescent psychopaths in countries outside Germany, in: Monthly Journal of German Doctors 4 (1928), 143–147
• The vocationally weak and endangered, in: Central Institute for Education and Teaching (Ed.): Die Volksschülerin, Berlin 1927, pp. 167–177.
• Education for psychopaths and special educational institutions. In: Nohl, H./Pallat, L. (Ed.): Handbuch der Pädagogik. Volume 5, Social Pedagogy, Langensalza 1929, pp. 149–164.
• Expert conferences of the German Association for the Care of Adolescent Psychopaths and the German Association for Juvenile Courts and Juvenile Court Aid. Dresden, 6./7. June 1930 - Introduction, in: ZfK (1930), 113–130
• Inclusion of care for adolescent psychopaths in youth law and education, in: Zeitschrift für Kinderforschung, Berlin 1931, Volume 38

literature

• Manfred Berger : Leyen, Ruth Ida from the. In: Hugo Maier (Ed.): Who is who of social work , Freiburg / Br. 1999, pp. 360-361.
• Manfred Berger: Ruth von der Leyen - Your life and work, in: info Berufsverband de Heilpädagogen e. V. 2000 / H. 4, pp. 11-13.
• Manfred Berger: Selected trailblazers in curative education, in: Our youth , 2000 / H. 9, pp. 365-376.
• Elisabeth Dötsch: Ruth von der Leyen. A life for psychopath care , Dortmund 1998
• Fritz Gartz: Ruth von der Leyen - your life and work. A contribution to the history of child and adolescent psychiatry in Germany during the Weimar Republic, Munich 2008
• Elisabeth Siegel : For and against. A life for social education, Stuttgart 1981
• Wolfgang Rose / Petra Fruchs / Thomas Beddies: Diagnosis "Psychopathy". Urban modernity and the difficult child. Berlin 1918–1933, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2016

Web links

• Literature by and about Ruth von der Leyen in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ collections.hu-berlin.de
2. ↑ Rose / Fuchs / Beddies 2016, p. 86 f.
3. ↑ Rose / Fuchs / besddies 2016, p. 89.
4. ↑ cf. Dötsch 1998, pp. 24-122.
5. ↑ cf. Gartz 2008, p. 198.