Salomon Mendelssohn
Salomon Mendelssohn (first name: Selmar, born June 4, 1813 in Jever , † May 11, 1892 in Braunschweig ) was a German educator . As a Grand Ducal Oldenburg gymnastics teacher, he was a decisive promoter of gymnastics in Jeverland and Oldenburg (Oldb) .
Live and act
Salomon Mendelssohn was born in 1813 in Jever as the son of Moses Mendelssohn (1778-1848) (not identical to the famous Berlin philosopher Moses Mendelssohn ) and Gohla Schwabe (1785-1826). The Mendelssohn family from Jever is a German-Jewish family of merchants, scholars and artists. Solomon's younger brother was the writer Joseph Mendelssohn . One of his children was the classical philologist Ludwig Mendelssohn , whose son Erich von Mendelssohn was a poet and writer; Another was the artisan Georg Mendelssohn , whose son Peter de Mendelssohn wrote an extensive biography of Thomas Mann as a publicist and published his diaries.
Salomon Mendelssohn and his brother attended the Israelite Free School under the direction of Eduard Kley in Hamburg. After school he should have become a businessman like his father, but because he lacked an “independent establishment” and because he “had no inclination”, he volunteered in the Grand Ducal Oldenburg Infantry at the age of 19, although “his confession only allowed him Sergeant post could have been achieved ”. In fact, he even reached the level of sergeant when he resigned from the army in 1840 and accepted a position as a fortress inspector at the fortress penal institution in his hometown of Jever . At the same time he married Johanna Philippsohn, a Jewish merchant's daughter from Jever. With her he had a total of fourteen children whom he had evangelically baptized. He and his wife stuck to their Jewish religion.
His job left Mendelssohn so much time that he devoted himself intensively to promoting gymnastics . With the support of the Grand Duke of Oldenburg August I (1783-1853), he organized the establishment of a gymnasium in Jever, the first of its kind in the Duchy of Oldenburg. With the opening on July 1, 1841, regular gymnastics began there, which Mendelssohn offered to boys and girls. In 1842 Mendelsohn published the book “Words about the gymnastics center in Jever” about the gymnastics area, the importance of gymnastics in general and the description of specific gymnastics exercises. In addition, he promoted the introduction of gymnastics as a subject in schools in newspaper advertisements and with numerous articles (especially in the German gymnastics newspaper ). After Jever, he had four more gymnastics grounds set up in the parish of Sengwarden, Sande, Hooksiel and Tettens, and organized gymnastics trips with exhibition gymnastics and award ceremonies to inspire the general public for gymnastics.
Mendelssohn's reform pedagogy understood gymnastics as an activity across all sexes and age groups aimed at achieving physical well-being. At first he offered - like Johann Christoph Friedrich GutsMuths in his gymnastics book for the sons of the fatherland (1817) or Jahn - also military exercises as part of his lessons, but in later writings he spoke out against gymnastics lessons as a preschool for the future soldier.
With financial support from the Grand Duke, Mendelssohn undertook four long trips through Germany and Switzerland between 1843 and 1847 to visit the leading gymnastics and sports facilities (including in Bremen, Hanover, Hildesheim, Braunschweig, Magdeburg, Dessau, Berlin and Leipzig) and at the same time to exchange ideas with the pioneers of gymnastics and sports education such as Ernst Wilhelm Bernhard Eiselen , a student of "gymnastics father" Friedrich Ludwig Jahn , and Adolf Spieß .
Due to his success in spreading the gymnastics in private initiative, he was hired on April 1, 1844 as a state gym teacher for the schools in Oldenburg. Just a few weeks after taking office, the first public gymnasium in Oldenburg was inaugurated on April 22, 1844 on Peterstrasse.
Mendelssohn advocated the so-called in his turn education team gymnastics for which Jahn and his colleague Eiselen in the journal " German gymnastics " in 1816 the foundation had been laid. This gymnastics was strongly acrobatic, but excluded an even and similar occupation of an entire class.
By introducing free and orderly exercises, Adolf Spieß reformed this traditional teaching method and thus created the prerequisites for the integration of gymnastics into school teaching. In the autumn of 1851 Spieß was invited to Oldenburg to demonstrate his methodology in a course lasting several weeks. The positive evaluation of Spieß's methodology led to the fact that physical education was reformed accordingly in the following years.
Mendelssohn paid tribute to the further development of gymnastics by Spieß by commenting in 1873 as follows: "If Jahn's endeavors were on the whole more towards mass gymnastics and, as is understandable, he tried to achieve the highest possible degree of military ability, a second younger master undertook it ( Spieß) to give gymnastics an actual pedagogical direction. "
In 1881 Mendelssohn retired and moved with his wife to Braunschweig, where he died in 1892 at the age of 78. His grave is in the old Jewish cemetery in Braunschweig on Hamburger Strasse.
In November 2010, the sports halls of the Mariengymnasium in Jever were named after him in memory of Salomon Mendelssohn .
Works
- 1842: Words about the gymnasium in Jever, an attempt to spread the orderly physical exercise in the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg, along with a guide for prospective gym teachers and for self-teaching.
- 1845: Songs and games for gymnasts.
- 1861: Contributions to the history of gymnastics.
- 1873: You have to do gymnastics not only in youth but also in old age.
Web links
- Known people from Jever , accessed October 9, 2017.
Individual evidence
- ^ Joseph Mendelssohn: A corner of Germany. 1845, page 90
- ↑ Ibid., Page 90.
- ^ Karl Peters: Salomon Mendelssohn. A contribution to the history of gymnastics. Oldenburger Jahrbuch Volume 58 (1959), page 84.
- ↑ Spiess-Hohnholz, 2010, foreword to the reprint of Salomon Mendelssohn's book "Words about the Gymnasium in Jever"
- ↑ Salomon Mendelssohn: Words about the gymnasium in Jever. 1842, Reprint 2010, Isensee Verlag Oldenburg.
- ^ Karl Peters, pp. 86f., 101f.
- ^ Karl Peters, p. 110.
- ^ Salomon Mendelssohn, 1873, p. 8.
- ↑ Atto Ide: Physical exercises according to Mendelssohn. In: NWZ online. November 8, 2010, accessed February 1, 2016 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Mendelssohn, Solomon |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Mendelssohn, Selmar (first name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Fortress inspector, grand-ducal Oldenburg gymnastics teacher |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 4, 1813 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Jever |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 11, 1892 |
| Place of death | Braunschweig |