School on the Mediterranean

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The school on the Mediterranean is one of the six schools in exile that Klaus Voigt has identified in Italy for German-Jewish emigrant children. The founders of the school were the two pedagogues Hans Weil and Heinz Guttfeld, who were expelled from Frankfurt's Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in 1933 by the Nazis . The school located in Recco is also known in Italy today as Scuola sul Mediterraneo .

The establishment of the school

Weil first went to Florence and took on the position of head of studies at the rural school home in Florence founded by Werner Peiser and Moritz Goldstein . However, due to his pedagogical ideas based on the ideas of reform pedagogy , he soon no longer agreed with the more traditional pedagogical concept of the rural school home, which was more closely aligned with the classic German grammar school. Therefore, together with Heinz Guttfeld, who had also previously worked at the rural school in Florence, he founded the school on the Mediterranean in Recco . The choice of this school location was purely random, as Hans Weil describes very drastically. Another difficulty in founding a school becomes clear from his short notes: At this point, Hans Weil, as he confessed, spoke less than twenty words of Italian. He was therefore accompanied in the search for a location by an Italian-speaking student.

The "School on the Mediterranean" was opened on March 1, 1934, initially with four students who had come over from the rural school in Florence and was located in the "Villa Palma", which still exists today.

Concept and everyday life

In its basic program, the school professed its loyalty to both the German and the Jewish tradition. At the same time, she campaigned for openness to the host country Italy and declared social humanity education to be her primary learning goal:

“Hans Weil stuck to the 'German-Jewish symbiosis' that he himself convincingly embodied; his school was therefore especially designed for 'half-Jewish' children. Even a pupil of two country education centers, Weil also practiced their ways of living and working in Recco. "

Manual work, work in the house and garden, were just as much an integral part of everyday school life as intensive language courses and preparation for a life in other European or non-European countries. The weekly “Sunday Addresses” were also firmly anchored in school life, in which Weil repeatedly re-developed his ideas of social humanism. They were often involved in musical accompaniment and in accompanying discussions with the children and staff. A frequent guest at the school was the writer Karl Wolfskehl , who had lived in Recco since November 1935 , took part in discussions with the students and maintained contact with the teachers.

Hans Weil, who later had to earn his living as a photographer in the USA, had also assigned photography a major role in everyday school life and set up a school's own studio. Many photos resulted from this work, which can still give an impression of school life today. In addition, around fifty pictures of everyday school life by a professional photographer, Erika Baumann, whose children were students in Recco, have been preserved.

In its early years, the school worked on a more informal basis: Tuldung from the German Consulate General in Genoa and from the local Italian authorities. When Weil tried to legalize this status in 1936, the Italian side indicated to him that objections from Germany were opposed. On July 31, 1937, an order was issued to close the school, which at the time had about thirty students and employed eight Italian employees, until mid-September 1937. Protests against this were unsuccessful, as was the attempt to continue the school under Italian management.

As a foreign Jew, Hans Weil had to leave Italy in February 1939. Apart from that of two pupils, nothing is known about the further fate of the children. What is known, however, is the story of Paul Wolf from Darmstadt, the son of the lawyer Hermann Wolf , who attended school from October 1936 to November 1937 and then switched to an English boarding school.

Employee

There is also only sparse information about the teachers who teach at the school:

  • Heinz Guttfeld , the co-founder of the "School on the Mediterranean", taught here until 1935, and also
  • Ellen Ephraim, the future wife of Heinz Guttfeld. Both emigrated to Palestine together.
  • Lenz Weishaupt was a historian with a doctorate, as can be seen from a Sunday address given on April 21, 1937. Between 1924 and 1929 he did a traineeship at a Cologne museum and did his doctorate in Würzburg. In the catalog of the German National Library, Lenz Weishaupt's 1935 dissertation with the title "Wolfgang Waldberger, a German master builder in Nördlingen" is listed.
  • Kurt Heinrich Wolff , a sociologist, was able, like Hans Weil, to emigrate to the USA via England.

literature

Essays
  • How the school on the Mediterranean came about . In: Hildegard Feidel-Mertz (Hrsg.): Schools in Exile. The displaced pedagogy after 1933 . Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1983, pp. 110–112, ISBN 3-499-17789-7 .
  • Hildegard Feidel-Mertz: Educators in Exile. For example Hans Weil (1898–1972) . In: Edith Böhne (Ed.): The arts and sciences in exile 1933–1945 . Schneider, Gerlingen 1992, pp. 379-399, ISBN 3-7953-0902-6 .
  • Hildegard Feidel-Mertz: Education for social humanity. Hans Weil's “School on the Mediterranean” in Recco / Italy (1934 to 1937/38). In: Claus-Dieter Krohn (ed.): Childhood and youth in exile. A generation theme (= exile research. An international yearbook; Volume 24). edition text + kritik, Munich 2006, pp. 95–116, ISBN 3-88377-844-3 .
Books
  • Hildegard Feidel-Mertz: Education in exile after 1933. Education for survival. Pictures and texts from an exhibition. dipa-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1990, ISBN 3-7638-0520-6 .
  • Klaus Voigt: Refuge on Revocation. Exile in Italy 1933–1945, vol. 1 . Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1989, ISBN 3-608-91487-0 .

Web links

  • The Hans Weil papers in the collection of the USHMM . It contains a lot of picture material from Recco, a school brochure and a letter to the friends of the school with two lists of names.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Klaus Voigt: Refuge on revocation. Exile in Italy 1933-1945, Vol. 1 , pp. 200ff.
  2. ↑ Laura Carlotta: La "Scuola sul Mediterraneo" .
  3. ↑ a b c Klaus Voigt: Refuge on revocation. Exile in Italy 1933-1945, vol. 1 , p. 204
  4. ↑ How the school on the Mediterranean came about .
  5. ↑ The memory of the school and the Weils have remained alive in Recco to this day: Weil, un'iniziativa coraggiosa and Constanze Weil visits Recco .
  6. ↑ Hildegard Feidel-Mertz: Education for social humanity , p. 97.
  7. ↑ a b Hildegard Feidel-Mertz: Pedagogy in Exile after 1933 , p. 155.
  8. ↑ Hildegard Feidel-Mertz: Education for social humanity , p. 99.
  9. ^ Klaus Voigt: Refuge on revocation. Exile in Italy 1933-1945, vol. 1 , p. 425.
  10. ↑ Hildegard Feidel-Mertz: Education for social humanity , p. 108ff (Feidel-Mertz analyzes several Sunday speeches that tie in with visits from Wolfskehl).
  11. ↑ Hildegard Feidel-Mertz: Education for social humanity , p. 110ff.
  12. ↑ Hildegard Feidel-Mertz: Education for social humanity , p. 112ff.
  13. ^ Klaus Voigt: Refuge on revocation. Exile in Italy 1933-1945, vol. 1 , p. 209.
  14. ↑ Hildegard Feidel-Mertz: Education for social humanity , p. 106.
  15. ^ Historical archive of the city of Cologne: The officials of the museums
  16. ↑ Dissertation Lenz Weishaupt
  17. ^ Klaus Voigt: Refuge on revocation. Exile in Italy 1933-1945, vol. 1 , p. 397.