Siegfried Lehmann (Pedagogue)

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Siegfried Lehmann (1948)
Lehmann Square in Ben Shemen
Berlin memorial plaque on the house, Max-Beer-Strasse 5, in Berlin-Mitte

Siegfried Lehmann (born January 4, 1892 in Berlin ; died June 13, 1958 in the children's and youth village Ben Shemen , Israel ) was a German-Israeli doctor and educator and founder of several Jewish social institutions for children and young people.

Life

Siegfried Lehmann was the son of the bookseller Paul Lehmann and his wife Emma and had three brothers:

  • Curt, who had completed a bank apprenticeship, later also lived in Palestine and temporarily ran a hotel in Ben Shemen ;
  • Erich, an art historian and communist who called himself Erich Lehmann-Lukas , was the first secretary of the newly founded Society of Friends of the New Russia in 1923 . In 1933 he emigrated to France with his wife Raja. The couple were interned there in 1939 and deported to Auschwitz in August 1942 and murdered. Erich Lehmann's daughter Monika (* in Berlin, married to the German-American Germanists 1925 Wulf Köpke , with whom she in Boston lived) their story and that of their parents in the book that her parents were not deported, has overnight train to Paris published .
  • Alfred, who called himself Alfred Lemm and died of a flu epidemic in 1918 at the age of 28.

A memorial plaque in the entrance area of ​​the Jewish cemetery in Berlin-Weißensee , where Alfred Lemms grave is located, commemorates the fate of the members of the Lehmann family who were murdered during the Nazi era .

Siegfried Lehmann attended Friedrichs-Gymnasium and from 1913 studied medicine in Freiburg im Breisgau , Frankfurt am Main and Berlin. He passed the medical state examination in November 1919 at the University of Frankfurt am Main. In 1920 he received his doctorate with the dissertation on the prognosis of mental development in childhood epilepsy .

Through his brother Alfred, Siegfried Lehmann came into contact with Martin Buber , in whose monthly magazine Der Jude the two brothers published their own texts. He became a Zionist and visited Palestine for the first time in 1914 . In 1916 he founded the aid organization Jüdisches Volksheim in the Berlin Scheunenviertel on Dragonerstraße (today's Max-Beer-Straße 5) , which mainly looked after war orphans and neglected young people.

After receiving his doctorate in 1920, Lehmann worked “as a pediatrician at a Berlin clinic before he went to Lithuania in 1921 - now married and father of a son”. He had been commissioned by the Jewish National Council of Lithuania to build a children's and youth home in Kaunas for orphans uprooted by war and revolution . The refuge could accommodate up to 200 people. Lehmann's goal for the young people was to become farmers or artisans in Palestine.

In Kovno Lehmann married the Lithuanian doctor Rebecca Klawanska (-1959) for the second time, they had two children. In 1926 they led the first youth group to Palestine and in 1927 they founded a children's and youth village southeast of Tel Aviv , in Ben Shemen .

Under Lehmann's leadership, this “children's republic” became a center for children and youth alijahs and a model for modern agricultural vocational education from the 1930s onwards . Among the students in Ben Shemen was the future President of Israel Shimon Peres .

In January 1940, Lehmann, "a moral rigorist when it came to the idea of ​​peace, especially peace with the Arab neighbors", and some of his staff were arrested on charges of possessing weapons. A British military court sentenced Lehmann to seven years in prison. After international protests, u. a. by Albert Einstein , Lehmann was released after three weeks in prison.

In 1952 Lehmann was recognized for his social commitment by the UN children's aid organization UNICEF . In 1957 he received the Israel Prize .

Among his numerous educational publications, he dealt in “Schoraschim” (German: roots) the relationships between Jews and Arabs from the perspective of a teacher. The peaceful coexistence between Jews and Arabs was important to him.

On September 21, 2018 , a Berlin memorial plaque was unveiled at his former place of work, Berlin-Mitte , Max-Beer-Strasse 5 .

Fonts (selection)

  • Salomon Lehnert [i. e. Siegfried Lehmann]: Jüdische Volksarbeit , in: Der Jude , 1916, no . 2, pp. 104–111
  • From the street horde to the community (from the life of the “Jewish children's home” in Kovno) , in: Der Jude, vol. 9 (1925–1927), no. 2 (1926): special issue on education, pp. 22–36. The text is available online through the collections of the University Library of the University of Frankfurt am Main .
  • A Jewish children's republic in Palestine. The Ben Schemen Children's and Youth Village , in: Palestine, March 1930.
  • For humanistic education in Ben-Schemen . without year
  • "Shorashim" fundamental principles of Jewish youth education in Palestine; Jewish Arab relations as an educational problem . Foreword by SH Bergmann . Jerusalem: Rubin Mass, 1943
  • Ludwig Liegle / Franz-Michael Konrad (ed.): Reform pedagogy in Palestine. Documents and interpretations of attempts at a 'new' education in the Jewish community of Palestine (1918–1948) , dipa-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1989, ISBN 3-7638-0809-4 . In it from Siegfried Lehmann:
    • The Position of the West Jewish Youth to the People (1919/1920) , pp. 61–68.
    • Ben Shemen Children's and Youth Village (1929) , pp. 107–115.

literature

  • Siegfried Lehmann , in: Encyclopaedia Judaica , 1971, Volume 10, Sp. 1583
  • Dieter Oelschlägel: The idea of ​​'productive work': Siegfried Lehmann (1892–1958) , in: Sabine Hering (ed.): Jewish welfare in the mirror of biographies . Frankfurt am Main: Fachhochschulverlag, 2007, pp. 256–267 (not viewed)
  • Dieter Oelschlägel: Siegfried Lehmann and his life's work: Remembering someone wrongly forgotten , in: Sozialpädagogik, 1997, Issue 1, pp. 26–30 ISSN 0038-6189.
  • Dieter Oelschlägel: Lehmann, Siegfried , in: Hugo Maier (Ed.): Who is who of social work . Freiburg: Lambertus, 1998 ISBN 3-7841-1036-3 , pp. 351-353
  • Ari Shavit : My promised land . Translation from the American by Michael Müller and Susanne Kuhlmann-Krieg. Munich: Bertelsmann, 2015, ISBN 978-3-570-10226-8 .
  • Beate Lehmann: Siegfried Lehmann and the Jewish people's home in Berlin's Scheunenviertel , in: Sabine Hering, Harald Lordick, Gerd Stecklina (eds.): Jewish youth movement and social practice , Fachhochschulverlag, Frankfurt am Main, 2017, ISBN 978-3-943787-77 -1 , pp. 103-122.
  • Elisabeth Bückmann: Ben-Shemen. Integration of two cultures in an Israeli children's village , German Institute for International Educational Research, Frankfurt am Main, 1965.
  • Gershom Scholem: From Berlin to Jerusalem. Jugenderinnerungen , Jüdischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1994, ISBN 3-633-54086-5 .
  • Wolf von Wolzüge: "... This Ben Shemen spirit brought me very close to the Jewish culture". The children's and youth village Ben Shemen between Berlin and Lod - a sketch , in: Monika Lehmann / Hermann Schnorbach (ed.): Enlightenment as a learning process. Festschrift for Hildegard Feidel-Mertz , dipa-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1992, ISBN 3-7638-0186-3 , pp. 256-274.
  • Roni Hirsh-Ratzkovsky: From Berlin to Ben Shemen: The Lehmann Brothers between Expressionism and Zionism , AJS Review, Volume 41, Issue 1, April 2017, pp. 37-65.

Web links

Commons : Siegfried Lehmann  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Manfred Lang: Almost escaped the Holocaust , Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, June 26, 2002
  2. ^ Monique Köpke: Night train to Paris. A Jewish girl survives Hitler's France , Altius Verlag GmbH, 2000, ISBN 978-3-932483-10-3 .
  3. ↑ Dieter Oelschlägel: The idea of ​​›productive work‹ , p. 262
  4. ↑ Beate Lehmann: Siegfried Lehmann and the Jewish People's Home in Berlin's Scheunenviertel , p. 108.
  5. ↑ Active Museum Berlin: Siegfried Lehmann and his life's work (web links)
  6. ↑ Dieter Oelschlägel: The idea of ​​›productive work‹, p. 267
  7. ↑ See: Active Museum Berlin: Siegfried Lehmann and his life's work . Address by Beate Lehmann on the occasion of the unveiling of a 'Berlin memorial plaque' on September 21, 2018 in Max-Beer-Straße 5
personal data
SURNAME Lehmann, Siegfried
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lehman, Siegfried
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Israeli doctor and educator
DATE OF BIRTH January 4, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH June 13, 1958
Place of death Ben Shemen