Susanne Charlotte Engelmann

Susanne Charlotte Engelmann (born September 26, 1886 in Berlin ; † June 26, 1963 there ) was a German Protestant teacher of Jewish origin and a professor in the United States after her emigration.

education

Engelmann completed her schooling at a secondary school for girls in Berlin in 1900 and then attended the humanistic private high school Helene Langes . In 1905 she passed the external Abitur examination and began studying in Berlin and Heidelberg . Engelmann dealt with various specialist areas during her studies, including German and English as well as psychology and pedagogy . She received her doctorate in 1909 with a dissertation on the subject of The Influence of Folksong on the Poetry of the Wars of Liberation , passed her first state examination in 1910 and spent her legal clerkship at Berlin girls' schools in the same year until she received a Prussian license to teach secondary schools in 1912.

From 1913 to 1914 Engelmann was a German visiting researcher at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania , USA . This stay later proved to be enormously helpful, as Engelmann managed to emigrate to the USA thanks to her good knowledge of the country and language as well as thanks to her connections to the American Association of University Women (AAUW).

job

After her stay in the USA, Engelmann worked as a student councilor for 12 years. From 1925 to 1928 she was director of the Margarethen-Lyzeum and then in the same position until her dismissal in 1933 director of the first girls' high school in Berlin, the Viktoria-Oberlyzeum.

When the NSDAP came to power in Germany, the Jewish teacher Engelmann was increasingly pushed out of her profession. After she was forced into retirement, Engelmann turned to Esther Brunauer in Washington in the hope of being able to use the contacts she had made during her stay in the USA in 1912 to emigrate. Since her exclusion from the public working world, she has worked as a private lecturer in literature, psychology and education. In this unsatisfactory situation, Engelmann found the premature end of her career very stressful, but only wanted to emigrate if a position could be found at a university. This condition was based on the fact that Engelmann, in contrast to other people who had been forced out of the job, received a small pension and did not want to emigrate without securing a new job. In addition, she lived with her mother Martha Engelmann, who was dependent on her support. From 1935 she was the head of adult education for the Berlin Paulus Bund for two years . This position was opened to her because Engelmann was a staunch Protestant and a member of Martin Niemöller's Confessing Church . This position was withdrawn from her in 1937 following the resolution of the Nuremberg Laws and the subsequent exclusion of all members defined as “fully Jewish”. As their situation deteriorated, Engelmann's calls for help to the AAUW became clearer. In 1939, with the help of her brother, who worked in the Turkish Ministry of Economics, she managed to flee to Turkey together with her mother . Engelmann lived there in Istanbul , where she taught educational psychology at an American Social Service Center and taught German literature to the children of professors who were also in exile .

After Engelmann's mother died in June 1940, Engelmann, now 54 years old, moved on to the USA via Russia , Siberia , Manchuria and Japan and received a post as a Refugee Scholar at Wilson in 1942/43 with the help of the American Association of University Women College in Pennsylvania . In the years that followed, Engelmann worked in several academic positions in various states until she received her first position as professor at Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg , Virginia in 1947, which she held until her retirement in 1952. After Engelmann received American citizenship in 1948, she returned to Berlin in 1952 and was compensated for the pension entitlement that was revoked in 1933. It is assumed that her remigration to Berlin, which as such rarely occurred, was closely related to her connection to the Dahlem parish. It is also recorded that Engelmann was interested in the reconstruction of the German school system.

Act

During the Weimar Republic , Engelmann was known as an important educator in the field of girls' education and author of influential academic papers. When the NSDAP came to power , her career as an educator in Germany came to an end and Engelmann was forced to continue her career first in Turkey and then in the USA. After 1940, the subject area of ​​her academic work increasingly dealt with the changes in German school education in the 1930s and above all with the methodology of the National Socialists with regard to indoctrination .

Publications

• The influence of the folk song on the poetry of the wars of liberation, dissertation 1909.
• The crisis of today's girls' education, Quelle & Meyer, Leipzig 1928.
• The upbringing of the girl. Quelle & Meyer, Leipzig 1929.
• Methodology of German Teaching, 1933.
• German Education and Re-Education, 1945.

literature

• Christine von Oertzen: Looking back on emigration: the academics Erna Barschak (1888-1958), Susanne Engelmann (1885-1963?) And Lucie Adelsberger (1895-1971). In: Angelika Schaser (ed.): Remembrance cartels. On the construction of autobiographies after 1945. Winkler, Bochum 2003, pp.? - ?.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Christine von Oertzen, Strategy Understanding - On the Transnational Networking of Female Academics 1917 to 1955, Göttingen 2012, biographical appendix. Also the following.
2. ↑ Oertzen, Strategy Understanding, p. 325.
3. ↑ Oertzen, Strategy Understanding, p. 303.
4. ↑ Oertzen, Strategy Understanding, p. 303.
5. ↑ Oertzen, Strategy Understanding, p. 304.
6. ↑ Oertzen, Strategy Understanding, p. 304.
7. ↑ Oertzen, Strategy Understanding, p. 310.
8. ↑ Oertzen, Strategy Understanding, p. 311. Also the following.
9. ^ Oertzen, Strategy Understanding, biographical appendix.
10. ↑ Oertzen, Strategy Understanding, p. 311.
11. ↑ Oertzen, Strategy Understanding, p. 292.
12. ↑ Oertzen, Strategy Understanding, p. 334.
13. ^ Oertzen, Strategy Understanding, biographical appendix.
14. ↑ Oertzen, Strategy Understanding, p. 338ff.
15. ↑ Renate Heuer, Bibliographia Judaica - Directory of Jewish Authors in the German Language, Vol. 1, Munich 1981, p. 385.
16. ↑ Heuer, Bibliographia Judaica, p. 385.