Theda Heineken

Theda Johanna Helene Heineken (born September 17, 1907 in Breslau , † March 31, 1993 in Würzburg ) was a German, reformist pedagogue , Bremen women's rights activist and senior director of studies.

biography

Family, education and work

Heineken was the only child of Dr. Ing. Werner Karbe and Johanna Elisabeth Karbe, geb. Heineken. The educator Agnes Heineken was her aunt.
She graduated from the higher girls' school in Worms , Neustadt-Glewe , Ludwigslust , Hamburg-Wandsbek and Bremen and, from 1921, the college for girls at Lerchenfeld (Lyzeum, now Gymnasium Lerchenfeld ) in Hamburg-Nord, where she obtained her Abitur. From 1926 to 1930 she studied mathematics, physics and sport at the University of Hamburg and the University of Bonn . In 1930 and 1933 she passed the first and second state exams for teaching at secondary schools.

In 1935 she married the farmer Friedrich Heineken from the Hadeln country ; their son Fritz was born in 1936. As early as 1936 she worked as a private tutor in Wyk auf Föhr . From 1938 to 1940 she was employed in the main laboratory of the Krümmel dynamite factory in Geesthacht . Their marriage has since been divorced.

At the end of 1945 Heineken got a job as a teacher at the Kippenberg-Gymnasium and in 1948 at the Oberschule on Hamburger Straße in Bremen . In 1951 she became a student councilor , in 1953 senior student councilor and in 1959 senior director and head of the Lesum grammar school , which was built around this time as a new building based on plans by Hermann Brede .
She strongly supported the confessional unbound teaching in Biblical history .
As early as 1967 she introduced reform pedagogical methods of teaching based on the Buxtehude model at her school, according to which class groups in grades 12 and 13 were dissolved. Each student independently chose the study groups and a tutor (tutor). The subject matter was also acquired in group work by the students.
Heineken campaigned with her college for the introduction of a comprehensive school at her grammar school. From 1970 the comprehensive school was introduced as a regular school at their and two other schools in Bremen-North, West and East.
In the turbulent 1968s , the liberal director gained a lot of recognition for her balanced management of the school, at which committed students advocated new, reformist approaches (keyword: schools in troubled times on reform course , Bremen tram riots in 1968 ).

She retired in 1972. Then she moved to Würzburg with her son.

Politics, trade union, party and honorary positions

Until 1933, Heineken was active for many years in the liberal German Democratic Party and the German State Party that emerged from it in 1930 . In 1937 she joined the NSDAP , but was dismissed from school in 1938 due to a lack of party reliability. In 1948 she was classified as exonerated in the denazification process .

After the Second World War she became active in the Bremen women's movement in 1946 as a co-founder of the Bremen Women's Committee - Landesfrauenrat Bremen (bfa) together with Agnes Heineken , Anna Klara Fischer , Anna Stiegler , Käthe Popall and Irmgard Enderle . She worked here in the working group for civic education.

In 1946 she and twelve other educators called for the establishment of a teachers' union, the Bremen Teachers Association , which became part of the Education and Science Union (GEW) in 1948 . From 1948 to 1972 she was second chairwoman of the Bremen local association and since 1950 she has been active in three committees. The chairman of the trade union Paul Goosmann (SPD) and she represented the interests of teachers as advisory members in the Bremen school deputation .

Since 1961 she was a member of the FDP in the district association Bremen-Nord of the FDP Bremen . Here she was since 1963 a member of the district executive as well as in various bodies of the party.

Honors

• The Heineken-Weg in Knoops Park in Bremen - Burglesum , St. Magnus district, was named after her in 1998.

Literature, sources

• Romina Schmitter: Heineken, Theda Johanna Helene, b. Karbe . In: Women's history (s) , Bremer Frauenmuseum (ed.). Edition Falkenberg, Bremen 2016, ISBN 978-3-95494-095-0 .