Wenzel Holek

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Wenzel Holek (born January 20, 1864 in Schönhof ; † January 2, 1935 in Berlin ) was a Czech writer , publicist and educator .

Life

origin

Wenzel Holek was probably one of the first professional youth workers in Germany, but certainly the first practitioner of “outreach” youth work, and is therefore a remarkable and yet little-known exceptional figure. Holek was born in Bohemia in 1864 into a poor family of day laborers. From an early age, Holek, who was not allowed to attend elementary school for more than three years, had to contribute to the family's livelihood: child labor, begging, street music. Holek became a "manual worker", i. H. unskilled worker. That meant the hardest physical work with the greatest social insecurity. His professional career led Holek to railway construction, in brickworks, glass factories and in opencast mining. He started a family and over time had six children. Unemployment and pressing hardship forced him, at the age of 40, in 1904 to leave his homeland, Bohemia, and look for work in Dresden, Saxony.

Act

The life of a German-Czech manual worker

Holek had already become a member of the Social Democratic Party in Bohemia and did not want to accept the existing conditions. His eagerness to read led to the fact that he got his hands on one of the workers' biographies published by the former pastor Paul Göhre . That motivated him to write such an autobiography. In May 1909 his book "Lebensgang einer Deutsch-Czech Handarbeiters" was published - also edited by Paul Göhre. With its immediacy and authenticity, the book provided an undisguised insight into the life and thinking of the lower strata of the working class . In 1912 a pastor from Leipzig invited Holek to a lecture and was so impressed by Holek's statements that he offered him the currently vacant position in the management of the Leipzig “Volksheim”. The Volksheim was in a desperate situation when Holek took over the management. Holek decided to direct all energies towards attracting the youth. That turned out to be successful. Within half a year he reached a tenfold increase in the number of young members of the Volksheim, who now dominated its educational events as an audience. Word got around that Holek managed to get to the youngsters.

The word of Holek's skill in youth work also reached the governor of Leipzig, Mr. von Nostiz-Wallwitz, who wanted to set up a settlement based on the English model in one of the districts for which he was responsible , with a special focus on youth care . He recruited Holek from the people's home and gave him the job of building a corresponding facility in the Leipzig suburb of Thekla . The outbreak of World War I thwarted these lofty plans. Von Nostiz-Wallwitz tried to get Holek another job in youth work instead. This finally succeeded in another Leipzig suburb ( Großzschocher ) - and so Holek, now as a state employee, was able to gain further experience in youth work.

The young people were organized into clubs with 15 to 20 members each, each of which had the elected posts of chairman, secretary, treasurer and game attendant. The clubs were combined to form an association in which there was an elected president with special rights and duties. Holek had a free hand to shape the youth work according to his ideas, but his self-confident manner always offended the teachers, who were very conservative and z. B. ensured that the girls' work that Holek had built up had to be stopped again. The only reliable support was and remained for him only the governor von Nostiz-Wallwitz, who stood by him, even though he knew of his still social democratic political convictions. When von Nostiz-Wallwitz was transferred from the Saxon government to a legation post in Vienna, Holek was rightly afraid that more obstacles might be put in his way in the future. It was therefore very helpful to him that one of his (student) employees at the social working group in East Berlin felt that she was looking for a responsible employee for her youth work. Its director, Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze , offered Holek in the course of the explorations to come to Berlin and take on this task. Holek decided to accept this offer and moved to Berlin in May 1916.

The social working group Berlin-Ost (SAG) was also based on the example of the English and American settlements. In the youth work he was responsible for in the SAG, Holek tied in theoretically and practically with the experiences he had made in Leipzig. Until his death in 1935, Holek remained primarily responsible for the SAG's open youth work, despite a few interruptions.

He was the father of the writer Heinrich Holek .

Works

  • Life history of a German-Czech handworker Wenzel Holek 1: with a foreword edited by Paul Göhre (Jena 1909) digitized
  • Religious experience of a craftsman Holek, Wenzel. - Berlin: publ. "Der Fährmann", [1919]
  • The first memories. - My school days Holek, Wenzel. - [Reprint. d. Edition] Jena 1930. - 1979 = 1930
  • Life course of a German-Czech manual worker / Wenzel Holek 2: From craftsman to youth educator / Holek, Wenzel. - 1. u. 2nd thousand - Jena: Diederichs, 1921
  • From my youth Holek, Wenzel. - Reutlingen: Enßlin & Laiblins Verlagbuchhandlung, [1924]
  • Holek, Wenzel: The Life of a Craftsman Diederichs (1930)
  • Holek, Wenzel: My experiences in Berlin Ost Böhlau (1998)

literature

  • Early German workers' autobiographies Ursula Münchow 1973 Akademie-Verlag Berlin p. 18 ff.
  • Wenzel Holek and the youth work of the Social Working Group Berlin-Ost (1916-1933) Searching for traces in an almost forgotten chapter from our prehistory by Elvira Berndt and Herbert Scherer IKO-Verlag für Interkulturelle Kommunikation (Frankfurt) 2005. ISBN 978-3-88939-759 -1
  • On the way to the worker: memories of Wenzel Holek and Albert Goldammer Hofmann, Walter. - Reutlingen, 1952
  • Wenzel Holek In: "Who goes to the east, goes to another country" by Vogelsberg, Annette. (1997), pp. 161-178.
  • Wenzel Holek - portrait of a worker reader / Marwinski, Felicitas. - In: From the work of the Workers 'Readers' Council of the Free Public Library Dresden-Plauen. - Dresden: City u. District Library. - 1983, pp. 51-61.
  • Wenzel Holek: a workers fate in the contact area of ​​Bohemia and Saxony / Heilfurth, Gerhard. - In: Festschrift for Walter Schlesinger / ed. by Helmut Beumann; 1. - Cologne: Böhlau. - 1973, pp. 608-631: Bildn., Ill., Kt.
  • Holek, Wenzel: From the deep up. Pictures from the life of an unskilled worker , by Laßmann Alfred Professor Dr. (Author) Leipzig; Vienna: Deuticke, 1931

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wenzel Holek and the youth work of the social working group Berlin-Ost (1916-1933)
personal data
SURNAME Holek, Wenzel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Czech writer, publicist and educator
DATE OF BIRTH January 20, 1864
PLACE OF BIRTH Schönhof
DATE OF DEATH January 2, 1935
Place of death Berlin