Wilhelm Hofmann (pedagogue)

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Wilhelm Hofmann (born April 25, 1901 in Darmstadt , † October 26, 1985 in Heilbronn ) was a German teacher and special education teacher. He was a pioneer of modern special education . Various schools were named after him, but they were renamed again after 2010 after the critical appraisal of his role in the Nazi era.

Life

He attended schools in Vaihingen / Enz , Stuttgart and Geislingen an der Steige and then the teachers' seminar in Esslingen am Neckar , where he passed his first teaching degree in 1921. He then worked as a teacher at the auxiliary school in Stuttgart, at the institutions for the deaf and dumb in Schwäbisch Gmünd and Bönnigheim and at elementary schools in Flein , Heilbronn , Böckingen and other places in the area. After completing a degree in curative education in Munich in 1925/26, he initially worked at schools in the Stuttgart area. In 1927 he married Auguste Rau, the marriage had a son. In 1929 he got a permanent position as an auxiliary school teacher in Heilbronn.

Like almost all Württemberg curative educators of that time, he belonged to the circle around the Stuttgart auxiliary school rector Christian Hiller , who had committed himself to reforming the auxiliary school system. In Heilbronn Hofmann gave lectures and wrote essays on questions of special education from 1930. So far he only saw “retention classes” in the auxiliary schools, into which all those pupils were deported who could no longer be needed or supported in the other schools, and he advocated that in future the “educable” children in the auxiliary schools too far promote that they can be reintegrated into the national community, while the no longer capable of education would have to be eliminated entirely from the auxiliary schools.

At the time of National Socialism , Hofmann joined the National Socialist Teachers' Association and the NSDAP . For the party he was from 1935 local group training leader and from 1939 circular speaker . As a party speaker, Hofmann gave more than 50 lectures of a propagandistic nature between 1937 and 1943. At the instigation of the party, Hofmann was also appointed headmaster of the Heilbronn Pestalozzi School in 1936. There he developed a calculating device presented in the specialist press in 1940, which was also marketed under the name Rechenfix in the post-war period . In 1942/43 he was also acting head of the NS district office. In 1943 Hofmann was drafted into the Wehrmacht and worked for the medical replacement department in Ulm until the end of the war .

After internment in Ludwigsburg from 1945 to 1947, the Spruchkammer first indicted him as the main culprit during denazification . Hofmann was able to name exonerating witnesses who testified his integrity and his commitment to those persecuted by the Nazi regime. He justified his membership in the NSDAP with opportunistic reasons. He denied anti-Semitic ideology. The ruling chamber therefore first classified him as a minor , after a revision procedure in 1948 only as a follower . Also in 1948 Hofmann returned to school as an auxiliary school teacher in Geislingen an der Steige.

In 1951 he was again rector of the Heilbronn Pestalozzi School. In 1952 he became chairman of the Baden-Württemberg state association of the Association of German Special Schools . In 1957 he switched to the state auxiliary school teacher seminar in Stuttgart, where he was head. In 1962 he was appointed professor at the Ludwigsburg University of Education. He was in charge of the introduction of full training for special school teachers in Baden-Württemberg.

In his didactic conception of the high school (1961) he called the auxiliary school pedagogy “pedagogy in general”, but saw no significant differences between auxiliary pupils and regular pupils. An important educational goal for him was the possibility of reintegration into the mainstream school (with the special school as a through school). To do this, he demanded individual support and intensive language training from auxiliary students. Today's modern special school system with differentiated school types goes back to his thoughts.

Honors

In 1976 Hofmann received the Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon and in the same year the Golden Mint of the city of Heilbronn.

Several schools in Baden-Württemberg were named after him: the special schools in Baienfurt (1981-2008), Herbrechtingen , Weingarten (from 2008) and since 1982 the special school Wilhelm-Hofmann-Schule in Böckingen , for which he was previously responsible as rector . In addition, the district special school for the mentally handicapped in the Freudenstadt district in Dornstetten was named after him in 1984 . The Wilhelm-Hofmann-Gymnasium in Sankt Goarshausen, on the other hand, is not named after the special educator, but after a local boarding school founder of the same name.

Critical processing

In 2010 the city of Heilbronn commissioned the contemporary historian Gerhard Eberle to research Hofmann's life and work. In May 2010 the results of Eberle's research were presented. He was able to prove that Wilhelm Hofmann was a fanatical member of the NSDAP and, among other things, represented all aspects of Nazi ideology in political speeches as a local group training leader. There was also criticism of his demand for a “performance and ethics school”, through whose selection, according to Hofmann, poor school performance “can still be made useful and economically viable for the national community”. For this, however, only children would be considered, "who are fully minded, socially capable and capable of education and are generally physically healthy". In his opinion, people with mental, mental or physical disabilities, “feeble-minded people, the blind, deaf and hard of hearing, epileptics” belong in an institution.

Contrary to Hofmann's self-testimony after the end of the war that he had withdrawn from the racist and anti-Semitic content of the Nazi ideology, recent research has been able to show that Hofmann had also explicitly expressed himself anti-Semitic in lectures .

Due to the new research on Wilhelm Hofmann and his problematic statements during the Nazi era, the schools named after him have since been renamed again. The Wilhelm Hofmann School in Böckingen was renamed the Neckartal School in 2011. The school in Herbrechtingen changed its name in 2011. The schools in Weingarten and Dornstetten also announced a name change.

Fonts

  • The student assistant, his occupation and training. In: Journal for curative education. Issue 9, 1958, pp. 478-487.
  • Language education and speech training the learning disabled child on a phonetic basis. Curative educational series. Neckar-Verlag, Villingen 1969.

literature

  • Peter Wanner: The Wilhelm Hofmann Case - Aspects of a Career . In: heilbronnica 5. Contributions to town and regional history , Heilbronn town archive, Heilbronn 2013, pp. 287–324.
  • Andreas Möckel (ed.): Special school in transition. Pedagogy, psychology, didactics. Festschrift for Wilhelm Hofmann. Schindele, Neuburgweier (Karlsruhe) 1971 (with bibliography of Hofmann's writings).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wanner 2013, p. 287. In files from the post-war period, Geislingen an der Steige is erroneously mentioned as the place of birth.
  2. ^ Place of death according to Gertrud Schubert: Does the special school have to change its name? In: Heilbronn voice . June 2, 2010 ( from Stimme.de [accessed June 2, 2010]).
  3. ↑ a b c Gertrud Schubert: Does the special needs school have to change its name? In: Heilbronn voice . June 2, 2010 ( from Stimme.de [accessed June 2, 2010]).
  4. ↑ Dirk Grupe: Historians: Wilhelm Hofmann was a Nazi. The special needs school in Weingarten will most likely have to change its name . In: Schwäbische Zeitung , local edition Ravensburg . February 16, 2011 ( from schwaebische.de [accessed June 11, 2011]).
  5. ↑ a b Gertrud Schubert: Pestalozzi turns 100 . In: Heilbronn voice . May 20, 2010 ( from Stimme.de [accessed June 2, 2010]).
  6. ↑ Wanner 2013, pp. 297/298.
  7. ^ Neckar Valley instead of Hofmann School . Stimme.de, May 19, 2011 (accessed June 11, 2011)
  8. ^ Website of the Neckartal School
  9. ↑ Monika Schwarz: A questionable godfather - Wilhelm Hofmann School in Dornstetten will change names . In: Neckar-Chronik - Südwest Presse , local edition of the Freudenstadt district . February 22, 2011 ( from neckar-chronik.de [accessed June 11, 2011]).
personal data
SURNAME Hofmann, Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German teacher and special education teacher
DATE OF BIRTH April 25, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Darmstadt
DATE OF DEATH October 26, 1985
Place of death Heilbronn