Willi Hammelrath

Wilhelm Leo Maria "Willi" Hammelrath (born April 13, 1893 in Ronsdorf (today Wuppertal ), † August 31, 1966 in Karlsruhe ) is the founder of the Burg Vondern Workers' College , one of the first adult education centers after the Second World War .

Life

He was the oldest brother of three other siblings: Maria "Mia" Theissen, b. Hammelrath, Leo (Wilhelm Maria) Hammelrath and Toni Menzinger . His father was a teacher, later a rector in Düsseldorf , who made a name for himself early on, above all for his activities in connection with the Franco-German youth exchange, which remarkably even survived the beginning of the First World War . After graduating from high school in 1910, Hammelrath first studied theology in 's-Heerenberg and Valkenburg in the Netherlands and became a member of the Jesuit order . During the First World War he served as a medic for 4 years, deployed on all fronts. After the war he took up his studies again and graduated with a D. Romanus. He then studied art history and history, graduating as Dr. phil.

The experiences of the First World War, the war death of his brother, who despite the family's Francophilia enthusiastically went to war, the complete collapse of everything that held society together for him, shaped his thoughts and actions from then on.

After graduating, he took on several odd jobs (including underground in mining) and resigned from the Jesuit order with the express dispensation of the superiors of the order. He always emphasized his respect for the intellectual and spiritual achievements of the Societas Jesu, and he, who also left the Church at an early age, used the New Testament in particular, which he read in the original text, until his death. - This attitude also made lifelong friendships possible with former friars, of which the one with the later cardinal Augustin Bea was certainly the most remarkable.

In the following years he went on trips to Palestine , Egypt , Russia and the Balkans. In 1927, together with his future wife Margarete, he went on a one-year long trip to Sweden. In September 1928 the birth of the first son (Fro), two more children (1933 daughter Urd, 1937 son Alf) followed. Prominent member of the so-called " vagabond movement ", the "League of the Homeless" of Gregor Gog .

Political

Willi Hammelrath was never a member of any party. Such formal memberships were very far from his thinking. In fact, he worked regularly in the 1920s on the weekly newspaper Das Neue Volk , the party newspaper of the Christian Social Reich Party (CSRP) around Vitus Heller. This party was a split from the Center Party , which radicalized itself after 1926 and criticized the Weimar Republic from a left-wing Catholic position. Hammelrath represented this party u. a. at a rally of the Union of Religious Socialists in November 1928 in Vienna . After being able to travel to the young Soviet Union , he published enthusiastic reports about Soviet Russia in the “red paper of the Catholic socialists” and in the CSRP series of publications . The development there, the prospect of success of which he was of course skeptical, appeared to him as a possible alternative to the "rule of the moneybag" and as a starting point for the creation of a new world. The trained historian saw the class struggle as a war of freedom that would replace the aristocracy of money and property with an "aristocracy of action, of heroism". The collectivization of agriculture, which in the eyes of many appeared to be radical and social land reform, and a socially organized economy seemed to him suitable foundations for the creation of a society free from exploitation. This utopia was a direct result of his processing of the First World War.

In the years of the Depression he earned a living for his small family and himself with all kinds of odd jobs, radio lectures, journalistic activities, piano tuning, gardening.

Until the end of World War II

In 1931 he took a position in Vienna, first as a servant, later as a private secretary for a Jewish lawyer and close confidante and advisor to the then Austrian Chancellor Ignaz Seipel , Dr. Gottfried Kunwald . After the connection of Austria to the Third Reich , who led his working environment for total destruction, he was first arrested by the Nazis; he was the only "Aryan" among Jewish colleagues and was therefore named an "honorary Jew" while in custody - based on the "honorary Aryan" appointed by the Nazis.

This was followed by the acceptance of a position as a teacher and educator at the Burg Nordeck school ; During this time he passed his state examination in German , Latin and history at the University of Giessen . He turned down the offer of a university career because it was linked to the request to join a Nazi group.

After the Second World War

From 1940 he worked in Braunschweig as assistant to the director of the “Aviation Research Institute” - in a dubious atmosphere: the operation was important for armaments, but most of the scientists were anti-Nazi.

After the Second World War, from 1945 to 1948, Hammelrath became head of the Bad Sachsa educational center in the southern Harz, a private institute that, with regard to the Nazi past (both in general and that of the previous head), only had one “unencumbered”, and that means: any sympathy with the Nazis, the director was allowed to reopen. The time was marked by post-war problems, those returning from the war did their Abitur, many boarding school students were victims of flight, bombs, and torn families. The function of school and boarding school director came to an end when, after the currency reform in 1948, the owners (the Kulenkampff family, former owners of the Nordwolle Group) focused on earning again, but not on educational work.

In 1948 he founded the “Workers College Burg Vondern” in Oberhausen in the Rhineland, one of the first new adult education centers to be established after the Second World War. It was the forerunner of the later municipal adult education center in Oberhausen, which was then taken over by Hilmar Hoffmann . During this time he worked as a teacher at what later became known as the Novalis Gymnasium in Oberhausen (today part of the Heinrich Heine Gymnasium). At the same time he was intensively active in adult education (for example at the VHS Oberhausen with courses in philosophy and literature, history and art history), especially with miners, also in other cities in the Ruhr area. He fascinated his listeners with his modernity, his broad intellectual horizon and the ability to formulate print-ready sentences off the cuff.

Because of his unsteady professional life, Hammelrath never had an entitlement to a pension or even a pension; therefore he worked until his death. In 1958 - at the age of 65 - he took up a new job: he became head of the orphanage in Bad Niederbreisig, which had opened on July 9, 1905 as the “ 5th Reich Orphanage in Niederbreisig on the Rhine ”. After an opinion clash with the owner, he went back a year later - and immediately became a teacher again at the same school. Willi Hammelrath died on August 31, 1966 in Karlsruhe at the age of 73.

Works

• Russia  : the awakening of a people. - Würzburg: Verl. Das neue Volk, 1927
• Proletarian Unity and Christians , special print from Die Einheit 1927
• Encounters (together with Margarete Hammelrath) - Würzburg, Das Neue Volk, 1929
• Good news , Cologne 1931
• World roads and forest paths . (Together with Margarete Hammelrath) - Brixlegg: Heimat-Verl., And Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag, Wiesbaden 1937
• Contribution in: Fritz Rechfelden (Ed.): Der Bogen Ein Almanach 1937–1947, Salzburg-Brixlegg-Innsbruck, Heimat-Verlag Fritz Rechfelden, 1947
• On the way - A book of the art of living , Nuremberg, Glock and Lutz, 1949 (1st), 1953 (2nd)
• Popular education - workers' education . - Nuremberg: Glock and Lutz, 1954
• Numerous articles in newspapers and magazines, e.g. B .: The New People , The Red Sheet of the Catholic Socialists , Nature and Culture as well as under a pseudonym (W. Gotthard) in various Catholic sheets. Also noteworthy: Collaboration with the West German Football Association - publication of the youth magazine Mucki Moor .