Willi Lassen

Willi Lassen (* 1906 in Hamburg ; † August 25, 1973 in Karlsruhe ) was a German school principal and author. Lassen was part of the military resistance against Hitler and from 1945 made an important contribution to the development of a democratic education in Schleswig-Holstein, which is still little known today .

Live and act

1920-1936

Willi Lassen studied English, mathematics, German literature, art history and philosophy in Hamburg from 1924 to 1929. He left the university without a degree and did not pass a teaching degree in English, German and mathematics until 1936 - with distinction. In the meantime, he is said to have got into a life crisis, which probably had to do with his homosexuality . It is very likely that he had a relationship with photographer Herbert List in the meantime and, like him in Stephen Spender's novel “The Temple”, served as a model for an important figure, that of “Willy Lassel”. Decades later, Spender wrote openly - in English spelling - of a "Willy Lassen" in a foreword to an illustrated book. Jan Lauts , whom he had met while studying art history, helped him out of his life crisis . Both entered into a relationship - unknown to the public - that lasted until Willi Lassen's death.

1936-1944

After graduating as a teacher until the outbreak of war, Lassen worked in England at the famous Oundle Public School. From January 1940 he was a soldier in the German Wehrmacht , from February 1940 in the news, interpreter replacement and training department of the army in Meißen , where he ran the interpreting school for English. There should be v. a. Soldiers are trained to eavesdrop on Allied radio messages. Lassen's excellent knowledge of English gave him an important function and was able to create a non-military atmosphere in the service against the concerns of the military. During these years, Lassen published a textbook for the Wehrmacht and managed not to use any ethnic or National Socialist vocabulary in the foreword. During the last years of the war, Lassen was part of the military resistance against Hitler and tried to save other soldiers from being deployed on the Russian front by calling them to his office, according to his friend Jan Lauts, who was already working at the Kunsthalle Karlsruhe at the time. At the time of the failed assassination attempt on Hitler, Lassen had already been transferred to the staff of the 277th Infantry Division in Normandy. One month after the assassination, as he said himself, he escaped into English captivity to avoid imminent arrest.

1944-1948

Lassen was in an "anti-Nazi camp" at a very early age, and eventually came to the " Norton Camp " in Nottinghamshire , which, like the better-known Wilton Park, was a camp university and school. The Norton Camp was u. a. was initiated by Birger Forell as a training center for theologians. Lassen was as a teacher u. a. was called to the camp for English, then became examination commissioner for the Abitur for German soldiers in English captivity. The Norton Camp was in 1946 in a conference in London a. a. with Adolf Grimme as the leading camp for obtaining the Abitur in English captivity. Willi Lassen became the central figure here. His signature on a certificate was ultimately used in all three western zones as access authorization to a university. A total of 200 German prisoners of war received their Abitur exams at Norton Camp. In addition, 600 primary school teachers were trained, who were urgently needed in Germany, where the entire educational system was permeated by Nazi party cadres. In the camp, Willi Lassen gave his fellow prisoners an example of how a lot can be achieved with “diplomacy”, unlike in the German barracks yard. In letters from fellow prisoners, he was described as a master of negotiations with the English "guards" and was therefore also appointed camp elder at Norton Camp. When the YMCA , which organized the educational work in the camps, also wanted to offer training opportunities for the other prisoners of war, Lassen was finally also appointed coordinator of all non-political education programs for 400,000 prisoners of war in the English camps.

The camps were closed in 1948, and Willi Lassen was one of the last to return to Germany. Before that, he had organized the graduation ceremonies in the camp, which were celebrated in the presence of many VIPs. Lassen spoke for the POWs in a row u. a. with YMCA General Secretary John Mott , who had received the Nobel Peace Prize two years earlier.

1950-1968

Contrary to what he had hoped, Lassen in Germany, despite his contacts with the Hamburg Senator for Education Landahl or Adolf Grimme, did not find a job in Hamburg, but instead became a teacher and ultimately director of two high schools in Schleswig-Holstein. In St. Peter-Ording he directed the “ Oberschule for Boys and Girls St. Peter ” with an attached boarding school. This school was founded in 1945, before the end of the war, by and for 394 students who fled the hail of bombs in Berlin and ended up on a wrong track on the Eiderstedt peninsula . Classes initially took place in boarding houses, then in barracks. The first permanent buildings were erected under Willi Lassen's direction in 1954. The school was so successful in these years from 1950 that, in view of the sharp increase in the number of students, classes were even given in the director's living room. Since Lassen had already overexploited his health in England, he had to leave the school with its extremely strenuous work and from 1957 became director of the Klaus Harms School in Kappeln .

In Kappeln, as in many schools in Schleswig-Holstein, the problem was that many teachers had a Nazi past and did not fit into the reform orientation of a cosmopolitan and liberal school that Lassen was striving for. In the end, he managed to do it anyway, by promoting all the endeavors that aimed at such an ideal. He was also responsible for bringing young colleagues to Kappeln, which at the time was more a place of punishment. Eric Christian Rust, one of his students and now professor for European history in Waco , Texas, writes about Willi Lassen: “ He gave both his teachers and us students freedom that shaped us positively, made us responsible and helped, our high school in the back To give the province, with its numerous teachers who have been transferred to punishments, a character and a horizon-broadening quality, thanks to which the Klaus Harms School was able to compete with its rivals in the larger cities. “Willi Lassen worked as a counter-example to the political reality, which was characterized by the Nazi past of many politicians and teachers. With one exception, all ministers in the state government were former NSDAP members from 1950 onwards. In 1968 Willi Lassen retired for health reasons and died in 1973 near Karlsruhe , the city where his partner Jan Lauts was director of the Kunsthalle.

Network art

Even if Willi Lassen worked as a teacher, his passion was the fine arts . He returned from England with a large library of English-language art literature. Willi Lassen and Jan Lauts were part of a network of - from today's perspective - very important art historians and art dealers. In 1937, Lassen visited the historian Peter Cecil Wilson in England , who later worked for the MI6 secret service during the war and Ian Fleming is said to have served as a model for the character of James Bond. After 1945, Wilson led the Sotheby’s auction house to its current importance. During his English captivity, Willi Lassen visited the art dealer Grete Ring in London and was in contact with Gertrud Bing , who had saved the Aby Warburg Archives to London. Willi Lassen and Jan Lauts were also friends with Elfriede Schulze-Battmann , the sister of the painter Wols , and with Carmen Gronau , another art historian who had emigrated from Germany and who worked as Peter Wilson's deputy at Sotheby's.

Publications

• News paper cuttings. Newspaper clippings from English papers, factual and linguistic comments . Birnbach Verlag, Leipzig 1941
• The High Command Announces - vocabulary and phraseology for the translation of Wehrmacht reports (= workbooks for language mediators, issue 1). Leipzig 1941, 5th edition Leipzig 1944

Individual evidence

1. ^ Nicolaus Schmidt , Willi Lassen - a biographical sketch, in "Democratic History" Vol. 26, Schleswig-Holsteinischer Geschichtsverlag, 2015, p. 196
2. ↑ Stephen Spender, foreword to the illustrated book "Herbert List, Sons of Light", eds. Max Scheeler and Jack Woody, Hamburg 1988, p. 2.
3. ↑ Nicolaus Schmidt, Willi Lassen - a biographical sketch, in "Democratic History" Vol. 26, Schleswig-Holsteinischer Geschichtsverlag, 2015, pp. 198f.
4. ^ "The High Command Announces - Vocabulary and Phraseology for the Translation of Wehrmacht Reports", Issue 2 from the series "Arbeitshefte für den Sprachmittler, 4th edition, Leipzig 1943."
5. ↑ Nicolaus Schmidt, Willi Lassen - a biographical sketch, in “Democratic History”, Vol. 26, Schleswig-Holsteinischer Geschichtsverlag, 2015, p. 199.
6. ↑ Nicolaus Schmidt, Willi Lassen - a biographical sketch, in “Democratic History”, Vol. 26, Schleswig-Holsteinischer Geschichtsverlag, 2015, p. 199.
7. ^ Klaus Loscher: Study and everyday life behind barbed wire - Birger Forell's contribution to the theological-pedagogical teaching in Norton Camp / England (1945-1948) . Neukirchner 1997, p. 65 and 78, 79.
8. ↑ Nicolaus Schmidt, Willi Lassen - a biographical sketch, in "Democratic History" Vol. 26, Schleswig-Holsteinischer Geschichtsverlag, 2015, p. 212.
9. ↑ Nicolaus Schmidt, Willi Lassen - a biographical sketch, in "Democratic History" Vol. 26, Schleswig-Holsteinischer Geschichtsverlag, 2015, pp. 194, 204 ff.
10. ↑ Festschrift of the North Sea High School for the 40th anniversary, St. Peter-Ording, 1995, Ed. Headmaster Dieter Demmler, p. 4.
11. ↑ Nicolaus Schmidt, Willi Lassen - a biographical sketch, in "Democratic History" Vol. 26, Schleswig-Holsteinischer Geschichtsverlag, 2015, pp. 194, 215 ff.
12. ↑ Nicolaus Schmidt, Willi Lassen - a biographical sketch, in “Democratic History” Vol. 26, Schleswig-Holsteinischer Geschichtsverlag, 2015, p. 193.
13. ↑ Uwe Danker, Astrid Schwabe, Schleswig-Holstein and National Socialism, Neumünster 2005, p. 178
14. ^ Nicolaus Schmidt: Willi Lassen - a biographical sketch . In: Democratic History Vol. 26, Schleswig-Holsteinischer Geschichtsverlag, 2015, pp. 226, 201.