Wolf Dohrn

Wolf Dohrn (born April 5, 1878 in Naples , † February 4, 1914 in the Valais Alps / Switzerland ) was a German sponsor of culture and education.

Life

Wolf Dohrn's birthplace as it is today

Wolf Dohrn grew up multilingual after his birth in Naples (his mother was Polish , his father the marine biologist Felix Anton Dohrn ). At the age of eleven, his parents sent him to Germany to attend school, which he finished in July 1897 with the final examination at the Royal Wilhelmsgymnasium in Munich .

He then studied German, philosophy, psychology, aesthetics and political science in Berlin , Leipzig and Munich. During the seven semesters at the University of Leipzig , Dohrn mainly attended the courses in Germanic philology with Professors Albert Köster , Eduard Sievers and Wilhelm Wundt . In 1902 he changed his place of study and studied psychology and aesthetics in Munich first with Theodor Lipps , and later economics with Lujo Brentano . In his seminars he also met the later first Federal President, Theodor Heuss , and was friends with him. During this time he first met the social reformer Friedrich Naumann (1860–1919), with whom he worked closely after completing his studies, initially as responsible for politics and economics at the national social weekly for politics, literature and art "Freistatt", the Thomas Mann , Frank Wedekind , Otto Julius Bierbaum , Richard Dehmel and Max Halbe were among its authors . His more left-liberal outlook and his increasing interest in the forms of aesthetic communication led him to resign from his post in November 1904. He processed this interest in his dissertation, defended in 1906, “The artistic representation as a problem of aesthetics. Investigations into the method and conceptual formation of aesthetics with an application to Goethe's Werther ” , in order to put himself at the service of the views represented by Naumann with his brilliant speaker talent and his organizational skills and for whom he secured the parliamentary election victory in Heilbronn in 1907 .

In 1907 he took over at Karl Schmidt in the German workshops for craftsmanship the duties of the Secretary-General . In the same year he was one of the co-founders of the German Werkbund established in Munich , of which he was first secretary from 1908 to 1910.

The garden city movement, which was mainly represented politically by Friedrich Naumann at the beginning of the 20th century, found an ardent advocate in Wolf Dohrn who, alongside Karl Schmidt as an entrepreneur and Richard Riemerschmid as an architect, was to prove himself to be the outstanding organizer of the project to create, in addition to economic success, living and working space for the families of the workers and employees of the Deutsche Werkstätten für Handwerkskunst as well as for interested business people and artisans. His further declared aim was to create a garden city in which the areas of art, trade and ethics were both aesthetically and practically combined. The foundation stone for the Hellerau workshops and the garden city of Hellerau at the gates of Dresden was laid on April 22, 1909, and operations in the new factory premises began as early as the following year.

Enthusiastic about the methods of the Geneva composer and founder of a new direction in music education (" rhythmic education ") Émile Jaques-Dalcroze , whom Wolf Dohrn got to know in Dresden, he saw in the establishment of a "musical-rhythmic educational institution" the solution for connecting Art and education as elements of the "garden city concept". With far-reaching commitments, he was able to win over the rhythmist Jaques-Dalcroze for the project and in May 1910 he arranged the constituent meeting of the founding committee. Under the leadership of Dresden's Mayor Paul Hermann Kretschmar , the assembly elected a subcommittee to pursue the institutionalization further, with Nikolaus Graf von Seebach , General Director of the Court Theater, elected as its chairman . The initiator Wolf Dohrn, in turn, was appointed founding director.

Hellerau, Festspielhaus (2003)

For the activities aimed at regaining rhythm in upbringing, the formation of the personality, in art and in life, he finally had a central building in mind as the external symbol of the garden city, which was also what he promised Jaques-Dalcroze owed. Since Richard Riemerschmidt pursued a completely different direction in planning the garden city and was not available for this project, Dohrn had to plan again in this direction. At the beginning of October 1910 he was able to win the architect Heinrich Tessenow for the realization of the planned educational institution according to the strict specifications of Jaques-Dalcroze, and in November 1911 the classrooms of the building still under construction were inaugurated. The " Bildungsanstalt Jaques-Dalcroze " (today: Festspielhaus Hellerau ) wrote music and theater history until 1914.

Wolf Dohrn's sudden death after a skiing accident and the First World War prevented the full development of his life's work. It was continued in the best sense of the word by his brother Harald Dohrn , who also married his widow, as long as it was economically viable for the family.

Web links

• Literature by and about Wolf Dohrn in the catalog of the German National Library
• Katy Schlegel: Dohrn, Wolf . In: Institute for Saxon History and Folklore (Ed.): Saxon Biography .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Annual report from the K. Wilhelms-Gymnasium in Munich. ZDB ID 12448436 , 1896/97.
2. ^ Hans-Jürgen Sarfert: Hellerau. The garden city and artist colony. Small Saxon Library, No. 3. Hellerau-Verlag, Dresden, 1992, ISBN 3-910184-05-7 , pp. 17-20.