From the Archivportal "Focus on – Education Reform"
Von Sophia Schorr und Daniel Lieb (Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen)
By Sophia Schorr and Daniel Lieb (Eberhard Karl University of Tübingen)
In the section “Im Blickpunkt” (“Focus on”), we present special highlights from archives represented in the Archivportal-D. These selected archival documents give an insight into the holdings and offer research suggestions for a possible search in the Archivportal-D or in the theme portal “Weimarer Republik” (“Weimar Republic”). This month, we are pleased to present a scientific contribution by Sophia Schorr and Daniel Lieb from the Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen (Eberhard Karl University of Tübingen) with sources from the Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg (State Archives of Baden-Wuerttemberg).
Willi Flemming’s (1888-1980) essay “Richtlinien zur Schulreform” (“Guidelines on School Reform”) was published in 1919 as the 79th edition of the magazine "Werbedienst der deutschen sozialistischen Republik" (“Advertising Service of the German Socialist Republic”).
Willi Flemming was a literary scholar and a specialist in German studies. During the First World War, he did voluntary military service, from which he was exempted after one month due to a psychological breakdown, and then took up a position as a senior teacher. In 1919, he obtained the “habilitation” at the University of Rostock and qualified as an art and literature scholar. As a result of the November Revolution, Flemming sought to become closer to the socialist-oriented workers’ and soldiers’ councils, which also published the “Werbedienst”. The aim of the magazine was the propagation of socialist and social democratic reforms for the young Weimer Republic.
In his essay on school reform, Flemming elucidated his socially critical stance towards the social inequality of the late Imperial Age. To counteract this, he suggested some fundamental reforms of the education system. According to Flemming, education should be accessible to everyone free of charge. Moreover, particularly the pupils from the lower social levels of society should be given more state support and individual performance should be placed above privileges based on class. School lessons should be designed in an interdisciplinary way, for which an inspiring teacher should be primarily responsible. The teaching staff should show themselves to have leadership qualities and thus form the personalities of the pupils so that mature people would be produced at the end of their school careers. Such leaders’ organisations eventually became the fascist model in National Socialism. However, these were also popular in broad sections of the socialists and Marxists of that time, who saw these as necessary means for the education of the masses.
The establishment of equal education for everyone was supposed to overcome the rigid division of labour at the same time, and with this the division of society into classes. A key factor for Flemming in this context was to involve working people in school lessons: in this way, education should be designed to be true to life and counteract the seclusion of the teaching staff as a caste. At the same time, Flemming pursued a socialist ideal with this: overcoming the separation of manual and mental work.
With this, Flemming’s text was in line with further articulations around the workers’ and soldiers’ councils in 1918-1920. With the end of monarchist rule, overcoming the class hierarchy within German society seemed to be within reach, the foundations of which had already been laid with the division into higher and lower school forms in the education system. Free tuition and the setting up of a comprehensive school were an integral part of a series of radical democratic demands, which were particularly articulated around the Social Democratic Party (SPD). Flemming’s essay on school reform can be included among these. These attempts came to a standstill in the course of 1920 due to financial constraints of the state and the dominance of conservative forces. Only a slightly higher level in the primary school can be seen as a long-term result of the reform efforts.
Willi Flemming only became an important academic figure in the course of National Socialism. Here he showed himself to be a nationalist mastermind, a contributor to the redesigning of the education system and an ardent admirer of the soldier ethos; a paradoxical turnaround for someone who had experienced the horrors of war and its psychological consequences at first hand. Towards the end of the war, Flemming was dishonourably released from his duties at the University of Rostock, but was, however, given a new chair at the University of Mainz as early as 1946. But he no longer had an important role in the young Federal Republic. Flemming died in Mainz in 1980.
This text is a scientific contribution to the series “Focus on”. Many thanks to Ms. Sophia Schorr and Mr. Daniel Lieb from the Eberhard Karl University of Tübingen for making this available.
Links to the sources in the Archivportal-D