 | Thisbiography of a living person includes alist of references,related reading, orexternal links,but its sources remain unclear because it lacksinline citations. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourcedmust be removed immediately, especially if potentiallylibelous or harmful. Please helpimprove this article byintroducing more precise citations.(March 2015) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Adolf Reichwein | |
|---|---|
 Reichwein,c. 1940 | |
| Born | (1898-10-03)3 October 1898 |
| Died | 20 October 1944(1944-10-20) (aged 46) |
| Cause of death | Execution by hanging |
Adolf Reichwein (3 October 1898 – 20 October 1944) was a Germaneducator,economist, and cultural policymaker for theSPD, whoresisted the policies ofNazi Germany.
Reichwein was born inBad Ems. He took part in theFirst World War, in which he was seriously wounded in thelung. Reichwein studied at the universities ofFrankfurt am Main andMarburg, underHugo Sinzheimer andFranz Oppenheimer, among others. In the 1920s, he was active in education policy and adult education in Berlin and Thuringia. It was he who founded theVolkshochschule ("People's High School"; i.e.Community College) and theArbeiterbildungsheim ("Workers' Training Home") inJena and ran them until 1929. In hisHungermarsch nachLappland ("Hunger March to Lappland") he described in diary form a punishing hike with some young jobless people in the far north. In 1929–1930, he worked as an adviser to the Prussian Culture MinisterCarl Heinrich Becker.
From 1930 until 1933, he was a professor at the newly founded Pedagogical Academy inHalle. After the Nazis seized power, he was let go for political reasons and sent off toTiefensee inBrandenburg to become an elementary schoolteacher. There, until 1939, he conducted many instructional experiments, which received a lot of attention, witheducational progressivism and especially vocational education in mind. Reichwein described in his workSchaffendes Schulvolk ("Productive School People") his instructional concept, inspired by theWandervogel movement and labour-school pedagogy, whose main focus was on trips, activity-oriented instruction with school gardens, and projects spanning age groups. ForSachunterricht (~field education, or practical learning) and its history, he included important historical documents. Reichwein split the instructional content into a summer cycle (natural sciences and social studies) and a winter cycle ("Man as former"/"in his territory"). From 1939, Reichwein was working at the Folklore Museum in Berlin as a museum educator.
As a member of theKreisau Circle, Reichwein belonged to the resistance movement againstHitler. In early July 1944, Reichwein was arrested by theGestapo, and, in a trial againstJulius Leber,Hermann Maaß andGustav Dahrendorf, sentenced to death byRoland Freisler'sVolksgerichtshof. He was killed next to Maaß atPlötzensee Prison inBerlin on 20 October 1944.
