Adolf Reichwein - Works (selection), Literature

German politician and teacher, born in Bad Ems, W Germany. He was a religious socialist and member of the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD). Professor in Halle (1930–3), he thereafter became a primary school teacher. As a member of the Kreisauer Kreis he was arrested in 1944 and executed at Berlin-Plötzensee later that year.

Adolf Reichwein (born 3 October 1898 in Bad Ems; died 20 October 1944 in Berlin-Plötzensee, executed) was a German educator, economist, and cultural policymaker for the SPD.

After taking part in the First World War, in which he was seriously wounded in the lung, Reichwein studied at the universities in Frankfurt am Main und Marburg, under Hugo Sinzheimer and Franz Oppenheimer, among others. In the 1920s, he was active in education policy and adult education in Berlin and Thuringia. There, until 1939, he conducted many instructional experiments, which received a lot of attention, with educational progressivism and especially vocational education in mind. Reichwein described in his work Schaffendes Schulvolk ("Productive School People") his instructional concept, inspired by the Wandervogel movement and labour-school pedagogy, whose main focus was on trips, activity-oriented instruction with school gardens, and projects spanning age groups. 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 the Kreisau Circle, Reichwein belonged to the resistance movement against Hitler. In early July 1944, Reichwein was arrested by the Gestapo, and after a trial under Roland Freisler before the Volksgerichtshof at which he was found guilty of treason, he was put to death at Plötzensee Prison in Berlin.

Works (selection)

Schaffendes Schulvolk. (New annotated edition of both works:) Schaffendes Schulvolk – Film in der Schule. ISBN 3-407-34063-X

For more, see: Ullrich Amlung: Adolf Reichwein 1898 - 1944. Universität Marburg 1991 (Schriften der Universitätsbibliothek Marburg, 54) ISBN 3-8185-0087-8

Literature

Ullrich Amlung: "... in der Entscheidung gibt es keine Umwege": Adolf Reichwein 1898 - 1944. Auflage Schüren, Marburg 2003 ISBN 3-89472-273-8 derselbe: Adolf Reichwein: 1898–1944. Auflage dipa, Frankfurt am Main, 1999 ISBN 3-7638-0399-8 Hartmut Mitzlaff: Adolf Reichweins (1898–1944) heimliche Reformpraxis in Tiefensee 1933-1939.