Gustav Wyneken
Encyclopedia
Gustav Wyneken was a German
education
al reformer, free thinker
and charismatic leader. His ideas and practice on education and youth became highly influential but were also controversial.
and Philology
in Berlin
. In 1900 he married Luise Margaretha Dammermann, from whom he was divorced in 1910. From 1900 to 1906 he worked as a teacher in boarding schools, where he was a colleague of Hermann Lietz
.
The first term was "pedagogic eros", the name given to erotic attraction and/or love between a teacher and a pupil. Pedagogic eros (or Pädagogischer Eros in German) was embodied as a set of concepts popularised by Wyneken's Wickersdorf Free School
Community in Germany
, and based around the Ancient Greek
Plato
nic 'Ladder of Beauty' model of same-sex pedagogic relationships, but blended with high Germanic philosophical ideas. Although focused on same-sex relationships, his ideas could also be applied to heterosexuality. He led the wider Free School (or Freie Schulgemeinde in German) movement, a movement that founded boarding school
s across Germany.
The second term was "Jugendkultur"; this implied that wherever possible adults should refrain from overtly 'leading' youth groups, and older youths should instead lead younger youths. This was part of his deep influence on the German Youth Movement
; notably the Jugendkulturbewegung, the Wandervogel
and the Adolf Brand's Gemeinschaft der Eigenen
. He downplayed the then-popular notions of the need for a restored Volkish German culture and was not known to be anti-semitic
. His Free Schools accepted a large portion of Jewish pupils. In a sense, by coining and encouraging 'Jugendkultur' he was the founder of what would later become widely known as 'youth culture'.
Wyneken also influenced Jewish youth movements in Poland
and Vienna
(such as Hashomer Hatzair
), and had some influence on the early Kibbutz
education in Israel
. He also known to have influenced the circle around Stefan George
; Bruno Bettelheim
; and Pier Paolo Pasolini
's school in Casarsa, as well as Pasolini's later teaching.
Wyneken had himself been influenced by the thinking of Martin Buber
and Hermann Lietz
, and also the Hebrew
educational tradition, in which a good education is founded on a teacher's love for his students.
In the maelstrom of ideas and ideologies that was pre-war Germany, inevitably his strong ideas caused much controversy.
's political aesthetics were greatly influenced by a stay (1905-1907) at a Wyneken boarding school
(Haubinda in Thüringen
) where he became close to Wyneken. He was also influenced by the Wyneken-edited radical youth journal Der Anfang ('The Beginning'). Here Benjamin found...
However, when Gustav Wyneken gave a broadly pro-war speech in Munich
in November 1914, the pacifist Benjamin reluctantly broke with his mentor. Wyneken did, however, also urge that... "We must dare to keep a certain distance from the Fatherland and from the unthinking patriotism in which we have been educated."
of the German Criminal Code in 1921 means that it is unlikely that he was involved with the Nazi Party.
. He also influenced Homer Lane
who settled in England in 1912 to run the 'Little Commonwealth' school in Dorset
, and who became the mentor of A.S. Neill
Wyneken's ideas and influence allowed pedagogic eros to be treated in cultural productions such as the first ever feature-film on same-sex love, Mädchen in Uniform (Germany, 1931), based on the novel The Child Manuela by Christa Winsloe
. Among many other cultural manifestations from this era in Germany are: Robert Walser
's novel Institute Benjamenta (1908; English trans. 1995); and Erich Ernst's novel Symphony of Eros (1925). Colette
's novel Claudine at School (1957 in English) reflects some of the influence of German ideas on teaching traditions in French
boarding schools.
The theme has continued to be explored in literature and film; most recently in novels by David Cook (Happy Endings, 1989); Stephen Fry
; and Alan Hollinghurst
; in poetry and song lyrics by Pauline Stainer
("The Flute Lesson"), Momus
("The Guitar Lesson"), Rufus Wainwright
("The Art Teacher"), and Sting ("Don't Stand So Close to Me
").
For a fuller discussion & bibliography of the appearance of the theme in books and films; see: Jo Keroes's book Tales Out of School: Gender, Longing and the Teacher in Fiction and Film (Southern Illinois University Press, 1999); and for a discussion of U.S. classroom issues see: Regina Barreca and Deborah Morse's The Erotics of Instruction (1998).
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
education
Education
Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts...
al reformer, free thinker
Freethought
Freethought is a philosophical viewpoint that holds that opinions should be formed on the basis of science, logic, and reason, and should not be influenced by authority, tradition, or other dogmas...
and charismatic leader. His ideas and practice on education and youth became highly influential but were also controversial.
Early life
He was born to a Christian family, and studied TheologyTheology
Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...
and Philology
Philology
Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...
in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
. In 1900 he married Luise Margaretha Dammermann, from whom he was divorced in 1910. From 1900 to 1906 he worked as a teacher in boarding schools, where he was a colleague of Hermann Lietz
Hermann Lietz
Hermann Lietz was a German educational progressive and theologian who founded the German Landerziehungsheime für Jungen. Basing his schools on the model of the English Abbotsholme School, he emphasized sports and crafts along with modern languages and science while deemphasizing rote learning and...
.
Jugendkultur and Pädagogischer Eros
Wyneken coined two influential terms:The first term was "pedagogic eros", the name given to erotic attraction and/or love between a teacher and a pupil. Pedagogic eros (or Pädagogischer Eros in German) was embodied as a set of concepts popularised by Wyneken's Wickersdorf Free School
Free school
An anarchistic free school is a decentralized network in which skills, information, and knowledge are shared without hierarchy or the institutional environment of formal schooling. Free school students may be adults, children, or both...
Community in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, and based around the Ancient Greek
Straton of Sardis
Straton of Sardis was a Greek poet and anthologist from the Lydian city of Sardis. He is thought to have lived during the time of Hadrian, based on Straton authorship of a poem about the doctor Artemidorus Capito, a contemporary of Hadrian...
Plato
Plato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
nic 'Ladder of Beauty' model of same-sex pedagogic relationships, but blended with high Germanic philosophical ideas. Although focused on same-sex relationships, his ideas could also be applied to heterosexuality. He led the wider Free School (or Freie Schulgemeinde in German) movement, a movement that founded boarding school
Boarding school
A boarding school is a school where some or all pupils study and live during the school year with their fellow students and possibly teachers and/or administrators. The word 'boarding' is used in the sense of "bed and board," i.e., lodging and meals...
s across Germany.
The second term was "Jugendkultur"; this implied that wherever possible adults should refrain from overtly 'leading' youth groups, and older youths should instead lead younger youths. This was part of his deep influence on the German Youth Movement
German Youth Movement
The German Youth Movement is a collective term for a cultural and educational movement that started in 1896. It consists of numerous associations of young people that focus on outdoor activities. The movement included German Scouting and the Wandervogel...
; notably the Jugendkulturbewegung, the Wandervogel
Wandervogel
Wandervogel is the name adopted by a popular movement of German youth groups from 1896 onward. The name can be translated as rambling, hiking or wandering bird and the ethos is to shake off the restrictions of society and get back to nature and freedom...
and the Adolf Brand's Gemeinschaft der Eigenen
Adolf Brand
Adolf Brand was a German writer, individualist anarchist and pioneering campaigner for the acceptance of male bisexuality and homosexuality.-Biography:...
. He downplayed the then-popular notions of the need for a restored Volkish German culture and was not known to be anti-semitic
Anti-Semitism
Antisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...
. His Free Schools accepted a large portion of Jewish pupils. In a sense, by coining and encouraging 'Jugendkultur' he was the founder of what would later become widely known as 'youth culture'.
Wyneken also influenced Jewish youth movements in Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
and Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
(such as Hashomer Hatzair
Hashomer Hatzair
Hashomer Hatzair is a Socialist–Zionist youth movement founded in 1913 in Galicia, Austria-Hungary, and was also the name of the group's political party in the Yishuv in the pre-1948 British Mandate of Palestine...
), and had some influence on the early Kibbutz
Kibbutz
A kibbutz is a collective community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. Today, farming has been partly supplanted by other economic branches, including industrial plants and high-tech enterprises. Kibbutzim began as utopian communities, a combination of socialism and Zionism...
education in Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
. He also known to have influenced the circle around Stefan George
Stefan George
Stefan Anton George was a German poet, editor, and translator.-Biography:George was born in Bingen in Germany in 1868. He spent time in Paris, where he was among the writers and artists who attended the Tuesday soireés held by the poet Stéphane Mallarmé. He began to publish poetry in the 1890s,...
; Bruno Bettelheim
Bruno Bettelheim
Bruno Bettelheim was an Austrian-born American child psychologist and writer. He gained an international reputation for his work on Freud, psychoanalysis, and emotionally disturbed children.-Background:...
; and Pier Paolo Pasolini
Pier Paolo Pasolini
Pier Paolo Pasolini was an Italian film director, poet, writer, and intellectual. Pasolini distinguished himself as a poet, journalist, philosopher, linguist, novelist, playwright, filmmaker, newspaper and magazine columnist, actor, painter and political figure...
's school in Casarsa, as well as Pasolini's later teaching.
Wyneken had himself been influenced by the thinking of Martin Buber
Martin Buber
Martin Buber was an Austrian-born Jewish philosopher best known for his philosophy of dialogue, a form of religious existentialism centered on the distinction between the I-Thou relationship and the I-It relationship....
and Hermann Lietz
Hermann Lietz
Hermann Lietz was a German educational progressive and theologian who founded the German Landerziehungsheime für Jungen. Basing his schools on the model of the English Abbotsholme School, he emphasized sports and crafts along with modern languages and science while deemphasizing rote learning and...
, and also the Hebrew
Hebrews
Hebrews is an ethnonym used in the Hebrew Bible...
educational tradition, in which a good education is founded on a teacher's love for his students.
In the maelstrom of ideas and ideologies that was pre-war Germany, inevitably his strong ideas caused much controversy.
Wyneken and Walter Benjamin
The young Walter BenjaminWalter Benjamin
Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin was a German-Jewish intellectual, who functioned variously as a literary critic, philosopher, sociologist, translator, radio broadcaster and essayist...
's political aesthetics were greatly influenced by a stay (1905-1907) at a Wyneken boarding school
Boarding school
A boarding school is a school where some or all pupils study and live during the school year with their fellow students and possibly teachers and/or administrators. The word 'boarding' is used in the sense of "bed and board," i.e., lodging and meals...
(Haubinda in Thüringen
Thuringia
The Free State of Thuringia is a state of Germany, located in the central part of the country.It has an area of and 2.29 million inhabitants, making it the sixth smallest by area and the fifth smallest by population of Germany's sixteen states....
) where he became close to Wyneken. He was also influenced by the Wyneken-edited radical youth journal Der Anfang ('The Beginning'). Here Benjamin found...
- "... an elitist, aristocratic and fiercely intellectualist wing of the German youth movement ... Wyneken's ideal (was) of an elite and highly ethical Männerbund devoted to the ideals of KantKANTKANT is a computer algebra system for mathematicians interested in algebraic number theory, performing sophisticated computations in algebraic number fields, in global function fields, and in local fields. KASH is the associated command line interface...
, Hegel, Goethe and Nietzsche." (Rabinbach, 1985)
However, when Gustav Wyneken gave a broadly pro-war speech in Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
in November 1914, the pacifist Benjamin reluctantly broke with his mentor. Wyneken did, however, also urge that... "We must dare to keep a certain distance from the Fatherland and from the unthinking patriotism in which we have been educated."
Wickersdorf scandal
In 1920 Wyneken was forced to resign as leader of the Free School Community amidst allegations of homosexual relations with two students. Many parents and the leadership of the school defended Wyneken. Subsequently he was indicted of committing vice with minors and convicted in 1921.Wyneken after 1934
It is uncertain what Wyneken did in the thirty years between 1934 and his death in 1964, although it seems he stayed in Germany and tried to be involved with education. His prosecution for immorality (he had allegedly embraced two pupils while naked) under Paragraph 175Paragraph 175
Paragraph 175 was a provision of the German Criminal Code from 15 May 1871 to 10 March 1994. It made homosexual acts between males a crime, and in early revisions the provision also criminalized bestiality. All in all, around 140,000 men were convicted under the law.The statute was amended several...
of the German Criminal Code in 1921 means that it is unlikely that he was involved with the Nazi Party.
Wider cultural influence
Wyneken's ideas on pedagogical eros, related through gay emigres to the USA, influenced the fiction and educationalist writings of Paul GoodmanPaul Goodman (writer)
Paul Goodman was an American sociologist, poet, writer, anarchist, and public intellectual. Goodman is now mainly remembered as the author of Growing Up Absurd and an activist on the pacifist Left in the 1960s and an inspiration to that era's student movement...
. He also influenced Homer Lane
Homer Lane
Homer Lane was an American-born educator who believed that the behaviour and character of children improved when they were given more control over their lives....
who settled in England in 1912 to run the 'Little Commonwealth' school in Dorset
Dorset
Dorset , is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The county town is Dorchester which is situated in the south. The Hampshire towns of Bournemouth and Christchurch joined the county with the reorganisation of local government in 1974...
, and who became the mentor of A.S. Neill
Wyneken's ideas and influence allowed pedagogic eros to be treated in cultural productions such as the first ever feature-film on same-sex love, Mädchen in Uniform (Germany, 1931), based on the novel The Child Manuela by Christa Winsloe
Christa Winsloe
Christa Winsloe was a 20th century German-Hungarian novelist, playwright and sculptor, best known for her play Gestern und heute, filmed in 1931 as Mädchen in Uniform and the 1958 remake.- Biography :...
. Among many other cultural manifestations from this era in Germany are: Robert Walser
Robert Walser (writer)
Robert Walser , was a German-speaking Swiss writer.-1878–1897:...
's novel Institute Benjamenta (1908; English trans. 1995); and Erich Ernst's novel Symphony of Eros (1925). Colette
Colette
Colette was the surname of the French novelist and performer Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette . She is best known for her novel Gigi, upon which Lerner and Loewe based the stage and film musical comedies of the same title.-Early life and marriage:Colette was born to retired military officer Jules-Joseph...
's novel Claudine at School (1957 in English) reflects some of the influence of German ideas on teaching traditions in French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
boarding schools.
The theme has continued to be explored in literature and film; most recently in novels by David Cook (Happy Endings, 1989); Stephen Fry
Stephen Fry
Stephen John Fry is an English actor, screenwriter, author, playwright, journalist, poet, comedian, television presenter and film director, and a director of Norwich City Football Club. He first came to attention in the 1981 Cambridge Footlights Revue presentation "The Cellar Tapes", which also...
; and Alan Hollinghurst
Alan Hollinghurst
Alan Hollinghurst is a British novelist, and winner of the 2004 Man Booker Prize for The Line of Beauty.-Biography:Hollinghurst was born on 26 May 1954 in Stroud, Gloucestershire, the only child of James Hollinghurst, a bank manager, and his wife, Elizabeth...
; in poetry and song lyrics by Pauline Stainer
Pauline Stainer
Pauline Stainer is an acclaimed English poet. She was born in the industrial district of Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent. She later left the city to attend St Anne's College, Oxford, where she took a degree in English...
("The Flute Lesson"), Momus
Momus (artist)
Nick Currie , more popularly known under the artist name Momus , is a songwriter, blogger and former journalist for Wired...
("The Guitar Lesson"), Rufus Wainwright
Rufus Wainwright
Rufus McGarrigle Wainwright is an American-Canadian singer-songwriter. He has recorded six albums of original music, EPs, and tracks on compilations and film soundtracks.-Early years:...
("The Art Teacher"), and Sting ("Don't Stand So Close to Me
Don't Stand So Close to Me
"Don't Stand So Close to Me" is a 1980 song and hit single by the British rock band The Police. It concerns a schoolgirl's crush on her young teacher and the teacher's nervousness about the situation. The Police won the 1982 "Grammy Award for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal"...
").
For a fuller discussion & bibliography of the appearance of the theme in books and films; see: Jo Keroes's book Tales Out of School: Gender, Longing and the Teacher in Fiction and Film (Southern Illinois University Press, 1999); and for a discussion of U.S. classroom issues see: Regina Barreca and Deborah Morse's The Erotics of Instruction (1998).
List of works
- (1916) Wider den Altsprachlichen Schulunterricht
- (1918) Schule und Jugendkultur
- (1920) Der Kampf für die Jugend. Gesammelte Aufsätze
- (1921) Der europäische Geist. Gesammelte Aufsätze über Religion und Kunst
- (1921) Eros
- (1947) Weltanschauung (2nd edition)
- (1948) Musikalische Weltanschauung
- (1963) Abschied vom Christentum — Religion, Christentum, Bibel, Anfänge und anderes
Further reading
Note: Much of the extensive German literature on pädagogischer eros and the German youth movements of 1900-1934 remains untranslated into English.- John Alexander Williams. Ecstasies of the Young: Sexuality, the Youth Movement, and Moral Panic in Germany on the Eve of the First World War. Central European History, No.34, No.2 (2001).
- Thijs Maasen. De Pedagogische Eros in Het Geding: Gustav Wyneken En De Pedagogische Vriendschap in De Freie Schulgemeinde Wickersdorf Tussen 1906-1931. (University of Utrecht, 1988). (The first full length study of the German pedagogic eros movement. An English-translation summary of the book is in: Paidika, Vol.1, No.12.)
- Thijs Maasen. Pädagogischere Eros: Gustav Wyneken und die Freie Schulgemeinde Wickersdorf. (1995)
- Thijs Maasen. Man-Boy Friendships on Trial: On the Shift in the Discourse on Boy Love in the Early Twentieth Century. Journal of Homosexuality, Vol.20, No.1/2 1990. (Much discussion of the 'Pädagogischer Eros' movement and its influences).
- Richard Dougherty. Eros, Youth Culture and Geist: The Ideology of Gustav Wyneken and its Influence Upon the German Youth Movement (1978).
- Margarete Kohlenbach. Walter Benjamin, Gustav Wyneken and the Jugendkulturbewegung. IN: Counter-Cultures in Germany and Central Europe: From Sturm Und Drang to Baader-Meinhof (2003).
- P. Utley. Schism, Romanticism and Organization: Anfang, January-August 1914. Journal of Contemporary History (1999).
- Anson Rabinbach. Between Enlightenment and Apocalypse: Benjamin, Bloch and Modern German Jewish Messianism IN: New German Critique, No.34 (1985).
- John Lauritsen and David Thorstad. The Early Homosexual Rights Movement, 1864-1935. (Second Edition revised)
- James D. Steakley. The Early Homosexual Emancipation Movement in Germany. (1975).
- Sheila CavanaghSheila CavanaghSheila Cavanagh is an Associate Professor in Sociology and the Sexuality Studies Coordinator at York University. She was previously an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Western Ontario. Cavanagh completed her M.A. at the University of Toronto , and her Ph.D. in...
. Upsetting Desires in the Classroom: School Sex Scandals and the Pedagogy of the Femme Fatale IN: Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society Vol.9, No.3, (1994). - McWilliam. Beyond the Missionary Position: Teacher Desire and Radical Pedagogy IN: Todd (Ed.) Learning Desire: Perspectives on Pedagogy, Culture, and the Unsaid. Routledge (1994).