The Politics of Progressive Education: The Odenwaldschule in Nazi Germany

by Dennis Shirley

In March 1933, Nazi storm troopers seized control of the Odenwaldschule, a small German boarding school near Heidelberg. Founded in 1910 by educational reformer Paul Geheeb, the Odenwaldschule was a crown jewel of the progressive education movement, renowned for its emancipatory pedagogical innovations and sweeping curricular reforms. In the tumultuous year that followed that fateful spring, Geheeb moved from an initial effort to accommodate Nazi reforms to an active opposition to the Third Reich’s transformation of the school. Convinced at last that humanistic education was all but impossible under the new regime, he emigrated to Switzerland in March 1934. There he opened a new school, the Ecole d’Humanité, which became a haven for children escaping the horrors of World War II.

In this intimate chronicle of the collision between a progressive educator and fascist ideology during Hitler’s rise to power, Dennis Shirley explores how Nazi school reforms catalyzed Geheeb’s alienation from the regime and galvanized his determination to close the school and leave Germany. Drawing on a wealth of unpublished documents, such as Geheeb’s exhaustive correspondence with government officials and transcripts of combative faculty meetings, Shirley is able to reconstruct in detail the entire drama as it unfolded. Others have examined the intellectual antecedents of Nazism and the regime’s success at developing themes from popular culture for its political purposes; Shirley goes further by analyzing the many ways in which German educators could and did respond to Nazi reforms. In the process he identifies the myriad forces that led individuals to accept or resist the regime’s transformation of education.

The Politics of Progressive Education offers a richly rewarding examination of how education in general, and progressive education in particular, fared in the turbulent political currents of Nazi Germany. It brings to light a remarkable story, hitherto untold, of one individual’s successful attempt to uphold humanistic values in the darkest of circumstances.

296 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Dr. Dennis Shirley’s work in education spans from the microlevel of assisting beginning teachers to the macrolevel of designing and guiding large-scale research and intervention projects for school districts, states, and nonprofit agencies. Dr. Shirley recently collaborated with Andy Hargreaves on a study of the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust Raising Achievement Transforming Learning Project, which raised pupil learning results in over 200 schools in England at double the national rate in a 2-year period. The findings of that research have been presented in Hargreaves’ and Shirley’s first collaboratively authored book, The Fourth Way.
For 4 years, Dr. Shirley has led a teacher inquiry project along with Boston Public Schools teacher-leader Elizabeth MacDonald; their research has been published in The Mindful Teacher. Dr. Shirley serves on the Scholars Forum of the Public Education Network, advises the One Square Kilometer of Education school improvement project of the Freudenberg Foundation in Berlin, and collaborates with the California Teachers Association on improving 480 schools in struggling circumstances. He has led three school improvement efforts with more than 13 million dollars in funding, and his research has been translated into German, Swedish, Spanish, and French. He holds a doctorate from Harvard University.

Reviews

[Skye · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an incredible book! I've waited a very long time to read this book-- I am the daughter of two teachers from the Ecole, my father wrote this book (I will try to be as unbiased here as possible!) when I was a toddler, I visited the Ecole throughout my childhood, and I went to the Ecole for my junior year of high school. The history of the school was told to me so early and so often that I don't remember being told it for the first time. My childhood incorporated so many beautiful aspects of the school, like Andachten on Sunday evenings and family meetings reminiscent of Schulgemeinde.

Even if you don't know of the school though, you are in for a treat with this book. It's a really gripping and moving story of a man (Geheeb) whose courage and integrity enable him to steer a German school successfully through the rise of the Nazis and eventually move the school to Switzerland. There are so many heroes in the book, and at the heart of the story is the conflict between Geheeb (who emigrated to found the Ecole) and Sachs (who continued to run the German school under the Nazis, but who protected and hid Jews as well as others throughout the war). The Geheeb/Sachs divide poses big questions about what it means to stand for one's values. The fact that this is a true story makes it all the more powerful.

I originally was going to read just a chapter a day, but I read the second half of the book in one sitting. I cried at some moments, especially when Geheeb welcomes refugee children and helps them overcome the traumas of war.

I recommend this to anyone who has an interest in history, especially WW2 or Jewish history. I also think it will be cherished by anyone who is at all connected with the Ecole. It is a total tear-jerker for teachers like me, so I would strongly recommend it to anyone who has the honor of teaching young people.

At the end of the day though, it's just a book about two ordinary men who put their lives on the line so that they could make the best of a horrible situation. It's the kind of book that makes you proud to be a human being. I feel so blessed to be a child of the Ecole and grateful to Geheeb for... well, my existence! Without his decision, I would not be here. It was high time I learned more about him and his journey to Switzerland.