Herman Nohl
Herman Nohl was a German philosopher and pedagogue.
World War I was a major turning point in Herman Nohl's life. The consequences of the war and his involvement with the youth movement and the folk high school prompted him to devote himself to pedagogy. He subsequently became one of the best-known representatives of reform pedagogy and humanities pedagogy. Nohl worked on establishing pedagogy as an independent science and the foundation of social pedagogy. He was dismissed from his post in 1937, but resumed his work in 1945. Nohl was Professor of Education at the University of Göttingen, co-editor of the journal Die Erziehung and founder and editor of the journal Die Sammlung. He wrote several works on aesthetics, educational anthropology and pedagogy, with Die Pädagogische Bewegung in Deutschland und ihre Theorie being considered his main pedagogical work.
Life and works
Herman Nohl came from a middle-class family who lived in an apartment on the grounds of the Berlinisches Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster throughout his childhood and youth. His father Hermann Nohl was a grammar school teacher. His mother Gabriele Nohl died in 1882. Herman Nohl had a total of four siblings, two from his father's first marriage and two from his second marriage to Elise. Nohl met Eduard Spranger at boarding school.In the summer semester of 1898, Nohl studied medicine in Berlin, but switched to the Geisteswissenschaften in the winter semester of 1898. He studied history, philosophy and German language and literature and studied with Friedrich Paulsen, among others. Paulsen offered Nohl the opportunity to go to Davos as a teacher after his studies, but Nohl had made contact with Wilhelm Dilthey in 1901, with whom he established a firm working relationship. In 1902, Nohl decided to write a dissertation on Socrates. On Dilthey's and Paulsen's recommendation, he was granted the Jüngken-scholarship, which made him financially independent of his father. In August 1904, Nohl completed his dissertation entitled Socrates and Ethics. Nohl's first academic work was the compilation and arrangement of Hegel's Theologischen Jugendschriften nach den Handschriften der Königlichen Bibliothek in Berlin which were printed in 1907.
In 1905, Herman Nohl married the pianist Bertha Oser from Vienna, a pupil of Clara Schumann and cousin of Ludwig Wittgenstein. This marriage ensured Nohl's continued financial independence.
Jena
Following Dilthey's recommendation to Rudolf Eucken, the Nohl family moved to Jena in the fall of 1907, where Herman Nohl habilitated in 1908 with his thesis on Die Weltanschauungen der Malerei. Nohl spent his time in Jena until the beginning of the World War I, completing various academic works. During this time, Nohl also came into contact with the German youth movement. He became friends with Eugen Diederichs and became acquainted with Gustav Wyneken's Landerziehungsheim in Wickersdorf. Some of his students were active in the youth movement, which was important for the development of his pedagogy.Herman Nohl and the youth movement
Herman Nohl described his first experiences with the German youth movement in a separate chapter of his book Die pädagogische Bewegung in Deutschland und ihre Theorie published in 1935. In it, he saw this movement as outstanding, as it changed the relationship between pedagogy and the generations and had an educational effect on itself. Herman Nohl summarized the youth movement as part of a "German movement" that lasted over 150 years, which also included the Sturm und Drang and Romantic periods. It was a recurring epoch "in which the young forces of our people struggled for a new content in life". This movement seeks "the new unity of a higher spiritual life, which ultimately takes root in the metaphysical foundation of our existence and revives the dead forms of culture and reshapes them from within". Herman Nohl saw parallels between the young Herder, the young Goethe and the youth movement, such as "the feeling of the obsolescence of the previous generation, the demand for a new youth, nature, art and religion as the three liberating powers, a new humanity that cannot be separated from an original German nationality, in which at the same time the contrasts between the classes and denominations that tear Germany apart are abolished." Nohl cited "the intrinsic importance of being young , the focus on the present and future and, most importantly, a new belief in the nature of man" as the main characteristics of the movement. Nohl was a nature-loving person, which fitted in with the ideals of the youth movement. His own children were also active in the Wandervogel and regularly went on hiking trips.Nohl developed his first thoughts on a specifically educational relationship as early as 1914 in the essay Das Verhältnis der Generationen in der Pädagogik, which is understood as a response to the youth movement's claim that young people could organize and lead themselves. For Nohl, an educationally relevant relationship between the generations remained necessary, despite the right of the child and adolescent to their own rights.
World War I
In the summer of 1915, Herman Nohl was conscripted into the army as a Landsturm and stationed in a barracks in Weimar. He spent the war as part of the occupying army in Ghent, where he was mainly assigned administrative tasks due to a knee injury and his short-sightedness. His initial enthusiasm for the war and conviction of its legitimacy changed over the course of the war and after the death of several friends. He realized how senseless and contradictory the war was when he met up with Belgian friends while soldiers from both countries were killing each other on the western front.In November 1918, Nohl returned to Jena. As a result of his conversations with the people, he now devoted himself to popular education and became a founding member of the democratic folk high school in Thuringia in 1919.
Göttingen and the relative autonomy of pedagogy
In the summer of 1919, at the instigation of his friend Georg Misch, Herman Nohl became his successor at the University of Göttingen in an extraordinary chair for practical philosophy with a special focus on education. On May 8, 1922, he became a full professor of education. He remained in Göttingen until his forced dismissal from the civil service in 1937.Nohl based his pedagogy on the concept of the customer, a concept of pre-scientific knowledge. According to this, education represents a reality of life that has always existed. The practice of education is therefore older than scientific reflection on it and therefore has its own value. For the experience of education is also the result of a possibly unconscious, but in each case very specific question.
Nohl's pedagogy was oriented towards the totality of pedagogical phenomena. He joined the Social Work Guild founded by his student Curt Bondy in 1925 and, together with Aloys Fischer, Wilhelm Flitner, Theodor Litt and Eduard Spranger, founded the journal Die Erziehung. Monatsschrift für den Zusammenhang von Kultur und Erziehung in Wissenschaft und Leben, which represented the representatives of a humanities-oriented pedagogy. Nohl was involved in the conception of the pedagogical academies reformed in Prussia in 1926 and, from 1928, published the five-volume Handbuch der Pädagogik together with Ludwig Pallat. In 1929, Nohl sought a connection to practice by founding a home in Lippoldsberg, which was affiliated to the pedagogical seminar in Göttingen. There, he held didactic courses for teachers in pedagogical seminars and combined theoretical knowledge with pedagogical practice.
Nohl intervened in the discussions surrounding the school reform of 1927 and formulated the postulate of the "relative autonomy" of education as a demarcation from political claims to power. Accordingly, education is primarily derived from the reality of education, which served Nohl as the starting point for a universally valid theory of education. Dilthey's concept of education was based on the idea that education is a "planned activity through which adults seek to educate the souls of adolescents" should be understood. According to Nohl, the reason for the autonomy of pedagogy lay in the "fact of educational reality as a meaningful whole". The pedagogical idea determines the meaning of that reality, and this also determines the independence of education and its boundary to other areas of society. Pedagogy should therefore assess economic, religious or political interests from its own point of view and reject them if necessary, and not subordinate itself to these interests.
In 1931, Nohl presented a plan for a "national educational organization within the framework of aid to the East". Further lectures from 1931 and 1932, which were published in 1933 as Landbewegung, Osthilfe und die Aufgabe der Pädagogik, emphasized the national aspect of education.
Pedagogical reference
Herman Nohl first used the specific term "pedagogical reference" in his lectures on social pedagogy in 1924 and 1925. In his 1924 lecture Die Pädagogik der Verwahrlosten, he named pedagogical reference as a possible cause of neglect, alongside disposition and milieu. In 1925, he called for an unconditional soul connection with the young person in the period of maturity:He saw the acquisition of a pedagogical reference as the prerequisite for a pedagogical relationship in general. According to Nohl, the relationship between pupil and educator was a community in which both were dependent on each other:As with Dilthey, for Nohl the relationship between an adult and a younger person formed the basis for educational action. In this way, education is no longer conceived only in asymmetrical relationships, but also as a personal choice based on sympathy. According to Nohl, the starting point of education was not the demands of society, but the sensitivities and learning needs of the adolescent himself. The starting point should be the difficulties that the child has and not those that the child makes for the educator or the parents. The educator should step out of his role as a purely professional interested party and fill his task with passion :The following points can be derived from this, which are decisive for the pedagogical reference according to Nohl:- The relationship has an emotional component.
- The pedagogical reference is fundamentally based on different levels of development, which requires maturity from the educator.
- Educational action is not derived from external goals and purposes, but is primarily oriented towards the pupil.
For Nohl, the focus here was on the aspect for its own sake, i.e. that the educator is not the executor of the interests of third parties or society. Not the demands of society, but the sensitivities and learning needs of the adolescent himself should be the starting point of educational activity, and education is therefore "decisively characterized by the fact that it has its starting point absolutely in the pupil, that is, that it does not feel itself to be the executor of any objective powers towards the pupil". For Nohl, the foundation of the pedagogical relationship was pedagogical love based on the model of motherly and fatherly love, which should be detached from its instinctive behavior. Nohl understood uplifting love as a spiritual behavior of its own kind, which is directed towards the higher form of the developing human being. According to Nohl, the so-called pedagogical community is supported "by two powers: Love and authority, or seen from the child's perspective: Love and obedience". Education as a relationship, as Nohl understood it, is established by the educator earning the pupil's favor through knowledge and empathy. The educator's authority should develop from the educator's personal qualities. This is achieved on the one hand through affection and eros, and on the other through the appreciation of achievements, whereby educational action has the character of a risk and can therefore also fail.
Even if, according to Nohl, pedagogy was solely at the service of the child, it should not be an end in itself, but should also be committed to objective contents and objectives. According to Nohl, education is not realized in the mere adaptation of the pupil to social conditions, but rather in the adaptation of such concerns to the pupil. As a result, the social and individual perspectives come into play, but always with the pupil in mind. At this point, the pedagogical reference sees itself as an advocate for the child.
The present and the future should be linked in the educator's actions. However, future possibilities and the goals derived from them should in no way prevent the fulfillment of present concerns and needs. Rather, Nohl saw an intrinsic value in every stage of a child's life, indeed in every moment, "which must not be sacrificed merely to the future, but demands its independent fulfillment".According to Nohl, unconditional obedience and the breaking of the pupil's self-will should be replaced by independence and activity, culminating in moral autonomy. The pedagogical relationship is therefore not a one-sided relationship of influence between the educator and the pupil, but rather one of interaction. Nohl spoke of a modern and active pedagogy that no longer sees its counterpart as a merely passively receiving object of educational actions and measures. The educator has a certain advantage over the pupil, on which their authority is based. The pupil, on the other hand, contributes to this relationship as a distinctive personality and his spontaneity, as well as his as yet undiscovered future possibilities, which are to be discovered and promoted through the pedagogical relationship.
However, it should not be forgotten that such a relationship cannot be forced, as "irrational factors such as sympathy and antipathy" are at work, which neither the educator nor the pupil can influence. For this reason, the educator should "not be offended or even let the pupil take it out on him if he does not succeed in establishing a relationship". A relationship based on freedom and free will always includes the possibility of failure, whereby the recognition of the subjectivity and sovereignty of the pupil can be demonstrated. Nohl saw a significant advance in pedagogy in the knowledge that the pupil has his or her own right and that taking this into account is what makes pedagogical work possible in the first place. In order for this pedagogical work to be possible, the failure of this pedagogical relationship on the part of the educator must not lead to offense and certainly not to reproaches towards the pupil, but must bring about a bond with someone else, "if only the bond takes place at all".The pedagogical reference is therefore not timelessly valid, but a fact of historical change in pedagogical relationships or opinions. Elements such as authority, obedience and trust are therefore not fixed values, but are always to be renegotiated between the generations and their content redefined. The pedagogical relationship also contains a tendency towards separation from the outset. With each developmental progress of the pupil, both sides, educator and pupil, strive to dissolve the pedagogical relationship. Even though all education is geared towards independence, the fundamental relationship between the generations remains intact. Pedagogues as advocates of the child, according to Nohl, would have to reshape the demands of society, but without the abandonment of these demands.This transformation should therefore be designed in such a way that the child's abilities are enhanced. The demands of society should be viewed from the context of meaning and the possibilities of the child. Pedagogy should therefore represent a balance between the subjective life of the pupil and the demands of objective culture. It would therefore be uneducational if the educator decided unilaterally in favor of either the subjective life of the pupil or the objective culture.