Anna Siemsen

On 26 October 2005, the completely-renovated lecture hall in the Department of Education was ceremoniously renamed after the educator, politician, literary scholar, university instructor and Socialist Anna Siemsen (born on 18 January 1882 in Mark, Westphalia, died on 22 January 1951 in Hamburg). Following exile in Switzerland, Anna Siemsen lived from 1946 until her death in Hamburg. Her academic reintegration, however, was administratively and politically impeded in Hamburg's governmental offices.

Anna Siemsen belonged to an early generation of women who had tread the thorny path to university via finishing schools, teacher's training, and external Abitur exams (at humanistic high schools). She studied German, Philosophy and Latin in Munich, Bonn and Göttingen and in 1910 she completed her studies with the state exam and doctorate. Until the end of the war, she taught at various girl's schools. The war, particularly the justifications and propoganda which it generated, turned the daughter of a pastor and child of a conservative, middle-class milieu into an active Socialist.

Her growing political involvement as well as her interest in creating a new educational system led to a new position in school administration: in 1919, Anna Siemsen went as an academic assistant to the Volksministerium in Berlin; shortly thereafter, she went to Düsseldorf to oversee the creation of the Vocational School System (1920/21) and ultimately became the head school inspector of the Vocational School System in Berlin (1921-23). In 1923, she followed a call by the Socialist government of Thuringia and became head school inpector (for the secondary and tertiary educational systems). She also had a contract to teach at the University of Jena. She kept this teaching position as late as 1924, after the political winds in Thuringia had changed.

Anna Siemsen, like most active educational reformers, believed in the structural metamorphosis of the entire educational system. Her goals involved democratic school reform and the creation of a uniform, horizontally-structured school system comprising the entire spectrum of vocational training. She believed in hands-on learning as well as pedagogical principles such as "autonomy" and "responsibility". A further point of focus in her reform work was the expansion of the upper level schools. By combining general education and vocational training, she sought to dispense with the one-sidedness of the respective approaches and to dismantle the educational privileges enjoyed by those who opted for the institutions of higher learning. Her various undertakings, however, did not stop at schools. While teaching in Jena, she was also involved in worker's and adult education (particularly in the Heimvolkschule Tinz) and was involved in the field of youth literature. Her "Book of Girls," published in 1926, enjoyed a third print-run by 1927.

"Career and Education"

While in Jena, her central writings on educational theory, such as "Career and Education" (1926) and "The Social Foundations of Education" (1948) were completed. The latter had already appeared in manuscript form in 1934 but it could not be published until after the war. in "Career and Education," Anna Siemsen laid the theoretical groundwork for a new understanding of education, in which work formed the basis for the relationship between education and society. Simultaneously, she promoted another conception of work and vocational training: the single or individual job gave way to a work community and vocational training was to be understood as preparation for community work and social responsibility. The modern question of work, and the question as to how to reconcile work and personal life, was epitomized for Anne Siemsen in the double-burden shouldered by working women. The increasing amount of work for women (about one-third of the working population in 1925 were women), as well as the high percentage of women in unskilled jobs were social facts which made the "double education of women" socially necessary. In continuing education programs, she was committed to the idea that unskilled female, and not just male, workers should learn about finding work rather than about homemaking; in the field of adult education, she developed a special educational concept for women which focussed on working women's legal and social position.

In 1932, Anna Siemsen's professorship was revoked. In order to escape National Socialism, she was foced to emigrate to Switzerland in 1933. In exile, she already began to prepare to provide teacher training in universities. But beyond a few teaching contracts at the university, her desire to be part of the creation of a democratic school system in Hamburg remained unfulfilled.

Text_Prof. Dr. Christine Mayer Copyright yousee - Das Magazin der Universität Hamburg