Visualizing Discipline of the Body in a German Open‐Air School (1923–1939): Retrospection and Introspection

Abstract

This article considers how historians might use imagery in the context of an open‐air school in Germany, Senne I‐Bielefeld (1922–1939). In considering the ‘nature’ of such images, issues and problems associated with their interpretation are illuminated and discussed. First, two images selected from the pre‐Nazi period of the school are examined within a theoretical discussion. Then, the article explores the question of how historians might understand the ‘discipline’ of the body of the schoolchild through its representation in photographs. The open‐air school is thereby considered as a demonstration of the result and possibility of bio‐power. Through such visual representations an argument is developed to reveal the meaning of the body in the school with reference to children's experience of the school's power/knowledge. A third image from the Nazi period of the school is employed to point to changes in the representation of children's bodies over time. Finally a plea is made for more attention to the emotional engagement of the historian as a valuable source in the history of education.

Notes

¹Thyssen, Geert. “Open‐air Education in (pre‐)Nazi Germany. A Case Study of Waldschule Senne I‐Bielefeld (1923–1939) and Karl Triebold Senior (1888–1970).” Paper presented at the annual European Conference on Educational Research, Dublin, September 2005.

²Germany hosted the third of five international congresses on open‐air schools in Bielefeld‐Hannover in 1936. The first one took place in France (1922), the second in Belgium (1931), the fourth in Italy (1949), the fifth in Switzerland (1953).

³A distinction must be made between Karl Triebold senior, principal of the open‐air school in Senne‐Bielefeld from 1923 until 1928 and general secretary of the International Committee of Open‐Air Education, and his son Karl Triebold junior (school doctor of the second open‐air school his father helped found in Schloss‐Haldem in 1948 and head doctor of the Municipal Child Clinic of Dortmund‐Derne).

⁴Burke, Peter. Eyewitnessing: The Uses of Images as Historical Evidence. New York: Cornell University Press, 2001: 10 and 13.

¹²Mitchell, Picture Theory, 24 and 104.

⁵See for instance: Pöggeler, Franz. Bild und Bildung: Beiträge zur Grundlegung einer Pädagogischen Ikonologie und Ikonographie. Frankfurt a. Main: Peter Lang, 1992; Schmitt, Hanno. Bilder als Quellen der Erziehungsgeschichte. Bad Heilbrunn/Obb: Klinkhardt, 1997; Grosvenor, I., M. Lawn, and K. Rousmaniere. Silences & Images. The Social History of the Classroom. New York: Peter Lang, 1999; Paedagogica Historica 36, no. 1 (2000); Emmison, M., and P. Smith. Researching the Visual. Images, Objects, Contexts and Interactions in Social and Cultural Inquiry. London–Thousand Oaks–New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2000; History of Education 30, no. 2 (2001); Burke, Eyewitnessing; Myers, K., U. Mietzner, and N. Peim, eds. Visual History: Images of Education. London: Peter Lang, 2005.

⁶See in this respect for instance: Ariès, Philippe. L'Enfant et la Vie Familiale sous l'Ancien Régime. Paris: Plon, 1960; and Hameline, Daniel. L'Éducation, ses Images et Son Propos. Paris: Éditions ESF, 1986.

⁷This concept is used by, among others, Grosvenor, Ian, and Martin Lawn. “Ways of Seeing in Education and Schooling: Emerging Historiographies.” History of Education 30, no. 2 (2001): 106, Nóvoa, António. “Texts, Images, and Memories. Writing ‘New’ Histories of Education.” In Cultural History and Education. Critical Essays on Knowledge and Schooling, edited by T. S. Popkewitz, B. M. Franklin and M. A. Pereyra. New York/London: Routledge Falmer, 2001: 53, but has been coined earlier, for example, by Tagg, John. The Burden of Representation. Essays on Photography and Histories. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988: 171.

⁸Cf. Catteeuw, Karl. “Als de Muren Konden Spreken… Schoolwandplaten en de Geschiedenis van het Belgisch Lager Onderwijs.” Ph.D. diss., Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, 2005, 17–22; Goodman, Joyce, and Jane Martin. “Editorial: History of Education—Defining a Field.” History of Education 33, no. 1 (2004): 8; and Popkewitz, Thomas S., Barry M. Franklin, and Miguel A. Pereyra. “History, the Problem of Knowledge, and the New Cultural History of Schooling.” In Cultural History and Education, 21.

⁹Catteeuw, Karl, Kristof Dams, Marc Depaepe, and Frank Simon. “Filming the Black Box: Primary Schools on Film in Belgium, 1880–1960: a first Assessment of Unused Sources.” In Visual History, 229.

¹⁰Mitchell, W. J. T. Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation. Chicago–London: University of Chicago Press, 1994: 418.

¹¹Grosvenor, Ian. “On Visualising Past Classrooms.” In Silences & Images, 87. The term has been used before in the context of revisionism.

¹³Nóvoa, António. “Ways of Saying, Ways of Seeing. Public Images of Teachers (19th–20th Centuries).” Paedagogica Historica 36, no. 1 (2000): 28.

¹⁴Grosvenor, Ian, and Martin Lawn. “Portraying the School: Silence in the Photographic Archive.” In Visual History, 107.

¹⁵Burke, Eyewitnessing, 188.

¹⁶Grosvenor, and Lawn, “Portraying the School”, 88–89.

¹⁷Cf. Catteeuw, Dams, Depaepe, and Simon, “Filming the Black Box”, 204.

¹⁸Ibid., 214.

¹⁹Ibid., 229.

²⁰Kennedy, Katharine D. “Visual Representation and National Identity in the Elementary Schoolbooks of Imperial Germany.” Paedagogica Historica 36: 227.

²¹Mietzner, Ulrike, and Ulrike Pilarczyk. “Methods of Image Analysis in Research in Educational and Social Sciences.” In Visual History, 111.

²²Mitchell, W. J. T. Iconology. Image, Text, Ideology. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1986: 157.

²³Mitchell, Picture Theory, 106.

²⁴Mitchell, Iconology, 157.

²⁵Mitchell, Picture Theory, 13.

²⁶This representation actually does not come from Bourdieu, but from Castel, Robert. “Images et Phantasmes.” In Un Art Moyen. Essai sur les Usages Sociaux de la Photographie, edited by P. Bourdieu. Paris: Les Éditions De Minuit, 1965: 295. Compare: Nóvoa, “Ways of Saying, Ways of Seeing”, 21–52; and Nóvoa, “Texts, Images, and Memories”, 45 and 53.

²⁷Castel, “Images et Phantasmes”, 295.

²⁸For a more thorough discussion, see: Mitchell, Iconology, 162–63, 171–72, 175 and 180–81.

²⁹Cf. Cohen, Sol. Challenging Orthodoxies: Toward a New Cultural History of Education. New York: Peter Lang, 1999: 148.

³⁰Mitchell, Picture Theory, 5. In de Certeau's words ‘heterology’ is literally ‘discourse on the other’. According to him historiography should be heterology; the word itself reveals a paradox, perhaps even an oxymoron, that is: between history (the real) and writing (discourse). See: de Certeau, Michel. The Writing of History. Translated by Tom Conley. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988: xxvii and 3.

³⁵Tagg, The Burden of Representation, 63.

³¹Popkewitz, Franklin, and Pereyra, “History, the Problem of Knowledge”, 4.

³²Ibid., 29.

³³Tagg, The Burden of Representation, 161.

³⁴Mitchell, Iconology, 69.

³⁶Nóvoa, “Ways of Saying, Ways of Seeing”, 26. Nóvoa does not provide a definition of the concept ‘cartography of vision’, but the term ‘cartography’ goes back to Rorty and could be understood as ‘mapping out a field of discussion’. See Depaepe, Marc. “Geen Ambacht Zonder Werktuigen. Reflecties over de Conceptuele Omgang met het Pedagogisch Verleden.” In Paradoxen van Pedagogisering. Handboek Pedagogische Historiografie, edited by M. Depaepe, F. Simon and A. Van Gorp. Leuven: Acco, 2005: 28.

³⁷Popkewitz, Franklin, and Pereyra, “History, the Problem of Knowledge”, 4.

³⁸Goodman, Joyce. “Troubling Histories and Theories: Gender and the History of Education.” History of Education 32, no. 2 (2003): 159. Two works of Benjamin himself provide implicit descriptions of the method: Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” In Illuminations, edited by Hannah Arendt. New York: Schocken Books, 1969; and Benjamin, Walter. “A Small History of Photography.” In One‐Way Street and Other Writingss, translated by Edmund Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter. London: NLB, 1979.

³⁹Goodman, “Troubling Histories and Theories”, 159.

⁴⁰Rousmaniere, Kate. “Questioning the Visual in the History of Education.” History of Education 30, 110–13.

⁴¹Samuel, Raphael. Theatres of Memory. London: Verso, 1994: 364.

⁴²Cf. Grosvenor, and Lawn, “Portraying the School”, 102.

⁴³Mitchell, Picture Theory, 287.

⁴⁴Figure 1 belongs to the following file: M 1 I M Nr. 1021. Waldschule in Senne I, Kr. Bielefeld. 1921–1931. [Landesarchiv Nordrhein‐Westfalen, Staats‐ und Personenstandsarchiv Detmold]. It was provided by Matthias Schultes. I should like to thank the archive for its kind permission to publish the picture. Figure 2 might have been sent in an envelope that was stamped in Bielefeld on 18 May 1927. It belongs to the personal archive of Hans Schumacher [Museum Osthusschule] whom I should like to thank for his permission to publish the picture.

⁴⁵Grosvenor, “On Visualising Past Classrooms”, 99.

⁴⁶Tagg, The Burden of Representation, 12.

⁴⁷Ibid., 12–13.

⁴⁸Ibid., 12–13.

⁴⁹I adopt the term from Cohen, Challenging Orthodoxies, 53 and 68. He defines it as the ‘encodation of the facts contained in a chronicle as components of specific kinds of plot structures’.

⁵⁰Compare Burke, Catherine. “Light: Metaphor and Materiality in the History of Schooling.” In Materialities of Schooling. Design–Technology–Objects–Routines, edited by M. Lawn and I. Grosvenor. Symposium Books: Oxford, 2005, 129–133.

⁵¹See: Hwang, C. P., M. E. Lamb, and I. E. Sigel. Images of Childhood. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1996; Higonnet, Anne. Pictures of Innocence: The History and Crisis of Ideal Childhood. London: Thames & Hudson, 1998; Holland, Patricia. Picturing Childhood: The Myth of the Child in Popular Imagery. London: IB Taurus, 2004.

⁵²Tagg, The Burden of Representation, 9.

⁵³Ibid., 11.

⁵⁴Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. London: Alan Lane, 1977.

⁵⁵The letter is marked and dated as “Waldschule, Senne I, Friedrichsdorf (Westf.) B. Nr. 2221, Senne I, den 15. Juli 1924.” In [file] M 1 I M Nr. 1021. Waldschule in Senne I, Kr. Bielefeld. 1921–1931. [Landesarchiv Nordrhein‐Westfalen, Staats‐ und Personenstandsarchiv Detmold]

⁵⁶Three of the photographs depicted boys, two of them depicted girls, from the age of 6 to 15½ and 6 to 12½ respectively. This particular photograph was not chosen for dubious reasons such as a gendered preference. It was selected for its potential to mislead the viewer, especially when accompanied by a caption in an explicit image–text constellation. Being the least frontally posed photograph, it is perhaps the least disturbing of all five.

⁵⁷“Waldschule, Senne I, Friedrichsdorf (Westf.) B. Nr. 2221, Senne I, den 15. Juli 1924.”

⁵⁸Compare Mitchell, Picture Theory, 103–06.

⁵⁹Green, David. “On Foucault: Disciplinary Power and Photography.” Camerawork 32 (1985): 9.

⁶⁰Dams, Depaepe, and Simon, “Sneaking into School”, 19. In Grosvenor, Lawn and Rousmaniere, Silences and Images: The Social History of the Classroom. History of Schools and Schooling, Volume 7. 1999.

⁶¹Either Hilda or Frieda Sopp may have been the wife of Karl Triebold senior. See: “Abschrift. Bielefeld, den 5.10.24” In [file] M 1 I M Nr. 1021. Waldschule in Senne I, Kr. Bielefeld. 1921–1931. [Landesarchiv Nordrhein‐Westfalen, Staats‐ und Personenstandsarchiv Detmold].

⁶²Burke, Eyewitnessing, 179.

⁶³This 8 ½‐minute film is called Waldschule Senne der Landesversicherungsanstalt Westfalen and has been produced by Firma Ernst Krahn, Münster i. W. in 1927. [Stadtarchiv Bielefeld]

⁶⁴Triebold, Karl. “Erholungs‐ und Heilstätten.” In Sozialpädagogik [Handbuch der Pädagogik series, 5], edited by H. Nohl and L. Pallat. Langensalza: Beltz, 1929: 89.

⁶⁵Nóvoa, “Ways of Saying, Ways of Seeing”, 35.

⁶⁶In Germany, open‐air day schools were more common variants. See: Triebold, Karl. “Gegenwärtiger Stand der Deutschen Freiluftschulbewegung.” In Die Freiluftschulbewegung. Versuch einer Darstellung ihres gegenwärtigen internationalen Standes, edited by K. Triebold. Berlin: R. Schoetz, 1931: 63.

⁶⁷Kirk, David. Schooling Bodies: School Practice and Public Discourse, 1880–1950. London–Washington, DC: Leicester University Press, 1998.

⁷⁰Tagg, The Burden of Representation, 62.

⁷¹Mitchell, Picture Theory, 324.

⁶⁸Depaepe, “Geen Ambacht Zonder Werktuigen”, 23–57.

⁶⁹Eggermont, Betty. “The Choreography of Schooling as Site of Struggle: Belgium Primary Schools, 1880–1940.” History of Education 30, no. 2: 129–40.

⁷²Tagg, The Burden of Representation, 9.

⁷³Ibid., 87.

⁷⁴Ibid., 60.

⁷⁵Cohen, S. Challenging Orthodoxies, 216, 241 and 242.

⁷⁶Tagg, The Burden of Representation, 173–74.

⁷⁷Verstraete, Pieter. “The Taming of Disability: Phrenology and Bio‐Power on the Road to the Destruction of Otherness in France (1800–60).” History of Education 34, no. 2 (2005): 123.

⁷⁸Kirk, Schooling Bodies, 3 and 11–12.

⁷⁹Tagg, The Burden of Representation, 62.

⁸⁰Verstraete, “The Taming of Disability”, 122.

⁸¹See for example: Triebold, Karl. “Pädagogische Beiträge zur Beschäftigungstherapie für Lungenkranke.” Zeitschrift für Kinderforschung: Organ der Gesellschaft für Heilpädagogik und des Deutschen Vereins zur Fürsorge für Jugendliche Psychopathen 23, no. 1 (1918): 21.

⁸²Cf. Labrie, Arnold. Zuiverheid en decadentie. Over de grenzen van de burgerlijke cultuur in West‐Europa 1870–1914. Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 2001: 87. The school was predominantly Protestant as was Triebold, its main propagator.

⁸³Cf. Corinthians 6: 19–20.

⁸⁴Cf. Triebold Karl. “Erholungs und Heilstätten”. Sozialpädagogik [Handbuch der Pädagogik series, 5], edited by H. Nohl and L. Pallat. Langensalza: Beltz, 1929, 88–91.

⁸⁵Gunning, Tom. “Tracing the Individual Body: Photography, Detectives, and Early Cinema.” In Cinema and the Invention of Modern Life, edited by L. Charney and V. R. Schwartz. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995: 32.

⁸⁶Eggermont, “The Choreography of Schooling”, 136.

⁸⁷Tagg, The Burden of Representation, 173–74.

⁸⁸Green, “On Foucault”, 9.

⁸⁹Triebold, Karl. “Waldschule und Tuberkulose.” In Jugendwohlfahrt und Schule, edited by E. Stern. Dortmund: Rupfus, 1926: 197.

⁹⁰Gunning, “Tracing the Individual Body”, 34.

⁹¹Dams, Depaepe, and Simon, “Sneaking into School”, 19, 31 and 25.

⁹²Cf. Mietzner, Ulrike, and Pilarczyck, Ulrike. “Gesten und Habitus im Pädagogischen Gebrauch. Ein Historischer Vergleich der Entwicklung von Gesten und Körperhabitus im Unterricht der DDR und der Bundesrepublik Deutschland seit 1945.” Paedagogica Historica 36, no. 1: 474–75; and Mietzner and Pilarczyk, “Methods of Image Analysis”, 111.

⁹³Mitchell, Iconology, 152.

⁹⁴This picture from 1933–1945 was provided by the ‘Stadtarchiv Bielefeld’, which I should like to thank for allowing me to publish it.

⁹⁵Cf. Triebold, K., K. Tornow, and W. Villinger. Freilufterziehung in Fürsorge‐Erziehungsheimen. Frankfurt a. M.: Diesterweg, 1938, 1–2; and Triebold, Karl, and Karl Tornow. “Freilufterziehung in Fürsorgeerziehungsheimen.” Zeitschrift für Kinderforschung: Organ der Gesellschaft für Heilpädagogik und des Deutschen Vereins zur Fürsorge für Jugendliche Psychopathen 47, no. 1 (1939): 101.

⁹⁶Compare Triebold, Karl. “Gesundheitliche Erziehung in der Waldschule” Leipzicher Lehrerzeitung: Organ des Leipzicher Lehrervereins und der Verwaltung der Comeniusbücherei 34, no. 5 (1927): 94 and Triebold and Tornow, “Freilufterziehung in Fürsorgeerziehungsheimen”, 103.

⁹⁷Triebold and Tornow, “Freilufterziehung in Fürsorgeerziehungsheimen”, 102–03.

⁹⁸Ibid.

⁹⁹Châtelet, Anne‐Marie. “The International Movement for Open‐air Schools.” In Open‐Air Schools. An Educational and Architectural Venture in Twentieth‐Century Europe, edited by A.‐M. Châtelet, D. Lerch and J.‐N. Luc. Paris: Éditions Recherches, 2003: 33; and Saint, Andrew. “Early Days of the English Open‐Air School (1907–1930).” In Open‐Air Schools, 74.

¹⁰⁰Villinger, Werner. “Arzt und Freiluftschulbewegung in der Fürsorgeerziehung.” Zeitschrift für Kinderforschung. Organ der Gesellschaft für Heilpädagogik und des Deutschen Vereins zur Fürsorge für Jugendliche Psychopathen 47, no. 1 (1939): 108.

¹⁰¹See e.g. Triebold, Karl. “Deutsche Freiluftschulen: im Dienste Körperlicher Ertüchtigung und im Kampfe Gegen die Arbeitslosigkeit: Zum 3. Internationalen Freiluftschulkongreß 1934 in Deutschland.” Die Arbeitsschule: Monatsschrift des Deutschen Vereins für Werktätige Erziehung 47, no. 5 (1933): 189–93.

¹⁰²Burke, Catherine. “Hands‐On‐History: Towards a Critique of the ‘Everyday’.” History of Education 30, no. 1: 192–94.

¹⁰³Grosvenor, Ian, Martin Lawn, and Kate Rousmaniere. “Introduction.” In Silences & Images, 6 and 7.

¹⁰⁴Cunningham, Peter. “Moving Images: Propaganda Film and British Education, 1940–45.” Paedagogica Historica 36, no. 1: 402.

¹⁰⁵Castel, “Images et Phantasmes”, 309.

¹⁰⁶Gunning, “Tracing the Individual Body”, 39.

¹⁰⁷Tagg, The Burden of Representation, 4.

¹⁰⁸Ibid., 62.

¹⁰⁹Ibid., 203 and 206.

¹¹⁰Mitchell, Picture Theory, 422–24.

¹¹¹Ibid., 6.