Elisabeth Blochmann (April 14, 1892 in Apolda, Germany - 27 January 1972 in Marburg, Germany) was an eminent scholar of education, as well as of philosophy, and a pioneer in and researcher of womens' education in Germany. April 14 is the 104th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (105th in leap years). ... 1892 (MDCCCXCII) was a leap year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ... Apolda is a town in Saxe-Weimar with extensive hosiery manufactures; has mineral springs. ... January 27 is the 27th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1972 (MCMLXXII) was a leap year that started on a Saturday. ... Marburg is a city in Hesse, Germany, on the Lahn river. ... A scholar is either a student or someone who has achieved a mastery of some academic discipline. ... These five broad types of question are not the only subjects of philosophical inquiry, and there are many overlaps between the categories which are subsumed within the discipline under the four major headings of Logic, Ontology, Epistemology, and Axiology. ...

Life

Born in 1892 as the first child of the public prosecutor Dr. Heinrich Blochmann and his wife Anna née Sachs into an assimilated German-Jewish upper-middle-class family, Elisabeth grew up in then then Grand Ducal capital of Weimar, where she attended the upper girls' school, was certified as an assistant nurse, and qualified as a teacher. Serving as a nurse at a lazarett in Weimar during the first year of World War I, and then for two years as a teacher at the Großherzogliche Sophienstift, she enrolled, in 1917, at the University of Jena to study history, philosophy, and german language and literature. She then switched to the University of Straßburg, then in Germany, where she attended lectures by Georg Simmel, and after one semester, as a result of the end of the war, to the University of Marburg, where she focused on medieval history and on pedagogy and philosophy, two subjects taught together there. Her teacher, who had a chair combining both fields, was the eminent Neo-Kantian Paul Natorp. In 1919, she switched to the University of Göttingen, where she met her most important academic teacher, Herman Nohl. In 1922, she passed the State Examn qualifying her to teach at the Gymnasium, and in 1923, she received a PhD in history. See also Weimar Republic. ... Combatants Entente Powers Central Powers Commanders {{{commander1}}} {{{commander2}}} Strength {{{strength1}}} {{{strength2}}} Casualties > 5 million military deaths > 3 million military deaths {{{notes}}} World War I, also known as the First World War and (before 1939) the Great War, the War of the Nations, War to End All Wars was a world... Friedrich Schiller University of Jena (FSU) is located in Jena, Thuringia in Germany and was named for the German writer Friedrich Schiller. ... Georg Simmel Georg Simmel (March 1, 1858 – September 28, 1918) was one of the first generation of German sociologists. ... The University of Marburg, officially called Philipps-Universität Marburg after its founder, the Landgrave Philipp I of Hesse (usually called the Magnanimous), was founded in 1527 and is the worlds first and oldest Protestant university. ... Paul Gerhard Natorp (24 January 1854-17 August 1924) was a German neo-Kantian philosopher, and educationalist, and one of the Marburg school. ... The Georg-August University of Göttingen (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, often called the Georgia Augusta) was founded in 1734 by George II, King of Great Britain and Elector of Hanover, and opened in 1737. ...

Until 1926, Blochmann was instructor at the "Social Womens' School" in Thale, Harz; from 1926 to 1930, lecturer at the Pestalozzi-Fröbel House, and from 1930, Professor of Social and Theoretical Pedagogy at the Academy of Education at Halle an der Saale. After the Nazis' rise to power, she was dismissed from that position in 1933 because of her Jewish background, due to the Nuremberg Race Laws, and fled via the Netherlands to England. Unlike almost all other German émigrés, she was able to secure an eventually permanent position at a prestigious institution, Lady Margaret Hall of the University of Oxford, where she also was University Lecturer in Education (since 1945). In 1938, she received an Oxford MA, and in 1947, she became a British citizen. Pedagogy is the art or science of teaching. ... Map of Germany showing Halle Halle (also called Halle an der Saale in order to distinguish from Halle in North Rhine-Westphalia) is the largest town in the German Bundesland of Saxony-Anhalt. ... The neutrality of this article is disputed. ... Lady Margaret Hall is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. ... The University of Oxford, located in the city of Oxford, England, is the oldest university in the English-speaking world. ...

In 1952, she was invited back to the University of Marburg, in order to build up the newly-founded, first independent Chair of General Education (Pedagogy), and decided to accept this call in spite of many qualms. During that year, she first became acting head of the chair, then Professor extraordinaria (full professor without a chair), and finally Professor ordinaria. During her Marburg time, she was the mentor of a large group of education scientists, many of whom going on to become very eminent scholars and administrators in her own right, forming a "Blochmann School". In 1960, she retired as Professor emerita, but substituted later for vacant chairs both in Marburg and Göttingen. A street in Marburg's Tannenberg district bears her name today.

In 1972, Elisabeth Blochmann died of cancer in Marburg. Her grave is in the Urnenhain of the Ockershäuser Friedhof.

Work

Blochmann's work covers history, philosophy, literature, and education. Most important is the latter, as it takes a key role in the establishment of scholarly work on the Kindergarden, as well as on womens' education. In that field, her main scholarly interest was in its beginning, i.e. in the first institutions, such as girls schools, in Germany. In the United States and Germany, kindergarten (German for garden of children) refers to the first level of a childs formal education. ...

Blochmann and Martin Heidegger

Of some importance for, and great interest in, the history of philosophy is Blochmann's significant affair with her philosophical teacher Martin Heidegger. It is probably fair to say that, after Hannah Arendt, she was Heidegger's most important extramarital affair (as is known since 2005, Heidegger led something of an "open" marriage and his wife Elfriede both knew about his affairs and conducted her own). Elfriede Heidegger and Elisabeth Blochmann were friends and former classmates. Martin Heidegger (September 26, 1889 – May 26, 1976) was a German philosopher. ... Hannah Arendt (October 14, 1906 – December 4, 1975) was a German political theorist. ...

The story is well-documented in the 1989 edition of their letters, starting in 1918.

Bibliography

Works

• Das 'Frauenzimmer' und die 'Gelehrsamkeit'. Eine Studie über die Anfänge des Mädchenschulwesens in Deutschland. Heidelberg, 1966.
• Hermann Nohl in der pädagogischen Bewegung seiner Zeit, 1879-1960, Göttingen, 1969.

About Elisabeth Blochmann

• Elisabeth Blochmann (1892-1972), Wolfgang Klafki and Helmut-Gerhard Müller, ed., Marburg: Universitätsbibliothek Marburg, 1992. The main (short) biography, written by some of her students. The affair with Heidegger is not mentioned at all.
• Martin Heidegger - Elisabeth Blochmann. Briefwechsel 1918-1969. Joachim W. Storck, ed. Marbach am Neckar: Deutsches Literatur-Archiv, 1989, 2nd edn. 1990.
• Festgabe für Elisabeth Blochmann zum 70. Geburtstag. K.-E. Nipkow and Peter-M. Roeder, eds.
• Pädagogische Analysen und Reflexionen. Festschrift für Elisabeth Blochmann zum 75. Geburtstag. Peter-M. Roeder, ed.