Georg-Siegfried Kawerau jako prekursor współczesnej dydaktyki historii

Abstract

Georg-Siegfried Kawerau (1886-1936) was the co-founder and one of the chief representatives of the German pedagogy and didactics of history of the times of the Weimar Republic. Ideologically connected with social-democracy, he was bringing social-democratic values to education. His desire was to form the historical and political education of youth in the spirit of acceptance of the parliamentary republic. He conducted a critical analysis of the German history handbooks, in which he gave a negative evaluation of Germanocentrism, nationalism, and chauvinism. He was taking measures to remove from the history handbooks the image of history of other nations as enemies, especially, the French and the Polish. He was for educating youth in the spirit of peace and friendship among nations. He insisted on freeing the teaching of history of any political propaganda. Noticing the relationships between the teaching of history, civics and politics, he was creating methodological foundations which were referred to many years later in the Federal Republic of Germany. He was a proponent of the sociological model of history. He propagated views which were ahead of his times. It was only in the Federal Republic of Germany that they found favourable atmosphere and followers who reconstructed the theory and practice of teaching history and other social subjects, which was started by Kawerau at the times of the Weimar Republic. He was persecuted for his views by the Hitler regime. He died during an interrogation by the Gestapo.