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The following photos depict three broadly health-related projects. The
first represents an advisory service for the education of children and young
people with intellectual disabilities, offered by a welfare society for young
people with intellectual or psychological disabilities and also founded in the
1920s (figure 33). The next one shows a scene at a social service in a hospital.
Based on the U.S. model, this was started in 1913/14 (figure 34). The last one
depicts Dr. Neumann‘s Kinderhaus, the earliest hospital for children and infants
in Berlin, founded in 1896 (figure 35).
In the following I give a summary of the second part of the photo album:
At the beginning there are five photos of the oldest projects of modern
professional social work in Germany, these are followed by pictures of newer
projects which were founded or established around the time of World War I
and in the years of the Weimar Republic, and finally we are shown another
early project. Each of these can be characterised as a pioneer project in its field,
which means that they were important for the development of social work
in two senses: first through their practice and secondly by their training of
students for social work. On the other hand – and this is especially interesting
for the early years – these projects were influenced and developed by women
who were studying social work or had studied it – often at the school of Alice
Salomon.
To put it in concrete terms: the founder and chairwoman of the Welfare
Society for Young Psychopaths (Verein zur Fürsorge für jugendliche Psychopathen)
was Ruth Ida von der Leyen (1888–1935). She had attended the
Soziale Frauenschule in 1912/13, was subsequently trained by Frieda Duensing
in youth welfare, and then she herself trained students of the school, also later
lecturing at the school. She wrote the text for the album (figure 36). 9 Heide
9
“The consulting centre for remedial education of the German Welfare Society for Young Psychopaths served as
a training centre for the introduction of students of the welfare school [i.e. the Soziale Frauenschule] to the work
with psychopathic children. In this special branch of youth welfare, they should learn: the importance, in the case of
every single child, of taking his or her personality, education and the environment into consideration; the manner in
which abnormal traits become apparent in a child’s behaviour; and how all these aspects are to be taken into consideration
for any suitable educational measure. – In practice, the students, apart from their participating in consultation
hours and subsequent care, were trained during ‘play afternoons’ to observe psychopathic children, to deal with them
and to understand the difficulties to which a psychopathic child is exposed in the community. Ruth Ida v.d. Leyen”.
Wronsky, „Alice Salomon“, 16.
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