22 Facts About Kurt Hahn

Kurt Matthias Robert Martin Hahn was a German educator.

Kurt Hahn was decisive in founding, among other organizations and initiatives, Stiftung Louisenlund, Schule Schloss Salem, Gordonstoun, Outward Bound, the Duke of Edinburgh's Award, and the first of the United World Colleges, Atlantic College in Wales.

Kurt Hahn had been private secretary to Prince Max von Baden, the last Imperial Chancellor of Germany, and in 1919 was part of the German delegation to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, where he witnessed the creation of the Treaty of Versailles, as secretary and speechwriter for the German minister of Foreign Affairs, Graf Brockdorff-Rantzau.

Kurt Hahn asked the students, faculty, and alumni of the Salem school to choose between Salem and Hitler.

Kurt Hahn settled in Scotland, where he founded Gordonstoun with Sir Lawrence Holt on similar principles to the school in Salem.

Related searches

Later, Kurt Hahn converted to Christianity and became a communicant member of the Church of England in 1945 and preached in the Church of Scotland.

Kurt Hahn started an international organisation of schools, now called Round Square.

Kurt Hahn was involved in the foundation of the Outward Bound Organisation, Atlantic College in Wales and the wider United World College movement, and the Duke of Edinburgh's Award.

Kurt Hahn founded or inspired the founding of several new boarding schools based on the principles of Salem and Gordonstoun: Anavryta, Greece ; Louisenlund, Germany ; Battisborough, England ; Rannoch School, Scotland ; Box Hill, England ; International School Ibadan, Nigeria ; and The Athenian School, USA.

Kurt Hahn resigned from the headship of Gordonstoun on health grounds and returned to Hermannsberg near Salem in 1953.

Kurt Hahn died there on 14 December 1974 and was buried in Salem.

Kurt Hahn believed that education could prevent this corruption, if students were given opportunities for personal leadership and to see the results of their own actions.

Kurt Hahn relied here on Dr Bernhard Zimmermann, the former Director of the Gottingen University Physical Education Department, who had to leave Germany in 1938 as he did not want to divorce his Jewish wife.

Kurt Hahn's educational thinking was crystallised by World War I, which he viewed as proof of the corruption of society and a promise of later doom if people, Europeans particularly, could not be taught differently.

Kurt Hahn's prefects are called Colour Bearers, and traditionally they are promoted according to Kurt Hahn's values: concern and compassion for others, the willingness to accept responsibility, and concern and tenacity in pursuit of the truth.

Kurt Hahn emphasised what he called "Samaritan service", having students give service to others.

Kurt Hahn formulated this as focusing on finding Christian purpose in life.

In 1934, through his lectures in London to the New Education Fellowship, Hahn met the educationalist T C Worsley and persuaded him to spend a summer term at the newly founded Gordonstoun in the capacity of consultant.

Kurt Hahn revealed himself as having a fierce temper, a strong hand with the cane, and a temperament which hated being crossed.

Kurt Hahn's behaviour came to seem to Worsley "so ineffably, so Germanically silly" that he was unable to share the clear adulation of the teaching staff:.

Kurt Hahn had what I have since learned to be a common German belief that Shakespeare was better in German than in English.

Kurt Hahn proposed four solutions to these problems, all of which manifested themselves in a variety of ways at Salem, Gordonstoun, Atlantic College, and with Outward Bound:.