Magda Kelber

returned to post-war Germany and took over the leadership of the Quaker Relief Society in the British occupation zone. She had prepared for this in the group "German Educational Reconstruction Committee", which was committed to the denazification and democratisation of German society. From 1949 to 1963, she was director of Haus Schwalbach in the Taunus, a renowned educational institution founded by the American military government, which was particularly concerned with the theory and practice of group pedagogy. The institution was initially intended as a leadership training centre for informal and formal multipliers in the Hessian communities. A considerable number of educators, social workers and similar professional groups "attended training or advanced training courses at Haus Schwalbach and were familiarised with modern social work and social psychology here, rather than at the backward and desolate universities after 1945". In Kelber's understanding of group pedagogy, two poles stand out, namely the group and the individual. She wrote succinctly: "Healthy work is based on the right relationship of the individual to the group". Elsewhere she stated the same thing: "As a social being, man needs the I-We-relationship in addition to the I-You-relationship, in many different groups, in order to try out different roles and develop different abilities". Group pedagogy is a method that consciously uses the small, manageable group as the centre and means of education. Accordingly, Kelber added another dimension: the "group as an educational space and means". This results in the goal of group pedagogy, namely the "individual and social maturation of the human being. It grows out of the moral maxims of reverence for man and his responsibility for the community." Group pedagogy and the group process are determined by pedagogical principles that govern the work of the group leader, which are: Individualise... Work with the strength of each individual ... Starting where the group is and moving with them - at their pace ... Give space for decisions ... Set necessary boundaries and use them positively ... Making yourself superfluous as a group educator ... Cultivate cooperation more than individual competition ... Help through programme design ...