Europe outside Europe: developing a German Jewish citizenship in Argentina. The case of the Pestalozzi Schule

MAYER, LILIANA; SCHENQUER, LAURA

Pragmatics of social and cultural capital

University of Rzeszowskiego

Lugar: Rzeszow; Año: 2015; p. 54 - 67

The Pestalozzi Schule (Pestalozzi School) was set up in 1934 by German immigrants opposed to National Socialism, which at the time was the ruling party in Germany. Those who founded the institution in Argentina proposed fomenting an alternative pedagogical line to the Germanophile position which, at this juncture, almost all the German institutions in the country had adopted . As a consequence, the Pestalozzi School was withdrawn from the list of schools receiving grants from the German government . This article aims to investigate the children of Jewish and German immigrants experience as pupils attending the Pestalozzi between the second half of the fifties up to the first half of the seventies. This period was chosen as we consider it has been little researched; other works, such as Friedman (2011), concentrated on an analysis of the school in the period of opposition to the Nazi regime. In this paper, on the other hand, its later socializing role is investigated in a period when it is rebuilt and the establishment anti-Nazi past is conjured up. In these circumstances we seek to analyse the reasons why Jewish- German chose the Pestalozzi to educate their children, during a period in which the extermination of the Jews of which Nazi Germany was capable acquired the status of crimes against humanity. In a similar vein, this paper goes into what the reasons for justifying the learning of German were; if it demonstrated a firm desire to return to Germany or if on the other hand it was a symptom of the defense of their German character despite suffering expulsion and rejection.** Nota de aclaración: Este capítulo fue enviado y seleccionado para participar del libro compilado por Jan P. Galkowski & Hubert Kotarski de University Rzeszow, Poland.