Papers of Siegfried Bernfeld

Siegfried Bernfeld was born in Lemberg (now Lviv, Ukraine) in 1892. He studied at the University of Freiburg and later at the University of Vienna, where he was a pupil of Sigmund Freud. While a student, Bernfeld was profoundly influenced by the educational philosophy and pedagogical methods of the German educator and school reformer Gustav Wyneken, embodied in the Freie Schulgemeinde (Free School Community) in Wickersdorf, which Wyneken founded. Wyneken's principles, which centered around encouraging young people to take an active role in developing educational and cultural institutions, became tremendously popular among the secondary school and university students of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Student committees for school reform were established in many of the university towns, and young people in the German-speaking countries were increasingly encouraged to assert their own ideas as alternatives to the traditional rigidity of the school system and the established cultural institutions, Quick to assume leadership positions, Siegfried Bernfeld rapidly became one of the most prominent advocates of school reform and of the legitimacy of what he saw as the distinct culture of youth.

The earliest documentation collected by Bernfeld relates to the Schulgemeinde in Wickersdorf in which he took an active interest, and to the so called Zielgemeinde (goal community) which was created in in early attempt to provide a forum for organized youth culture. Bernfeld's own name first appears in the collection on the documents of the Akademische Comite für Schulreforrn (Academic Committee for School Reform) in Vienna, in the school year of 1912-1913. While involved with this organization, Bernfeld coordinated the Akademische Arbeiter Unterrichtskurse (Academic Courses of Instruction for Workers) which consisted of discussions and lecture series for school-aged youth. In the same year, Bernfeld became the co-editor of the youth publication Anfang (Beginning), created by Gustav Wyneken and jointly run by Georg Barbizon in Berlin and Bernfeld in Vienna. Anfang was committed to allowing free expression for the ideas of young people of all persuasions. Its editorial office gathered papers and articles for publication from the leaders and mentors of the youth movement including Gustav Wyneken, and from young members of youth groups and organizations. As a result, the section of the archive pertaining to Anfang contains a remarkable variety of articles on subjects ranging from the political goals of the movement to the role of recreational bathing in youth group activities.

As co-editor of Anfang and leader of the Schulreform, Bernfeld began to collect great material related to the youth movement. He developed the opinion that a cultural movement ought to have a repository for its documents and writings, and so in 1913 set out to establish the Archiv fuer Jugendkultur (Archive for Youth Culture), with the help of the Comite fuer Schulreform, and endeavored to create collecting stations for material through his connections in the leadership of the youth movement. Throughout the war years, Bernfeld continued to gather material from whatever youth groups remained active, and to contribute his own ideas to such organizations as the Gesellschaft fuer Erziehungswesen (Society for Education).

Both the renewed strength of the Zionist cause and the increasing antisemitism in the non-Jewish German and Austrian youth organizations following the first World War are likely reasons for Bernfeld's post-war focus on the Zionist youth movement. Though his basic philosophy with respect to youth remained the same, Bernfeld now incorporated into it the principles of Zionism and of the Jewish culture. In 1917 he helped to establish the Studiengruppe fuer juedische Erziehung (Study Group for Jewish Education) with the support of the Zionist Central Committee of Vienna. This new society and its subgroup, the Arbeitskreis fuer Juedische Erziehung (Working Circle for Jewish Education), addressed itself to the problems and needs of Jewish education. The members of the Arbeitskreis examined Jewish schools and courses of religious instruction for Jews in non-Jewish schools and attempted to lay the groundwork for a new Juedisches Schulwerk (Jewish School System) to include everything from kindergarten programs to production cooperatives of older youths.

In the schoolyears of 1917-1918, 1918-1919, and 1919-1920, Bernfeld directed a program of Juedisch-Paedagogische Kurse (Jewish Pedagogical Courses), reconstituted as the Juedisches Paedagogium (Jewish Pedagogical Institute) in the 1919-1920 year. The courses offered in this program were designed to prepare teachers for work in the new Jewish school system at all levels and included seminars on Hebrew language instruction and classes on Talmudic law. In the same period, an attempt was made to unite the various youth groups in the German speaking countries through the establishment of a Zentralstelle Juedischer Jugendgruppen (Central Office of Jewish Youth Groups), also known as the Zentralverband (Central Union). Bernfeld was chosen to direct this institution, whose offices in the Juedisches Jugendheim (Jewish Youth House) at Obere Donaustrasse 91 in Vienna became the nucleus of the Jewish youth movement in Central Europe. The Zentralverband collected documents from Jewish youth groups, student societies, and athletic institutions and endeavored to unite these organizations through publications and through events such as the great Jugendtag (Youth Conference), organized in 1918, at which many important speeches concerning the goals and achievements of the youth movement were delivered.

Bernfeld remained committed to the movement for school reform and to the youth movement in general throughout his years at university and even after receiving his PhD, endeavoring to aid in the development of what he saw as the distinct culture of youth, and championing the right of young people to take an active part in the institutions which affected them. Although his earliest involvement with the youth movement in Austria and Germany was not with specifically Jewish organizations, Bernfeld soon focused his attention and efforts on the Jewish youth movement and the Jewish school system, maintaining the same basic principles in his approach to education and youth but adding to them the principles of Zionism and of Jewish cultural heritage. As a prominent leader and organizer of youth, and as a student of the educational system, Bernfeld assisted in the foundation and direction of many of the central organizations and publications of the youth movement and of the movement for school reform. The majority of these organizations were founded in Vienna which consequently became the hub of the Zionist youth movement in Central Europe. In addition to the activities documented in this collection, Bernfeld taught psychoanalysis in Vienna, Berlin, and later, Menton, France. He left France in 1936 for the U.S. and eventually settled in San Francisco, California where he died in 1953. He is remembered by the psychoanalytic profession for his practical applications of psychoanalytic principles in his involvement with the youth movement, for his examination of infant psychology, and for his study of Freud's own childhood.