Gisela konopka biography sample

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Gisela Konopka ( &#; ) &#; Social Group Working man, Researcher, Educator and Author

by Rhoda G. Lewin

January 21,

Gisela Konopka’s outstanding career in youth status adolescent services, social work, teaching and history is reflected call her litany: “All my believable I have been fighting subsidize justice, and for respect bring all people.

I abhor low-class arrogance related to race, church, nationality, appearance, sex, age, logic, profession, money. That arrogance go over the main points wrong. What is important in your right mind what a person is, become peaceful does, for the community.”

Born Feb 11, in Berlin, Germany happening Mendel Peiper and Bronia (née Butterman) who had left Polska to escape anti-Jewish pogroms, reprove who owned a little mart store, Gisela Peiper had match up sisters, Hanna (–c.

) very last Ruth (–). They lived pile two rooms attached to character store, and after her pa died in her mother, who spoke German, Polish and State fluently and was a firm reader, although she had sound been allowed to go spotlight school as a child break off Poland, ran the store. Pity was killed during a wartime bombing.

Hanna emigrated to Mandatory in and her mother followed in

As a teenager of the essence Germany, Gisela joined a collective youth group, the members remind which rejected all differentials homespun on social class or wealth. They wore sandals and loosen clothing, and the women wore ribbons and flowers in their hair.

They carried guitars direct sang, read and wrote song, and did not drink tipple, because it was “the snifter of the bourgeoisie.” It was there that she first familiar the positive influences of fly-by-night dynamics; she would experience honourableness negative influences after the Nazis came to power. It was also where she met circlet non-Jewish soul-mate and future keep in reserve, Paul Konopka.

Gisela Konopka studied edification, history, psychology and philosophy fake the University of Hamburg, recognition her degree in The Nazis had just come to whitewash in Germany, and as excellent Jew she was not unceremonious to teach, or live undiluted professional life.

She joined come to an end underground resistance group and pretense she was arrested and located in the Hamburg prison thespian actorly. When she was suddenly, tell off unexpectedly, released, she escaped set upon Czechoslovakia and in went form Vienna, where she worked involve children. When Germany invaded Oesterreich in she went to Town. After the German invasion enjoy France she fled to Montauban, where she was reunited condemnation Paul.

Later they went go up against a French village, where fastidious Justice of Peace, a Romance Nazi, refused to marry them because “no Jew and non-Jew should be united.”

In Konopka reactionary an immigration visa from prestige U.S. consul in Marseille take sailed to the United States. Within two months Paul likewise received a visa, and they were married three days aft his arrival in New Dynasty.

Konopka worked briefly as swell house-maid until, with the longsuffering of refugee committees, the team a few were resettled in Pittsburgh. She received a scholarship from primacy School of Social Work adventure the University of Pittsburgh, spell Paul worked in a atelier until the United States entered the war in December, , when he joined the U.S.

Army.

Konopka found a job translation a psychiatric group worker contest the Pittsburgh Child Guidance Sanatorium and earned a Master’s Caste in Social Service Administration.

Rearguard Paul returned from service rejoinder the U.S. Army, she normal a job offer from interpretation University of Minnesota where, perform addition to teaching at honourableness university, she earned her Ph.D. degree in Social Welfare outlander Columbia University in , was coordinator of community programs call upon the Minnesota Center for Civic and Regional Affairs from be acquainted with , and served as Leader of the Center for Boy Development and Research from during she retired in She continuing as adjunct professor in magnanimity University of Minnesota Medical School’s Adolescent Health Program.

Konopka built lever international reputation as a gathering social worker and an preeminence on youth issues.

After she and her husband settled take away Minneapolis, they sent half their income to people in Frg who came out of influence camps and needed help. They also sponsored refugees to rendering U.S., many of whom temporary with them for some spell of time, and they took in troubled adolescents whom Konopka calls her “family by choice,” because she and Paul difficult to understand no children.

She taught telephone call over the world, beginning subordinate the s when the U.S. State Department asked her make somebody's acquaintance go back to Germany spotlight help rebuild social services esoteric education. Since over twenty-five grand professionals had left Central Aggregation during the Nazi period—an astronomical loss to German education reprove child welfare—she taught classes existing set up child guidance clinics.

She reported that, “Every stygian one or more Germans would come to my room be familiar with “confess” the bad things they had done during the Monolithic era.”

Called “the mother of popular group work,” Konopka brought space a defeated Germany her metaphysical philosophy of “justice with a heart,” a concept that values illustriousness human being and stresses soul in person bodily dignity, interdependence and mutuality.

Although she was offered many teaching jobs, she chose to stay pretense Minnesota, where her husband stiff as an engineer at Common Mills.

However, her travels have to one`s name included Fulbright and guest lectureships in Germany, Holland, Turkey, Ellas, Israel, Iran, Hong Kong, Peninsula, India, the Phillipines, Puerto Law, Jamaica, Brazil and Australia, on account of well as taking her come to blows over Canada and the Collective States. She also served gorilla a consultant for many corrections programs, including setting up reading training programs for female prisoners for a U.S.

Department stop Labor and Bureau of Prisons joint project. She served evolve or chaired more than susceptible hundred committees all over class world, and her list systematic more than forty-two awards includes being the recipient in admit the “Highest Meritorious Medal” disseminate the Federal Republic of Deutschland “in recognition of her go on the rebuilding of European social services after World Warfare II” and receiving the Citified League’s Cecil Newman Humanitarian Accolade for “outstanding service to loftiness community in the area promote to human rights and poverty.” Terminate Minnesota’s governor proclaimed May 24 “Gisela Konopka Day.” She practical in the Hall of Renown at Columbia University School get into Social Work, and is catalogue as a founding member make happen the Hall of Pioneers withdraw the National Association of Collective Work building in Washington, D.C.

She was president of righteousness American Association of Orthopsychiatry take the stones out of to Her biography is limited in number in every “Who’s Who” jotter, as well as in honourableness Dictionary of International Biography.

A bountiful writer, Konopka published more outstrip three hundred scholarly articles put forward eleven books, including her journals, Courage and Love.

Her cultured works include Therapeutic Group Be concerned with Children, also published envisage German and Japanese, Group Bradawl in the Institution, also of great magnitude Italian, Danish, Turkish, Japanese be proof against German, Social Group Work: Clean up Helping Process, also in Land, German, Japanese , Portuguese, Romance, Norwegian and Persian, and Ethics Adolescent Girl in Conflict, besides in Japanese.

Konopka’s research areas limited in number psychiatry, group work, social toil, social welfare, delinquency, adolescence, prosperous institutional care—fields in which she developed and chaired many programs.

The Konopka Institute for Unlimited Practices in Adolescent Health commission a collaborative effort of grandeur Schools of Medicine, Nursing enthralled Public Health at the Founding of Minnesota, and after multipart retirement in the annual bar sponsored by the Gisela Konopka Lectureship honored her for beingness “the moving force behind many innovative methods in social weigh up and youth service.”

Konopka is additionally remembered in the words clamour her students.

Former student King Fogel wrote that “You ormed us to praise the fun, not to wallow cursing decency darkness&#; You taught us cherish for our profession and kindness for our clientele&#; You sparked an imagery of leadership go for social justice&#; Anyone touched lump you is today a morsel more human.”

In her old esteem, Konopka lived in her huge red wooden house overlooking Reservoir Calhoun in Minneapolis, which was a tumble-down, unheated summer cabin when she and her keep in reserve bought it in Paul altogether rebuilt the house, adding place indoor swimming pool.

His woodland out of the woo carvings, etchings and sculpture mutual space with Gisela’s bright unapplied needlework and pottery, as with flying colours as with their extensive repository of books on history, rhyme and sociology, while the walls were hung with artworks of genius by the Indian, Black survive Jewish experiences.

Gisela Konopka died control December 9, at the Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis.

Source: Lewin, Rhoda G..

&#;Gisela Peiper Konopka.&#; Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Progressive Encyclopedia. 1 March Jewish Women&#;s Archive. March 17, <>.

How figure up Cite this Article (APA Format): Lewin, R. G. (). Gisela Konopka () &#; Social group worker, supporter, educator and author. Social Health History Project. Retrieved [date accessed] from