The Life Space of the Urban Child

Perspectives on Martha Muchow's Classic Study

Gunter Mey

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351480093
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

The heart of this book is the translation of The Life Space of the Urban Child, written in 1935 by Martha and Hans Heinrich Muchow. Life Space provides a fresh look at children as actors and how they absorb their city environments. It uses an empirical base connected with theories about the worlds in which children live. The first section provides historical background on Muchow's study and the author. The second section presents the translation of the Life Space study, as well as comments from an environmental psychologist's perspective. The third section reviews the study's theoretical foundations, including the concept of "critical personalism, " the perspectives of phenomenology, and the notion of Umwelt (environment). The last section addresses various lines of research developed from the Life Space study, including Muchow's work in describing children in urban environments, methodological approaches, and the significance of space in social science and educational contexts. The manner in which Martha Muchow conducted her studies is itself of note. She obtained access to the children in their environments and combined observation with cartographies and essays produced by the children. This approach was new at the time and continues to inspire researchers today. This volume is the latest work in Transaction's History and Theory of Psychology series.

Part I
Background

Martha Muchow and Hans Heinrich Muchow: The Life Space of the Urban Child—The Loss and Discovery, Connections and Requisites

Imbke Behnken and Jürgen Zinnecker¹

Preface

The study published under the title Der Lebensraum des Groβstadtkindes (The Life Space of the Urban Child) in 1935 is based on Martha Muchow’s investigations. Between 1916 and 1933, she worked at the Psychological Laboratory headed by William Stern at Hamburg University. In one of his reports, Stern wrote, “Volunteer collaborators, teachers Mr. Otto Wiegmann and Ms. Martha Muchow, placed most of their leisure time at the disposal of the laboratory.” In the autumn of 1920, Stern succeeded in getting Ms. Martha Muchow a sabbatical, freeing her from her teaching load at school. In 1923, Muchow became a research assistant at the laboratory and earned a PhD with her thesis on her preparatory methodological work entitled Psychologie des Erziehers (The Psychology of the Educator). Martha Muchow was only forty-one when she died in 1933.

In his obituary, William Stern voiced his appreciation for Martha Muchow the educator and scientist:

She uniquely incorporated both psychological expertise theory and hands-on pedagogy. Thus she was one of the very few who had the true vocation of scientifically entering the life space of young children and adolescents, as well as of young educators. (From William Stern’s obituary for Martha Muchow)

Martha Muchow had planned to publish her Life Space study in 1934, but it fell on her brother, Hans Heinrich Muchow, to prepare the print version of her work.

My sister presumably meant to publish this research in 1934. Some preliminary work had already been done and several sketches² had been made public. […] My sister allowed me to participate in her work from the beginning through conversations and collaboration, and my efforts to continue her work and publish it are a way to pay a debt of gratitude to which I am honor bound. (Muchow and Muchow, this volume, 64)

No background information concerning the study itself or Martha Muchow’s life was known at that time. The study was published as part of the series Der Ertrag der Hamburger Erziehungsbewegung (Results of the Hamburg Educational Movement) and was available only to subscribers of the series.

Figure 1
Martha Muchow 1930

Figure 2
Title Page of the 1935 Edition

It was not until 1978, forty-three years later, that the study was edited by Jürgen Zinnecker and published in the series reprint, päd. Extra buchverlag, Bensheim. He conducted detailed investigations and supplemented the new edition with a fifty-page essay on the history of science and a scientific commentary on Martha Muchow’s life and work. In this chapter, we try to answer the question why Muchow’s study had been lost for many years and how the re-publication came about. Additionally, the chapter comments on the editions of 1998 and 2006. Finally, this contribution discusses the desiderata and mission of the Life Space study.

Toward the end of 2006, Zinnecker became seriously ill and died in 2011. The thirty years of our research cooperation began in the early 1970s, when we conducted our joint ethnographic life space project (Projektgruppe Jugendbüro und Hauptschülerarbeit 1975; Projektgruppe Jugendbüro 1977). This study, like others, follows the same tradition as the study conducted by Martha Muchow.

Introduction: Rediscovering Der Lebensraum Des GroβStadtkindes (The Life Space of the Urban Child) 1972: Study by M. and H. H. Muchow is Found

During the early 1970s, a project group (Projektgruppe Jugendbüro und Hauptschülerarbeit 1975; Projektgruppe Jugendbüro 1977) headed by Zinnecker conducted an ethnographic study on the life space of secondary school pupils. The study used the term “Lebenswelt” (life space) as defined by Edmund Husserl and his student Alfred Schütz (1971). It had also been used in Kurt Lewin’s 1963 theoretical field approach, and further research on homologous studies led to Elisabeth Pfeil’s Das Groβstadtkind ([The Urban Child] 1955/1965), which made a reference to Martha and Hans Heinrich Muchow’s study:

I only know of one case where the urban child was the object of an independent scientific study of its own. It is the exceptional empirical study by Martha and Hans Muchow […], which systematically conducted a series of observations of the life space of urban children, their behavior within it, and their ideas of their life space. (Pfeil 1955/1965, 9)

Figure 3
The Loading Dock as a Life Space of Children and Adults (See Werner 1959, 268)

The project group Jugendbüro used the concept established in Muchow and Muchow (1935) to investigate the socio-geographical spaces children lived in, such as places they established as part of their life space, and how children experienced and reshaped certain spaces such as public places, streets, and city parks to make them into playgrounds.

Another finding was an informative schematic sketch drawn by Heinz Werner, Martha Muchow’s former colleague who had emigrated to the United States, of the Hamburg “loading dock” in his book Entwickungspsychologie ([Developmental Psychology] 1959), which was retranslated into German after the World War II. The loading dock is one of the many places in the children’s life space that was so powerfully described in the Life Space study. Heinz Werner drew the sketch from the perspectives of the parents and the children. The sketch concisely illustrates that the children made the loading dock their “dwelling” by activating parts of the place that were least relevant to adults and vice versa.

The 1978 Edition

In 1978, the reprint of the Life Space study with a comprehensive introduction by Zinnecker was published by Päd. Extra Buchverlag, located in Bensheim, Germany. This small, reform-oriented publishing house was committed to making available forgotten and lost texts written by dedicated partisan educators before National Socialism. Both editors Bruno Schonig and Jürgen Zinnecker followed the 1970s pedagogical movements that focused mainly on the socialization of proletarian children. In a blurb about the 1978 volume, published as a facsimile, they say: “The reprint series offers lost texts that may foster a more sophisticated insight into radical democratic socialist pedagogy and class-related research on socialization dating back to 1900.”

In the preface, the editors pay tribute to Martha and Hans Heinrich Muchow’s lifework and underscore the contributions made by the study to children and childhood studies:

Martha Muchow studied how children in a working class neighborhood used their ingenuity to transform their quarter and streets into their own life space. Muchow chose a working class and petit bourgeois quarter in Barmbek, a part of the city of Hamburg, as her research location. That choice gave the study a specific value of its own in terms of social and historical documentation, reaching far beyond the limits of typical socialization studies preoccupied mainly with the of and environment.

The study documents a piece of the history of urban childhood as seen from “below,” using a sensitive and participative perspective. […] With regards to the author, Martha Muchow, the publication of her book in 1935 partly compensated for the suffering society had inflicted on her.

However, she did not live long enough to see the study published. Martha Muchow surrendered to the circumstances in Germany and committed suicide in her flat. We owe it to her younger brother, Hans Heinrich Muchow, that the Life Space studies and some preliminary work left by his sister were condensed into a book and thus preserved for posterity. […] The work, therefore, more than rightly mentions his name as a co-editor and co-author. (Preface to the reprint edition 1978, 7f)

Success was not long in coming. In 1998, Zinnecker notes in his Preface to the new edition, 20 years after the reprint was published:

The re-publication attracted national and international attention. The publishers had to issue a new edition as early as 1980. (Martha) Muchow was rediscovered and gained publicity as a scientist and expert in childhood research, development psychology, and the women’s movement. […] In the 1980s The Life Space of the Urban Child became one of the most frequently quoted study of contemporary German social-scientific research into childhood. (6)

[On-Site] Research and Explorations

Zinnecker’s introduction in the 1978 edition of Martha and Hans Heinrich Muchow’s study bears a programmatic title: The life space of the urban child. A voyage to suppressed life spaces and scientific traditions. These two approaches to the subject matter form the framework of his fifty-page Introduction.

The author began by studying relevant literature at the nearby Hessische Landesbibliothek in Wiesbaden where he had access to Martha Muchow’s publications (and others) via interlibrary loans. For his on-site explorations, he had the first chapters and he was able to review the then current pedagogical, psychological, and sociological discussions to appreciatively evaluate Hans Heinrich Muchow’s approach:

• The impasse of milieu research. Newly formulated environmental psychology and game theory

• The structure of a child’s life space as a subject matter—Life Space investigations and partisan research. Developmental psychology seen as a rejection of “psychological” normalization and a fragmentation of childhood.

Subsequently, Zinnecker traveled to Hamburg, the location of the original study, for several days at different intervals in 1978. He first researched Martha Muchow’s life story, then the circumstances under which her brother published the study, and finally why the study disappeared. Additionally, Zinnecker was highly interested in the history of that part of Hamburg, called the Barmbeker Insel (Barmbek Isle), which is the backdrop of the study.

Zinnecker describes the strong influence Martha Muchow’s work has on his own efforts as a scientific researcher, and explains the history of her study:

Martha and Hans Heinrich Muchow’s work has not only had a deep impact on my own scientific approaches, but also on my decision to conceptualize and carry out studies on socialization as it occurs on the streets. Being confronted with lost resources of socialization research done in Germany touched me personally and made me reconsider my own understanding of the way we establish our scientific traditions, to the point of making me re-evaluate my own positioning within such traditions.

He allows the public to participate in his investigations by using a science reporting style.

In Pursuit of the Lost Workers’S Quarters—Example of the Karstadt Department Store

Urbanism based on history inevitably leads researchers to the relevant locations. Are there still any preserved pieces of historical furniture? Is it possible to interview living witnesses? Can we find any photographs? What kind of changes can be detected? Zinnecker visited Barmbek Isle and tried to identify the places Martha Muchow so powerfully described as part of children’s life space. He spontaneously conducted on-site interviews with children and their mothers and other contemporary witnesses who remembered the “Old Barmbek.” He studied documents on the history of the city and Barmbek Isle, and reviewed relevant resources on Martha and Hans Heinrich Muchow, which were found in different archives (state archive, archive and photo editorial office of one of the daily evening papers [the “Hamburger Abendblatt”], and photographers’ and city chroniclers’ archives).

Confrontation with historical photos has an effect on visitors, albeit anticipated, and despite the fact that Zinnecker was well-acquainted with the history of the city. He notes:

Visitors might be surprised and deeply stirred by the fact that Barmbek Isle ( Barmbeker Insel ) does not exist anymore. Barely any of the old house facades have survived. […] The “redevelopment” of the quarter is […] the result of the disastrous English bombardments of Hamburg […] equivocally codenamed “Operation Gomorrah,” which successfully destroyed a metropolis with incendiary and blockbuster bombs. In July 1942 the first major raid hit Barmbek, and in July 1943 the entire district was almost wiped out. (1978, 11)

I suddenly hit upon the idea that interviewing fifty and sixty-year olds might be extremely rewarding, since they are the former children who populated the Barmbek Isle and may have been some of the many street kids whom Martha and Hans Heinrich Muchow saw experiencing and creating a “dwelling” on the urban streets. (14)

The Karstadt department store is one of those locations described as being an outstanding site in the life space of the Barmbek children in 1930.

The most modern department store in Hamburg had been replaced by a gigantic shopping center stretching many kilometers between two underground stations along the Hamburger Straβe, which had been made into a six-lane urban motorway.

Urban researcher Fritz Lachmund’s comment on this picture:

The big modern building was erected in 1927 and 1928, directly succeeding Heilbuth (department store. the author). The house itself was no less than 28 metres high, and the tower 38 metres. A little later they added a 13-metre light column, thereby raising the total height to 49 metres. It was an impressive picture indeed, especially in the evening and at night—with the new light column being visible from afar. It represented a new landmark and symbol of Barmbek, marvellously highlighting the entire district. The house also was the place of many other superlatives. Apart from an escalator—perceived as a “revolutionary” achievement in those days—it had 6 built-in passenger lifts. The gigantic building with its 32 shop windows was the highlight in itself, beaming with an enormous advertising power. (Lachmund 1976, 17)

A salvage crew passing by on Hamburger Straβe. A photo chronicler named Erich Andres captured this change of scene, and later another transformation the same place went through in 1961, from the same perspective.

Figure 4
The Newly Erected Karstadt Department Store at the Time of the Life Space Study

Figure 5
Change of Scene, 1943. Photo by Erich Andres: Debris and Ruins of the Department Store Immediately after Its Destruction in 1943

Figure 6
Change of Scenes, 1978, Photo by JüRgen Zinnecker

At the site of the old Karstadt department store—extended by more adjoining land—where a large-scale shopping mall has been built. The foreground shows only a part of the building complex, namely the Karstadt furniture store.

Martha Muchow was particularly interested in how children conquered or appropriated their life space, that is, how they lived in it and how they made themselves feel at home there. Verbal and visual approaches were used to illustrate the term “Umleben.” Former Barmbek children reminisced about their world in the streets. They talked ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Series Editor’s Foreword
• Muchow’s Marks—An Introduction
• Part I: Background
• Part II: The Study
• Part III: Theoretical Foundations
• Part IV: Perspectives
• Contributors
• Index