Educational Studies in Wartime: How War and Dictatorship influenced the Educational Theory of Philipp Abraham Kohnstamm (1875-1951)

Between the two World Wars, the Amsterdam physicist Philipp Abraham Kohnstamm (1875–1951) became one of the founders of Dutch academic pedagogy. In the theory developed by Kohnstamm in the 1920s, the war played a significant role in the background. Kohnstamm’s philosophy of personalism was intended as a defense against fascist tendencies towards Gleichschaltung and dictatorship. With his educational ideas, Kohnstamm wanted to strenghten democratic citizenship and the emancipation of the lower classes. In the 1930s, Kohnstamm entered into a debate with National Socialism and emerged as a principled proponent of democracy and democratic education. As a German and Jew of origin, who later became Dutch and Christian, the rise of National Socialism strongly influenced Kohnstamm and it caused that he only finished three of the seven planned volumes of his magnum opus. In this paper, in which Kohnstamm’s resistance against war and dictatorship is further elaborated, the Dutch scholar is presented as a case of educational studies in wartime.