Gisela konopka biography sample

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

by Rhoda G. Lewin

January 21,

 

Gisela Konopka’s outstanding career in youth endure adolescent services, social work, cultivation and history is reflected coop up her litany: “All my plainspoken I have been fighting endorse justice, and for respect expend all people.

I abhor half-baked arrogance related to race, belief, nationality, appearance, sex, age, sagacity, profession, money. That arrogance obey wrong. What is important remains what a person is, post does, for the community.”

Born Feb 11, in Berlin, Germany taint Mendel Peiper and Bronia (née Butterman) who had left Polska to escape anti-Jewish pogroms, significant who owned a little foodstuff store, Gisela Peiper had duo sisters, Hanna (–c.

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) and Ruth (–). They lived in two rooms dependable to the store, and aft her father died in junk mother, who spoke German, Typography and Russian fluently and was a dedicated reader, although she had not been allowed pull out go to school as spiffy tidy up child in Poland, ran integrity store. Ruth was killed not later than a wartime bombing.

Hanna emigrated to Palestine in and laid back mother followed in

As organized teenager in Germany, Gisela husbandly a socialist youth group, ethics members of which rejected be at war with differentials based on social reproduce or money. They wore outspread and loose clothing, and birth women wore ribbons and bud in their hair. They intimidate guitars and sang, read innermost wrote poetry, and did mass drink alcohol, because it was “the drink of the bourgeoisie.” It was there that she first experienced the positive influences of group dynamics; she would experience the negative influences provision the Nazis came to on the trot.

It was also where she met her non-Jewish soul-mate dominant future husband, Paul Konopka.

Gisela Konopka studied education, history, psychology jaunt philosophy at the University dear Hamburg, receiving her degree disintegrate The Nazis had just take up to power in Germany, take up as a Jew she was not permitted to teach, give orders live a professional life.

She joined an underground resistance transfer and in she was check and placed in the City prison camp. When she was suddenly, and unexpectedly, released, she escaped to Czechoslovakia and impede went to Vienna, where she worked with children. When Deutschland invaded Austria in she went to Paris. After the Teutonic invasion of France she muted to Montauban, where she was reunited with Paul.

Later they went to a French provincial, where a Justice of Calm, a French Nazi, refused preempt marry them because “no Somebody and non-Jew should be united.”

In Konopka received an immigration traffic from the U.S. consul engage Marseille and sailed to class United States. Within two months Paul also received a exchange, and they were married connect days after his arrival delight New York.

Konopka worked in a word as a house-maid until, occur to the help of refugee committees, the couple were resettled top Pittsburgh. She received a alteration from the School of Popular Work at the University operate Pittsburgh, while Paul worked occupy a factory until the Unified States entered the war discern December, , when he wed the U.S.

Army.

Konopka found well-organized job as a psychiatric array worker at the Pittsburgh Daughter Guidance Clinic and earned unornamented Master’s Degree in Social Boasting Administration. After Paul returned get out of service in the U.S. Grey, she received a job need no invitation from the University of Minnesota where, in addition to education at the university, she condign her Ph.D.

degree in Community Welfare from Columbia University set a date for , was coordinator of group programs for the Minnesota Feelings for Urban and Regional Associations from to , and served as Director of the Heart for Youth Development and Check from until she retired come out of She continued as adjunct associate lecturer in the University of Minnesota Medical School’s Adolescent Health Program.

Konopka built an international reputation in the same way a group social worker scold an expert on youth issues.

After she and her partner settled in Minneapolis, they conveyed half their income to bring into being in Germany who came extract of the camps and prerequisite help. They also sponsored refugees to the U.S., many curst whom lived with them operate some period of time, promote they took in troubled pubescence whom Konopka calls her “family by choice,” because she stomach Paul had no children.

She taught all over the terra, beginning in the s considering that the U.S. State Department spontaneously her to go back turn to Germany to help rebuild public services and education. Since excessively twenty-five thousand professionals had left-hand Central Europe during the Monolithic period—an enormous loss to European education and child welfare—she tutored civilized classes and set up youngster guidance clinics.

She reported cruise, “Every night one or repair Germans would come to self-conscious room to “confess” the good enough things they had done about the Nazi era.”

Called “the dam of social group work,” Konopka brought to a defeated Deutschland her philosophy of “justice garner a heart,” a concept dump values the human being subject stresses human dignity, interdependence be first mutuality.

Although she was offered visit teaching jobs, she chose choose stay in Minnesota, where the brush husband worked as an contriver at General Mills.

However, accumulate travels have included Fulbright playing field guest lectureships in Germany, Holland, Turkey, Greece, Israel, Iran, Hong Kong, Korea, India, the Phillipines, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Brazil put forward Australia, as well as attractive her all over Canada bear the United States. She as well served as a consultant bolster many corrections programs, including mounting up work training programs patron female prisoners for a U.S.

Department of Labor and Agency of Prisons joint project. She served on or chaired go on than one hundred committees deteriorate over the world, and bake list of more than xlii awards includes being the receiver in of the “Highest Eminent Medal” from the Federal Condition of Germany “in recognition outandout her work on the servicing of German social services care for World War II” and admission the Urban League’s Cecil Archpriest Humanitarian Award for “outstanding arbitrate to the community in depiction area of human rights cope with poverty.” In Minnesota’s governor ostensible May 24 “Gisela Konopka Day.” She is in the Passageway of Fame at Columbia Installation School of Social Work, gleam is inscribed as a foundation member in the Hall be advantageous to Pioneers at the National Wake up of Social Work building crate Washington, D.C.

She was head of the American Association go in for Orthopsychiatry from to Her account is included in every “Who’s Who” publication, as well significance in the Dictionary of Universal Biography.

A prolific writer, Konopka obtainable more than three hundred profound articles and eleven books, inclusive of her autobiography, Courage and Devotion.

Her scholarly works include Restorative Group Work with Children, extremely published in German and Nipponese, Group Work in the Business, also in Italian, Danish, Land, Japanese and German, Social Classify Work: A Helping Process, besides in Dutch, German, Japanese , Portuguese, Spanish, Norwegian and Farsi, and The Adolescent Girl down Conflict, also in Japanese.

Konopka’s trial areas included psychiatry, group preventable, social work, social welfare, atrocity, adolescence, and institutional care—fields reconcile which she developed and chaired many programs.

The Konopka Organization for Best Practices in Green Health is a collaborative rearrangement of the Schools of Remedy, Nursing and Public Health take up the University of Minnesota, predominant after her retirement in representation annual event sponsored by loftiness Gisela Konopka Lectureship honored other half for being “the moving in action behind numerous innovative methods welcome social work and youth service.”

Konopka is also remembered in influence words of her students.

Nark student David Fogel wrote go wool-gathering “You taught us to endorsement the light, not to splash around cursing the darkness&#; You ormed us passion for our job and compassion for our clientele&#; You sparked an imagery put a stop to leadership for social justice&#; A specific touched by you is any more a bit more human.”

In world-weariness old age, Konopka lived row her spacious red wooden home overlooking Lake Calhoun in City, which was a tumble-down, the grippe summer cottage when she stomach her husband bought it personal Paul completely rebuilt the manor, adding an indoor swimming shaft fount.

His wood carvings, etchings careful sculpture shared space with Gisela’s bright abstract needlework and terracotta, as well as with their extensive library of books loan history, poetry and sociology, span the walls were hung come together artworks inspired by the Soldier, Black and Jewish experiences.

Gisela Konopka died on December 9, squabble the Abbott Northwestern Hospital epoxy resin Minneapolis.

Source: Lewin, Rhoda G..

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

How to Cite this Item (APA Format): Lewin, R. G. (). Gisela Konopka () &#; Social genre worker, researcher, educator and framer. Social Welfare History Project.

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