Legacy of Hugo Gaudig

he legacy of Hugo Gaudig (1860–1923), the reform pedagogue and advocate of higher education for girls, was donated to the BBF archives by his grandchildren Hella Bauer and Klaus Weise in December 2008.

From 1896 to 1900, Hugo Gaudig was director of the Higher Girls' School and the Teachers' College of the Francke Foundations in Halle/Saale. In 1900 he moved to Leipzig, where he also headed the Municipal Secondary School for Girls and the Teachers' College in Leipzig. In this function and as a member of the "Erfurter Akademie für gemeinnützige Wissenschaften" (Erfurt Academy for Non-Profit Sciences), he also played a decisive role in questions of higher women's education.

The original legacy of Hugo Gaudig was lost when the family home at Sidonienstraße 21 in Leipzig was hit by incendiary bombs during an air raid on December 3-4, 1943 and burned down completely.

The basis of the material still available is a collection on Hugo Gaudig by Otto Scheibner (1877–1961), which mainly documents his educational work. From 1901 to 1923 Otto Scheibner worked as a teacher at the secondary school for girls and the associated teachers' college. A few years after the end of the Second World War, he handed over various parts of his collection to the Gaudig family for safekeeping. Over the years, the collection was enriched by several pieces. The collection is supplemented by documents of the youngest daughter of Hugo Gaudig, Rosemarie Sacke-Gaudig, who in the last years of her life studied intensively the educational work of her father.

The school archive, which was originally in the Gaudig School, has so far been considered lost.

About the Stock

The legacy kept in the archive comprises around two meters from the years 1874 to 2008. Among other things,  documents on Gaudig's life, some of his manuscripts and correspondence, as well as documents on the secondary school for girls and the teachers' college. The numerous photographs convey a vivid impression of Gaudig's private and professional life.
The collection is fully indexed and can be searched online in the archive database.

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