Henry Schaefer-Simmern

Henry Schaefer-Simmer was a German-born art educator who rose to academic and popular prominence in the United States after the publication of his 1948 book, The Unfolding of Artistic Activity. The book documented the results of his non-directive but disciplined approach with a diverse array of students with little or no previous art instruction. One of them, an intellectually disabled girl named Selma, was celebrated for the striking changes in her personality attributed to that process as she developed confidence in her own judgment and artistic skill. Schaefer-Simmern’s civic efforts and his Berkeley-based Institute of Art Education earned him a following of primarily lay artists whose enthusiasm often bordered on veneration, but his adamant views and outspoken personality ultimately led to irreconcilable differences with the leading art institutions and with rival leaders in his field . Once considered a contender to chart the course for art education in the United States, his influence was reduced to near obscurity by the end of his life. 
== Biography ==
Early Life and Career in Germany
Henry Walter Schaefer was born in Haan, Germany, the youngest of 11 children of Rosalie and Alfred Schaefer. He initially attended a teacher's college in deference to his father's preferences, but his father's death near the date of his graduation freed him to studyfine arts and art education for two years at Dusseldorf_AcademyDusseldorf State Academy. The Academy's traditional curriculum emphasized copying and life drawing, and he later remembered with distaste that he was required to depict a crumpled newspaper.(262-263 Berta.)
 
Schaefer served briefly an artilleryman for the German army in WWI before receiving a discharge for medical reasons. After the war, he attempted to open a painting studio near Cologne but was eventually forced for economic reasons to settle in a small town called SimmernSimmern, where he taught art and pursued his painting. ( p 13). He joined Das Junge Rheinland, a group founded in Dusseldorf in 1919 with the objective of creating greater visibility and opportunity for young artists and counted Otto DixOtto Dix and Max_ErnstMax Ernst among its members. (p 13) Schaefer gained recognition as an Expressionist Expressionist painter(Berta, p 262), holding his first one-man show in Dusseldorf in 1922 ( p13) and eventually participating in exhibitions in Berlin, Munich, Dusseldorf, Kasse, and Darmstadt. (13) While teaching art in Simmern, Schaefer-Simmern because interested in the similarities between his own students’ work and the work of adult folk artists. (p 13). 
During this period, Schaefer added the name “Simmern” to his own to distinguish him from another painter in his area whose name was often confused with his. (p 13).
In 1926, the German commissioner for art education saw some of the artwork Schaefer-Simmern’s students had done in Simmern and was so impressed that he arranged to have them exhibited in Berlin. (p 13).
In 1926, (Ray Berta, p 262) Schaefer -Simmern Began working in Frankfurt at the MusterschuleMusterschule, or Model School, one of many such schools established in Germany after WWI , where he continued to develop his approach to teaching art. (p 13). His career flourished there and he became director of art instruction for the school. (Ray Berta, 262) In 1928 he was sent to the International Congress of Art Education in Prague to report of the proceedings for the Frankfurter Zeitung. At the conference, he took a strong interest in theories of Gustaf BritschGustaf Britsch as presented by his student Egon Kornmann, and in the methods of Franz Cizek. (Art Education, Roy A, December 1980, p 13). 
 
In addition to his professional duties, he initiated community efforts in the cause of cultivating artistic development. In 1929 Established a night school of art for laymen and unemployed workers in Frankfurt in 1929 (Berta, p 262?). In 1930, Schaefer-Simmern became known in Germany for a radio broadcast for elementary school children seven days a week called “Who paints the most beautiful picture?” that he begin in 1930. For these broadcasts, he would describe a scene and encourage each child to imagine in and render it on paper in their own ways. (find dates/reference) . Parents were encouraged to mail him their children’s resulting artworks. The show was broadcast from Frankfurt for three years. 
Schaefer-Simmern’s work as an art education began to earn recognition through an exhibition of his students’ work by the American Federation of Art in Washington, DC. The exhibit, called “New Ways of Art Education in Germany”, travelled to Boston, New York and Chicago. (p 13). In 1930, The Manchester Guardian of England published an in-depth article about his classroom approach that ended up with the prediction that “This method will light up the future.” 
 
Schaefer-Simmern eventually advanced to instructing graduate art education students at the State Teachers College for Higher Education. The Oakland Tribune. Hitler purgee to take post at U.C. August 15, 1945. However, he found himself under increasing government scrutiny and disfavor. Schaefer-Simmern opposed the Nazi regime and resisted what he saw as a perversion of art for political purposes Berta p 138. In April 7, 1933, Schaefer-Simmern refused to join the Nazi teacher’s Association and was banned from all leadership and teaching roles for being “politically unreliable”. 262 Berta His children’s radio broadcast was shut down. (Berta dates?) 
United States
In 1937, Schaefer-Simmern fled Germany and arrived in the United States, where he had established some academic connections. (p. 13) He taught himself English by listening to native speakers on the street and through the process of translating a book, John Dewey'sJohn Dewey’s Art as Experience... Dewey, John. Art as experience. New York: The Berkeley Publishing Group (1934) In the same year, the Nierendorf Gallery arranged an exhibit of his work, and he was appointed as a guest lecturer at Cleveland Museum’s Department of Education. 
 
In 1939, the Russell_Sage_FoundationRussell Sage Foundation in New York sponsored Schaefer-Simmern’s culminating research involving several diverse groups of lay artists: intellectually developed youth at Southbury Training SchoolSouthbury Training School; delinquent boys at the New York City Reformatory; adults who had recently immigrated to the United States; and business and professional people. (Schaefer-Simmern, Henry. The unfolding of artistic activity. Its basis, processes, and implications. With a foreword by John Dewey. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1961.) The project built upon his earlier work with unemployed workers in Frankfurt (Berta p 262). 
Schaefer-Simmern summarized the results of his “experiments” into a book, The Unfolding of Artistic Activity as an effort to forward the view of Conrad FiedlerConrad Fiedler, as substantiated by Gustaf Britsch, that art education can “encourage the natural unfolding of artistic activity as an inherent quality of man” in a way that “may activate latent, hitherto unconsidered, potentialities in artistic as well as other fields of human function” and that “such broadening of the layman’s capabilities has definite social and cultural implications.” . (Schaefer-Simmern, Henry. The unfolding of artistic activity. Its basis, processes, and implications. With a foreword by John Dewey. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1961.Preface, p xi). The book became well known and was reprinted four times and translated into German, Japanese and Russian. ( p. 13)
He began teaching as a guest lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley UC Berkeley in the fall of 1945 and remained there for four years, in addition to holding weekly classes for Bay Area for superintendents and teachers of art education in Bay Area schools. 
In 1949, he founded his Institute of Art Education in Berkeley, where he conducted classes six days a week in addition to weekly classes in San Francisco at the Jewish Community Center. The Institute was in operation until 1971. He also lectured at universities throughout the United States.
He also taught for many years at St. Mary's College of CaliforniaSt. Mary's College of California, which granted him an honorary doctorate in 1975. After his retirement, he worked on his final book, which was completed after his death by his wife and a former student. 
== Theory ==
== Contributions ==
Henry Schaefer-Simmern was a strong influence on Seymour SarasonSeymour Sarason, who worked with Schaefer-Simmern at Southbury Training Institution in the 1940's and was a pioneer in the field of Community Psychology. 
== Students of Henry Schaefer-Simmern ==
Sylvia FeinSylvia Fein
Wayne AndersonWayne Anderson
Clement Renzi
Eleanor Arbeit
Gustaf Adolf Britsch (11 August 1879 – 27 October 1923) was an early 20th-century German art theorist and the founder of Gustaf Britsch Institute in Starnberg, Germany.