The GDR was not only proud of its crèches and polyclinics, but also of its school gardens. In order to educate the socialist personality, gardening had been made a compulsory subject, following the Soviet model. Scientific knowledge and concrete practice should come together. At the behest of the Ministry of National Education, gardens were set up at the polytechnic secondary schools in order to "involve the pupils directly in the process of social upheaval" and to participate "in the revolutionary activity of the working people" in the beet patch, as it was stated in an educational pamphlet written in the early 1960s. Individual gardens were forbidden, and the maintenance of the plots was the responsibility of the student collective, who were allowed to use the proceeds to improve the notoriously tense supply situation and fill the class coffers. After the end of the workers' and peasants' state, however, the red garden vision came to an end. The school garden survived the fall of the Berlin Wall as a compulsory subject only in Thuringia.
The metaphorical comparison of garden and school, of gardener and teacher, of seedling and pupil, however, is not a prerogative of the Communists, but can be found in all cultures and at all times. In the European tradition, education and gardening were repeatedly put into one: from the Platonic philosophy of antiquity to the Christian theology of the Middle Ages to the godly pedagogy of Pietism and the emancipatory philanthropy of the Enlightenment. The school garden as a learning tool, on the other hand, is an Austrian invention and the Habsburg reaction to the trauma of the compromise with Hungary in 1867, which transformed the Austrian Empire into a real union of two states.
Viticulture and fruit trellises
When, two years later, a school law came into force in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy that only applied in Austria but not in Hungary, the elementary school garden in town and country also had to contribute to the "rebirth of the fatherland" and "usher in a new era". Pupils should exercise themselves physically and mentally; but gender segregation could not be abolished. While flowers and vegetables played "the main role" for "girls", "boys" were to devote themselves to viticulture and fruit trellises. From Austria, the idea quickly spread to the German Empire, where the maintenance of school gardens became a national-patriotic duty.
The school garden was and remained a place of learning that trained the individual in theoretical and practical terms, but at the same time integrated them into a larger group that was only constituted by the common experience of working in nature. It was not so much the rules of botany as the worldview of its proponents that determined its appearance. Consequently, it was ideologically vulnerable and associated with specific reform concerns in school education. His conjunctures reflect the political conditioning of pedagogy.
In the ecopax movement
During the First World War, students made their physical contribution to the struggle for the fatherland on the home front. In the Weimar Republic, reform pedagogical approaches demanded holistic learning in "working school gardens", whose theorists sought to counteract the negative consequences of industrialization and urbanization, but at the same time received völkisch and culturally pessimistic positions. The National Socialist ideology of popular education finally misused the school garden for its inhumane doctrine of heredity and race, but – like the currents before it – did not lose sight of the postulate of increasing yields. In the Federal Republic of Germany, school gardens initially lay fallow until the ecopax movement rediscovered them as biotopes in the 1970s in order to preserve peace and protect the environment in the countryside.
From here, the issue found its way into the political agenda of various groups and parties that celebrated the school garden as a heterotopia, where nature is experienced and community is celebrated. Today, environmental education guarantees biodiversity and integrates people from different backgrounds; At the same time, garden therapy protects against the isolation of the individual in the digital age. At its annual conference in Cottbus in 2015, the Bundesarbeitsgemeinschaft Schulgarten e.V., whose ambassador is the former Minister of the Environment Klaus Töpfer, launched an appeal that emphasizes the importance of school (and daycare) gardens and calls for "education for sustainable development" in a forward-looking manner. Meanwhile, there is also an annual day of the school garden. This year it will take place on 14 June.