In 1933 Konopka graduated from Hamburg University with a Bachelor of Arts in Education, History, and Psychology.
Gallery of Gisela Konopka
New York, NY 10027, United States
Konopka earned a doctorate in social work from Columbia University in 1955.
Gallery of Gisela Konopka
4200 Fifth Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, United States
Konopka earned a master's degree from the University of Pittsburgh in 1943.
Gallery of Gisela Konopka
Minneapolis, MN 55455, United States
In 1957 Konopka got a Doctor of Social Welfare (DSW) with a dissertation on Eduard C. Lindeman and Social Work Philosophy, which was published by the University of Minnesota Press the following year.
In 1957 Konopka got a Doctor of Social Welfare (DSW) with a dissertation on Eduard C. Lindeman and Social Work Philosophy, which was published by the University of Minnesota Press the following year.
(Candid interviews with American adolescent girls from a v...)
Candid interviews with American adolescent girls from a variety of social, economic, and ethnic backgrounds provide moving and compassionate insights into the needs, concerns, hopes, and dreams of young girls.
(In this book, Dr. Konopka writes about the early years of...)
In this book, Dr. Konopka writes about the early years of her life, the development of philosophy, and the deep love that helped her through the horror years of resistance work against the Nazis, imprisonment, and hunger.
Gisela Konopka was a German-born educator, social worker, and author. She became renowned for her contributions to social group work which she disseminated internationally. Konopka was the author of several works, including The Adolescent Girl in Conflict.
Background
Gisela Konopka was born as Gisela Peiper in Berlin on February 11, 1910. She was the daughter of Mendel Peiper and Bronia (Butterman) who had left Poland to escape anti-Jewish pogroms, and who owned a little grocery store. Gisela Peiper had two sisters, Hanna and Ruth. They lived in two rooms attached to the store, and after her father died in 1935 her mother, who spoke German, Polish, and Russian fluently and was a dedicated reader, although she had not been allowed to go to school as a child in Poland, ran the store. Ruth was killed during a wartime bombing. Hanna emigrated to Palestine in 1935 and her mother followed in 1937.
Education
During secondary school, Gisela got involved in extracurricular activities with Jewish and later socialist youth groups. After graduation, she spent a year working in a bottle factory in Hamburg to bring in some money for her education and to gain some first-hand experience of the workers' labor and struggle. Still in Hamburg, she studied education, history, psychology, and philosophy from 1929 to 1933. In 1933 she graduated from Hamburg University with a Bachelor of Arts in Education, History, and Psychology. This was also the year of the National Socialists' takeover in Germany. The Nazis withdrew Konopka's German citizenship and banned her from working as a teacher as she had intended.
In fear for her safety because of her political activities, she left Germany in 1941, continuing her education in the United States, where she earned a master's degree from the University of Pittsburgh in 1943 and a doctorate in social work from Columbia University in 1955. In 1957 she received the Doctor of Social Welfare (DSW) with a dissertation on Eduard C. Lindeman and Social Work Philosophy, which was published by the University of Minnesota Press the following year.
After her release from prison in 1937, Gisela Konopka went to Vienna, Austria, where she worked with children and studied nursery school and Kindergarten work. Shortly thereafter, in 1938, Nazi Germany annexed Austria and she had to flee again. She went to Marseille, France, and three years later, in 1941, arrived in the United States, where she would spend the rest of her life, becoming a naturalized citizen in 1944. For Konopka's subsequent career, the experiences during her time in the resistance movement, in the concentration camp, and during her escapes proved crucial.
In Pittsburgh, she put her education into practice and, from 1943 to 1947, worked as a psychiatric group worker at the Pittsburgh Child Guidance Clinic; in addition, she held several positions as lecturer and field instructor during that time.
In 1947 Gisela joined the faculty of the School of Social Work at the University of Minnesota, first as an assistant professor and from 1956 as full professor of social group work until her 1978 retirement; in 1989 she returned to teaching as an adjunct professor.
She taught all over the world, beginning in the 1950s when the United States State Department asked her to go back to Germany to help rebuild social services and education. Since over twenty-five thousand professionals had left Central Europe during the Nazi period - an enormous loss to German education and child welfare - she taught classes and set up child guidance clinics.
Konopka also directed the Center for Youth Development and Research from 1970 to 1977.
Although she was offered many teaching positions, she chose to stay in Minnesota, where her husband worked as an engineer at General Mills. However, her travels have included Fulbright and guest lectureships in Germany, Holland, Turkey, Greece, Israel, Iran, Hong Kong, Korea, India, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Brazil, and Australia, as well as taking her all over Canada and the United States. She also served as a consultant for many corrections programs, including setting up work training programs for female prisoners for a United States Department of Labor and Bureau of Prisons joint project. She served on or chaired more than one hundred committees all over the world.
A prolific writer, Konopka published more than three hundred scholarly articles and eleven books, including her autobiography, Courage, and Love. Her scholarly works include Therapeutic Group Work with Children, also published in German and Japanese, Group Work in the Institution, also in Italian, Danish, Turkish, Japanese and German, Social Group Work: A Helping Process, also in Dutch, German, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, Norwegian and Persian, and The Adolescent Girl in Conflict, also in Japanese.
In her old age, Konopka lived in her spacious red wooden house overlooking Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis.
Gisela Konopka was a world-renowned researcher, teacher, and advocate known as a moving force behind innovative methods of practice and research in social work and youth services. Konopka was a sought-after speaker and consultant to numerous national and international youth development and social service organizations.
The many honors she received included the first Distinguished Alumnus Award from the School of Social Work, University of Pittsburgh (1968); Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in recognition of her work on behalf of rebuilding German social services after World War II (1975); Social Worker of the Year Award from the University of Minnesota School of Social Work Alumni Association (1977); A.A. Heckman Community Services Lecture Award (1986); "Gisela Konopka Day" proclaimed by the Governor of the State of Minnesota (May 24, 1990); and Certificate of Outstanding Merit from the University of Minnesota Board of Regents on the occasion of her 90th birthday for her distinguished service to the University (2000).
She is in the Hall of Fame at Columbia University School of Social Work and is inscribed as a founding member in the Hall of Pioneers at the National Association of Social Work building in Washington, D.C. Konopka has been listed as a notable Social worker, author, lecturer, educator by Marquis Who's Who. The Konopka Institute for Best Practices in Adolescent Health at the University of Minnesota was named in her honor.
In 1933 Konopka joined the resistance movement against Adolf Hiller and in 1936 she was arrested and spent some time in the concentration camp Fuhlsbüttel.
Views
Gisela Konopka realized the importance of human connection, the significance of groups for the individual. Also, she reported how, during her stay in Vienna, she learned the basics of what would become a crucial part of her scholarly approach: Socialist educational reforms in Vienna had included and combined various pedagogical approaches. Konopka's lesson from her experience of the new methods for educating children in former "Red Vienna" was the insight that approaches sometimes are more powerful if they are combined in meaningful ways than if they are kept pure within the boundaries of intellectual traditions and theories.
Gisela's main research interests focused on institutional settings and the process of group work, philosophy and history of social work, history of social welfare, history of correctional reforms, adolescence (especially girls), and delinquency, specifically with regard to institutions and delinquency of girls.
Called "the mother of social group work," Konopka brought to a defeated Germany her philosophy of "justice with a heart," a concept that values the human being and stresses human dignity, interdependence, and mutuality.
Membership
Gisela Konopka was president of the American Association of Orthopsychiatry from 1963 to 1964. She was a member of the American Association of University Professors, National Association of Social Workers, National Conference Social Welfare, Urban League, National Academies Practice, National Consumers League, World Federalist Movement, and Society for Adolescent Medicine.
American Association of Orthopsychiatry
,
United States
American Association of University Professors
,
United States
National Consumers League
,
United States
National Association of Social Workers
Urban League
National Academies Practice
World Federalist Movement
Society for Adolescent Medicine
Connections
Gisela met Paul, a non-Jewish German, a few years older, who became the love of her life despite years of separation and times when one did not know if the other was still alive. Paul was the jovial, often smiling and joking complement to Gisela's serious; worried, more despairing manner. They married on June 23, 1941, three days after his arrival in New York, and Paul, later, always liked to tease Gisa that "You never gave me a chance to meet the American girls."
Soon, after the United States entered into World War II, Paul was drafted into the American Army and, once it was realized that his German could be useful, served most of the time in London with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) doing secret work that he could not share with Gisa. He survived the Blitz. Despite their lengthy separations through all their political work in Germany in the 1930s, both agreed that Paul should contribute to the war effort on behalf of the Americans against their foe, the Nazis.
After the war, Paul found work at General Mills as an engineer. Over the years, his responsibilities grew and Gisela was thrilled that he was able, without a formal education, to find such satisfying work. Time permitting, he completely rebuilt a run down, unheated summer cottage on a half-acre lot they had bought on Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis. Over the years their house, which Paul rebuilt into a magnificent home, was highlighted in a variety of newspaper articles. Finally, after years of travel through many countries as refugees, they had a permanent home.
In 1976, Paul failed to pick Gisa up from work. When a colleague drove her home, she knew she was going to find the worst. Paul had died of a heart attack sometime during the day.
