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Margareta Berger-Hamerschlag |
‘Her liberal attitude and firm hand would still be very useful’
Life of Austrian artist who pioneered changes in education celebrated in new biography
‘Her liberal attitude and firm hand would still be very useful’
AN inspirational youth worker who fled Austria for Maida Vale at the onset of the second world war, and went on to help turn around the lives of troubled teenagers, is the subject of a new book on the 50th anniversary of her death.
Margareta Berger-Hamerschlag travelled to England in 1936, aged 34, fearing her Jewish roots would make her a target as Vienna came under the influence of the Nazi party.
Author Mel Wright’s book, Beyond the Jiving, recounts the story of the inimitable Berger-Hamerschlag, an artist who brought hope to some of London’s most poverty-afflicted children.
The under-acknowledged painter became a standard-bearer for a new dawn in education, helping blow away starchy Victorian attitudes to children that had remained intransigent to change.
Living in a modest one bed flat in Warwick Avenue, in Westminister, with her architect husband and young son, her forays into the London art world were initially unsuccessful – a reflection of indifference to her Germanic style and mounting anti-German mood.
Out of work, she replied to an advert in the local paper as a youth worker, an unorthodox profession at a time where the mantra “children should be seen and not heard” still prevailed.
Berger-Hamerschlag worked at a number of youth centres in Paddington, Queen’s Park and Kilburn including the Moberley Sports and Education Centre which to this day still stands in Kilburn Lane.
She quickly connected with the children, helping them step outside their grinding poverty to let them dream of another life.
Mr Wright, who has spoken to Berger-Hamerschlag’s son as part of his research, says it was her female touch and ability to empathise that made her such a revelation. But it seems she was not without a disciplinarian streak.
“There’s no doubt she could be stern but she never talked down to them. She could communicate with them on their level. Many of them resisted her, some even attacked her. I think it was probably very rough-and-tumble but she managed to turn many of their lives around.”
The art lessons were pure escapism for the children, many of whom had never ventured further than the street where they lived. When social mobility was an impossibility, Berger-Hamerschlag helped build the ladder for them to escape their class prison.
Her experiences with the children inspired her to write Journey into a Fog, which soon became a surprise best seller among educationists, teachers and social reformers.
It was a mixture of whistle-blowing on the Dickensian squalor that still blighted that area of the city and pioneering ideas on youth work.
She worked as an unsung hero until her death from cancer in 1958. She was 56.
Among her triumphs which have later come to light is the tale of 16-year-old Peter Young, who she schooled so well that he went on become head of conservation of paintings at the Victoria and Albert Museum until his retirement in 1993.
Berger-Hamerschlag’s paintings are experiencing something of a renaissance, with more than one recent West End exhibition.
It was at one of these where Mr Wright, himself a former social worker who has worked in north Westminster and Brent, fell in love with Berger-Hamerschlag and decided her story deserved airing.
He says her ideas still influence social policy today. “You can still see a lot of what she was saying and doing are still very relevant today in those fields. Her liberal humanist attitude combined with a firm hand would still be very useful. I think she would be shocked at where we are with the various youth disorder problems, but she would be pleased to see that the Moberley centre is still running.”
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