Women's Portraits

Dr. Erna Subklew

Family and Education

Erna was born in Upper Silesia. Her father, an engineer, was often working  abroad. For more than ten years he was employed in Istanbul, where Erna lived until the middle of the Second World War. This stay in Turkey became a formative influence in her whole life. Back in Silesia, she finished high school and then studied pedagogics and got married.

In early 1945, she fled before the Russians. The first stay in the Western zones was Upper Austria, where the family was reunited. After the war, when all Germans  were expelled, the family was evacuated to Bavaria. Again they could not settle down permanently, because their provisory residence had to be cleared for a military training ground. In search of earning a living, Erna's husband found a job in the early 50s in Frankfurt. Meanwhile, four children had been born.

In 1969, as the Land of Hessen needed teachers, she applied for a job and was hired because of her Turkish language skills. Since she only had the first teaching certificate, she had to pass additional state examinations. She passed her finals at the same time as her daughter passed her first exams.

Retirement

After several years working as a teacher, she retired and began a training course of  her own choice. At the University of Frankfurt she enrolled in adult education classes, turkology and European ethnology. After six semesters, she passed the final exams in all chosen subjects. And after three more years she successfully completed her doctoral thesis.

The much younger students had accepted her well. That time saw an influx of older people to the universities. In the 1990s this was no rarity, because of the need of the war generation to catch up on education, as Erna assured me.

She used her professional skills, as a volunteer, to help children from immigrant families, a cause particularly close to her heart. In kindergartens she not only introduced a program to further the language proficiency of preschool children, but  also trained the respective teachers.

Through her computer activities she came into contact with ZAWiW, the University of Third Age in Ulm. For her, this opened up a new field of virtual activities for seniors. She became a founding member of the Association ViLE (virtual learning in adult education), where she initiated, together  with other senior students, the online newspaper “Lerncafé”, a project that has already won several awards.

In the context of the association ViLE, she founded a literary circle at her home in Frankfurt, where people meet once a month to talk about current literature. In addition, the participants, spread over the whole Land of Hessen, are connected by the ViLE virtual discussion forum of the literary circle.

In retrospect, Erna thinks that through education she made the best of each situation. Her attitude to learn and to study as long as possible, has allowed her to always find a satisfactory solution. This motto will also serve her in the future. Ideas she still has enough. 

Brigitte Nguyen-Duong, June 2011

Technical part of the Interview

The interview was recorded in the afternoon of 8 July 2011, at the home of Dr.Erna Subklew in Frankfurt Praunheim. Interviewer was Brigitte Nguyen-Duong. For technical assistance, a video camera was running during the two and a half-hour conversation. Besides, extensive notes were taken. The prepared questionnaire was used only for the initial questions. A final part of the interview was taken in the garden of Mrs. Subklew with the video camera.

The portrait of Mrs. Subklew was compiled from the notes.

Mrs. Subklew agrees with the publication of photos and video on the website of EWA.

Brigitte Nguyen-Duong, Erdmute Dietmann-Beckert