February 21, 2003
UW-L PROFESSOR TO SPEAK AT VITERBO ON EDUCATION OF CHILDREN IN NAZI GERMANY
LA CROSSE, Wis.— Using propaganda images from Nazi school curriculum and the extensive research local expert Gregory Wegner offers insight into the significance of this chapter in the history of education during an ethics talk at Viterbo University on Thursday, March 6.
Nazi Germany, one of the most powerful racial states from the 20th century, fully legitimized the teaching of anti-Semitism in schools. This massive propaganda effort to advance anti-Semitic thinking with the full weight of the state was a feature unique to the Third Reich and it was the subject of Wegner’s recent book Anti-Semitism and Schooling under the Third Reich.
A reception and booksigning follows his talk. This lecture, sponsored by the D.B. Reinhart Institute for Ethics in Leadership, is free and open to the public. It will be held at 7:30 p.m. in the Fine Arts Center Recital Hall.
Wegner, an education professor and administrator at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, received his bachelor’s degree in broad field social studies in secondary education from UW-La Crosse in 1971. In 1975, he graduated from UW-Milwaukee with a master’s degree in modern European history. And, in 1988, he received his doctorate in curriculum and instruction from UW-Madison. He is the author of numerous published articles, the most recent of which, "Mothers of the Race: The Elite Schooling of German Girls under the Nazi Dictatorship," will be published this April in the Journal of Curriculum and Supervision. He has taught, on several occasions in Germany and Poland. And, in 1976, he had the opportunity to interview Albert Speer, Hitler’s former architect and armaments minister at Heidelberg, Germany.
For more information, contact Richard Kyte, director of the Ethics Institute, at 608-796-3704, email ethics@viterbo.edu.