Umbrella, Johann Wilhelm

Pedagogue

born: 13.12.1812 in Scheuern

died: 20.02.1889 in Wiesbaden

Schirm, the son of a master craftsman, attended the teacher training college in Idstein and passed his exams as an elementary school teacher in 1828. He then worked for a year and a half as a tutor for the ducal magistrate Magdeburg in Wallmerod. After moving to Wiesbaden, he took lessons in natural sciences as well as English and French. A loan enabled him to spend two years studying in Paris in 1841, after which he went to London for six months. He returned to Wiesbaden in 1843, having gained his doctorate in philosophy in Giessen in the meantime. He taught natural history at the Hof Geisberg agricultural school until 1849. He also continued to study natural sciences at the University of Heidelberg.

In 1852, he founded the Schirm'sche Handels- und Gewerbeschule in conjunction with a boarding school. The school was very popular in the following years and had 301 pupils by 1856. In 1861, he handed over the management of the school to the two teachers Dr. Haas and Lindner due to his wife's illness.

From then on, Schirm was very active in local politics: he was first a member of the citizens' committee (1862-65), then of the municipal council (1868-88). As head of the municipal council, he was an influential and formative personality during this time. He was also chairman of the administrative commission of the eye clinic (1863) and deputy director of the board of the children's home (1879). He was also chairman of the committee for the Schiller monument unveiled in 1866 and a member of the board and secretary of the Protestant Association (1864). His activities also included membership of the extraordinary Protestant district synod for the administrative district of Wiesbaden (1876), and he was also a member of the board of the Wiesbaden branch of the Gustav Adolf Foundation (1880-87), chairman of the board of the Society for the Dissemination of Popular Education (1880-88, Wiesbaden branch) and president of the "Curverein"(1880-86)(Kur- und Verkehrsverein e.V.(Kur- und Verkehrsverein e.V.).