Martha Muchow mural
In 2007, the library of the Faculty of Education, Psychology and Human Movement at the University of Hamburg was named after Martha Muchow. To mark Martha Muchow’s 120th birthday in 2012, an exhibition on her life and work was displayed in the library. As part of this commemoration, the artist Philipp Kabbe painted a mural on a cement wall on Joseph-Carlebach-Platz. The mural is based on a photograph of Martha Muchow from the 1930s and shows her in profile.
Two quotes included in the mural reference Muchow’s main work, The Life Space of the Urban Child:
‘Hence, the objective was no longer to investigate how an urban world, as described in a particular manner, influences children who live there, but to show how children transform their “city” into their environment, and how thereupon the “world lived by the child” represents their city.’
‘In order to communicate with the child, you need to not only understand how it lives in the world, but also what world it lives in.’
Martha Muchow was a psychologist and educator who worked at the University of Hamburg from 1919, where she collaborated closely with William Stern. She was dismissed from the institute in 1933 by the National Socialists and committed suicide. Her main work was published posthumously by her brother in 1935.