The Idea
Education through Dialogue
GENIA offers teachers and learners an international and interdisciplinary network of inspiring personalities and experts – ranging from Architects to Zoologists.
Through virtual and, whenever possible, in-person encounters, GENIA brings professionals from diverse fields into the classroom and enriches teaching with impulses from knowledgeable, experienced, and committed individuals. GENIA supports these encounters with pedagogical expertise and provides accompanying learning materials.
GENIA fosters international cooperation as well as interdisciplinary and intergenerational dialogue. It encourages curiosity, career orientation, innovation, and the development of talents. By enabling exchange and encounters between experts and teachers, GENIA opens up new perspectives for contemporary education.
Inspired by Eugenie Schwarzwald
GENIA is a tribute to the educator, school reformer, and headmistress of the Schwarzwald School in Vienna, Eugenie “Genia” Schwarzwald (1872–1940), whose understanding of education was far ahead of her time. Long before the First World War, discussion rather than rote learning was already central to her pedagogical practice. She fostered her students’ expressive abilities and self-confidence through writing, singing, and theatre, and regularly invited her guests to walk through the classrooms with her. Renowned figures such as Arnold Schoenberg and Oskar Kokoschka also taught at her school.
“Genia”, also known as “Fraudoktor”, was among the first Austrian women to earn a doctorate at the University of Zurich. In her home at Josefstädter Straße 68 in Vienna, she hosted a salon – a place of exchange where her students and teachers met leading intellectuals, writers, and artists of the time, including Else Lasker-Schüler, Rainer Maria Rilke, Ezra Pound, Robert Musil, and the young Karl Popper.
Numerous contemporary accounts and life stories testify to the lasting impact of her pedagogy, such as the autobiography Adventures of a Bystander by her former student Peter F. Drucker, or the novel The Happy School (“Die fröhliche Schule”) by Karin Michaëlis. Open to new technologies, Frau Doktor was already using radio broadcasts in the mid-1920s to share her educational ideas.
GENIA builds on Eugenie Schwarzwald’s educational philosophy and carries it forward in a contemporary way – digitally connected and internationally oriented. Trust in young people, opening the classroom to the world, and the conviction that learning gains depth through encounters form the foundation of our network.
Sometimes learning begins with a shift in perspective.
