Heilpädagogisches Kinderheim Hütteldorf, Former children's home in Hietzing, Vienna, Austria
The Heilpädagogisches Kinderheim Hütteldorf was a contract home of the City of Vienna run by the private association Kuratorium für Erziehungshilfe, holding about 150 boys of compulsory school age. Despite its name it stood in Hietzing, not Hütteldorf. Founder Rudolf Häusler lived with his family in the main building. The separate special school was at Hackinger Kai 15 in the 13th district.
Rudolf Häusler founded the home in the 1950s as a contract home of the City of Vienna, run by his own association, the Kuratorium für Erziehungshilfe, with around 150 boys of compulsory school age. Paul Kuszen, senior physician at the University Children's Hospital, supplied the adjective "heilpädagogisch" and referred children he had assessed there. In 1984 Häusler handed over to a successor called Ott, who left in 1994; in 1995 the home was renamed August-Aichhorn-Haus, and it closed in 2001. The building then housed the Freie Waldorfschule Wien-West until 2023.
The name came from Paul Kuszen, senior physician at the University Children's Hospital Vienna, who supplied the adjective "heilpädagogisch" and referred children he had assessed there to the home. The home's own school at Hackinger Kai 15 taught combined school levels in one class under a single teacher, the class-teacher system, until it was the last school in Austria to do so.
The home stood in Hietzing, not Hütteldorf, despite its name; the associated special school was at Hackinger Kai 15 in the 13th district. The main building was later used by the Freie Waldorfschule Wien-West, which closed in 2023, so it is not open as a museum and there are no guided tours.
The school at Hackinger Kai 15, created for the home, was Austria's last to teach two school levels in one class at once, with a single teacher for both. It kept this 19th-century system into the 1960s and 1970s, and gifted children there carried a lifelong educational deficit.
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