Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel Part 9

[31] These were two pamphlets by the famous patriot and poet Ernst Moritz Arndt (1769-1860), published in 1805.

[32] That is, Froebel realised the distinction of the subject-world from the object-world.

[33] That is, he signed Wilhelm Froebel instead of Friedrich Froebel, for a time. It cannot have been for long, however.

[34] The young man mentioned on page 39.

[35] The pretty district bordering the river Ucker, in pleasing contrast with the sandy plains of Brandenburg; it lies at no great distance from Berlin, so that it forms the favourite goal for a short excursion with the people of that arid city.

[36] Whither Luther fled for refuge after the Diet of Worms in 1521; and where, protected by the Elector of Saxony, he lay concealed for a year.

During this year he translated the Bible.

[37] Held all over Protestant Germany in 1817.

[38] Our children still in like manner "say their catechism" at afternoon church in old-fashioned country places.

[39] This school, still in existence up to 1865 and later, but now no longer in being, had been founded under Gruner, a pupil of Pestalozzi, to embody and carry out the educational principles of the latter.

[40] There is a smaller town called Frankfurt, on the Oder. "Am Main,"

or "An der Oder," is, therefore, added to the greater or the smaller Frankfurt respectively, for distinction's sake.

[41] He never does, for this interesting record remains a fragment.

[42] Situate at the head of the lake of Neuchatel, but in the canton of Vaud, in Switzerland.

[43] Austria was not the only country alive to the importance of this new teaching. Prussia and Holland also sent commissioners to study Pestalozzi's system, and so did many other smaller states. The Czar (Alexander I.) sent for Pestalozzi to a personal interview at Basel.

[44] _Wandernde Cla.s.sen._ Some of our later English schools have adopted a similar plan.

[45] One of Pestalozzi's teachers, to whom especially was confided the arrangement of the arithmetical studies.

[46] By positive instruction Froebel means learning by heart, or by being told results; as distinguished from actual education or development of the faculties, and the working out of results by pupils for themselves.

[47] This must mean the system invented by Rousseau, a modern development of which is the Cheve system now widely used on the Continent. In England the tonic-sol-fa notation, which uses syllables instead of figures, but which rests fundamentally on the same principles, is much more familiar.

[48] _"Geht und schaut, es geht ungehur (ungeheuer)."_

[49] The miserable quarrels between Niederer and Schmid, which so distressed the later years of Pestalozzi, are here referred to.

[50] A Consistorium in Germany is a sort of clerical council or convocation, made up of the whole of the Established clergy of a province, and supervising Church and school matters throughout that province, under the control of the Ministry of Religion and Education.

No educator could establish a school or take a post in a school without the approval of this body.

[51] That is, the education of other minds than his own; something beyond mere school-teaching.

[52] _Einertabelle_; tables or formulas extending to units only; a system embodied to a large extent in Sonnenschein's "ABC of Arithmetic,"

for teaching just the first elements of the art.

[53] Like other matters, this, too, has been left undone, as far as the present (unfinished) letter is concerned.

[54] _Erdkunde._

[55] _Recht schreiben._

[56] _Recht sprechen._

[57] One of Arndt's pamphlets, then quite new.

[58] 1827.

[59] He would have refused to countenance Froebel's throwing up his engagement.

[60] Georg Friedrich Seller (1733-1807), a Bavarian by birth, became a highly-esteemed clergyman in Coburg. He wrote on religious and moral subjects, and those amongst the list of his works, the most likely to be alluded to by Froebel, are "A Bible for Teachers," "Methods of Religious Teaching for Schools," "Religious Culture for the Young," etc.

[61] Jean Paul Friedrich Richter (1763-1825). No doubt the celebrated "Levana," Richter's educational masterpiece, which was published in this same year, 1807, is here alluded to.

[62] 1808.

[63] This is in 1827. But the expression of his thought remained a difficult matter with Froebel to the end of his life, a drawback to which many of his friends have borne witness; for instance, Madame von Marenholtz-Bulow.

[64] Probably done with the point of a knitting needle, etc. The design is then visible on the other side of the paper in an embossed form.

[65] This account is dated 1827, it is always necessary to remember.

[66] After all, the work was left to Froebel himself to do. These words were written in 1827. The "Menschen Erziehung" of Froebel ("Education of Man"), which appeared the year before, had also touched upon the subject. It was further developed in his "Mutter und Koselieder"

("Mother's Songs and Games"), in which his first wife a.s.sisted him. That appeared in 1838. In the same year was also founded the _Sonntags-Blatt_ (_Sunday Journal_), to which many essays and articles on this subject were contributed by Froebel. The third volume ("Padagogik") of Dr.

Wichard Lange's complete edition of Froebel's works is largely made up of these _Sonntags-Blatt_ articles. The whole Kindergarten system rests mainly on this higher view of children's play.

[67] A report that Froebel drew up for the Princess Regent of Rudolstadt in 1809, giving a voluminous account of the theory and practice pursued at Yverdon (Wichard's "Froebel," vol. i., p. 154).

[68] The castle of Yverdon, an old feudal stronghold, which Pestalozzi had received from the munic.i.p.ality of that town in 1804, to enable him to establish a school and work out his educational system there.

[69] Froebel desired to see in Rudolstadt, or elsewhere in Thuringia (his "native land"), an inst.i.tution like that of Pestalozzi at Yverdon; and he sought to interest the Princess Regent of Rudolstadt by the full account of Yverdon already mentioned.

[70] This would scarcely seem probable to those who admire and love Pestalozzi. But we must remember that religious teaching appeals so intimately to individual sympathies that it is quite possible that what was of vital service to many others was not of so much use to Froebel, who was, as he frankly admits, out of harmony on many points with his n.o.ble-hearted teacher.

[71] That the boys' characters were immersed in an element of strengthening and developing games as the body is immersed in the water of a strengthening bath, seems to be Froebel's idea.

[72] Sanskrit is here probably meant.

[73] Hebrew and Arabic.

[74] The comet of 1811, one of the most brilliant of the present century, was an equal surprise to the most skilled astronomers as to Froebel. Observations of its path have led to a belief that it has a period of 300 years; so that it was possibly seen by our ancestors in 1511, and may be seen by our remote descendants in 2111. The appearance of this comet was synchronous with an unusually fine vintage harvest, and "wine of the great Comet year" was long held in great esteem.

[75] _Geognosie._

[76] The Plamann School, an inst.i.tution of considerable merit. Plamann was a pupil of Pestalozzi. One of the present writers studied crystallography later on with a professor who had been a colleague of Froebel's in this same school, and who himself was also a pupil of Pestalozzi.

[77] Froebel is here symbolically expressing the longing which pervaded all n.o.ble spirits at that time for a free and united Germany, for a great Fatherland. The tender mother's love was symbolised by the ties of home (Motherland), but the father's strength and power (Fatherland) was only then to be found in German national life in the one or two large states like Prussia, etc. It needed long years and the termination of this period of preparation by two great wars, those of 1866 and of 1870, to bind the whole people together, and make Germany no longer a "geographical expression" but a mighty nation.