The Student-Life of Germany

by William Howitt

GENERAL SYSTEM OF GERMAN EDUCATION.

All our educational institutions form, of many members, an existing ring, which embraces the inhabitants of Germany so thoroughly, that every one of them must, according to his station and capacity, receive the benefit of a humane education. The university beams on this ring like a noble jewel set in gold, and while it closes the ring, as the noblest member of the whole, it touches again on the commencing portion, over which its beneficent splendour shall be diffused. So Mr. Traveller regarded these institutions, and regarded them therefore with approval and admiration. Von Kronen, who had already delivered to him a short history of the universities, promised to give him a brief notice of the general German educational system, which he had prepared, at another opportunity:--and here it is.

A glance into the evolution periods of the continually ascending spiritual and material interests of an age; a glance at the state of improvement even of this time, and our latest posterity, must unite in the judgment,--with truth was the nineteenth century called "the enlightened!" The spirit of man lies no longer in a lethargic sleep; the nations of the tempus novi appear no more the slaves of superstition and of absurdity; manhood feels its worth; discerns its destiny; and strains towards the highest limit,--towards an ennobled humane accomplishment, with all that strength which nature so affluently pours out upon it. Art and science embrace with giant arms the awakened spirit of man; they will be, and they are become, the common property; and every one seeks to make himself a partaker of them, according to the measure of his individual ability. Trade and commerce flourish; the activity of the common man, of the greater part of mankind, has therethrough acquired a nobler direction. Increasing population brings new necessities; and these, again, elicit a zealous wrestling for the means of satisfying them, whereby the spirit of man sees itself compelled continually to a persistence in the most strenuous activity. And does not all this contribute to a perpetually advancing improvement of our human heart and mind most essentially?--Does a thistle here and there thrive amongst the wheat? still the field is well cultivated, and the farmer knows very well how to separate it from the crop.

If we seek now the ground, the cause, of the condition of our time in all its connexions, we find the germ laid in the primordial point of union of every kind of cultivation--in education and instruction. Where and at what time has more been done for the education of the people than now? Where and when have the Folk's-schools, those primary institutions for the accomplishment of manhood, acquired a higher and more beautiful position than at present? This interesting circumstance we shall observe somewhat more closely in these pages.

Perhaps nowhere can a close inquiry into the innermost essence of a thing be more entwined with the historical developement of the same, than exactly here, when treating of schools, and their peculiar conduct and condition; and although it is by no means our intention to give here a regular history of such developement, yet we cannot avoid casting a hasty retrospective glance on the schools of a former age, since we shall thereby, on the one hand, most securely arrive at the position whence we can, as already observed, best learn to judge properly and perfectly of the nature of Folk's-schools; and, on the other hand, learn best to know the real rank of the schools of our times, and to prize their advantages. "The world's history is the world's judgment," said Schiller, and certainly he therein pronounced an important truth, of which truth where do we find a more evident testimony than here, where the most momentous portion of the intellectual cultivation of the human race is concerned? But to come to the matter.

In far antiquity education was the business of domestic life; and how imperfect it was, under such circumstances, we may easily conceive. The parents, uninformed themselves, could impart to their children but very scanty information; the whole of life was rather a vegetation, a physical rather than an inward and intellectual existence. It was then first, as population increased and state compacts were organized, that a kind of schools arose, because men then learned to see that it was only by intellectual ascendency that it was possible to work upon the rude mass. The teachers of such schools were the priests; but the scholars were such alone as, according to their custom, were destined to some high office. We thus see that real Folk's schools were not then in existence; there was, in fact, no conception of them; and what more was necessary to say on the subject of the schools of former ages, we have already given under the head, Universities. Those institutions were calculated rather for the higher range of education, and are to be regarded as the forerunners of our universities, on which account we may here pass them over.

It is only with the time of Charlemagne that we can begin to talk of Folk's-education and Folk's-schools. Besides the Scola Palatii, founded by him, and which was placed under the management of his friend Alcuin, he also originated and promoted in the convents the idea of a female education. He and Alfred of England are the true founders of village and country schools. National education owes to them an improvement the most excellent and rich with blessings; alas! that the age was not ripe enough to give a ready hand of co-operation to these noble reformers. Before this time, ay, from the very promulgation of the Christian religion, the priests had striven incessantly to monopolise the instruction of the people, and to throw it entirely into the hands of their order; a fact most prominently testified by the catechetical schools of the second and third centuries, the later episcopal and cathedral schools, and, after the sixth century, those most influential cloister schools. And as it had thus been their constant policy to secure the absolute possession and direction of popular instruction, this became the case again, after the death of these noble monarchs, when every thing had fallen once more into the old track, and these very institutions, which they had planned and founded, became still more effectual tools in their hands. What might and would result from such a predominating hierarchical tendency, experience has taught us. The selfish interests of a form of religion, degraded to the most crafty state-policy, were made the motives for keeping mankind in darkness. The understanding was oppressed by the diffusion of superstition; and under the hypocritical cloak of sanctity, beneath which the most unhallowed fanaticism concealed itself, the priesthood compelled humanity to wander on in blindness and error. The reforms of Charlemagne were as good as forgotten, and the proper Folk's-schools were swallowed up in the darkness of the Middle Ages. What was done in course of time through the exertions of such men as the Emperor Frederick I. took the direction of the high educational institutions, and wholly concerned the universities, which had for a long period been striving to make themselves independent, and, in fact, were so. In the fourteenth century a ruddy streak of dawn showed itself, which though but faintly pervading the darkness, yet at a later period harbingered the sun. Gerhardus Magnus first spoke out the idea of a free education with perspicuity. In 1379 he founded an educational institution at Deventer, in this spirit, and thereby led to the creation of similar institutions in the Netherlands, on the Rhine, and in North Germany. Montaigne, Bacon, and Lord Verulam, were powerful advocates of this idea, which, being only more and more stimulated by the reaction-system of the hierarchy, lead to the epoch of the fifteenth century.

The well-to-do Bürger-class began to erect city-corporation, or writing-schools, as they were called, and found themselves obliged to appoint masters to them at their own cost, as the clergy more and more neglected their office of teaching. The clergy, however, exerted all their power against these schools, on grounds which touched them nearly, for they feared a diminution of their income and their power through a greater enlightenment of the people. Under these circumstances the Folk's-schools could not prosper; they either fell speedily, or totally degenerated. The city-schools which were founded in the sixteenth century, and called Latin-schools, were scantily enough endowed, and the proper Folk's-schools were in a still more miserable condition most of those in the villages falling to decay, and those which did still exist scarcely being worthy of the name.

But the dawn of a new era soon broke, and the arduous and holy warfare of the Reformation threw light into the darkness of the human mind. Men were now seen to contend for knowledge, and strove to rend asunder the dishonourable bonds which, in a more animal condition, had been riveted upon them. Luther arose, and with him a new order of things in the conduct of schools was called forth. Many worthy schoolmasters, who had already gone forth from the pedagogic brotherhood of Gerhardus Magnus at Deventer, and from the Rhenish Society of Learned Men, founded by Conrad Celtes for the restoration of classical antiquity, had prepared the way for the great Reformers. How illustriously shine out in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the names of Desiderius Erasmus, Johann Reuchlin, Johann Dalberg, Rudolph Agricola, Wilibald Pirkheimer. They are like sacred signs of an approaching better time for the school affairs of the civilized world; and they all strengthened powerfully the hands of Luther, Melancthon, Zuinglius, since they treated schools, and the whole business of education, in a magnanimous spirit. To point out the active services of these men would lead us too far; it must suffice simply to remark that continually more, and fresh, and faithful teachers came forth, amongst whom, Johann Sturm, Valentin Friedland, also called Trotzendorf, Michael Neander, Johann Casselius, and Christian Hellwich, were especially distinguished. If a great want was still here and there visible, yet the path being once broken open, a retreat was by no means to be thought of, and the discovery of Guttenberg contributed not a little to make this impossible. The labours of Wolfgang Ratich and Johann Amors Comenius are of peculiar importance, whose works are known, and in which they treat of the natural and complete developement of all the powers of the human mind, especially of the understanding and the imagination. Pestalozzi's ideas here lie in embryo before us.

Soon after the appearance of these men, and the springing up of schools framed according to their views, the Jesuits made every exertion to draw the management of education to themselves; and they succeeded to a certain extent, since with their usual political acumen, they easily saw that it was necessary for them entirely to imitate the form and matter of the evangelical schools. But the stratagem of these satellites of the hierarchy was soon seen through, and the best consequences were to be hoped, had not the storms of the Thirty Years' War crushed so many promising germs and scattered so much beautiful fruit. School economy, during such an epoch, could only wearily maintain itself; the miserable management of ignorant teachers, the simple consequence of that fanatical rage, made the prosperity of schools a thing beyond hope. Yet this reaction actually hastened the entrance of a better spirit, which soon found its warmest advocates in Fenelon, Ph. T. Spener, but especially in A. H. Franke.

The activity of the last worthy man had an eminently auspicious influence; and other zealous characters soon enrolled themselves in the list of the friends of knowledge; as Godfried Zeidler, who simplified the mode of spelling; Valentin Hein, and Sulzer, who, 1700-1799, introduced an improved mode of teaching arithmetic. But, unfortunately, there soon grew in the Folk's-schools a deadly poison of all good--Mysticism, which was carried by the teachers to a most mischievous length. Equally blighting lay the pharisaical constraint of evangelical orthodoxy on the school system, not less influentially than that of the Romish hierarchy. It was not till philanthropy raised its head in the middle of the eighteenth century, through the influence of Locke, Rousseau, and Bassedow, that the school system appeared earnestly to seek to improve itself. Locke was the first to treat with a philosophical spirit educational tuition, as a connected whole. T. P. Crousatz followed in the same path. In Germany, the fiery Bassedow, in 1768, took up the Rousseau enthusiasm, and sought to plant the ideas of this philosopher in his native soil.

We imagine that we have so far conducted the reader that he can easily follow the description of the institutions for popular education of our time. We have arrived at the position we recently alluded to, and have with it reached also, that exact point of union whence all that succeeds diverges. Although it yet remains to be shown how the various kinds of schools have gradually developed themselves, we believe we may pass over this part of the subject, as on the one hand all that is necessary may be inferred from what has just been said, and on the other, they are too much a part of the present not to be well known to all. Let us therefore proceed to an illustration of the system of our Folk's-schools, which divide themselves into higher and lower; and in the first place notice the lower, as