[11] As a result of the overthrow of Napoleon, the Congress of Vienna restored to Prussia and France substantially the boundaries they had at the opening of the Napoleonic Wars. Still more important for the future was the consolidation of some four hundred States and petty German kingdoms into thirty-eight States.
[12] Friedrich Adolph Wilhelm Diesterweg became a pupil in one of the earliest normal schools in Prussia, that at Frankfort; then a teacher; and in 1820 became a director of a Teachers' Seminary at Moers. From 1833 to 1849 he was head of the normal school at Berlin. He has often been called "der deutsche Pestalozzi."
[13] Made in a letter to Baron von Altenstein, Prussian Minister for Education.
[14] "Herbart's seminar at the university of Königsberg was officially recognized, in 1810; Gedike's seminar in Berlin was formally taken over by the university, in 1812; the seminar in Stettin, founded in 1804, was reorganized in 1816; Breslau began pedagogical work, in 1813; and in 1817 it was stated that the purpose of the reorganized seminar in Halle was 'the training of skilled teachers for the Gymnasien.'" (Russell, James E., German Higher Schools, p. 97.)
[15] Gesner at Göttingen and Wolff at Halle laid down the lines for these in the middle eighteenth century. The early nineteenth-century foundations were at Königsberg, 1810; Berlin, 1812; Breslau, 1812; Bonn, 1819; Griefswald, 1820; and Münster, 1825.
[16] All prospective gymnasial teachers, whether graduates of the universities or not, were now required to take examinations in philosophy, pedagogy, theology, and the main gymnasial subjects, showing marked proficiency in one of the following groups, and a reasonable knowledge of the other two: namely, (1) Greek, Latin, German; (2) Mathematics and the Natural Sciences; (3) History and Geography.
[17] See Russell, Jas. E., German Higher Schools, p. 101, for the detailed "Gymnasial Program" promulgated in 1837.
[18] In 1840 there were six Prussian universities; by 1900 the number had increased to eleven, and three technical universities in addition. In the other German States eleven additional universities and six technical universities were in existence, in 1900.
[19] Benjamin Franklin visited Göttingen, as early as 1766, but the first American student to take a degree at a German university was Benjamin S. Barton, of Philadelphia, who took his doctor's degree at Göttingen, in 1799. By 1825 ten American students had studied one or more semesters at Göttingen. That year the first American student registered at Berlin, and in 1827 the first at Leipzig. (See Hinsdale, B. A., in Report, U.S. Commissioner of Education, 1897-98, vol. 1, pp. 603-16.)
[20] The remark attributed to Bismarck is interesting in this connection. "Of the students who attend the German universities," he said, "one-third die prematurely as the result of disease arising from too great poverty and undernourishment while students; another one-third die prematurely or amount to little due to bad habits and drinking and disease contracted while students; the remaining third rule Europe."