FELLENBERG, PHILIPP EMANUEL VON (1771-1844), Swiss educationist, was born on the 27th of June 1771 at Bern, in Switzerland. His father was of patrician family, and a man of importance in his canton, and his mother was a grand-daughter of the Dutch admiral Van Tromp. From his mother and from Pfeffel, the blind poet of Colmar, he received a better education than falls to the lot of most boys, while the intimacy of his father with Pestalozzi gave to his mind that bent which it afterwards followed. In 1790 he entered the university of Tübingen, where he distinguished himself by his rapid progress in legal studies. On account of his health he afterwards undertook a walking tour in Switzerland and the adjoining portions of France, Swabia and Tirol, visiting the hamlets and farmhouses, mingling in the labours and occupations of the peasants and mechanics, and partaking of their rude fare and lodging. After the downfall of Robespierre, he went to Paris and remained there long enough to be assured of the storm impending over his native country. This he did his best to avert, but his warnings were disregarded, and Switzerland was lost before any efficient means could be taken for its safety. Fellenberg, who had hastily raised a levy en masse, was proscribed; a price was set upon his head, and he was compelled to fly into Germany. Shortly afterwards, however, he was recalled by his countrymen, and sent on a mission to Paris to remonstrate against the rapacity and cruelty of the agents of the French republic. But in this and other diplomatic offices which he held for a short time, he was witness to so much corruption and intrigue that his mind revolted from the idea of a political life, and he returned home with the intention of devoting himself wholly to the education of the young. With this resolution he purchased in 1799 the estate of Hofwyl, near Bern, intending to make agriculture the basis of a new system which he had projected, for elevating the lower and rightly training the higher orders of the state, and welding them together in a closer union than had hitherto been deemed attainable. For some time he carried on his labours in conjunction with Pestalozzi, but incompatibility of disposition soon induced them to separate. The scheme of Fellenberg at first excited a large amount of ridicule, but gradually it began to attract the notice of foreign countries; and pupils, some of them of the highest rank, began to flock to him from every country in Europe, both for the purpose of studying agriculture and to profit by the high moral training which he associated with his educational system. For forty-five years Fellenberg, assisted by his wife, continued his educational labours, and finally raised his institution to the highest point of prosperity and usefulness. He died on the 21st of November 1844.
See Hamm, Fellenberg’s Leben und Wirken (Bern, 1845); and Schoni, Der Stifter von Hofwyl, Leben und Wirken Fellenberg’s.
FELLER, FRANÇOIS XAVIER DE (1735-1802), Belgian author, was born at Brussels on the 18th of August 1735. In 1752 he entered a school of the Jesuits at Reims, where he manifested a great aptitude for mathematics and physical science. He commenced his novitiate two years afterwards, and in testimony of his admiration for the apostle of India added Xavier to his surname. On the expiry of his novitiate he became professor at Luxembourg, and afterwards at Liége. In 1764 he was appointed to the professorship of theology at Tyrnau in Hungary, but in 1771 he returned to Belgium and continued to discharge his professorial duties at Liége till the suppression of the Jesuits in 1773. The remainder of his life he devoted to study, travel and literature. On the invasion of Belgium by the French in 1794 he went to Paderborn, and remained there two years, after which he took up his residence at Ratisbon, where he died on the 23rd of May 1802.
Feller’s works exceed 120 volumes. In 1773 he published, under the assumed name Flexier de Reval (an anagram of Xavier de Feller), his Catéchisme philosophique; and his principal work Dictionnaire historique et littéraire (published in 1781 at Liége in 8 volumes, and afterwards several times reprinted and continued down to 1848), appeared under the same name. Among his other works the most important are Cours de morale chrétienne et de littérature religieuse and his Coup d’œil sur congrès d’Ems. The Journal historique et littéraire, published at Luxembourg and Liége from 1774 to 1794 in 70 volumes, was edited and in great part written by him.
FELLING, an urban district in the Jarrow parliamentary division of Durham, England, forming an eastern suburb of Gateshead. Pop. (1901) 22,467. Its large industrial population is employed in the neighbouring collieries and the various attendant manufactures.
FELLOE, the outer rim of a wheel, to which the spokes are attached. The word is sometimes spelled and usually pronounced “felly.” It is a Teutonic word, in O. Eng. felg, cognate with Dutch velge, Ger. Felge; the original Teutonic root from which these are derived probably meant “to fit together.”