Chapter 1

Produced by Rose Koven, Juliet Sutherland, Joel Schlosberg and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

OF

FRIEDRICH FROEBEL

TRANSLATED AND ANNOTATED BY

EMILIE MICHAELIS,

_Head Mistress of the Croydon Kindergarten and Preparatory School_,

AND

H. KEATLEY MOORE, MUS. BAC., B.A.,

_Examiner in Music to the Froebel Society and Vice-Chairman of the Croydon Kindergarten Company._

*"Come, let us live for our children."*

SYRACUSE, N.Y.: C.W. BARDEEN, PUBLISHER. 1889.

German Books on Pedagogy.

1. _Comenius. Grosse Unterrichtslehre._ Mit einer Einleitung, "J. Comenius, sein Leben und Werken," von LINDNER. Price $1.50.

2. _Helvetius. Von Menschen, seinen Geisteskraften und seiner Erziehung._ Mit einer Einleitung, "Cl. Adr. Helvetius, 1715-1771. Ein Zeit- und Lebensbild," von LINDNER. 12mo, pp. 339. Price $1.50.

3. _Pestalozzi. Wie Gertrud ihre Kinder lehrt._ Mit einer Einleitung, "J.H. Pestalozzi's Leben, Werke, und Grundsätze," von RIEDEL. Price $1.25.

4. _Niemeyer. Grundsätze die Erziehung und des Unterrichtes._ Mit einer Einleitung "Aug. Herm. Niemeyer, sein Leben und Werken," von LINDNER. 2 vols. Price $3.00.

5. _Diesterweg. Rhenische Blätter._ Mit einer Einleitung, "F.A.W. Diesterweg," von JESSEN. Price $1.25.

6. _Jacotot. Universal Unterricht._ Mit einer "Darstellung des Lebens und der Lehre Jacotot's," von GOERING. 12mo, pp. 364. Price $3.75.

7. _Fröbel._ Pädagogische Schriften. Herausgegeben von SEIDEL. 3 vols. Price $7.00.

8. _Fichte._ Pädagogisch Schriften und Ideen. Mit "biographischer Einleitung und gedrängter Darstellung von Fichte's Pädagogik," von KEFERSTEIN. Price $2.00.

9. _Martin Luther._ Pädagogische Schrifte. Mit Einleitung von SCHUMANN. Price $1.50.

10. _Herder als Pädagog._ Von MORRES. Price 75 cts.

11. _Geschichte der Pädagogik._ in Biographen, Uebersichten, und Proben aus pädagogischen Hauptwerken. Von NIEDERGESAESS. Price $2.50.

11. _Lexikon der Pädagogik._ Von SANDER. Price $3.50.

For sale by

*C.W. BARDEEN, Publisher, Syracuse, N.Y.*

PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION.

It will be long before we have a biography of Froebel to compare with DeGuimp's _Pestalozzi_, of which an English translation has just appeared. Meantime we must content ourselves with two long autobiographical letters contained in this volume, which, though incomplete, have yet the peculiar charm that comes from the candid record of genuine impressions.

The first of these letters, that to the Duke of Meiningen, has already appeared in English, in a translation by Miss Lucy Wheelock for Barnard's _American Journal of Education_, since reprinted in pp. 21-48 of his _Kindergarten and Child Culture_, (see p. 146), and in a small volume under the title _Autobiography of Froebel_ (see p. 146). While a faithful attempt to reproduce the original, this translation struggled in vain to transform Froebel's rugged and sometimes seemingly incoherent sentences into adequate and attractive English, so that the long letter has proved to most English readers formidable and repellant. But in the original it is one of the most charming productions in literature, candid and confidential in tone, and detailing those inner gropings for ideas that became convictions which only an autobiography can reveal. These qualities are so admirably preserved in the translation by Miss Emily Michaelis and H. Keatley Moore that it seemed to leave nothing to be desired. They have not only given a faithful rendering, but they have impressed upon it the loving touch of faithful disciples. Accordingly I purchased from the English publishers the American rights to this translation; and have reproduced not only this letter, but that to the philosopher Krause, with Barop's "Critical Moments," and the "Chronological Abstract," all from duplicates of the English plates.

The rest of the volume appears for the first time. The Bibliography seemed desirable, and is confined to attainable books likely to be of value to American teachers. The Index is full, but not fuller than the fragmentary character of the material seemed to require. The Table of Contents will also serve to make reference easy to the principal evens of Froebel's history.

In the lives of Pestalozzi and of Froebel many resemblances may be traced. Both were sons of clergymen. Both were half-orphans from their earliest recollections. Both were unhappy in childhood, were misunderstood, companionless, awkward, clumsy, ridiculed. Both were as boys thrown into the almost exclusive society of women, and both retained to the last strongly feminine characteristics. Both were throughout life lacking in executive ability; both were financially improvident. Both were dependent for what they did accomplish upon friends, and both had the power of inspiring and retaining friendships that were heroic, Pestalozzi's Krüsi corresponding with Froebel's Middendorf. Both became teachers only by accident, and after failure in other professions. Both saw repeated disaster in the schools they established, and both were to their last days pointed at as visionary theorists of unsound mind. Both failed to realize their ideas, but both planted their ideas so deeply in the minds of others that they took enduring root. Both lacked knowledge of men, but both knew and loved children, and were happiest when personally and alone they had children under their charge. Both delighted in nature, and found in solitary contemplation of flowers and woods and mountains relief from the disappointments they encountered among their fellows.

But there were contrasts too. Pestalozzi had no family ties, while Froebel maintained to the last the closest relations with several brothers and their households. Pestalozzi married at twenty-three a woman older than himself, on whom he thereafter relied in all his troubles. Froebel deferred his marriage till thirty-six and then seems to have regarded his wife more as an advantage to his school than as a help-meet to himself.

Pestalozzi was diffident, and in dress and manner careless to the point of slovenliness; Froebel was extravagant in his self-confidence, and at times almost a dandy in attire. Pestalozzi was always honest and candid, while Froebel was as a boy untruthful. Pestalozzi was touchingly humble, and eager to ascribe the practical failure of his theories to his personal inefficiency; Froebel never acknowledged himself in the wrong, but always attributed failure to external causes. On the other hand, while Froebel was equable in temperament, Pestalozzi was moody and impressionable, flying from extreme gaiety to extreme dejection, slamming the door if displeased with a lesson a teacher was giving, but coming back to apologize if he met a child who smiled upon him. Under Rousseau's influence Pestalozzi was inclined to skepticism, and limited religious teaching in school to the reading of the gospels, and the practice of Christianity; Froebel was deeply pious, and made it fundamental that education should be founded plainly and avowedly upon religion.

Intellectually the contrast is even stronger. While Froebel had a university education, Pestalozzi was an eminently ignorant man; his penmanship was almost illegible, he could not do simple sums in multiplication, he could not sing, he could not draw, he wore out all his handkerchiefs gathering pebbles and then never looked at them afterward. Froebel was not only a reader but a scientific reader, always seeking first to find out what others had discovered that he might begin where they left off; Pestalozzi boasted that he had not read a book in forty years. Naturally, therefore, Pestalozzi was always an experimenter, profiting by his failures but always failing in his first attempts, and hitting upon his most characteristic principles by accident; while Froebel was a theorist, elaborating his ideas mentally before putting them in practice, and never satisfied till he had properly located them in his general scheme of philosophy.

And yet, curiously enough, it is Pestalozzi who was the author. His "Leonard and Gertrude" was read by every cottage fireside, while Froebel's writings were intelligible only to his disciples. Pestalozzi had an exuberant imagination and delightful directness and simplicity of expression; Froebel's style was labored and obscure, and his doctrines may be better known through the "Child and Child Nature" of the Baroness Marenholz von Buelow than through his own "Education of Man."

The account of Froebel's life given in this volume is supplemented somewhat by the "Reminiscences" of this same Baroness, who became acquainted with him in 1849, and was thereafter his most enthusiastic and successful apostle. Till some adequate biography appears, that volume and this must be relied upon for information of the man who shares equally with Pestalozzi the honor of educational reform in this century.

C.W. BARDEEN. Syracuse, June 10, 1889.

COMMENTS UPON FROEBEL AND HIS WORK.

Und als er so, wie Wichard Lange richtig sagt, der Apostel des weiblichen Gechlechts geworden war, starb er, der geniale, unermüdlich thätige, von Liebe getragene Mann.--SCHMIDT, _Geschichte der Pädagogik_, Cöthen, 1862, iv. 282.

En résumé, Rousseau aurait pu être déconcerté par les inventions pratiques, un peu subtiles parfois, de l'ingénieux Froebel. Il eût souri, comme tout le monde, des artifices par lesquels il obligeait l'enfant à se faire acteur au milieu de ses petits camarades, à imiter tour à tour le soldat qui monte la garde, le cordonnier qui travaille, le cheval qui piétine, l'homme fatigué qui se repose. Mais, sur les principes, il se serait mis aisément d'accord avec l'auteur de _l'Education de l'homme_, avec un penseur à l'âme tendre et noble, qui remplaçait les livres par les choses, qui à une instruction pédantesque substituait l'éducation intérieure, qui aux connaissances positives préférait la chaleur du sentiment, la vie intime et profonde de l'âme, qui respectait la liberté et la spontanéité de l'enfant, qui enfin s'efforçait d'écarter de lui les mauvaises influences et de faire à son innocence un milieu digne d'elle--COMPAYRÉ's _Histoire Critique des Doctrines de l'Éducation en France depuis le XVIme Siécle_, Paris, 1879, ii. 125.

We might say that his effort in pedagogy consists chiefly in organizing into a system the sense intuitions which Pestalozzi proposed to the child somewhat at random and without direct plan.--COMPAYRÉ's _History of Pedagogy_, Payne's translation, Boston, 1886, p. 449.

Er war gleich Pestalozzi von den höchsten Ideen der Zeit getragen und suchte die Erziehung an diese Ideen anzuknüpfen. So lange die Mutter nicht nach den Gesetzen der Natur ihr Kind erzieht und bildet und dafür nicht ihr Leben einsetst, so lange--davon geht er aus--sind alle Reformen der Schule auf Sand gebaut. Trotsdem verlegt er einen Theil der mütterlichen Aufgabe in den Kindergarten, in welchem er die Kinder vor ihre Schulpflichtigkeit vereinigt wissen will, (1) um auf die häusliche Erziehung ergänzend und verbessernd einzuwirken, (2) um das Kind aus dem Einzelleben heraus Zum Verkehr mil seinesgleichen zu führen, und (3) um dem weiblichen Geschlechte Gelegenheit zu geben, sich auf seinen erzieherischen Beruf vorzubereiten.--BÖHM's _Kurzgefasste Geschichte der Pädagogik_, Nürnberg, 1880, p. 134.

Le jardin d'enfants est évidemment en opposition avec l'idée fondamentale de Pestalozzi; car celui-ci avait confié entièrement à la mère et au foyer domestique la tâche que Froebel remet, en grande partie, aux jardins d'enfants et à sa directrice. A l'égard des rapports de l'éducation domestique, telle qui elle est à l'heure qu'il est, on doit reconnaître que Froebel avait un coup-d'oeil plus juste que Pestalozzi.--_Histoire d'Éducation_, FREDERICK DITTES, Redolfi's French translation, Paris, 1880, p. 258.

While others have taken to the work of education their own pre-conceived notions of what that work should be, Froebel stands consistently alone in seeking in the nature of the child the laws of educational action--in ascertaining from the child himself how we are to educate him.--JOSEPH PAYNE, _Lectures on the Science and Art of Education_, Syracuse, 1885, p. 254.

Years afterwards, the celebrated Jahn (the "Father Jahn" of the German gymnastics) told a Berlin student of a queer fellow he had met, who made all sorts of wonderful things from stones and cobwebs. This queer fellow was Froebel; and the habit of making out general truths from the observation of nature, especially from plants and trees, dated from the solitary rambles in the Forest.

As the cultivator creates nothing in the trees and plants, so the educator creates nothing in the children,--he merely superintends the development of inborn faculties. So far Froebel agrees with Pestalozzi; but in one respect he was beyond him, and has thus become, according to Michelet, the greatest of educational reformers. Pestalozzi said that the faculties were developed by exercise. Froebel added that the function of education was to develop the faculties by arousing _voluntary activity_. Action proceeding from inner impulse (_Selbsthäligkeit_) was the one thing needful, and here Froebel as usual refers to God: "God's every thought is a work, a deed." As God is the Creator, so must man be a creator also. Living acting, conceiving,--these must form a triple cord within every child of man, though the sound now of this string, now of that may preponderate, and then again of two together.

Pestalozzi held that the child belonged to the family; Fichte on the other hand, claimed it for society and the State. Froebel, whose mind, like that of Frederick Maurice, delighted in harmonizing apparent contradictions, and who taught that "all progress lay through opposites to their reconciliations," maintained that the child belonged both to the family and to society, and he would therefore have children spend some hours of the day in a common life and in well-organized common employments. These assemblies of children he would not call schools, for the children in them ought not to be old enough for schooling. So he invented the term _Kindergarten_, garden of children, and called the superintendents "children's gardeners."--R.H. QUICK, in _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, xix edition.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

PAGE

INTRODUCTORY 1, 2

LETTER TO THE DUKE OF MEININGEN 3-101

Birth and early life 3, 104

Enters the girls' school 9

Goes away from home to Stadt-Ihm 15

Is apprenticed to a forester 24

Returns to his father's house 27

Goes to the University of Jena 28, 105

Returns home again 35

Goes to Bamberg as clerk 33

Becomes land-surveyor 39

Goes to the Oberfalz as accountant 42

Soon after to Mecklenberg 42

Gets small inheritance from his uncle 43

Goes to Frankfurt 48, 107

Becomes teacher in the Model School 31, 109

Visits Pestalozzi 52

Resigns to become a private tutor 65, 110

Takes his three pupils to Yverdon 77

Returns to Frankfurt 84

Goes to the University of Göttingen 84, 111

Goes to Berlin 89, 111

Enters the army 91, 111, 120

Becomes curator in Berlin 96, 111, 121

Enlists in the army again 100, 121

SUPPLEMENTARY REMARKS BY THE TRANSLATORS 102, 103

LETTER TO KRAUSE 104-125

Begins at Griesheim his ideal work 113, 121

Undertakes education of his nephews 121

Moves to Keilhau 122, 127

NOTE BY THE TRANSLATORS 126

CRITICAL MOMENTS IN THE FROEBEL COMMUNITY 127-137

Froebel goes to the Wartensee 131

Then to Willisau 132, 136

Then to the Orphanage at Burgdorf 135, 136

Visits Berlin 137

NOTES BY THE TRANSLATORS 138, 139

Death of Froebel 138

CHRONOLOGICAL ABSTRACT OF FROEBEL'S LIFE AND MOVEMENT 140-144

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF FROEBEL 145-152

INDEX 153-167

INTRODUCTORY.

The year 1882 was the centenary of Froebel's birth, and in the present "plentiful lack" of faithful translations of Froebel's own words we proposed to the Froebel Society to issue a translation of the "Education of Man," which we would undertake to make at our own cost, that the occasion might be marked in a manner worthy of the English branch of the Kindergarten movement. But various reasons prevented the Society from accepting our offer, and the lamentable deficiency still continues. We have therefore endeavoured to make a beginning by the present work, consisting of Froebel's own words done into English as faithfully as we know how to render them, and accompanied with any brief explanation of our own that may be essential to the clear understanding of the passages given. We have not attempted to rewrite our author, the better to suit the practical, clear-headed, common-sense English character, but have preferred simply to present him in an English dress with his national and personal peculiarities untouched.

In so doing we are quite aware that we have sacrificed interest, for in many passages, if not in most, a careful paraphrase of Froebel would be much more intelligible and pithy to English readers than a true rendering, since he probably possesses every fault of style except over-conciseness; but we feel that it is better to let Froebel speak for himself.

For the faithfulness of translation we hope our respective nationalities may have stood us in good stead. We would, however, add that a faithful translation is not a verbal translation. The translator should rather strive to write each sentence as the author would have written it in English.

Froebel's opinions, character, and work grow so directly out of his life, that we feel the best of his writing that a student of the Kindergarten system could begin with is the important autobiographical "Letter to the Duke of Meiningen," written in the year 1827, but never completed, and in all probability never sent to the sovereign whose name it bears. That this is the course Froebel would himself have preferred will, we think, become quickly apparent to the reader. Besides, in the boyhood and the earliest experiences of Froebel's life, we find the sources of his whole educational system. That other children might be better understood than he was, that other children might have the means to live the true child-life that was denied to himself, and that by their powers being directed into the right channels, these children might become a blessing to themselves and to others, was undoubtedly in great part the motive which induced Froebel to describe so fully all the circumstances of his peculiar childhood. We should undoubtedly have a clearer comprehension of many a great reformer if he had taken the trouble to write out at length the impressions of his life's dawn, as Froebel has done. In Froebel's particular case, moreover, it is evident that although his account of himself is unfinished, we fortunately possess all that is most important for the understanding of the origin of the Kindergarten system. After the "Letter to the Duke of Meiningen," we have placed the shorter account of his life which Froebel included in a letter to the philosopher Krause. A sketch of Barop's, which varies the point of view by regarding the whole movement more in its outer aspect than even Froebel himself is able to do, seemed to us also desirable to translate; and finally we have added also a carefully prepared "chronology" extended from Lange's list. Our translation is made from the edition of Froebel's works published by Dr. Wichard Lange at Berlin in 1862.

EMILIE MICHAELIS. H. KEATLEY MOORE. THE CROYDON KINDERGARTEN, _January 1886_.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF FROEBEL.

(A LETTER TO THE DUKE OF MEININGEN.)

I was born at Oberweissbach, a village in the Thuringian Forest, in the small principality of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, on the 21st April, 1782. My father was the principal clergyman, or pastor, there.[1] (He died in 1802.) I was early initiated into the conflict of life amidst painful and narrowing circumstances; and ignorance of child-nature and insufficient education wrought their influence upon me. Soon after my birth my mother's health began to fail, and after nursing me nine months she died. This loss, a hard blow to me, influenced the whole environment and development of my being: I consider that my mother's death decided more or less the external circumstances of my whole life.

The cure of five thousand souls, scattered over six or seven villages, devolved solely on my father. This work, even to a man so active as my father, who was very conscientious in the fulfilment of his duty as minister, was all-absorbing; the more so since the custom of frequent services still prevailed. Besides all this, my father had undertaken to superintend the building of a large new church, which drew him more and more from his home and from his children.

I was left to the care of the servants; but they, profiting by my father's absorption in his work, left me, fortunately for me, to my brothers, who were somewhat older than myself.[2] This, in addition to a circumstance of my later life, may have been the cause of that unswerving love for my family, and especially for my brothers, which has, to the present moment, been of the greatest importance to me in the conduct of my life. Although my father, for a village pastor, was unusually well informed--nay, even learned and experienced--and was an incessantly active man, yet in consequence of this separation from him during my earliest years I remained a stranger to him throughout my life; and in this way I was as truly without a father as without a mother. Amidst such surroundings I reached my fourth year. My father then married again, and gave me a second mother. My soul must have felt deeply at this time the want of a mother's love,--of parental love,--for in this year occurs my first consciousness of self. I remember that I received my new mother overflowing with feelings of simple and faithful child-love towards her. These sentiments made me happy, developed my nature, and strengthened me, because they were kindly received and reciprocated by her. But this happiness did not endure. Soon my step-mother rejoiced in the possession of a son of her own;[3] and then her love was not only withdrawn entirely from me and transferred to her own child, but I was treated with worse than indifference--by word and deed, I was made to feel an utter stranger.