German Influence on English Education

W Armytage

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136722615
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book traces the impact of German educationists, such as Froebel and Herbart, on practice in Britain while stressing the important and lasting influence of German scientists, technologists, philosophers, sociologists and historians on our educational system. This record of interplay between the two countries shows not only the influence of German innovations but also the effect on British education of the many German émigrés in the last two hundred years.

1

Protestantism and Economic
Penetration

Its cradle: Wittenburg

The first German university to be sanctioned by the Emperor, and not the Pope, was Wittenberg. Its founder, the elector of Saxony, also amassed in the church thousands of relics in the hope of making his dull Saxon town a place of pilgrimage. And so it became, not for its relics, but for its university, and for one professor in particular, Martin Luther. For Luther accelerated the movement to a state church educational system by his discrediting of the magic of Catholic faith. This ‘magic’ centred round indulgences, which in 1517 were being sold by the agent of the Archbishop of Mainz to repay a loan raised from the Fuggers to purchase his benefice. The agent encountered Luther who ‘posted’ to his clerical superiors some 95 reasons why he, as a monk, thought such selling of indulgences was wrong. Luther argued that indulgences were based on the idea that sinners could, through priestly intercession, draw on a ‘treasury of merit’, accumulated by Christ's sacrifice and the good deeds of the saints, and suggested that guilt could be expurgated by faith alone.

From condemning indulgences to attacking the entire ecclesiastical hierarchy was a short step, and when he took it the King of England, Henry VIII, earned the papal accolade of Defender of the Faith for writing against him.

But Henry VIII himself was to collide with the Pope and Lutheranism became increasingly attractive to him as his negotiations over his divorce petered out. So he turned to Wittenberg where several Englishmen had already been studying with Luther. One of these was Robert Barnes, the puritan, who became a great friend of Luther's barber. So Henry selected him as his envoy to secure German support for his divorce and second marriage.

Barnes was to play an even bigger rôle in the theological debates and changes that followed the divorce, in that with others he brought Lutheranism so much to the forefront in the Thirty-nine Articles of the Anglican Church. A later writer described Anglicans as belonging to ‘Martin's Church’—a hybrid between Papist Rome and Calvinist Geneva.

Its propagation: grammar schools and books

The fibre of protestantism was strengthened by learning the ‘holy languages’—Latin, Greek and Hebrew. To teach these, ‘grammar schools’ were founded, in which secularized miracle-plays were encouraged by burghers and schoolmasters. German schools would often lend properties to towns whilst towns often contributed to the cost of such plays.

Because such plays were in Latin, schoolmasters in Germany and England could communicate more easily. English protestants especially admired the gymnasium at Strasbourg (sustained by the city), where the school play in both Latin and Greek became a permanent institution (Herford, 1886, 101–6). A tribute to Sturm, the remarkable headmaster of the Strasbourg School was paid by Roger Ascham in The Schoolmaster (1570) a book described by its author as ‘a rude porch’ to Sturm's techniques, which were being practised for eleven years after the book appeared. Some of Sturm's numerous educational writings were also translated into English by a mysterious writer, ‘T.B.’.

Several such miracle plays for children were written by the headmaster of a school at Hitchin, Ralph Radcliffe, whilst the first known English comedy Ralph Roister Doister was written by Nicholas Udall, headmaster of Eton.

If Strasbourg was the model grammar school, Frankfurt was the market for books. The first catalogue of new books for sale there was issued in 1564 by George Wilier from Augsberg. Here came Bodley's father in the reign of Queen Mary. Bodley himself never lost a passion for books—a passion enhanced by four years spent in Germany, France and Italy as a young man. After joining the Queen's service he was sent abroad in 1585, and from 1589–96 he became the Queen's personal resident in the Netherlands. The following year he devoted himself to restoring the library at Oxford, and sent John Bell to buy books for him abroad. Five years after his death Bell issued the first English version of the Frankfurt Catalogue in 1618.

Its perversion: diabolic science

By the end of the sixteenth century Wittenberg was known not so much as the home of protestantism as the home of magic. If protestantism meant Luther, magic meant Dr. Faustus. Mining and navigation needed mathematics, which was regarded by many as diabolic.

The very suspicion of mathematics led its devotees to conceal its truth in codes. Luther's friend Dürer is said to have concealed a statement of the canon of proportion in his picture Melancolia. Certainly Rudolf II the Holy Roman emperor, who patronized scientists like Tycho Brahe, was regarded as mad.

Most English tales of wonder were (or alleged to be) translated out of ‘Hie Almain’, so much so that it was said that ‘the literature of marvels was almost the only direction in which the literary communication between the two countries remained relatively flowing and vigorous’ (Herford, 1886, 178).

Here the legend of Dr. Faustus arose. Certainly the magi, whether actual or fiction, seemed to be German: Albertus Magnus Agrippa, Paracelsus, Frethheim. Just such a magus was Faust or Fastus, a legendary character who appeared at this time as the archetype of necromoncer and charlatan. Round him clustered so many legends associated with wizardry that a book was published about him in 1587. Seeing its dramatic possibilities Christopher Marlowe wrote a play on the subject. Marlowe implies that Dr. Faustus was at Wittenberg University, but provided a sop to the Protestant conscience by having his hero cast insults at the Roman Catholic Church.

So if Wittenberg could have a Faustus, so could Oxford. It was supplied by Robert Greene in the same year (1594) as Marlowe's play was performed in The honorable historie of Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (1594). In this, British magicians display their art at the expense of their German counterpart before the German emperor, the King of England and of Castile. When the King of England said ‘Now, monarchs, hath the German found his match’ (ii, 126), it showed that in magic, as in theology and trade, England was flexing her national muscles against Germany.

Religious peace and the groups

One German merchant who settled in England in 1628, believing that the spread of knowledge would damp the fires of war, started a correspondence with many scholars and men of science and tried to put Comenius (whom he invited to England) at the head of an institution which would effect this—unsuccessful because of the English civil war. Milton dedicated his tract on Education (1644) to him, and John Evelyn described him as ‘master of innumerable curiosities and very communicative’. This German, Samuel Hartlib, was not alone amongst his countrymen in seeking to alleviate men's needs by knowledge. Another German, Theodore Haak, suggested regular meetings of knowledgeable men, and a group took shape in London in 1645, chiefly at his suggestion (McKie, 1960, 15). When this group developed into the Royal Society of London, a third German, Henry Oldenburg (the son-in-law of Hartlib's friend John Dury) suggested that it should mount a journal. So not only did he found the Philosophical Transactions but for twelve years he edited and published (in spite of being gaoled at one period) it (Bluhm, 1960, 189).

The Royal Society was only one of numerous groups fostered by earnest Germans in England. The preacher at Haak's funeral sermon in 1690 was the Rev. Anthony Horneck who was especially active in forming others. These were not for the improvement of natural knowledge, but for the improvement of civilized manners. Horneck initiated the practice of twice weekly devotional meetings at his house to foster faith, which he had seen at Frankfurt conducted by P. J. Spener in 1666. For Spener intensified the activity of the protestant laity by emphasizing their spiritual priesthood. To him the practical aspect of Christianity was its charity, which deflated controversy. Spener's groups (collegia pietatis) of earnest young laymen appealed to Horneck who, on his return to England from the Palatinate in 1671 gathered a collegium pietatis around him at the Savoy Chapel. They drew up careful regulations for their conduct.

So began those societies for the reformation of manners. Other clergy like Dr. William Beveridge and Dr. Josiah Woodward followed Horneck's lead in establishing similar groups (Bullock, 1963, 127). Indeed the latter published in 1696 (the year after Horneck's death) An Account of the Rise and Progress of the Religious Societies in the City of London etc. and of Endeavours for the Reformation of Manners.

Pietism

Woodward's German translator was one of the foundation professors at the University of Halle: A. H. Francke. Appalled by the ignorance of the poor who came to his house for alms every Thursday, he had started a schools system. It grew rapidly. A boarding establishment (or Paedagogium) was organized for sons of the nobility where French, English, Italian and estate-management were taught.

Most interestingly, science, in the form of dissecting dogs or field excursions was cultivated. Similar ‘practical subjects’ were in the curriculum of a gymnasium he established with the exception that Hebrew took the place of French. The elementary schools he established were similarly oriented to practical ends, like speaking, singing, arts and crafts. Francke's educational practices were down to earth, based on co-operative work. ‘Setting’ replaced ‘classes’, music took the place of games, and everyone worked hard. The Paedagogium, for instance, had an eleven hour day (5 to 12, 2 to 6).

Many Englishmen were interested in Francke's work. The founding of Charity schools upon the same plan as that of Halle in Germany was initiated by Francis Lee and Robert Nelson both of whom had travelled through Germany absorbing the pietist spirit of service. Both were also interested in societies for the improvement of manners, and other ameliorative schemes. Both joined the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (1695) and Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (1701). Francke's work was further brought to the attention of English readers in Pietas Hallensis; or a publick demonstration of the footsteps of a Divine Being yet in the world: in an historical narration of the Orphan House and other charitable institutions at Glaucha near Halle in Saxony... done out of High-Dutch into English (1705) which Dr. Josiah Woodward commended to the American divines. Yet another disciple was Anthony Boehm, one of the first graduates of the University of Halle, who arrived in England in 1701 to open a school for the children of German families in London. Having met the Prince Consort's secretary on the boat coming over, he was also appointed to read the book of common prayer in the royal chapel. He became the English missionary of the practical Christianity of the Pietists. In The First Principles of Practical Christianity, in Questions and Answers, expressed in the very Words of Scripture (1708) he contributed to the greater understanding of Francke's work. He is thought to have translated Nicodemus or Treatise Against the Fear of Man (1706) which was later to be abridged by John Wesley.

Moravians and Wesleyans

Wesley was also influenced by another German, Count Zinzendorf, who had reacted against the joyless eleven hour day of Francke's Paedagogium (after spending six years there) by starting a school of his own near Dresden. Refugees from Bohemia and Moravia built a little settlement on his estate known as Herrnhut and adopted him as leader. So Zinzendorf in return rejected catechetical teachings, and encouraged the singing of hymns, as ‘the best method of inculcating religious truths and for conserving those in the heart*. Stripping the Bible of its Jewish accretions, he translated it into modern idiom, taking one such verse as a motto for each day. In pamphlets, 365 at a time, these mottoes (or Kinder-Loosungen) became the theme for activities on that day. Rejecting Francke's emphasis on ‘conversion’, Zinzendorf tried to reveal Christ to a child ‘as clearly as he can see a house’: to ‘walk’ with him. That the child could be free to do so, self-activity was to be encouraged, directed by the Holy Spirit.

This was the real origin of ‘progressive’ education in a structured environment. This ‘structured environment’ encompassed old and young, who were organized into ‘groups’ called ‘choirs’ by Zinzendorf. Infants, little children, bigger boys, bigger girls, young men, young women, widows, widowers and parents all had their own meetings, litanies and festivals. Socialization was to be the essence of happiness.

Wesley met Moravian missionaries on his way to Georgia. On his return he attended a meeting of the Moravians in Aldersgate Street on 24 May 1738, when he ‘felt his heart strangely warmed.’ ‘I felt,’ he wrote ‘I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me, that He had taken away my sins, even more, and saved me from the law of sin and death.’ From this time for the next fifty years he was to preach the gospel. In this work frequent hymns on the Moravian pattern as ‘a body of experimental and practical divinity’ played an essential rôle. He published the first collection of hymns for use in the Church of England, and, aided by his brother Charles, some fifty further tracts and books of hymns followed. Of the 525 hymns in The Methodist Hymn Book of 1780 several are translations from the German. Indeed the giving of place names to tunes—Leipzig, Jena, Herrnhut, etc. was begun by him.

Quiet, modest, peaceable, the Moravians went on to become school builders in their settlements in Britain. In addition to Fulneck (their first), girls’ schools at Dukinfield and Gomershall (1792), Wyke (1794), Fairfield (1796), Gracehill (1798), Ockbrook (1799) and Bedford (1801) were founded, followed by boys’ schools at Fairfield (1801), Gracehill (1805) and Ockbrook (1813). These schools had no competitive games, were open to children of all religions (Catholics included) and produced, in the shape of personalities like Richard Oastler, some very highly motivated alleviators of the miseries of early industrialism.

The Moravian influence on education continued well into the nineteenth century through their school at Neuwied on the Rhine where a number of English boys, including the novelist George Meredith, were educated. One old pupil, Henry Morley, himself established an experimental school in Cheshire (Stewart and McCann, 1967, 289–298).

2

Miners, Merchants, Mercenaries,
Missionaries and Musicians

Miners

Wittenberg symbolised the dual image which Germany has presented to England over the last four centuries and a quarter: an image of piety, industry and religious devotion on one side, and a cleverness that seems diabolical on the other. When phased the other images appeared in the shape of ingenious miners, merchants, mercenaries, mechanics and musicians that no doubt enabled Shakespeare to raise a laugh by comparing a woman in Love's Labour Lost to:

a German clock,

Still arepairing, ever out of frame,
And never going aright.

For the paper on which Shakespeare wrote might well have been German since Sir John Spielmann had established his famous paper-mill at Dartford in 1588, and the curious can still see the German inscription around his tomb in the local parish church where he was buried in 1626.

Their ‘pertinacious industry in manual experiments and their great courage in daring to haunt untrodden paths in the quest of nature's secrets’ (Gibb, 1957, 678), was no-where better exhibited than in the activities of their miners who, ever since the Fuggers of Augsberg had formed their company in 1494, had been screwing silver, iron and copper ore out of the hills of Silesia, Hungary, Carinthia, Tyrol and Bohemia.

Since they monopolised lore as well as ore—a lore, which a later German was to call technology—English kings tempted German miners to Engla...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Title Page
• Copyright
• THE STUDENTS LIBRARY OF EDUCATION
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 Protestantism and economic penetration
• 2 Miners, merchants, mercenaries and musicians
• 3 Allies against Napolean
• 4 Göttingen to Giessen: the German university model
• 5 The ‘ologies
• 6 The fight for compulsory education
• 7 ‘Look at Germany’ 1867-1914
• 8 Lessons of World War I
• 9 Youth movements, 1919-1955
• 10 The two economic miracles 1945–1968
• 11 Conclusion: the missioners of knowledge
• Bibliography