The Life of Frederick Froebel

Front matter

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VIRGINIA LIBRARY

SIGMA PUBLISHING COMPANY, 10 Van Buren Street, Chicago, Ill.

Table Of Contents

INTRODUCTORY.

Book I. Tur Yourn Froesen Chap. I. Early Schooling Chap. II. Froebel at Jena ; Chap. III. In Pursuit of a Vocation.

Boox Il. THe ScHootmaster FROEBEL. Chap. I. Froebel as Teacher and Pupils: oe Chap. II. Froebel as Principal . Chap. UI. The Principal Dethroned. Chap. IV. Expatriation

Chap. III. The Kindergarden Propagated . INTRODUCTORY

Not long before the close of his days, Froebel expressed himself thus to his most intimate friend, Middendorf: ‘ I recognize my life to be a unity through and through; it has been long since any such life has appeared among men; only under unusual circumstances has it been able to work itself out to its completeness.”’ One great whole he conceives it to be with each part joined to the other by a line of inner connection; thus his principle of education was the deep underlying principle of his life, which he drew out of himself and made real in his vocation.

Moreover, he holds strongly to the idea of development, the self-unfolding of the human spirit into or toward perfection. The doctrine which he applies to the child is to be applied to his own biography, for that doctrine is at bottom the true movement of his own soul, as it realizes itself in the events of his career. His life will not only illustrate his principle of the unfolding of the child but will be seen to be the very center and source of that principle; from beginning to end it shows a man’s own spiritual evolution projecting itself into his educational work. Inner unity, inner development, and inner connection —

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the trinity of Froebel’s spirit — will reveal themselves in his biography, which thereby becomes the best commentary on all that he has done.

For the purpose of keeping this fundamental fact before the reader’s mind, we shall throw his life into three grand sweeps or masses which indicate the chief stages of his own development as well as of his work.

I. THe Youtu Froese. This period lies between his birth and his first teaching at Frankfort on the Main (1782-1805). It is a time of elementary training, of seeking a vocation, of wandering from place to place, and of trying many things. Also it is a time of strong, often of harsh discipline; atime of inner fermentation and change; an epoch of all sorts of possibilities floating into and out of his life — we may call him now the potential Froebel.

Il. Tue ScnootmasterR FRoEBEL. This period embraces the years in which he is of the school, as instructor, tutor, principal (1805- 1835). His vocation is now clear, he knows himself to be an educator. It is the middle period, preparing him for the kindergarden. His school will succeed, then fail; he will have to leave it, and to leave Germany, till he be completely ‘separated from it and from all his former work. <A period of development, yet of separation and estrangement from what he had been and had

INTRODUCTORY. 1x done; he is shaken off from the school-idea and made ready for the kindergarden.

IJ. THe KInDERGARDNER FROEBEL. In Switzerland the kindergarden is conceived, the idea is begotten and born there, but is realized in Germany at Blankenburg. This period extends from 1835 to 1852, to the end of Froebel’s life, and it may be called the evolution of the kinder-— garden, which, however, in a wider sense, was evolving all his days.

Many heroisms we witness on his part and that of his followers. A strange thread of persecution, with counter-strokes of destiny, runs through his career, often giving to it an Adschylean tragic tinge. A man of suffering and of perverse fatalities, yet of courage and enthusiasm unparalleled; he has the extraordinary power of imparting to his disciples a religious fervor of faith and a sacred devotion to his cause. While here, his life was of the humblest; no station, no great place in the public eye, no patronage of the mighty fell te his lot; still it looks now as if his may turn out the most important life in the history of modern education.

My purpose is to show Froebel the educator, and specially Froebel. the founder of the kindergarden. But at the same time I shall try to reyeal Froebel the man, in all his strength and weakness — an ideal soul of transcendent insight and consecration to a noble cause, yet burdened a4 THE LIFE OF FROEBEL.

with his full share of foibles, follies, wrongs, and even sins. Only thus can I bring to light his truly human greatness, which must be seen in his rising above his own limits. No man was ever smitten more frequently or more remorselessly by the fates of his own deed than Froebel, and no man ever rose oftener to his feet again after the blow. Nothing could put him down, not even himself. Thus his life will have its lesson parallel with his educational doctrine.

Book First. ie Youth Frocbel (172-1808,

COAPTHRSELA SL: EARLY SCHOOLING.

A very important school Froebel deemed his own life, to whose past course he often returned to take his bearings for the future. In writing _his autobiography, he says his aim was ‘< to trace the connection between my earlier and later life,”’ in which connection he firmly believed as the inner bond of all his days. This return upon himself showed that ‘* my earlier life was for me the means of understanding my later ’? — he had always to go back in order to go forward. And

By THE LIFE OF FROEBEL.

more deeply still, ‘‘my own individual life became to me the key of the universal life’’ in man, in humanity. (1)

Life, then, has been his true university, to which he has often to come back for a course of

study in himself —the very hardest lesson to

‘Jearn, and sometimes never learned at all. With this brief overture faintly sounding in our ears, we may catch the key-note of all that follows.

The present chapter carries the youth Froebel forward till he enters Jena University when he was seventeen years old. Infancy, childhood, boyhood are here set forth, with their possibilities, which become realities in later life. The first stage of the potential Froebel, as we have named him in this Book; it shows the far-off unconscious preparation of the child for the work of the old man.

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The Child at Home.

Friedrich Wilhelm August Froebel has recorded that he was born on the 21st day of April, 1782, in Oberweissbach, a village of the Thuringian Forest, belonging to the small principality of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, Germany. His father was pastor of a district containing 5,000 souls, scattered among six or seven villages, the care of which kept him very busy, without much

EARLY SCIOOLING. 3 time to look after his own children, had he been so inclined. His family is said to have originally come from Holland, though it seems to have lost all connection with that country. (2)

Frederick (thus we shall call him henceforth ) at the age of nine months lost his mother, an event which had an important influence upon his whole life. The man who above all others has glorified the calling of motherhood, had no mother himself, even in the farthest reach of his memory; once only in an early letter he speaks ‘of her ‘last loving look.’’ But her real absence caused him to create her presence in an ideal mother who is the central figure of his greatest book, the Mother Play-songs, where she undergoes a kind of saintly canonization, while the father in that same book appears twice or thrice just to show his superfluity. The picture of the mother often returned to Froebel in later years; in fact, she becomes the educational center of the last period of his life, in which he, an old man, goes back to his infancy and erects the greatest of all monuments to the mother whom he never knew.

Having no mother and almost no father, he falls to the care of servants and of his brothers who are older. Four of these brothers are mentioned, two of whom, August (who died early) and Traugott (who became a physician), have little to do with his career; but the other two,

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Christian and Christoph, are deeply woven into his life. Especially did he love Christoph who both brothered him and mothered him, protecting him outwardly and comforting him inwardly amid, his trials. These trials culminated in a new person entering the household —the step-mother. The pastor took a second wife, who soon had a son of her own, and who became not only indifferent but averse to her little step-son. Such were the circumstances of the child Froebel as he entered the kindergarden age, which he will never forget, and which will impel him, as his final terrestrial work, to come to the rescue of those suffering as he did, whereby he becomes a kind of redeemer for the little child.

Frederick was now about four years old, and often quite alone in the world. Through his step-mother’s conduct he was isolated from the family, and made to feel that he was a stranger in his own home. Apparently his older brothers were absent a good deal from the new household, so that he had no longer their sympathy and protection. So he early turned inward and kept company with himself, whence came the habit of introspection which went with him through life. The proverbial character of the step-mother- was repeated in Froebel’s experience, he was the boy Cinderella of the German fairy-tale. Still, while almost driven from the home, he was strictly forbidden to go beyond the yard and garden,

EHARLY SCHOOLING. 5 inclosed by fences, hedges and houses, of the parental dwelling. Not only alone, but also in a prison the child has to occupy his young days.

Thus his expanding life seemed to be shut in on all sides by lofty mountain-walls, which he could not climb over. Aminner protest against all limitation and prescription could not help rising. within him, a tendency which will leave its strong mark on his future thought and life. Moreover, in the last period of his activity he will return to his own kindergarden age, and will do his share toward rendering impossible forever such treatment as he received during his childhood. ‘The isolation and suffering of these early years had no small part in calling forth his grand remedial deed, the kindergarden. So even as a little child we see Froebel in training for the work of his old age, and furthermore we catch a glimpse of that thread of ‘* connection between my earlier and later life’? on which he puts so much stress.

The child grew forward to school age. The religious character of the family was of the strict old-German orthodox Protestant type, and was in accordance with all the other restraints put upon the boy. Here too rose a secret protest, against the pastor as well as against the father — a protest which we can trace winding through his future career in his relations to the established church. One thing is certain: not for the world will he follow the calling of his parent and be a clergyman; still he will choose an allied vocation, for him the deeper and more compelling, that of educator. Moreover, we shall see later that under his influence his two great friends and co-workers, Middendorf and Langethal, had their careers deflected from theology into pedagogy.

The father, however, taught him to read, though with great difficulty, for the one was not a good teacher and the other was not a good pupil. One result was that the father regarded Frederick as a hopelessly stupid boy, totally unworthy of an university education, and the son for a time shrank back into himself with a disbelief in his own talent. Froebel confesses that it was hard work for him to learn to read, and this comports with what we know of him later. Human speech was his stumbling block, in his own mother-tongue he never could utter himself adequately, his best was another kind of expression. Over and over again he tried his hand at Latin without success; grammar, the organization of speech, he could never make his own fully, as we see from his frequent tirades about this study, as well as from many a peculiar turn in writings.

From his father’s instruction young Frederick passed to the village schools where he acquired not very thoroughly the rudiments of an ordinary education. From his own account we have to infer that he belonged to the class of bad boys. He was defiant, disobedient, and told falsehoods to get out of scrapes; he claims, however, that he was made naughty by being always misjudged and mistreated. As he had the name of an imp, he was determined to have the game. His was a destructive nature: ‘*I destroyed everything arouad me, whatever I wished to investigate.’’ Very significant too is it to observe by what means he sought afterwards to overcome just this destructive spirit in the child through the kindergarden.

So we see the boy in a secret rebellion against the established order in home, school, and church; the step-mother ruled his world, and his business was to thwart her in every possible way. She was the Law and the Gospel; could the child help turning against the Law and the Gospel? Still he had love in his heart for his brother Christoph, in whom he seemed to see reembodied his true mother. He records that this brother, explaining to him once the sexual difference in plant-life, opened the door of the great temple of Nature, into which his longing spirit entered and found peace, remaining there with few interruptions to the end of his days.

But what means this noise of hot discussion which the child hears between father and brother Christoph? The latter has just returned from the University of Jena, where he has been studying theology, and has brought back new views which the old pastor deems the quintessence of heresy and damnable innovation. Of course the boy listens with intense eagerness and understands the general bearing of the dispute, since it lay just in the line of his deepest experience. He cannot help taking sides with his brother, whom he loves, and who in addition now voices the secret protest and aspiration of his own soul. And that University of Jena— what a wonderful ideal place it must be, with its freedom in contrast to this cramped existence! Dimly a hope has been born in his heart that he, the dull boy, ‘will yet see Jena, in spite of father and step-mother, who have thrust him down into the limbo of everlasting stupidity. —

Meanwhile he has reached the age of ten years, and his prisoned spirit is longing for some release. ‘* I wished to escape from this unhappy state of things, my elder brothers I considered fortunate in being away from home.’’ Christoph again appears at the right moment and gives to the despairing boy consolation and protection — a providential appearance vividly recalling their common mother as the guardian angel over both of them.

Still another providential appearance on the maternal side comes down into Frederick’s life at this time, that of uncle Hoffman, a clergyman of Stadt-Ilm, and brother of the deceased mother. This kind-hearted man, on a visit to Oberweissbach, evidently saw the whole situation ; when he returns home, he begs by letter that the boy Frederick be sent to him for an indefinite stay. The father readily consented, and the step-mother surely would not object. And now we may see with sympathetic glance the youth springing across the paternal threshold in unconcealed joy, and leaving behind him that whole step-motherly world with eager face turned toward a new home.

And yet we cannot leave the step-mother without a sympathetic glance. Poor woman! what an immortality for that simple Thuringian country-girl who could not get along with her step-son! Kor he happened to be Frederick Froebel, the greatest benefactor of the little child that ever lived, and he has fully reported her ill treatment of him as a little child. The result is her name has gone through the wide world, and has descended thus far through time, and is destined to go down through untold ages, leaving behind it a line of sighs and tears and low maledictions from thousands upon thousands of tender-hearted kindergardners who read _ his story. Dear me! what a destiny for a woman, who violates the trust given her, neglecting to obey the call, when it has come to her, to be a mother to a motherless child!

Still let us in fairness think of her difficulties.

Not an easy position is hers; the child has neighbors, and relatives, and elder brothers, who cannot quite let him forget that he has a step-mother. Every word and act of hers are sure to be prejudged, and her every correction of the child, though deserved, is apt to be ascribed to her want of maternal feeling for her ward. And thou, my reader, who art some gentle kindergardner probably, wilt do well to feel a throb of sympathy with that step-mother, for thou mayst some time have to stand in her place.

Now we can turn to our boy Frederick, who has by this time arrived at his uncle’s in Stadt- Im, out of the reach of his step-mother, which event took place toward the end of the year 1792.

EL The Boy at Uncle Hoffmann’s.

Very different was the atmosphere of the two households; in the one was severity, in the other kindness; the father misunderstood and distrusted his son, the uncle recognized and trusted his nephew. There restraint, here freedom; there a step-mother spurned him from her presence, here a motherly spirit for the first time took him up into its bosom. When he passed outside of his new home, the mountain-walls which before penned him in had vanished as in a dream; ‘*I could go into my uncle’s gardens if

I liked, but I was also at liberty to roam all over the neighborhood.’’ Great indeed was the difference between here and there, so great that the boy at once began to pass from protest and the deepest tension of spirit into harmony with his environing world.

Of course he must go to school, that was probably a chief object of the uncle in taking the boy to himself. He had always been a solitary youth, depending on himself chiefly for society; but now he is suddenly plumped into a living roistering mass of school-boys, forty in number, of his own age. He must henceforth associate with his fellows and take part in their sports. He was deeply humiliated to find that he was physically unable to cope with the rest in strength or agility. But he bravely began to overcome his defects, and made the most of his opportunities. Confidence in himself he was getting after long suppression; surely there is something in the lad, if he can thus struggle with and mount above his limits. And all his life he will give great prominence to the physical development of the pupil, remembering his own insufficient training in this respect.

Reconciliation seems now to be the trend of our Frederick under the loving care of uncle Hoffmann ; reconciled he is becoming with the home, with the school, — yes, with the church. ‘¢T especially enjoyed the hours devoted to religious instruction; ’’ he delighted in the sermons of his uncle, which were ‘‘ mild, gentle and full of sweet charity; ’? somewhat different, evidently, from those of his father. His heart would melt and he would burst into tears when the lesson ‘‘ touched upon the life, the work, and the character of Jesus.’’ He resolved to lead a similar life.

Very deep run these notes of harmony with the established order around hin, in striking contrast to the discords of his previous life. He is now becoming truly ethical, drinking in from his - surroundings those virtues which form the tissue of all character, and which mount up for their highest source to the institutional world.

He gives an account of the school training at Stadt-Ilm, the residence of uncle Hoffmann. Reading, writing, arithmetic and religion (the four Rs, in this case), were ‘the subjects best taught; ’’? but Latin comes in for censure, ‘* being miserably taught and worse learned.’’ Still, from its study he got something, namely, that he could get nothing ‘* by such a method of teaching.’? So he blames the method, but Latin grammar is Latin grammar under any instruction, and will not put down its carefully adjusted bars to let Froebel jump in with a little playful leap. But ‘‘ arithmetic was a favorite study of mine,”’ and in general he had a quantitive or mathematical bent in his mind. Music lessons, too, he had, in singing and in playing the piano, «but without result.’’ We are, however, inclined to think that the musical side of his nature received a very considerable development at this time; his own mood and his environment fostered _ it, expressed it in a way, though he may not have learned much about the theory of music. Certainly a musical accompaniment runs through his life and his work to the very close, which harmonious attunement naturally belongs to his uncle’s, and not to his father’s, surroundings.

As to discipline, he claims that he and _ his school-fellows lived ** without control,’’ yet none of us were ever ‘guilty of a really culpable action.’’ Good boys, indeed, good by nature, not made bad by man: a note having a sound like that of The Hducation of Man, which indeed belongs, in its composition, to the same period as the Autobiography.

On a similar line note the following contrast : ‘s We had two teachers, one of whom was strict and pedantic, the other was kind-hearted and free,’’ i.e. he let us do as we pleased. Result: ‘¢the first never had ‘any influence over us,’’ though he sought to make us accomplish something, while ‘* the second could do with us whatever he pleased,’’ though he did not please to make us do anything. Then note another contrast, not between teachers now, but between preachers: ‘* My uncle, the principal minister of

Stadt-IIm, was gentle and soft-hearted,’’ never reproving anybody; but ‘* the other minister was rigid even to harshness, often scolding and ordering us about,’’ just like my father at Oberweissbach — let him be confounded (the minister of course, not the father).

Such was the spirit of re-action in the boy against authority, which had been, no doubt, formal, and sometimes harsh. This spirit will remain long with Froebel, he will carry it into his school at Keilhau, where it will give rise to one of the deepest contradictions of his life, under which indeed that school will sink till it passes out of his hands. For Froebel as principal will assert his authority in the most absolute, yea, tyrranical manner, but will resent all authority and prescription when exercised by the subordinate teacher over the pupil. The hardest lesson of his life will be to find out what to do with the established and the prescribed, and how to make them not only agree with, but to contribute to, freedom. But this is a chapter which lies far ahead, though it has its roots in the period which we are considering just now.

The time of his school education drew to a close, which was fitly celebrated and rounded out by his Confirmation. For this impressive ceremony he was prepared by his uncle, who thus brought him into union with the Church, from which he never afterward formally separated.

Still this institution had in him from now onward two representatives, quite opposite, yet both his kindred, both of them pastors, his father and his uncle. Thus the religious dualism of his life lay in his blood, coming to him hy inheritance from both parents, of whom his heart leaned unswervingly to his mother, who had now become to him a definite ideal image through his uncle Hoffmann as well as through his brother Christoph. But the other strand of his nature, the paternal, claimed him as heir too; he could be rigid, imperious, yea, despotic almost to the sacrifice of the person. Whereof much hereafter.

But he has now finished, the seal of manhood is given by the rite of Confirmation, which is acknowledged to have a natural connection with the period of adolescence. Out of home and the school inte the battle of the world is the transition, for which battle, however, he must be prepared. Accordingly we are now to see Froebel beginning his search for a vocation, and going throug! his first trial therein.

Lee

What Shall be Done with the Boy?

Such is the difficult question now presenting itself to Frederick and his father. After five years’ absence he is home again for the purpose of making a new start ina new direction. Away iia THE LIFE OF FROEBEL.

from parent and from uncle he is to grapple with the practical world; he must learn some business — What?

It is settled that he is not to study at the University and follow one of the learned professions — settled it was, he declares, by his step-mother, who was afraid that her own boy, Carl Poppo,.might not otherwise have the means from the paternal estate for a University education. Carl Poppo, now a lad of eleven (born in 1786), had shown decided ability, at least to.the eye of his mother, and was an emphatic contrast to his older half-brother, Frederick, whom all knew to be a stupid boy, unworthy and really unsusceptible of any higher training than he had already attained.

Here again rose a secret protest, and the dim resolution to thwart the step-mother’s plan of keeping him away from the University. For the thought of Jena had entered deep into his mind, he had heard of it and the great men there all his life; he loved to pore over the learned books of his brother Christoph with a vague longing for knowledge. He too was going to be a student of Jena some day —but how? At present no road seemed to lead thitherward, but let us work and wait for the future in one of her auspicious moods; perhaps she may give us a surprise in this matter, as is her way oftentimes.

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But meanwhile something must be tried, for the father is urgent to get the boy settled and be done with him. Various positions were suggested, till one was found acceptable to all parties. Frederick in 1797, being fifteen years and a half old, was apprenticed to a forester, with whom he was to stay two years.

The great fact during this period is the eagerness with which he prosecuted his studies. He worked especially at botany, as a good opportunity offered; but mathematics and languages were not neglected. He was left to himself a good deal, and used his spare time profitably ; living in the forest and contemplating plant-life, he entered into a religious communion with Nature, which displaced the religion of the Church, in part at least.

Froebel puts stress upon the fact that during this time he first saw a drama, which was given by a company of strolling actors. The performance took strong hold upon him, for a while he seems to have been stage-struck. He sought the acquaintance of the actors, and talked with them about their glorious profession; ‘* perhaps I expressed a wish that I might become a member of such a company.’’ But one of the actors told the misery of their life, and quite disillusioned him. Still the dramatic element was roused in him, and satisfied a certain need of his soul. It will remain with him in some form to the last; he will employ action for the purpose of education, and in the play-song he will create a little drama for the child.

The period elapsed, the apprenticeship came to an end. The forester wished to retain him, but he would not stay, having outgrown the business. Then came some trouble, the forester complained to the father, the step-mother echoing his bad opinion of the boy. But Frederick was able to clear himself of all charges, and to bring home a counter accusation against the forester, by invoking the help of brother Christoph. The outcome is that our Frederick, now seventeen years old, is again under the paternal roof, where he could not, however, feel very comfortable. For that father had sent him off to the forester two years before with the following farewell: «* Never come back to me with any complaint, for I shall not listen to you, but consider you in the wrong beforehand.’’

Again the question springs up in that household: What shall be done with the boy, the naughty, superfluous boy? Parents are determined not to do the right thing, for he is just the one of all the sons who ought to be sent to the University, having in himself the deepest aspiration for learning. But he is set down as the family dunce by the father, and besides, as the bad boy by the step-mother. Incapable and unworthy of the University, declare the parents ;

so let the other sons be educated at Jena, not Frederick the blockhead and general nuisance. But where now are those other sons, Traugott and Christoph, and bright little Carl Poppo? All have vanished into the night of oblivion except when their names are passingly read in the flare of light flashed from the illuminated fame of their stupid brother.