"
"If you mean this dog," said Gabriel, "it would be the first
time he ever did anything good.
"If you mean this dog," said Gabriel, "it would be the first
time he ever did anything good.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v10 - Emp to Fro
It is not only that as a writer of novels
Freytag did his most important and lasting work, but that the whole
of this work was in a manner the development of a similar tendency.
Although as different as need be in environment, all of his subsequent
novels embody inherently the characteristics of 'Debit and Credit,'
for like it, they are all well-defined attempts to depict the typical
social conditions of the period in which they move, and their char-
acters are the carefully considered types of their time. Freytag,
with a philosophic seriousness of purpose perhaps characteristically
German, is writing not only novels but the history of civilization, in
his early work. Later on, the didactic purpose to a certain extent
overshadows the rest; and although he never loses his power of tell-
ing a story, it is the history in the end that is paramount.
'Debit and Credit' is a novel of the century, and it takes up the
great problem of the century, the position of modern industrialism in
the social life of the day. Its principal centre of action is the busi-
ness house of the wholesale grocer T. O. Schröter, who is an admira-
ble embodiment of the careful, industrious, and successful merchant.
In sharp contradistinction to him is the Baron von Rothsattel, the
representative of earlier conditions in the organization of the State,
which made the nobleman pre-eminently a social force. Freytag's
polemic is not only the dignity of labor under present conditions.
but the absolute effeteness of the old order of things that despised
it.
The real hero of the story is Anten Wohlfahrt, who begins his
commercial career as a youth in the house of T. O. Schröter, and
ends, after some vicissitudes, as a member of the firm. Mercantile
life has nowhere been better described in its monotony, its interests,
and its aspirations, as the story is developed; and although at first
sight no field could be more barren in literary interest, there is in
reality no lack of incident and action, whose inevitable sequence makes
the plot. Anton's career in the house of Schröter is interrupted by
his connection with the Baron von Rothsattel, who has, through his
want of a business training and his lack of a knowledge of men,
fallen into the hands of a Jew money-lender; by whom he is per-
suaded to mortgage his land in order to embark in a business under-
taking which it is presumed will increase his fortune. His mill fails,
however, and he is involved in difficulties from which he is unable
## p. 6013 (#607) ###########################################
GUSTAV FREYTAG
6013
to extricate himself. Anton, the intimate friend of the family, is
therefore persuaded by the Baroness to undertake the management
of matters, and after vainly endeavoring to induce his principal to
interest himself in the affair, sacrifices his position to accompany the
family to their dilapidated estate in a distant province. The Baron
will tolerate no interference, however, and Anton finally returns to
the house of Schröter and is reinstated in the business. Lenore, the
Baron's daughter, the first cause of Anton's interest, meantime becomes
engaged to the young nobleman Fink; who has been an associate of
Anton's in the office of T. O. Schröter, has but recently returned
from the United States, and who first advances funds for the improve-
ment of the estate and ultimately purchases it.
Fink acts his part in the author's philosophy as a contrast to the
Baron von Rothsattel. Although a nobleman, he has adapted himself
to the conditions of the century, and is free from any hallucinations
of his hereditary rank, even while he is perfectly awake to its tradi-
tions. He has entered upon a commercial career not from choice, but
from necessity; but he has accepted his fate and has made successful
use of his opportunities. Anton marries the sister of T. O. Schröter,
and becomes a partner in the business. Fink is however really the
one who gains the princess in this modern tale, and is plainly to
have the more important share as an actual social force in the future.
The old feudal nobility has played its part on the stage of the world;
and being so picturesque, and full of romantic opportunity, its loss
is doubtless to be regretted. The tamer realities of the modern in-
dustrial state have succeeded it. As Freytag solves the problem in
'Soll und Haben,' it is the man who works, the man of the indus-
trial classes alone, to whom the victory belongs in the modern social
struggle, be his antecedents bourgeois or aristocratic.
Freytag's second great novel, 'Die Verlorene Handschrift' (The
Lost Manuscript), which appeared in 1864, concerns itself with another
phase of the same problem. This time, however, instead of the mer-
chant and man of affairs, it is the scholar about whom the action
centres. Felix Werner, professor of philology, has come upon unmis-
takable traces of the lost books of Tacitus, whose recovery is the
object of his life. In his search for the manuscript in an old house
in the country he finds his future wife Ilse, one of the finest types in
all German literature of the true German woman, both while at home
a maid in her father's house and subsequently as the professor's wife
in the university town. Werner, in his scholarly absorption, unwit-
tingly neglects his wife, whose beauty has attracted the attention of
the prince; and there is a series of intrigues which threaten seriously
to involve the innocent Ilse, until the prince's evil intentions become
evident even to the unsuspecting Werner. The covers of the lost
manuscript are actually discovered at last, but the book itself has
## p. 6014 (#608) ###########################################
6014
GUSTAV FREYTAG
vanished. In this second novel Freytag displays a most genial
humor, unsuspected in the author of 'Debit and Credit,' but apparent
enough in The Journalists. ' The professorial life is admirably
drawn with all its lights and shadows; and its motives and ambi-
tions, its peculiar struggles and strivings, have never been more
understandingly treated. The story, however, even more than 'Debit
and Credit,' displays the author's weaknesses of construction. The
plot is so confused by digressions that the main thread is sometimes
lost sight of, and the tendency to philosophical generalization, which
as a German is to some extent the author's birthright, reaches in
these pages an appalling exemplification. What had been an extraor-
dinary novel pruned of these defects, is still not an ordinary novel
with them; and as a picture of German university life from the point
of view of the professor, The Lost Manuscript' stands unrivaled in
literature. Again the thesis in this second novel is the dignity of
labor, and the nobleman fares no better at the author's hands than
in the mercantile environment of the first.
These two novels, which outside of Germany are Freytag's best
claim to attention, were followed by the four volumes of 'Bilder aus
der Deutschen Vergangenheit (Pictures from the German Past: 1859-
62), a series of studies of German life from different epochs of its
history, intended to illustrate the evolution of modern conditions
through their successive stages from the remote past. Freytag's early
work as a university docent had particularly fitted him for this sort of
writing, and some of his best is contained in these books.
More important still, however, was his next great work, the long
series of historical novels 'Die Ahnen' (The Ancestors: 1872-80), an
ambitious plan, born of the stirring events of the Franco-Prussian
War and the resultant awakening of the new spirit of nationality, to
trace the development of the German people from the earliest time
down to the present day. To carry out this purpose he accordingly
selects a typical German family, which he describes under the char-
acteristic conditions of each period, with the most conscientious at-
tention to manners and customs and social environment. The same
family thus appears from generation to generation under the changing
conditions of the different epochs of German history, and the whole
forms together the consecutive Culturgeschichte of the nation.
This whole long series of 'The Ancestors' stands as a monument
of careful research into the most minute factors of German life in
their time of action. Freytag's antiquarianism is not of the dilet-
tante kind that is content to masquerade modern motives in ancient
garb and setting. He was fully conscious of all the elements of his
problem, and he sought to reproduce the intellectual point of view
of his actors, and to account for their motives of action, as well
as to picture accurately their material environment. It is in his
## p. 6015 (#609) ###########################################
GUSTAV FREYTAG
6015
super-conscientiousness in these directions that the inherent weakness
of the novels of this series lies.
They are too palpably reconstructions
with a purpose.
Their didacticism is wrapped around them like a
garment; and much of the time, that is all that is visible upon the
surface. As the series advances this fault grows upon them. They
are in reality of very unequal interest. 'Ingo' and 'Ingraban are
the sprightliest in action, and have been as a consequence the
most widely read of these later works, many of which are, in part at
least, far too serious of purpose to play their part conspicuously well
as novels.
The novels of The Ancestors' are a culmination of Freytag's
literary evolution. As a playwright he will no doubt be forgotten ex-
cept for The Journalists'; in which he has, however, left an imper-
ishable play which German critics have not hesitated to call the best
comedy of the century. The two novels of modern life from his
middle period form together his greatest work, although here, and
particularly in The Lost Manuscript,' he has overweighted his ma-
terial with abstract discussion, in which his perspective has some-
times all but disappeared. Subsequently, both the 'Bilder' and 'Die
Ahnen' show his decided predilection for historical studies. The
struggle in his own case was between the scholar and the man of
letters, in which the scholar eventually won possession of the field.
Freytag's other work includes-'Die Technik des Dramas (The
Technique of the Drama: 1863), a consideration of the principles of
dramatic construction; the life of his friend Karl Malthy, 1870; and
'Der Kronprinz und die Deutsche Kaiserkrone' (The Crown Prince and
the German Imperial Crown: 1889), written after the death of Fred-
erick III. , with whom Freytag had had personal relations. To accom-
pany the collected edition of his works (1887-88), he wrote a short
autobiography, 'Erinnerungen aus Meinem Leben' (Recollections from
My Life).
PR
THE GERMAN PROFESSOR
From The Lost Manuscript>
ROFESSORS wives
also have trouble with their husbands.
Sometimes when Ilse was seated in company with her
intimate friends with Madame Raschke, Madame Struve-
lius, or little Madame Günther - at one of those confidential
coffee parties which they did not altogether despise, many things
would come to light.
The conversation with these intellectual women was certainly
very interesting. It is true the talk sometimes passed lightly
-
-
## p. 6016 (#610) ###########################################
6016
GUSTAV FREYTAG
over the heads of the servants, and sometimes housekeeping
troubles ventured out of the pond of pleasant talk like croaking
frogs. To Ilse's surprise, she found that even Flaminia Struvelius
could discourse seriously about preserving little gherkins, and
that she sought closely for the marks of youth in a plucked
goose. The merry Madame Günther aroused horror and laughter
in more experienced married women, when she asserted that she
could not endure the crying of little children, and that from the
very first she would force her child (which she had not yet got)
to proper silence by chastisement. Thus conversation sometimes
left greater subjects to stray into this domain. And when un-
important subjects were reviewed, it naturally came about that the
men were honored by a quiet discussion. At such times it was
evident that although the subject under consideration was men in
general, each of the wives was thinking of her own husband, and
that each silently carried about a secret bundle of cares, and
justified the conclusion of her hearers that that husband too
must be difficult to manage.
Madame Raschke's troubles could not be concealed; the whole
town knew them. It was notorious that one market day her hus-
band had gone to the university in his dressing-gown-in a
brilliant dressing-gown, blue and orange, with a Turkish pattern.
His students, who loved him dearly and were well aware of his
habits, could not succeed in suppressing a loud laugh; and
Raschke had calmly hung the dressing-gown over his pulpit,
held his lecture in his shirt-sleeves, and returned home in one of
the students' overcoats. Since that time Madame Raschke never
let her husband go out without herself inspecting him. It also
appeared that all these ten years he had not been able to learn
his way about the town, and she dared not change her residence,
because she was quite sure that her professor would never re-
member it, and always return to his old home. Struvelius also
occasioned much anxiety. Ilse knew about the last and greatest
cause; but it also came to light that he expected his wife to
read Latin proof-sheets, as she knew something of that language.
Besides, he was quite incapable of refusing commissions to amia-
ble wine merchants. At her marriage Madame Struvelius had
found a whole cellar full of large and small wine casks, none of
which had been drawn off, while he complained bitterly that no
wine was ever brought into his cellar. Even little Madame
Günther related that her husband could not give up night work;
## p. 6017 (#611) ###########################################
GUSTAV FREYTAG
6017
and that once, when he wandered with a lamp among his books,
he came too near the curtain, which caught fire. He tore it off,
and in so doing burnt his hands, and burst into the bedroom
with blackened fingers in great alarm, and resembling Othello
more than a mineralogist.
Raschke was wandering about in the ante-room. Here too
was confusion. Gabriel had not yet returned from his distant
errand; the cook had left the remains of the meal standing on a
side-table till his return; and Raschke had to find his greatcoat
by himself. He rummaged among the clothes, and seized hold
of a coat and a hat. As he was not so absent-minded as usual
to-day, a glance at the despised supper reminded him just in
time that he was to eat a fowl; so he seized hold of the news-
paper which Gabriel had laid ready for his master, hastily took
one of the chickens out of the dish, wrapped it in the journal,
and thrust it in his pocket, agreeably surprised at the depth and
capaciousness it revealed. Then he rushed past the astonished
cook, and out of the house. When he opened the door of the
étage he stumbled against something that was crouching on the
threshold. He heard a horrible growling behind him, and stormed
down the stairs and out of doors.
The words of the friend whom he had left now came into his
mind. Werner's whole bearing was very characteristic; and there
was something fine about it. It was strange that in a moment
of anger Werner's face had acquired a sudden resemblance to a
bull-dog's. Here the direct chain of the philosopher's contempla-
tions was crossed by the remembrance of the conversation on
animals' souls.
"It is really a pity that it is still so difficult to determine an
animal's expression of soul. If we could succeed in that, science
would gain. For if we could compare in all their minutiæ the
expression and gestures of human beings and higher animals, we
might make most interesting deductions from their common pecul-
iarities and their particular differences. In this way the natural
origin of their dramatic movements, and perhaps some new laws,
would be discovered. "
While the philosopher was pondering thus, he felt a con-
tinued pulling at his coat-tails. As his wife was in the habit of
giving him a gentle pull when he was walking next her absorbed
in thought and they met some acquaintance, he took no further
notice of it, but took off his hat, and bowing politely towards
the railing of the bridge, said "Good-evening. "
X-377
## p. 6018 (#612) ###########################################
6018
GUSTAV FREYTAG
"These common and original elements in the mimic expres-
sion of human beings and higher animals might, if rightly under-
stood, even open out new vistas into the great mystery of life. "
Another pull. Raschke mechanically took off his hat. Another
pull. "Thank you, dear Aurelia, I did bow. " As he spoke, the
thought crossed his mind that his wife would not pull at his coat
so low down. It was not she, but his little daughter Bertha who
was pulling; for she often walked gravely next him, and like her
mother, pulled at the bell for bows. "That will do, my dear,"
said he, as Bertha continued to snatch and pull at his coat-tails.
"Come here, you little rogue! " and he absently put his hand
behind him to seize the little tease. He seized hold of something
round and shaggy; he felt sharp teeth on his fingers, and turned
with a start. There he saw in the lamplight a reddish monster
with a big head, shaggy hair, and a little tassel that fell back
into its hind legs in lieu of a tail. His wife and daughter were
horribly transformed; and he gazed in surprise on this indistinct
creature which seated itself before him, and glared at him in
silence.
"A strange adventure! " exclaimed Raschke.
"What are you,
unknown creature? Presumably a dog. Away with you! " The
animal retreated a few steps. Raschke continued his meditations:
"If we trace back the expression and gestures of the affections
to their original forms in this manner, one of the most active
laws would certainly prove to be the endeavor to attract or repel
the extraneous. It would be instructive to distinguish, by means
of these involuntary movements of men and animals, what is
essential and what conventional. Away, dog! Do me a favor
and go home. What does he want with me? Evidently he be-
longs to Werner's domain. The poor creature will assuredly lose
itself in the town under the dominion of an idée fixe. "
Meantime Speihahn's attacks were becoming more violent; and
now he was marching in a quite unnatural and purely conven-
tional manner on his hind legs, while his fore paws were leaning
against the professor's back, and his teeth were actually biting
into the coat.
A belated shoemaker's boy stood still and beat his leathern
apron. "Is not the master ashamed to let his poor apprentice
push him along like that? " In truth, the dog behind the man
looked like a dwarf pushing a giant along the ice.
Raschke's interest in the dog's thoughts increased. He stood
still near a lantern, examined and felt his coat. This coat had
## p. 6019 (#613) ###########################################
GUSTAV FREYTAG
6019
developed a velvet collar and very long sleeves, advantages that
the philosopher had never yet remarked in his greatcoat. Now
the matter became clear to him: absorbed in thought, he had
chosen a wrong coat, and the worthy dog insisted on saving his
master's garment, and making the thief aware that there was
something wrong. Raschke was so pleased with this sagacity
that he turned round, addressed some kind words to Speihahn,
and made an attempt to stroke his shaggy hair. The dog again
snapped at his hand. "You are quite right to be angry with
me,” replied Raschke; "I will prove to you that I acknowledge
my fault. " He took off the coat and hung it over his arm.
«< Yes, it is much heavier than my own. " He walked on cheer-
fully in his thin coat, and observed with satisfaction that the dog
abandoned the attacks on his back. But instead, Speihahn sprang
upon
his side, and again bit at the coat and the hand, and
growled unpleasantly.
The professor got angry with the dog, and when he came to
a bench on the promenade he laid down the coat, intending to
face the dog seriously and drive him home. In this manner he
got rid of the dog, but also of the coat. For Speihahn sprang
upon the bench with a mighty bound, placed himself astride the
coat, and met the professor, who tried to drive him away, with
hideous growling and snarling.
"It is Werner's coat," said the professor, "and it is Werner's
dog: it would be wrong to beat the poor creature because it is
becoming violent in its fidelity, and it would be wrong to leave
the dog and the coat. " So he remained standing before the dog
and speaking kindly to him: but Speihahn no longer took any
notice of the professor; he turned against the coat itself, which
he scratched, rummaged, and bit. Raschke saw that the coat
could not long endure such rage. "He is frantic or mad," said
he suspiciously. "I shall have to use force against you after all,
poor creature;" and he considered whether he should also jump
upon the seat and push the mad creature by a violent kick into
the water, or whether it would be better to open the inevitable
attack from below. He resolved on the latter course, and looked
round to see whether he could anywhere discover a stone or
stick to throw at the raging beast. As he looked, he observed
the trees and the dark sky above him, and the place seemed quite
unfamiliar. "Has magic been at work here? " he exclaimed, with
amusement. He turned politely to a solitary wanderer who was
## p. 6020 (#614) ###########################################
6020
GUSTAV FREYTAG
passing that way:
the town we are?
a moment? "
"Indeed," angrily replied the person addressed, "those are
very suspicious questions. I want my stick myself at night. Who
are you, sir ? » The stranger approached the professor mena-
cingly.
"I am peaceable," replied Raschke, "and by no means inclined
to violent attacks. A quarrel has arisen between me and the
animal on this seat for the possession of a coat, and I should be
much obliged to you if you would drive the dog away from the
coat. But I beg you not to hurt the animal any more than is
absolutely necessary. "
"Is that your coat there? " asked the man.
"Unfortunately I cannot give you an affirmative answer," re-
plied Raschke conscientiously.
"Would you kindly tell me in what part of
And could you perhaps lend me your stick for
"There must be something wrong here," exclaimed the
stranger, again eyeing the professor suspiciously.
"There is, indeed," replied Raschke. "The dog is out of his
mind; the coat is exchanged, and I do not know where we are. "
"Close to the valley gate, Professor Raschke," answered the
voice of Gabriel, who hastily joined the group. "Excuse me, but
what brings you here? "
"Capital! " exclaimed Raschke joyously. "Pray take charge of
this coat and this dog. "
Gabriel gazed in amazement at Speihahn, who was now lying
on the coat and bending his head before his friend. Gabriel
threw down the dog and seized the coat. "Why, that is our
greatcoat! " exclaimed he.
"Yes, Gabriel," said the professor, "that was my mistake, and
the dog has shown marvelous fidelity to the coat. "
"Fidelity! " exclaimed Gabriel indignantly, as he drew a par-
cel out of the coat pocket. "It was greedy selfishness, sir; there
must be some food in this pocket. "
"Yes, true," exclaimed Raschke; "it is all the chicken's fault.
Give me the parcel, Gabriel; I must eat the fowl myself; and
we might bid each other good-night now with mutual satisfac-
tion, if you would just show me my way a little among these
trees. "
"But you must not go home in the night air without an over-
coat," said Gabriel considerately. "We are not far from our
## p. 6021 (#615) ###########################################
GUSTAV FREYTAG
6021
house; the best way would really be for you to come back with
me, sir. "
Raschke considered and laughed.
"You are right, Gabriel; my departure was awkward; and to-
day an animal's soul has restored a man's soul to order.
"
"If you mean this dog," said Gabriel, "it would be the first
time he ever did anything good. I see he must have followed
you from our door; for I put little bones there for him of an
evening. "
"Just now he seemed not to be quite in his right mind," said
the professor.
"He is cunning enough when he pleases," continued Gabriel
mysteriously; "but if I were to speak of my experiences with this
dog -»
"Do speak, Gabriel," eagerly exclaimed the
the philosopher.
"There is nothing so valuable concerning animals as a truthful
statement from those who have carefully observed them. "
"I may say that I have done so," confirmed Gabriel, with
satisfaction; "and if you want to know exactly what he is, I can
assure you that he is possessed of the devil, he is a thief, he is
embittered, and he hates all mankind. "
"Ah, indeed! " replied the professor, somewhat disconcerted.
"I see it is much more difficult to look into a dog's heart than
into a professor's. "
Speihahn crept along silent and suppressed, and listened to the
praises that fell to his lot; while Professor Raschke, conducted by
Gabriel, returned to the house by the park. Gabriel opened the
sitting-room door, and announced-
"Professor Raschke. "
Ilse extended both her hands to him.
"Welcome, welcome, dear Professor Raschke! " and led him to
her husband's study.
"Here I am again," said Raschke cheerfully, "after wander-
ing as in a fairy tale. What has brought me back were two
animals, who showed me the right way,-a roast fowl and an
embittered dog. "
Felix sprang up; the men greeted one another warmly, shak-
ing hands, and after all misadventures, spent a happy evening.
When Raschke had gone home late, Gabriel said sadly to his
mistress, "This was the new coat; the fowl and the dog have put
it in a horrible plight. "
## p. 6022 (#616) ###########################################
6022
FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
(1782-1852)
BY NORA ARCHIBALD SMITH
T WAS Froebel who said, "The clearer the thread that runs
through our lives backward to our childhood, the clearer
will be our onward glance to the goal;" and in the frag-
ment of autobiography he has left us, he illustrates forcibly the
truth of his own saying. The motherless baby who plays alone in
the village pastor's quiet house, the dreamy child who wanders soli-
tary in the high-walled garden; the thoughtful lad, neglected, mis-
understood, who forgets the harsh realities of life in pondering the
mysteries of the flowers, the contradictions
of existence, and the dogmas of orthodox
theology; who decides in early boyhood
that the pleasures of the senses are with-
out enduring influence and therefore on no
account to be eagerly pursued; these pre-
sentments of himself, which he summons
up for us from the past, show the vivid-
ness of his early recollections and indicate
the course which the stream of his life is
to run.
FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
The coldness and injustice of the new
mother who assumed control of the house-
hold when he was four years old, his isola-
tion from other children, the merely casual
notice he received from the busy father absorbed in his parish work,
all tended to turn inward the tide of his mental and spiritual life.
He studied himself, not only because it was the bent of his nature,
but because he lacked outside objects of interest; and to this early
habit of introspection we owe many of the valuable features of his
educational philosophy. Whoever has learned thoroughly to under-
stand one child, has conquered a spot of firm ground on which to
rest while he studies the world of children; and because the great
teacher realized this truth, because he longed to give to others the
means of development denied to himself, he turns for us the heart-
leaves of his boyhood.
## p. 6023 (#617) ###########################################
FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
6023
It would appear that Froebel's characteristics were strongly marked
and unusual from the beginning. Called by every one «< a moon-struck
child" in Oberweissbach, the village of his birth, he was just as
unanimously considered "an old fool" when, crowned with the ex-
perience of seventy years, he played with the village children on the
green hills of Thuringia. The intensity of his inward life, the white
heat of his convictions, his absolute blindness to any selfish idea or
aim, his enthusiasm, the exaltation of his spiritual nature, all furnish
so many cogent reasons why the people of any day or of any com-
munity should have failed to understand him, and scorned what they
could not comprehend. It is the old story of the seers and the
prophets repeated as many times as they appear; for "these colossal
souls," as Emerson said, "require a long focal distance to be seen. "
At ten years old the sensitive boy was fortunately removed from
the uncongenial atmosphere of the parental household; and in his
uncle's home he spent five free and happy years, being apprenticed
at the end of this time to a forester in his native Thuringian
woods. Then followed a year's course in the University of Jena, and
four years spent in the study of farming, in clerical work of various
kinds, and in land-surveying. All these employments, however, Froe-
bel himself felt to be merely provisional; for like the hazel wand in
the diviner's hand, his instinct was blindly seeking through these
restless years the well-spring of his life.
In Frankfort, where he had gone intending to study architecture,
Destiny touched him on the shoulder, and he turned and knew her.
Through a curious combination of circumstances he gained employ.
ment in Herr Gruner's Model School, and it was found at once that
he was what the Germans love to call "a teacher by the grace of
God. " The first time he met his class of boys he tells us that he
felt inexpressibly happy; the hazel wand had found the waters and
was fixed at last. From this time on, all the events of his life were
connected with his experience as a teacher. Impelled as soon as he
had begun his work by a desire for more effective methods, he visited
Yverdon, then the centre of educational thought, and studied with
Pestalozzi. He went again in 1808, accompanied by three pupils, and
spent two years there, alternately studying and teaching.
There was a year of lectures at Göttingen after this, and one at
the University of Berlin, accompanied by unceasing study and re-
search both in literary and scientific lines; but in the fateful year
1813 this quiet student life was broken in upon, for impelled by
strong moral conviction, Froebel joined Baron von Lützow's famous
volunteer corps, formed to harass the French by constant skirmishes
and to encourage the smaller German States to rise against Napo-
leon.
## p. 6024 (#618) ###########################################
6024
FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
No thirst for glory prompted this action, but a lofty conception of
the office of the educator. How could any young man capable of
bearing arms, Froebel says, become a teacher of children whose
Fatherland he had refused to defend? how could he in after years
incite his pupils to do something noble, something calling for sacri-
fice and unselfishness, without exposing himself to their derision and
contempt? The reasoning was perfect, and he made practice follow
upon the heels of theory as closely as he had always done since he
became master of his fate.
After the Peace of Paris he settled down for a time to a quiet
life in the mineralogical museum at the University of Berlin, his
duties being the care, arrangement, and investigation of crystals.
Surrounded thus by the exquisite formations whose development ac-
cording to law is so perfect, whose obedience to the promptings of an
inward ideal so complete, he could not but learn from their uncon-
scious ethics to look into the depths of his own nature, and there
recognize more clearly the purpose it was intended to work out.
In 1816 he quietly gave up his position, and taking as pupils five
of his nephews, three of whom were fatherless, he entered upon his
life work, the first step in which was the carrying out of his plan
for a "Universal German Educational Institute. " He was without
money, of course, as he had always been and always would be,— his
hands wer
ere made for giving, not for getting; he slept in a barn on
a wisp of straw while arranging for his first school at Griesheim; but
outward things were so little real to him in comparison with the life
of the spirit, that bodily privations seemed scarcely worth consider-
ing. The school at Keilhau, to which he soon removed, the institu-
tions later established in Wartensee and Willisau, the orphanage in
Burgdorf, all were most successful educationally, but, it is hardly
necessary to say, were never a source of profit to their head and
founder.
Through the twenty succeeding years, busy as he was in teaching,
in lecturing, in writing, he was constantly shadowed by dissatisfac-
tion with the foundation upon which he was building. A nebulous
idea for the betterment of things was floating before him; but it was
not until 1836 that it appeared to his eyes as a "definite truth. "
This definite truth, the discovery of his old age, was of course the
kindergarten; and from this time until the end, all other work was
laid aside, and his entire strength given to the consummate flower
of his educational thought.
The first kindergarten was opened in 1837 at Blankenburg (where
a memorial school is now conducted), and in 1850 the institution at
Marienthal for the training of kindergartners was founded, Froebel
remaining at its head until his death two years after.
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FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
6025
With the exception of that remarkable book The Education of
Man' (1826), his most important literary work was done after 1836;
'Pedagogics of the Kindergarten,' the first great European contribu-
tion to the subject of child-study, appearing from 1837 to 1840 in the
form of separate essays, and the 'Mutter-und-Kose Lieder' (Mother-
Play) in 1843. Many of his educational aphorisms and occasional
speeches were preserved by his great disciple the Baroness von
Marenholtz-Bülow in her 'Reminiscences of Froebel'; and though
two most interesting volumes of his correspondence have been pub-
lished, there remain a number of letters, as well as essays and educa-
tional sketches, not yet rendered into English.
Froebel's literary style is often stiff and involved, its phrases
somewhat labored, and its substance exceedingly difficult to trans-
late with spirit and fidelity; yet after all, his mannerisms are of a
kind to which one easily becomes accustomed, and the kernel of his
thought when reached is found well worth the trouble of removing a
layer of husk. He had always an infinitude of things to say, and
they were all things of purpose and of meaning; but in writing, as
well as in formal speaking, the language to clothe the thought came
to him slowly and with difficulty. Yet it appears that in friendly
private intercourse he spoke fluently, and one of his students reports
that in his classes he was often "overpowering and sublime, the
stream of his words pouring forth like fiery rain. "
It is probable that in daily life Froebel was not always an agree-
able house-mate; for he was a genius, a reformer, and an unworldly
enthusiast, believing in himself and in his mission with all the ardor
of a heart centred in one fixed purpose. He was quite intolerant of
those who doubted or disbelieved in his theories, as well as of those
who, believing, did not carry their faith into w ks. The people who
stood nearest him and devoted themselves to the furthering of his
ideas slept on no bed of roses, certainly; but although he sometimes
sacrificed their private interests to his cause, it must not be forgotten
that he first laid himself and all that he had upon the same altar.
His nature was one that naturally inspired reverence and loyalty, and
drew from his associates the most extraordinary devotion and self-
sacrifice. Then, as now, women were peculiarly attracted by his
burning enthusiasm, his prophetic utterances, and his lofty views of
their sex and its mission; and then, as now, the almost fanatical zeal
of his followers is perhaps to be explained by the fact that he gives
a new world-view to his students,- one that produces much the same
effect upon the character as the spiritual exaltation called "experi-
encing religion. "
He was twice married, in each case to a superior woman of great
gifts of mind and character, and both helpmates joyfully took up a
## p. 6026 (#620) ###########################################
6026
FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
life of privation and care that they might be associated with him and
with his work. Those memorable words spoken of our Washington, —
"Heaven left him childless that a nation might call him father," are
even more applicable to Froebel, for his wise and tender fatherhood
extends to all the children of the world. When he passed through
the village streets of his own country, little ones came running from
every doorstep; the babies clinging to his knees and the older ones
hanging about his neck and refusing to leave the dear play-master,
as they called him. So the kindergartners love to think of him
to-day, the tall spare figure, the long hair, the wise, plain, strong-
featured face, the shining eyes, and the little ones clustering about
him as they clustered about another Teacher in Galilee, centuries ago.
Froebel's educational creed cannot here be cited at length, but
some of its fundamental articles are:-
-
The education of the child should begin with its birth, and should
be threefold, addressing the mental, spiritual, and physical natures.
It should be continued as it has begun, by appealing to the heart
and the emotions as the starting-point of the human soul.
There should be sequence, orderly progression, and one continuous
purpose throughout the entire scheme of education, from kinder-
garten to university.
Education should be conducted according to nature, and should be
a free, spontaneous growth,-a development from within, never a pre-
scription from without.
The training of the child should be conducted by means of the
activities, needs, desires, and delights, which are the common herit-
age of childhood.
The child should be led from the beginning to feel that one life
thrills through every manifestation of the universe, and that he is a
part of all that is.
The object of education is the development of the human being
in the totality of his powers as a child of nature, a child of man, and
a child of God.
These principles of Froebel's, many of them the products of his
own mind, others the pure gold of educational currency upon which
he has but stamped his own image, are so true and so far-reaching
that they have already begun to modify all education and are des-
tined to work greater magic in the future. The great teacher's place
in history may be determined, by-and-by, more by the wonderful
uplift and impetus he gave to the whole educational world, than by
the particular system of child-culture in connection with which he is
best known to-day.
Judged by ordinary worldly standards, his life was an unsuccess-
ful one, full of trials and privations, and empty of reward.
His
## p. 6027 (#621) ###########################################
FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
6027
aro
death-blow was doubtless struck by the prohibition of kindergartens
in Prussia in 1851, an edict which remained nine years in force. His
strength had been too sorely tried to resist this final crushing mis-
fortune, and he passed away the following year. His body was borne
to the grave through a heavy storm of wind and rain that seemed to
symbolize the vicissitudes of his earthly days, while as a forecast of
the future the sun shone out at the last moment, and the train of
mourners looked back to see the low mound irradiated with glory.
In Thuringia, where the great child-lover was born, the kinder-
gartens, his best memorials, cluster thickly now; and on the face of
the cliffs that overhang the bridle-path across the Glockner mount-
ain may be seen in great letters the single word Froebel, hewn deep
into the solid rock.
个
Archibald Smitte
THE RIGHT OF THE CHILD
From Reminiscences of Friedrich Froebel,' by Baroness B. von Marenholtz-
Bülow. Copyright 1877, by Mary Mann. Reprinted by permission of
Lee & Shepard, publishers, Boston.
Α'
LL that does not grow out of one's inner being, all that is
not one's own original feeling and thought, or that at least
does not awaken that, oppresses and defaces the individual-
ity of man instead of calling it forth, and nature becomes there-
by a caricature. Shall we never cease to stamp human nature,
even in childhood, like coins? to overlay it with foreign images
and foreign superscriptions, instead of letting it develop itself
and grow into form according to the law of life planted in it by
God the Father, so that it may be able to bear the stamp of the
Divine, and become an image of God?
This theory of love is to serve as the highest goal and pole-
star of human education, and must be attended to in the germ
of humanity, the child, and truly in his very first impulses. The
conquest of self-seeking egoism is the most important task of
education; for selfishness isolates the individual from all commun-
ion, and kills the life-giving principle of love. Therefore the first
object of education is to teach to love, to break up the egoism
## p. 6028 (#622) ###########################################
6028
FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
of the individual, and to lead him from the first stage of com-
munion in the family through all the following stages of social
life to the love of humanity, or to the highest self-conquest by
which man rises to Divine unity.
•
Women are to recognize that childhood and womanliness
(the care of childhood and the life of women) are inseparably
connected; that they form a unit; and that God and nature
have placed the protection of the human plant in their hands.
Hitherto the female sex could take only a more or less passive
part in human history, because great battles and the political
organization of nations were not suited to their powers. But at
the present stage of culture, nothing is more pressingly required
than the cultivation of every human power for the arts of peace
and the work of higher civilization. The culture of individuals,
and therefore of the whole nation, depends in great part upon
the earliest care of childhood. On that account women, as one
half of mankind, have to undertake the most important part of
the problems of the time, problems that men are not able to
solve. If but one half of the work be accomplished, then our
epoch, like all others, will fail to reach the appointed goal. As
educators of mankind, the women of the present time have the
highest duty to perform, while hitherto they have been scarcely
more than the beloved mothers of human beings.
But I will protect childhood, that it may not as in earlier
generations be pinioned, as in a strait-jacket, in garments of cus-
tom and ancient prescription that have become too narrow for
the new time. I shall show the way and shape the means, that
every human soul may grow of itself, out of its own individuality.
But where shall I find allies and helpers if not in women, who
as mothers and teachers may put my idea in execution? Only
intellectually active women can and will do it. But if these are
to be loaded with the ballast of dead knowledge that can take
no root in the unprepared ground, if the fountains of their own
original life are to be choked up with it, they will not follow my
direction nor understand the call of the time for the new task
of their sex, but will seek satisfaction in empty superficiality.
To learn to comprehend nature in the child,- is not that to
comprehend one's own nature and the nature of mankind? And
in this comprehension is there not involved a certain degree
of comprehension of all things else? Women cannot learn and
take into themselves anything higher and more comprehensive.
## p. 6029 (#623) ###########################################
FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
6029
It should therefore at least be the beginning, and the love of
childhood should be awakened in the mind (and in a wider sense,
this is the love of humanity), so that a new, free generation of
men can grow up by right care.
EVOLUTION
From The Mottoes and Commentaries of Mother-Play. Copyright 1895, by
D. Appleton & Co.
WHAT
HAT shall we learn from our yearning look into the heart
of the flower and the eye of the child? This truth:
Whatever develops, be it into flower or tree or man, is
from the beginning implicitly that which it has the power to
become. The possibility of perfect manhood is what you read in
your child's eye, just as the perfect flower is prophesied in the
bud, or the giant oak in the tiny acorn. A presentiment that the
ideal or generic human being slumbers, dreams, stirs in your
unconscious infant-this it is, O mother, which transfigures you
as you gaze upon him. Strive to define to yourself what is that
generic ideal which is wrapped up in your child. Surely, as your
child—or in other words, as child of man — he destined to live
in the past and future as well as in the present. His earthly
being implies a past heaven; his birth makes a present heaven;
in his soul he holds a future heaven. This threefold heaven,
which you also bear within you, shines out on you through your
child's eyes.
The beast lives only in the present. Of past and future he
knows naught. But to man belong not only the present, but also
the future and the past. His thought pierces the heaven of the
future, and hope is born. He learns that all human life is one
life; that all human joys and sorrows are his joys and sorrows,
and through participation enters the present heaven- the heaven.
of love. He turns his mind towards the past, and out of retro-
spection wrests a vigorous faith. What soul could fail to conquer
an invincible trust in the pure, the good, the holy, the ideally
human, the truly Divine, if it would look with single eye into
its own past, into the past of history? Could there be a man in
whose soul such a contemplation of the. past would fail to blossom
into devout insight, into self-conscious and self-comprehending
faith? Must not such a retrospect unveil the truth? Must not
## p. 6030 (#624) ###########################################
6030
FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
the beauty of the unveiled truth allure him to Divine doing,
Divine living? All that is high and holy in human life meets
in that faith which is born of the unveiling of a heaven that has
always been; in that hope born of a vision of the heaven that
shall be; in that love which creates a heaven in the eternal Now.
These three heavens shine out upon you through your child's eye.
The presentiment that he carries these three heavens within him.
transfigures your countenance as you gaze upon him. Cherish
this premonition, for thereby you will help him to make his life a
musical chord wherein are blended the three notes of faith, hope,
and love. These celestial virtues will link his life with the
Divine life through which all life is one-with the God who is
the supernal fountain of life, light, and love.
Higher and more important than the cultivation of man's
outer ear, is the culture of that inner sense of harmony whereby
the soul learns to perceive sweet accord in soundless things, and
to discern within itself harmonies and discords. The importance
of wakening the inner ear to this music of the soul can scarcely
be exaggerated. Learning to hear it within, the child will strive
to give it outer form and expression; and even if in such effort
he is only partially successful, he will gain thereby the power to
appreciate the more successful effort of others. Thus enriching
his own life by the life of others, he solves the problem of devel-
opment. How else were it possible within the quickly fleeting
hours of mortal life to develop our being in all directions, to
fathom its depths, scale its heights, measure its boundaries?
What we are, what we would be, we must learn to recognize in
the mirror of all other lives. By the effort of each, and the
recognition of all, the Divine man is revealed in humanity.
Against the bright light which shines on the smooth white
wall is thrust a dark object, and straightway appears the form
which so delights the child. This is the outward fact; what is
the truth which through this fact is dimly hinted to the prophetic
mind? Is it not the creative and transforming power of light,
that power which brings form and color out of chaos, and makes
the beauty which gladdens our hearts? Is it not more than this,
-a foreshadowing, perhaps, of the spiritual fact that our darkest
experiences may project themselves in forms that will delight and
bless, if in our hearts shines the light of God? The sternest
crags, the most forbidding chasms, are beautiful in the mellow
sunshine; while the fairest landscape loses all charm, and indeed
## p. 6031 (#625) ###########################################
FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
6031
ceases to be, when the light which created it is withdrawn. Is
it not thus also with our lives? Yesterday, touched by the light
of enthusiastic emotion, all our relationships seemed beautiful
and blessed; to-day, when the glow of enthusiasm has faded, they
oppress and repulse us. Only the conviction that it is the dark-
ness within us which makes the darkness without, can restore the
lost peace of our souls. Be it therefore, O mother, your sacred
duty to make your darling early feel the working both of the
outer and inner light. Let him see in one the symbol of the
other, and tracing light and color to their source in the sun, may
he learn to trace the beauty and meaning of his life to their
source in God.
Translation of Susan E. Blow.
THE LAWS OF THE MIND
From The Letters of Froebel'
I
AM firmly convinced that all the phenomena of the child-world,
those which delight us as well as those which grieve us,
depend upon fixed laws as definite as those of the cosmos,
the planetary system, and the operations of nature; and it is
therefore possible to discover them and examine them. When
once we know and have assimilated these laws, we shall be able
powerfully to counteract any retrograde and faulty tendencies in
the children, and to encourage, at the same time, all that is
good and virtuous.
FOR THE CHILDREN
From The Letters of Froebel'
I
WISH you could have been here this evening, and seen the many
beautiful and varied forms and lovely patterns which freely
and spontaneously developed themselves from some system-
atic variations of a simple ground form, in stick-playing. No
one would believe, without seeing it, how the child soul, the
child life, develops when treated as a whole, and in the sense of
forming a part of the great connected life of the world, by some
skilled kindergarten teacher-nay, even by one who is only
simple-hearted, thoughtful, and attentive; nor how it blooms into
## p. 6032 (#626) ###########################################
6032
FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
delicious harmonies like a beautifully tinted flower. Oh, if I
could only shout aloud with ten thousand lung-power the truth
that I now tell you in silence! Then would I make the ears of
a hundred thousand men ring with it! What keenness of sensa-
tion, what a soul, what a mind, what force of will and active
energy, what dexterity and skill of muscular movement and of
perception, and what calm and patience, will not all these things
call out in the children!
How is it that parents are so blind and deaf, when they pro-
fess to be so eager to work for the welfare, the health, and peace
of their children? No! I cannot understand it; and yet a whole
generation has passed since this system first delivered its mes-
sage, first called for educational amendment, first pointed out
where the need for it lay, and showed how it could be satisfied.
If I were not afraid of being taken for an idiot or an escaped
lunatic, I would run barefoot from one end of Germany to the
other and cry aloud to all men: — "Set to work at once for your
children's sake on some universally developing plan, aiming at
unity of life purpose, and through that at joy and peace. " But
what good would it do? A Curtman and a Ramsauer, in their
stupidity or maliciousness, make it their duty to stigmatize my
work as sinful, when I am but quietly corresponding with just
my own friends and sympathizers; for they say I am destroying
all pleasure in life for the parents: "Who could be so silly as I,
amongst sane men who acknowledge that parents have a right
to enjoy life,—I who perpetually call to these parents in tones
of imperative demand, Come, let us live for our children! >»
(Kommt, laszt uns unseren Kindern leben! )
MOTIVES
From The Education of Man. By permission of Josephine Jarvis,
the translator, and A. Lovell & Co. , publishers
Ο
NLY in the measure that we are thoroughly penetrated by
the pure, spiritual, inward, human relations, and are faith-
ful to them even in the smallest detail in life, do we attain
to the complete knowledge and perception of the Divine-human
relation; only in that measure do we anticipate them so deeply,
vividly, and truly, that every yearning of our whole being is
thereby satisfied, at least receives its whole meaning, and is
-
## p. 6033 (#627) ###########################################
FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
6033
changed from a constantly unfulfilled yearning to an immediately
rewarded effort.
How we degrade and lower the human nature which we should
raise, how we weaken those whom we should strengthen, when
we hold up to them an inducement to act virtuously, even though
we place this inducement in another world! If we employ an
outward incentive, though it be the most spiritual, to call forth
better life, and leave undeveloped the inner, spontaneous, and
independent power of representing pure humanity which rests in
each man, we degrade our human nature.
But how wholly different every thing is, if man, especially in
boyhood, is made to observe the reflex action of his conduct, not
on his outward more or less agreeable position, but on his inner,
spontaneous or fettered, clear or clouded, satisfied or dissatisfied.
condition of spirit and mind! The experiences which proceed
from this observation will necessarily more and more awaken the
inner sense of man: and then true sense, the greatest treasure of
boy and man, comes into his life.
APHORISMS
SEE in every child the possibility of a perfect man.
I
The child-soul is an ever-bubbling fountain in the world of
humanity.
The plays of childhood are the heart-leaves of the whole
future life.
Childish unconsciousness is rest in God.
From each object of nature and of life, there goes a path
toward God.
Perfect human joy is also worship, for it is ordered by God.
The first groundwork of religious life is love-love to God
and man-in the bosom of the family.
Childhood is the most important stage of the total develop-
ment of man and of humanity.
Women must make of their educational calling a priestly
office.
Isolation and exclusion destroy life; union and participation
create life.
Without religious preparation in childhood, no true religion
and no union with God is possible for men.
X-378
## p. 6034 (#628) ###########################################
6034
FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
The tree germ bears within itself the nature of the whole
tree; the human being bears in himself the nature of all human-
ity; and is not therefore humanity born anew in each child?
Freytag did his most important and lasting work, but that the whole
of this work was in a manner the development of a similar tendency.
Although as different as need be in environment, all of his subsequent
novels embody inherently the characteristics of 'Debit and Credit,'
for like it, they are all well-defined attempts to depict the typical
social conditions of the period in which they move, and their char-
acters are the carefully considered types of their time. Freytag,
with a philosophic seriousness of purpose perhaps characteristically
German, is writing not only novels but the history of civilization, in
his early work. Later on, the didactic purpose to a certain extent
overshadows the rest; and although he never loses his power of tell-
ing a story, it is the history in the end that is paramount.
'Debit and Credit' is a novel of the century, and it takes up the
great problem of the century, the position of modern industrialism in
the social life of the day. Its principal centre of action is the busi-
ness house of the wholesale grocer T. O. Schröter, who is an admira-
ble embodiment of the careful, industrious, and successful merchant.
In sharp contradistinction to him is the Baron von Rothsattel, the
representative of earlier conditions in the organization of the State,
which made the nobleman pre-eminently a social force. Freytag's
polemic is not only the dignity of labor under present conditions.
but the absolute effeteness of the old order of things that despised
it.
The real hero of the story is Anten Wohlfahrt, who begins his
commercial career as a youth in the house of T. O. Schröter, and
ends, after some vicissitudes, as a member of the firm. Mercantile
life has nowhere been better described in its monotony, its interests,
and its aspirations, as the story is developed; and although at first
sight no field could be more barren in literary interest, there is in
reality no lack of incident and action, whose inevitable sequence makes
the plot. Anton's career in the house of Schröter is interrupted by
his connection with the Baron von Rothsattel, who has, through his
want of a business training and his lack of a knowledge of men,
fallen into the hands of a Jew money-lender; by whom he is per-
suaded to mortgage his land in order to embark in a business under-
taking which it is presumed will increase his fortune. His mill fails,
however, and he is involved in difficulties from which he is unable
## p. 6013 (#607) ###########################################
GUSTAV FREYTAG
6013
to extricate himself. Anton, the intimate friend of the family, is
therefore persuaded by the Baroness to undertake the management
of matters, and after vainly endeavoring to induce his principal to
interest himself in the affair, sacrifices his position to accompany the
family to their dilapidated estate in a distant province. The Baron
will tolerate no interference, however, and Anton finally returns to
the house of Schröter and is reinstated in the business. Lenore, the
Baron's daughter, the first cause of Anton's interest, meantime becomes
engaged to the young nobleman Fink; who has been an associate of
Anton's in the office of T. O. Schröter, has but recently returned
from the United States, and who first advances funds for the improve-
ment of the estate and ultimately purchases it.
Fink acts his part in the author's philosophy as a contrast to the
Baron von Rothsattel. Although a nobleman, he has adapted himself
to the conditions of the century, and is free from any hallucinations
of his hereditary rank, even while he is perfectly awake to its tradi-
tions. He has entered upon a commercial career not from choice, but
from necessity; but he has accepted his fate and has made successful
use of his opportunities. Anton marries the sister of T. O. Schröter,
and becomes a partner in the business. Fink is however really the
one who gains the princess in this modern tale, and is plainly to
have the more important share as an actual social force in the future.
The old feudal nobility has played its part on the stage of the world;
and being so picturesque, and full of romantic opportunity, its loss
is doubtless to be regretted. The tamer realities of the modern in-
dustrial state have succeeded it. As Freytag solves the problem in
'Soll und Haben,' it is the man who works, the man of the indus-
trial classes alone, to whom the victory belongs in the modern social
struggle, be his antecedents bourgeois or aristocratic.
Freytag's second great novel, 'Die Verlorene Handschrift' (The
Lost Manuscript), which appeared in 1864, concerns itself with another
phase of the same problem. This time, however, instead of the mer-
chant and man of affairs, it is the scholar about whom the action
centres. Felix Werner, professor of philology, has come upon unmis-
takable traces of the lost books of Tacitus, whose recovery is the
object of his life. In his search for the manuscript in an old house
in the country he finds his future wife Ilse, one of the finest types in
all German literature of the true German woman, both while at home
a maid in her father's house and subsequently as the professor's wife
in the university town. Werner, in his scholarly absorption, unwit-
tingly neglects his wife, whose beauty has attracted the attention of
the prince; and there is a series of intrigues which threaten seriously
to involve the innocent Ilse, until the prince's evil intentions become
evident even to the unsuspecting Werner. The covers of the lost
manuscript are actually discovered at last, but the book itself has
## p. 6014 (#608) ###########################################
6014
GUSTAV FREYTAG
vanished. In this second novel Freytag displays a most genial
humor, unsuspected in the author of 'Debit and Credit,' but apparent
enough in The Journalists. ' The professorial life is admirably
drawn with all its lights and shadows; and its motives and ambi-
tions, its peculiar struggles and strivings, have never been more
understandingly treated. The story, however, even more than 'Debit
and Credit,' displays the author's weaknesses of construction. The
plot is so confused by digressions that the main thread is sometimes
lost sight of, and the tendency to philosophical generalization, which
as a German is to some extent the author's birthright, reaches in
these pages an appalling exemplification. What had been an extraor-
dinary novel pruned of these defects, is still not an ordinary novel
with them; and as a picture of German university life from the point
of view of the professor, The Lost Manuscript' stands unrivaled in
literature. Again the thesis in this second novel is the dignity of
labor, and the nobleman fares no better at the author's hands than
in the mercantile environment of the first.
These two novels, which outside of Germany are Freytag's best
claim to attention, were followed by the four volumes of 'Bilder aus
der Deutschen Vergangenheit (Pictures from the German Past: 1859-
62), a series of studies of German life from different epochs of its
history, intended to illustrate the evolution of modern conditions
through their successive stages from the remote past. Freytag's early
work as a university docent had particularly fitted him for this sort of
writing, and some of his best is contained in these books.
More important still, however, was his next great work, the long
series of historical novels 'Die Ahnen' (The Ancestors: 1872-80), an
ambitious plan, born of the stirring events of the Franco-Prussian
War and the resultant awakening of the new spirit of nationality, to
trace the development of the German people from the earliest time
down to the present day. To carry out this purpose he accordingly
selects a typical German family, which he describes under the char-
acteristic conditions of each period, with the most conscientious at-
tention to manners and customs and social environment. The same
family thus appears from generation to generation under the changing
conditions of the different epochs of German history, and the whole
forms together the consecutive Culturgeschichte of the nation.
This whole long series of 'The Ancestors' stands as a monument
of careful research into the most minute factors of German life in
their time of action. Freytag's antiquarianism is not of the dilet-
tante kind that is content to masquerade modern motives in ancient
garb and setting. He was fully conscious of all the elements of his
problem, and he sought to reproduce the intellectual point of view
of his actors, and to account for their motives of action, as well
as to picture accurately their material environment. It is in his
## p. 6015 (#609) ###########################################
GUSTAV FREYTAG
6015
super-conscientiousness in these directions that the inherent weakness
of the novels of this series lies.
They are too palpably reconstructions
with a purpose.
Their didacticism is wrapped around them like a
garment; and much of the time, that is all that is visible upon the
surface. As the series advances this fault grows upon them. They
are in reality of very unequal interest. 'Ingo' and 'Ingraban are
the sprightliest in action, and have been as a consequence the
most widely read of these later works, many of which are, in part at
least, far too serious of purpose to play their part conspicuously well
as novels.
The novels of The Ancestors' are a culmination of Freytag's
literary evolution. As a playwright he will no doubt be forgotten ex-
cept for The Journalists'; in which he has, however, left an imper-
ishable play which German critics have not hesitated to call the best
comedy of the century. The two novels of modern life from his
middle period form together his greatest work, although here, and
particularly in The Lost Manuscript,' he has overweighted his ma-
terial with abstract discussion, in which his perspective has some-
times all but disappeared. Subsequently, both the 'Bilder' and 'Die
Ahnen' show his decided predilection for historical studies. The
struggle in his own case was between the scholar and the man of
letters, in which the scholar eventually won possession of the field.
Freytag's other work includes-'Die Technik des Dramas (The
Technique of the Drama: 1863), a consideration of the principles of
dramatic construction; the life of his friend Karl Malthy, 1870; and
'Der Kronprinz und die Deutsche Kaiserkrone' (The Crown Prince and
the German Imperial Crown: 1889), written after the death of Fred-
erick III. , with whom Freytag had had personal relations. To accom-
pany the collected edition of his works (1887-88), he wrote a short
autobiography, 'Erinnerungen aus Meinem Leben' (Recollections from
My Life).
PR
THE GERMAN PROFESSOR
From The Lost Manuscript>
ROFESSORS wives
also have trouble with their husbands.
Sometimes when Ilse was seated in company with her
intimate friends with Madame Raschke, Madame Struve-
lius, or little Madame Günther - at one of those confidential
coffee parties which they did not altogether despise, many things
would come to light.
The conversation with these intellectual women was certainly
very interesting. It is true the talk sometimes passed lightly
-
-
## p. 6016 (#610) ###########################################
6016
GUSTAV FREYTAG
over the heads of the servants, and sometimes housekeeping
troubles ventured out of the pond of pleasant talk like croaking
frogs. To Ilse's surprise, she found that even Flaminia Struvelius
could discourse seriously about preserving little gherkins, and
that she sought closely for the marks of youth in a plucked
goose. The merry Madame Günther aroused horror and laughter
in more experienced married women, when she asserted that she
could not endure the crying of little children, and that from the
very first she would force her child (which she had not yet got)
to proper silence by chastisement. Thus conversation sometimes
left greater subjects to stray into this domain. And when un-
important subjects were reviewed, it naturally came about that the
men were honored by a quiet discussion. At such times it was
evident that although the subject under consideration was men in
general, each of the wives was thinking of her own husband, and
that each silently carried about a secret bundle of cares, and
justified the conclusion of her hearers that that husband too
must be difficult to manage.
Madame Raschke's troubles could not be concealed; the whole
town knew them. It was notorious that one market day her hus-
band had gone to the university in his dressing-gown-in a
brilliant dressing-gown, blue and orange, with a Turkish pattern.
His students, who loved him dearly and were well aware of his
habits, could not succeed in suppressing a loud laugh; and
Raschke had calmly hung the dressing-gown over his pulpit,
held his lecture in his shirt-sleeves, and returned home in one of
the students' overcoats. Since that time Madame Raschke never
let her husband go out without herself inspecting him. It also
appeared that all these ten years he had not been able to learn
his way about the town, and she dared not change her residence,
because she was quite sure that her professor would never re-
member it, and always return to his old home. Struvelius also
occasioned much anxiety. Ilse knew about the last and greatest
cause; but it also came to light that he expected his wife to
read Latin proof-sheets, as she knew something of that language.
Besides, he was quite incapable of refusing commissions to amia-
ble wine merchants. At her marriage Madame Struvelius had
found a whole cellar full of large and small wine casks, none of
which had been drawn off, while he complained bitterly that no
wine was ever brought into his cellar. Even little Madame
Günther related that her husband could not give up night work;
## p. 6017 (#611) ###########################################
GUSTAV FREYTAG
6017
and that once, when he wandered with a lamp among his books,
he came too near the curtain, which caught fire. He tore it off,
and in so doing burnt his hands, and burst into the bedroom
with blackened fingers in great alarm, and resembling Othello
more than a mineralogist.
Raschke was wandering about in the ante-room. Here too
was confusion. Gabriel had not yet returned from his distant
errand; the cook had left the remains of the meal standing on a
side-table till his return; and Raschke had to find his greatcoat
by himself. He rummaged among the clothes, and seized hold
of a coat and a hat. As he was not so absent-minded as usual
to-day, a glance at the despised supper reminded him just in
time that he was to eat a fowl; so he seized hold of the news-
paper which Gabriel had laid ready for his master, hastily took
one of the chickens out of the dish, wrapped it in the journal,
and thrust it in his pocket, agreeably surprised at the depth and
capaciousness it revealed. Then he rushed past the astonished
cook, and out of the house. When he opened the door of the
étage he stumbled against something that was crouching on the
threshold. He heard a horrible growling behind him, and stormed
down the stairs and out of doors.
The words of the friend whom he had left now came into his
mind. Werner's whole bearing was very characteristic; and there
was something fine about it. It was strange that in a moment
of anger Werner's face had acquired a sudden resemblance to a
bull-dog's. Here the direct chain of the philosopher's contempla-
tions was crossed by the remembrance of the conversation on
animals' souls.
"It is really a pity that it is still so difficult to determine an
animal's expression of soul. If we could succeed in that, science
would gain. For if we could compare in all their minutiæ the
expression and gestures of human beings and higher animals, we
might make most interesting deductions from their common pecul-
iarities and their particular differences. In this way the natural
origin of their dramatic movements, and perhaps some new laws,
would be discovered. "
While the philosopher was pondering thus, he felt a con-
tinued pulling at his coat-tails. As his wife was in the habit of
giving him a gentle pull when he was walking next her absorbed
in thought and they met some acquaintance, he took no further
notice of it, but took off his hat, and bowing politely towards
the railing of the bridge, said "Good-evening. "
X-377
## p. 6018 (#612) ###########################################
6018
GUSTAV FREYTAG
"These common and original elements in the mimic expres-
sion of human beings and higher animals might, if rightly under-
stood, even open out new vistas into the great mystery of life. "
Another pull. Raschke mechanically took off his hat. Another
pull. "Thank you, dear Aurelia, I did bow. " As he spoke, the
thought crossed his mind that his wife would not pull at his coat
so low down. It was not she, but his little daughter Bertha who
was pulling; for she often walked gravely next him, and like her
mother, pulled at the bell for bows. "That will do, my dear,"
said he, as Bertha continued to snatch and pull at his coat-tails.
"Come here, you little rogue! " and he absently put his hand
behind him to seize the little tease. He seized hold of something
round and shaggy; he felt sharp teeth on his fingers, and turned
with a start. There he saw in the lamplight a reddish monster
with a big head, shaggy hair, and a little tassel that fell back
into its hind legs in lieu of a tail. His wife and daughter were
horribly transformed; and he gazed in surprise on this indistinct
creature which seated itself before him, and glared at him in
silence.
"A strange adventure! " exclaimed Raschke.
"What are you,
unknown creature? Presumably a dog. Away with you! " The
animal retreated a few steps. Raschke continued his meditations:
"If we trace back the expression and gestures of the affections
to their original forms in this manner, one of the most active
laws would certainly prove to be the endeavor to attract or repel
the extraneous. It would be instructive to distinguish, by means
of these involuntary movements of men and animals, what is
essential and what conventional. Away, dog! Do me a favor
and go home. What does he want with me? Evidently he be-
longs to Werner's domain. The poor creature will assuredly lose
itself in the town under the dominion of an idée fixe. "
Meantime Speihahn's attacks were becoming more violent; and
now he was marching in a quite unnatural and purely conven-
tional manner on his hind legs, while his fore paws were leaning
against the professor's back, and his teeth were actually biting
into the coat.
A belated shoemaker's boy stood still and beat his leathern
apron. "Is not the master ashamed to let his poor apprentice
push him along like that? " In truth, the dog behind the man
looked like a dwarf pushing a giant along the ice.
Raschke's interest in the dog's thoughts increased. He stood
still near a lantern, examined and felt his coat. This coat had
## p. 6019 (#613) ###########################################
GUSTAV FREYTAG
6019
developed a velvet collar and very long sleeves, advantages that
the philosopher had never yet remarked in his greatcoat. Now
the matter became clear to him: absorbed in thought, he had
chosen a wrong coat, and the worthy dog insisted on saving his
master's garment, and making the thief aware that there was
something wrong. Raschke was so pleased with this sagacity
that he turned round, addressed some kind words to Speihahn,
and made an attempt to stroke his shaggy hair. The dog again
snapped at his hand. "You are quite right to be angry with
me,” replied Raschke; "I will prove to you that I acknowledge
my fault. " He took off the coat and hung it over his arm.
«< Yes, it is much heavier than my own. " He walked on cheer-
fully in his thin coat, and observed with satisfaction that the dog
abandoned the attacks on his back. But instead, Speihahn sprang
upon
his side, and again bit at the coat and the hand, and
growled unpleasantly.
The professor got angry with the dog, and when he came to
a bench on the promenade he laid down the coat, intending to
face the dog seriously and drive him home. In this manner he
got rid of the dog, but also of the coat. For Speihahn sprang
upon the bench with a mighty bound, placed himself astride the
coat, and met the professor, who tried to drive him away, with
hideous growling and snarling.
"It is Werner's coat," said the professor, "and it is Werner's
dog: it would be wrong to beat the poor creature because it is
becoming violent in its fidelity, and it would be wrong to leave
the dog and the coat. " So he remained standing before the dog
and speaking kindly to him: but Speihahn no longer took any
notice of the professor; he turned against the coat itself, which
he scratched, rummaged, and bit. Raschke saw that the coat
could not long endure such rage. "He is frantic or mad," said
he suspiciously. "I shall have to use force against you after all,
poor creature;" and he considered whether he should also jump
upon the seat and push the mad creature by a violent kick into
the water, or whether it would be better to open the inevitable
attack from below. He resolved on the latter course, and looked
round to see whether he could anywhere discover a stone or
stick to throw at the raging beast. As he looked, he observed
the trees and the dark sky above him, and the place seemed quite
unfamiliar. "Has magic been at work here? " he exclaimed, with
amusement. He turned politely to a solitary wanderer who was
## p. 6020 (#614) ###########################################
6020
GUSTAV FREYTAG
passing that way:
the town we are?
a moment? "
"Indeed," angrily replied the person addressed, "those are
very suspicious questions. I want my stick myself at night. Who
are you, sir ? » The stranger approached the professor mena-
cingly.
"I am peaceable," replied Raschke, "and by no means inclined
to violent attacks. A quarrel has arisen between me and the
animal on this seat for the possession of a coat, and I should be
much obliged to you if you would drive the dog away from the
coat. But I beg you not to hurt the animal any more than is
absolutely necessary. "
"Is that your coat there? " asked the man.
"Unfortunately I cannot give you an affirmative answer," re-
plied Raschke conscientiously.
"Would you kindly tell me in what part of
And could you perhaps lend me your stick for
"There must be something wrong here," exclaimed the
stranger, again eyeing the professor suspiciously.
"There is, indeed," replied Raschke. "The dog is out of his
mind; the coat is exchanged, and I do not know where we are. "
"Close to the valley gate, Professor Raschke," answered the
voice of Gabriel, who hastily joined the group. "Excuse me, but
what brings you here? "
"Capital! " exclaimed Raschke joyously. "Pray take charge of
this coat and this dog. "
Gabriel gazed in amazement at Speihahn, who was now lying
on the coat and bending his head before his friend. Gabriel
threw down the dog and seized the coat. "Why, that is our
greatcoat! " exclaimed he.
"Yes, Gabriel," said the professor, "that was my mistake, and
the dog has shown marvelous fidelity to the coat. "
"Fidelity! " exclaimed Gabriel indignantly, as he drew a par-
cel out of the coat pocket. "It was greedy selfishness, sir; there
must be some food in this pocket. "
"Yes, true," exclaimed Raschke; "it is all the chicken's fault.
Give me the parcel, Gabriel; I must eat the fowl myself; and
we might bid each other good-night now with mutual satisfac-
tion, if you would just show me my way a little among these
trees. "
"But you must not go home in the night air without an over-
coat," said Gabriel considerately. "We are not far from our
## p. 6021 (#615) ###########################################
GUSTAV FREYTAG
6021
house; the best way would really be for you to come back with
me, sir. "
Raschke considered and laughed.
"You are right, Gabriel; my departure was awkward; and to-
day an animal's soul has restored a man's soul to order.
"
"If you mean this dog," said Gabriel, "it would be the first
time he ever did anything good. I see he must have followed
you from our door; for I put little bones there for him of an
evening. "
"Just now he seemed not to be quite in his right mind," said
the professor.
"He is cunning enough when he pleases," continued Gabriel
mysteriously; "but if I were to speak of my experiences with this
dog -»
"Do speak, Gabriel," eagerly exclaimed the
the philosopher.
"There is nothing so valuable concerning animals as a truthful
statement from those who have carefully observed them. "
"I may say that I have done so," confirmed Gabriel, with
satisfaction; "and if you want to know exactly what he is, I can
assure you that he is possessed of the devil, he is a thief, he is
embittered, and he hates all mankind. "
"Ah, indeed! " replied the professor, somewhat disconcerted.
"I see it is much more difficult to look into a dog's heart than
into a professor's. "
Speihahn crept along silent and suppressed, and listened to the
praises that fell to his lot; while Professor Raschke, conducted by
Gabriel, returned to the house by the park. Gabriel opened the
sitting-room door, and announced-
"Professor Raschke. "
Ilse extended both her hands to him.
"Welcome, welcome, dear Professor Raschke! " and led him to
her husband's study.
"Here I am again," said Raschke cheerfully, "after wander-
ing as in a fairy tale. What has brought me back were two
animals, who showed me the right way,-a roast fowl and an
embittered dog. "
Felix sprang up; the men greeted one another warmly, shak-
ing hands, and after all misadventures, spent a happy evening.
When Raschke had gone home late, Gabriel said sadly to his
mistress, "This was the new coat; the fowl and the dog have put
it in a horrible plight. "
## p. 6022 (#616) ###########################################
6022
FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
(1782-1852)
BY NORA ARCHIBALD SMITH
T WAS Froebel who said, "The clearer the thread that runs
through our lives backward to our childhood, the clearer
will be our onward glance to the goal;" and in the frag-
ment of autobiography he has left us, he illustrates forcibly the
truth of his own saying. The motherless baby who plays alone in
the village pastor's quiet house, the dreamy child who wanders soli-
tary in the high-walled garden; the thoughtful lad, neglected, mis-
understood, who forgets the harsh realities of life in pondering the
mysteries of the flowers, the contradictions
of existence, and the dogmas of orthodox
theology; who decides in early boyhood
that the pleasures of the senses are with-
out enduring influence and therefore on no
account to be eagerly pursued; these pre-
sentments of himself, which he summons
up for us from the past, show the vivid-
ness of his early recollections and indicate
the course which the stream of his life is
to run.
FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
The coldness and injustice of the new
mother who assumed control of the house-
hold when he was four years old, his isola-
tion from other children, the merely casual
notice he received from the busy father absorbed in his parish work,
all tended to turn inward the tide of his mental and spiritual life.
He studied himself, not only because it was the bent of his nature,
but because he lacked outside objects of interest; and to this early
habit of introspection we owe many of the valuable features of his
educational philosophy. Whoever has learned thoroughly to under-
stand one child, has conquered a spot of firm ground on which to
rest while he studies the world of children; and because the great
teacher realized this truth, because he longed to give to others the
means of development denied to himself, he turns for us the heart-
leaves of his boyhood.
## p. 6023 (#617) ###########################################
FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
6023
It would appear that Froebel's characteristics were strongly marked
and unusual from the beginning. Called by every one «< a moon-struck
child" in Oberweissbach, the village of his birth, he was just as
unanimously considered "an old fool" when, crowned with the ex-
perience of seventy years, he played with the village children on the
green hills of Thuringia. The intensity of his inward life, the white
heat of his convictions, his absolute blindness to any selfish idea or
aim, his enthusiasm, the exaltation of his spiritual nature, all furnish
so many cogent reasons why the people of any day or of any com-
munity should have failed to understand him, and scorned what they
could not comprehend. It is the old story of the seers and the
prophets repeated as many times as they appear; for "these colossal
souls," as Emerson said, "require a long focal distance to be seen. "
At ten years old the sensitive boy was fortunately removed from
the uncongenial atmosphere of the parental household; and in his
uncle's home he spent five free and happy years, being apprenticed
at the end of this time to a forester in his native Thuringian
woods. Then followed a year's course in the University of Jena, and
four years spent in the study of farming, in clerical work of various
kinds, and in land-surveying. All these employments, however, Froe-
bel himself felt to be merely provisional; for like the hazel wand in
the diviner's hand, his instinct was blindly seeking through these
restless years the well-spring of his life.
In Frankfort, where he had gone intending to study architecture,
Destiny touched him on the shoulder, and he turned and knew her.
Through a curious combination of circumstances he gained employ.
ment in Herr Gruner's Model School, and it was found at once that
he was what the Germans love to call "a teacher by the grace of
God. " The first time he met his class of boys he tells us that he
felt inexpressibly happy; the hazel wand had found the waters and
was fixed at last. From this time on, all the events of his life were
connected with his experience as a teacher. Impelled as soon as he
had begun his work by a desire for more effective methods, he visited
Yverdon, then the centre of educational thought, and studied with
Pestalozzi. He went again in 1808, accompanied by three pupils, and
spent two years there, alternately studying and teaching.
There was a year of lectures at Göttingen after this, and one at
the University of Berlin, accompanied by unceasing study and re-
search both in literary and scientific lines; but in the fateful year
1813 this quiet student life was broken in upon, for impelled by
strong moral conviction, Froebel joined Baron von Lützow's famous
volunteer corps, formed to harass the French by constant skirmishes
and to encourage the smaller German States to rise against Napo-
leon.
## p. 6024 (#618) ###########################################
6024
FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
No thirst for glory prompted this action, but a lofty conception of
the office of the educator. How could any young man capable of
bearing arms, Froebel says, become a teacher of children whose
Fatherland he had refused to defend? how could he in after years
incite his pupils to do something noble, something calling for sacri-
fice and unselfishness, without exposing himself to their derision and
contempt? The reasoning was perfect, and he made practice follow
upon the heels of theory as closely as he had always done since he
became master of his fate.
After the Peace of Paris he settled down for a time to a quiet
life in the mineralogical museum at the University of Berlin, his
duties being the care, arrangement, and investigation of crystals.
Surrounded thus by the exquisite formations whose development ac-
cording to law is so perfect, whose obedience to the promptings of an
inward ideal so complete, he could not but learn from their uncon-
scious ethics to look into the depths of his own nature, and there
recognize more clearly the purpose it was intended to work out.
In 1816 he quietly gave up his position, and taking as pupils five
of his nephews, three of whom were fatherless, he entered upon his
life work, the first step in which was the carrying out of his plan
for a "Universal German Educational Institute. " He was without
money, of course, as he had always been and always would be,— his
hands wer
ere made for giving, not for getting; he slept in a barn on
a wisp of straw while arranging for his first school at Griesheim; but
outward things were so little real to him in comparison with the life
of the spirit, that bodily privations seemed scarcely worth consider-
ing. The school at Keilhau, to which he soon removed, the institu-
tions later established in Wartensee and Willisau, the orphanage in
Burgdorf, all were most successful educationally, but, it is hardly
necessary to say, were never a source of profit to their head and
founder.
Through the twenty succeeding years, busy as he was in teaching,
in lecturing, in writing, he was constantly shadowed by dissatisfac-
tion with the foundation upon which he was building. A nebulous
idea for the betterment of things was floating before him; but it was
not until 1836 that it appeared to his eyes as a "definite truth. "
This definite truth, the discovery of his old age, was of course the
kindergarten; and from this time until the end, all other work was
laid aside, and his entire strength given to the consummate flower
of his educational thought.
The first kindergarten was opened in 1837 at Blankenburg (where
a memorial school is now conducted), and in 1850 the institution at
Marienthal for the training of kindergartners was founded, Froebel
remaining at its head until his death two years after.
## p. 6025 (#619) ###########################################
FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
6025
With the exception of that remarkable book The Education of
Man' (1826), his most important literary work was done after 1836;
'Pedagogics of the Kindergarten,' the first great European contribu-
tion to the subject of child-study, appearing from 1837 to 1840 in the
form of separate essays, and the 'Mutter-und-Kose Lieder' (Mother-
Play) in 1843. Many of his educational aphorisms and occasional
speeches were preserved by his great disciple the Baroness von
Marenholtz-Bülow in her 'Reminiscences of Froebel'; and though
two most interesting volumes of his correspondence have been pub-
lished, there remain a number of letters, as well as essays and educa-
tional sketches, not yet rendered into English.
Froebel's literary style is often stiff and involved, its phrases
somewhat labored, and its substance exceedingly difficult to trans-
late with spirit and fidelity; yet after all, his mannerisms are of a
kind to which one easily becomes accustomed, and the kernel of his
thought when reached is found well worth the trouble of removing a
layer of husk. He had always an infinitude of things to say, and
they were all things of purpose and of meaning; but in writing, as
well as in formal speaking, the language to clothe the thought came
to him slowly and with difficulty. Yet it appears that in friendly
private intercourse he spoke fluently, and one of his students reports
that in his classes he was often "overpowering and sublime, the
stream of his words pouring forth like fiery rain. "
It is probable that in daily life Froebel was not always an agree-
able house-mate; for he was a genius, a reformer, and an unworldly
enthusiast, believing in himself and in his mission with all the ardor
of a heart centred in one fixed purpose. He was quite intolerant of
those who doubted or disbelieved in his theories, as well as of those
who, believing, did not carry their faith into w ks. The people who
stood nearest him and devoted themselves to the furthering of his
ideas slept on no bed of roses, certainly; but although he sometimes
sacrificed their private interests to his cause, it must not be forgotten
that he first laid himself and all that he had upon the same altar.
His nature was one that naturally inspired reverence and loyalty, and
drew from his associates the most extraordinary devotion and self-
sacrifice. Then, as now, women were peculiarly attracted by his
burning enthusiasm, his prophetic utterances, and his lofty views of
their sex and its mission; and then, as now, the almost fanatical zeal
of his followers is perhaps to be explained by the fact that he gives
a new world-view to his students,- one that produces much the same
effect upon the character as the spiritual exaltation called "experi-
encing religion. "
He was twice married, in each case to a superior woman of great
gifts of mind and character, and both helpmates joyfully took up a
## p. 6026 (#620) ###########################################
6026
FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
life of privation and care that they might be associated with him and
with his work. Those memorable words spoken of our Washington, —
"Heaven left him childless that a nation might call him father," are
even more applicable to Froebel, for his wise and tender fatherhood
extends to all the children of the world. When he passed through
the village streets of his own country, little ones came running from
every doorstep; the babies clinging to his knees and the older ones
hanging about his neck and refusing to leave the dear play-master,
as they called him. So the kindergartners love to think of him
to-day, the tall spare figure, the long hair, the wise, plain, strong-
featured face, the shining eyes, and the little ones clustering about
him as they clustered about another Teacher in Galilee, centuries ago.
Froebel's educational creed cannot here be cited at length, but
some of its fundamental articles are:-
-
The education of the child should begin with its birth, and should
be threefold, addressing the mental, spiritual, and physical natures.
It should be continued as it has begun, by appealing to the heart
and the emotions as the starting-point of the human soul.
There should be sequence, orderly progression, and one continuous
purpose throughout the entire scheme of education, from kinder-
garten to university.
Education should be conducted according to nature, and should be
a free, spontaneous growth,-a development from within, never a pre-
scription from without.
The training of the child should be conducted by means of the
activities, needs, desires, and delights, which are the common herit-
age of childhood.
The child should be led from the beginning to feel that one life
thrills through every manifestation of the universe, and that he is a
part of all that is.
The object of education is the development of the human being
in the totality of his powers as a child of nature, a child of man, and
a child of God.
These principles of Froebel's, many of them the products of his
own mind, others the pure gold of educational currency upon which
he has but stamped his own image, are so true and so far-reaching
that they have already begun to modify all education and are des-
tined to work greater magic in the future. The great teacher's place
in history may be determined, by-and-by, more by the wonderful
uplift and impetus he gave to the whole educational world, than by
the particular system of child-culture in connection with which he is
best known to-day.
Judged by ordinary worldly standards, his life was an unsuccess-
ful one, full of trials and privations, and empty of reward.
His
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6027
aro
death-blow was doubtless struck by the prohibition of kindergartens
in Prussia in 1851, an edict which remained nine years in force. His
strength had been too sorely tried to resist this final crushing mis-
fortune, and he passed away the following year. His body was borne
to the grave through a heavy storm of wind and rain that seemed to
symbolize the vicissitudes of his earthly days, while as a forecast of
the future the sun shone out at the last moment, and the train of
mourners looked back to see the low mound irradiated with glory.
In Thuringia, where the great child-lover was born, the kinder-
gartens, his best memorials, cluster thickly now; and on the face of
the cliffs that overhang the bridle-path across the Glockner mount-
ain may be seen in great letters the single word Froebel, hewn deep
into the solid rock.
个
Archibald Smitte
THE RIGHT OF THE CHILD
From Reminiscences of Friedrich Froebel,' by Baroness B. von Marenholtz-
Bülow. Copyright 1877, by Mary Mann. Reprinted by permission of
Lee & Shepard, publishers, Boston.
Α'
LL that does not grow out of one's inner being, all that is
not one's own original feeling and thought, or that at least
does not awaken that, oppresses and defaces the individual-
ity of man instead of calling it forth, and nature becomes there-
by a caricature. Shall we never cease to stamp human nature,
even in childhood, like coins? to overlay it with foreign images
and foreign superscriptions, instead of letting it develop itself
and grow into form according to the law of life planted in it by
God the Father, so that it may be able to bear the stamp of the
Divine, and become an image of God?
This theory of love is to serve as the highest goal and pole-
star of human education, and must be attended to in the germ
of humanity, the child, and truly in his very first impulses. The
conquest of self-seeking egoism is the most important task of
education; for selfishness isolates the individual from all commun-
ion, and kills the life-giving principle of love. Therefore the first
object of education is to teach to love, to break up the egoism
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FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
of the individual, and to lead him from the first stage of com-
munion in the family through all the following stages of social
life to the love of humanity, or to the highest self-conquest by
which man rises to Divine unity.
•
Women are to recognize that childhood and womanliness
(the care of childhood and the life of women) are inseparably
connected; that they form a unit; and that God and nature
have placed the protection of the human plant in their hands.
Hitherto the female sex could take only a more or less passive
part in human history, because great battles and the political
organization of nations were not suited to their powers. But at
the present stage of culture, nothing is more pressingly required
than the cultivation of every human power for the arts of peace
and the work of higher civilization. The culture of individuals,
and therefore of the whole nation, depends in great part upon
the earliest care of childhood. On that account women, as one
half of mankind, have to undertake the most important part of
the problems of the time, problems that men are not able to
solve. If but one half of the work be accomplished, then our
epoch, like all others, will fail to reach the appointed goal. As
educators of mankind, the women of the present time have the
highest duty to perform, while hitherto they have been scarcely
more than the beloved mothers of human beings.
But I will protect childhood, that it may not as in earlier
generations be pinioned, as in a strait-jacket, in garments of cus-
tom and ancient prescription that have become too narrow for
the new time. I shall show the way and shape the means, that
every human soul may grow of itself, out of its own individuality.
But where shall I find allies and helpers if not in women, who
as mothers and teachers may put my idea in execution? Only
intellectually active women can and will do it. But if these are
to be loaded with the ballast of dead knowledge that can take
no root in the unprepared ground, if the fountains of their own
original life are to be choked up with it, they will not follow my
direction nor understand the call of the time for the new task
of their sex, but will seek satisfaction in empty superficiality.
To learn to comprehend nature in the child,- is not that to
comprehend one's own nature and the nature of mankind? And
in this comprehension is there not involved a certain degree
of comprehension of all things else? Women cannot learn and
take into themselves anything higher and more comprehensive.
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FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
6029
It should therefore at least be the beginning, and the love of
childhood should be awakened in the mind (and in a wider sense,
this is the love of humanity), so that a new, free generation of
men can grow up by right care.
EVOLUTION
From The Mottoes and Commentaries of Mother-Play. Copyright 1895, by
D. Appleton & Co.
WHAT
HAT shall we learn from our yearning look into the heart
of the flower and the eye of the child? This truth:
Whatever develops, be it into flower or tree or man, is
from the beginning implicitly that which it has the power to
become. The possibility of perfect manhood is what you read in
your child's eye, just as the perfect flower is prophesied in the
bud, or the giant oak in the tiny acorn. A presentiment that the
ideal or generic human being slumbers, dreams, stirs in your
unconscious infant-this it is, O mother, which transfigures you
as you gaze upon him. Strive to define to yourself what is that
generic ideal which is wrapped up in your child. Surely, as your
child—or in other words, as child of man — he destined to live
in the past and future as well as in the present. His earthly
being implies a past heaven; his birth makes a present heaven;
in his soul he holds a future heaven. This threefold heaven,
which you also bear within you, shines out on you through your
child's eyes.
The beast lives only in the present. Of past and future he
knows naught. But to man belong not only the present, but also
the future and the past. His thought pierces the heaven of the
future, and hope is born. He learns that all human life is one
life; that all human joys and sorrows are his joys and sorrows,
and through participation enters the present heaven- the heaven.
of love. He turns his mind towards the past, and out of retro-
spection wrests a vigorous faith. What soul could fail to conquer
an invincible trust in the pure, the good, the holy, the ideally
human, the truly Divine, if it would look with single eye into
its own past, into the past of history? Could there be a man in
whose soul such a contemplation of the. past would fail to blossom
into devout insight, into self-conscious and self-comprehending
faith? Must not such a retrospect unveil the truth? Must not
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FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
the beauty of the unveiled truth allure him to Divine doing,
Divine living? All that is high and holy in human life meets
in that faith which is born of the unveiling of a heaven that has
always been; in that hope born of a vision of the heaven that
shall be; in that love which creates a heaven in the eternal Now.
These three heavens shine out upon you through your child's eye.
The presentiment that he carries these three heavens within him.
transfigures your countenance as you gaze upon him. Cherish
this premonition, for thereby you will help him to make his life a
musical chord wherein are blended the three notes of faith, hope,
and love. These celestial virtues will link his life with the
Divine life through which all life is one-with the God who is
the supernal fountain of life, light, and love.
Higher and more important than the cultivation of man's
outer ear, is the culture of that inner sense of harmony whereby
the soul learns to perceive sweet accord in soundless things, and
to discern within itself harmonies and discords. The importance
of wakening the inner ear to this music of the soul can scarcely
be exaggerated. Learning to hear it within, the child will strive
to give it outer form and expression; and even if in such effort
he is only partially successful, he will gain thereby the power to
appreciate the more successful effort of others. Thus enriching
his own life by the life of others, he solves the problem of devel-
opment. How else were it possible within the quickly fleeting
hours of mortal life to develop our being in all directions, to
fathom its depths, scale its heights, measure its boundaries?
What we are, what we would be, we must learn to recognize in
the mirror of all other lives. By the effort of each, and the
recognition of all, the Divine man is revealed in humanity.
Against the bright light which shines on the smooth white
wall is thrust a dark object, and straightway appears the form
which so delights the child. This is the outward fact; what is
the truth which through this fact is dimly hinted to the prophetic
mind? Is it not the creative and transforming power of light,
that power which brings form and color out of chaos, and makes
the beauty which gladdens our hearts? Is it not more than this,
-a foreshadowing, perhaps, of the spiritual fact that our darkest
experiences may project themselves in forms that will delight and
bless, if in our hearts shines the light of God? The sternest
crags, the most forbidding chasms, are beautiful in the mellow
sunshine; while the fairest landscape loses all charm, and indeed
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FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
6031
ceases to be, when the light which created it is withdrawn. Is
it not thus also with our lives? Yesterday, touched by the light
of enthusiastic emotion, all our relationships seemed beautiful
and blessed; to-day, when the glow of enthusiasm has faded, they
oppress and repulse us. Only the conviction that it is the dark-
ness within us which makes the darkness without, can restore the
lost peace of our souls. Be it therefore, O mother, your sacred
duty to make your darling early feel the working both of the
outer and inner light. Let him see in one the symbol of the
other, and tracing light and color to their source in the sun, may
he learn to trace the beauty and meaning of his life to their
source in God.
Translation of Susan E. Blow.
THE LAWS OF THE MIND
From The Letters of Froebel'
I
AM firmly convinced that all the phenomena of the child-world,
those which delight us as well as those which grieve us,
depend upon fixed laws as definite as those of the cosmos,
the planetary system, and the operations of nature; and it is
therefore possible to discover them and examine them. When
once we know and have assimilated these laws, we shall be able
powerfully to counteract any retrograde and faulty tendencies in
the children, and to encourage, at the same time, all that is
good and virtuous.
FOR THE CHILDREN
From The Letters of Froebel'
I
WISH you could have been here this evening, and seen the many
beautiful and varied forms and lovely patterns which freely
and spontaneously developed themselves from some system-
atic variations of a simple ground form, in stick-playing. No
one would believe, without seeing it, how the child soul, the
child life, develops when treated as a whole, and in the sense of
forming a part of the great connected life of the world, by some
skilled kindergarten teacher-nay, even by one who is only
simple-hearted, thoughtful, and attentive; nor how it blooms into
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FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
delicious harmonies like a beautifully tinted flower. Oh, if I
could only shout aloud with ten thousand lung-power the truth
that I now tell you in silence! Then would I make the ears of
a hundred thousand men ring with it! What keenness of sensa-
tion, what a soul, what a mind, what force of will and active
energy, what dexterity and skill of muscular movement and of
perception, and what calm and patience, will not all these things
call out in the children!
How is it that parents are so blind and deaf, when they pro-
fess to be so eager to work for the welfare, the health, and peace
of their children? No! I cannot understand it; and yet a whole
generation has passed since this system first delivered its mes-
sage, first called for educational amendment, first pointed out
where the need for it lay, and showed how it could be satisfied.
If I were not afraid of being taken for an idiot or an escaped
lunatic, I would run barefoot from one end of Germany to the
other and cry aloud to all men: — "Set to work at once for your
children's sake on some universally developing plan, aiming at
unity of life purpose, and through that at joy and peace. " But
what good would it do? A Curtman and a Ramsauer, in their
stupidity or maliciousness, make it their duty to stigmatize my
work as sinful, when I am but quietly corresponding with just
my own friends and sympathizers; for they say I am destroying
all pleasure in life for the parents: "Who could be so silly as I,
amongst sane men who acknowledge that parents have a right
to enjoy life,—I who perpetually call to these parents in tones
of imperative demand, Come, let us live for our children! >»
(Kommt, laszt uns unseren Kindern leben! )
MOTIVES
From The Education of Man. By permission of Josephine Jarvis,
the translator, and A. Lovell & Co. , publishers
Ο
NLY in the measure that we are thoroughly penetrated by
the pure, spiritual, inward, human relations, and are faith-
ful to them even in the smallest detail in life, do we attain
to the complete knowledge and perception of the Divine-human
relation; only in that measure do we anticipate them so deeply,
vividly, and truly, that every yearning of our whole being is
thereby satisfied, at least receives its whole meaning, and is
-
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6033
changed from a constantly unfulfilled yearning to an immediately
rewarded effort.
How we degrade and lower the human nature which we should
raise, how we weaken those whom we should strengthen, when
we hold up to them an inducement to act virtuously, even though
we place this inducement in another world! If we employ an
outward incentive, though it be the most spiritual, to call forth
better life, and leave undeveloped the inner, spontaneous, and
independent power of representing pure humanity which rests in
each man, we degrade our human nature.
But how wholly different every thing is, if man, especially in
boyhood, is made to observe the reflex action of his conduct, not
on his outward more or less agreeable position, but on his inner,
spontaneous or fettered, clear or clouded, satisfied or dissatisfied.
condition of spirit and mind! The experiences which proceed
from this observation will necessarily more and more awaken the
inner sense of man: and then true sense, the greatest treasure of
boy and man, comes into his life.
APHORISMS
SEE in every child the possibility of a perfect man.
I
The child-soul is an ever-bubbling fountain in the world of
humanity.
The plays of childhood are the heart-leaves of the whole
future life.
Childish unconsciousness is rest in God.
From each object of nature and of life, there goes a path
toward God.
Perfect human joy is also worship, for it is ordered by God.
The first groundwork of religious life is love-love to God
and man-in the bosom of the family.
Childhood is the most important stage of the total develop-
ment of man and of humanity.
Women must make of their educational calling a priestly
office.
Isolation and exclusion destroy life; union and participation
create life.
Without religious preparation in childhood, no true religion
and no union with God is possible for men.
X-378
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FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
The tree germ bears within itself the nature of the whole
tree; the human being bears in himself the nature of all human-
ity; and is not therefore humanity born anew in each child?
