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The Social Function of Schools in the Lutheran Reformation in Germany

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Gerald Strauss
Gerald Strauss*
Affiliation:
Indiana University, Bloomington
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One of the most interesting aspects of the German Reformation for us to ponder is that of the educational reconstruction attempted in all Lutheran states in the sixteenth century. Churchmen and politicians acted in close collaboration, first in response to the reformist zeal charging the Lutheran movement in its heroic years, later in meeting the procedural obligations laid down for officials in the established Reformation's institutional structure. They agreed on fundamental objectives and shared a coherent body of pedagogical suppositions. They had high hopes for the power of education to direct thought and mold behavior. In the new church-state symbiosis they recognized unprecedented opportunities for reform and were eager to act on them. For a time, religion and politics moved in unison toward the enactment of a program of schooling intended in its overall purpose to conform the young to approved patterns of evangelical and civic rectitude.

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 28 , Issue 2 , Summer 1988 , pp. 191 - 206
Copyright
Copyright © 1988 by the History of Education Society 

References

1 For a general bibliographical introduction to this subject see Gerald Strauss, Luther's House of Learning: Indoctrination of the Young in the German Reformation (Baltimore, 1978), especially the notes to chapter 1.Google Scholar

2 From Luther's German translation of the New Testament and revision of the Vulgate, D. Martin Luthers Deutsche Bibel (D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe [from now on WA]) 7: 69 and 5: 645.Google Scholar

3 An die Ratsherren aller Städte (1524), WA 15: 44.Google Scholar

4 For citations of all relevant documents on this point see Werner Reininghaus, Elternstand, Obrigkeit, und Schule bei Luther (Heidelberg, 1969), 5.Google Scholar

5 Luther to Elector Johann, 22 Nov. 1526, WA Briefwechsel 4: 134.Google Scholar

6 “Die obrigkeit als gemeiner vater.” Quoted in Werner Reininghaus, ed., Evangelische Kirche und Elternrecht (Lüneburg, 1961), 19.Google Scholar

7 Eine Predigt, dass man Kinder zur Schulen halten solle (1530), WA 30 II: 586.Google Scholar

8 Vormbaum, Reinhold, Die evangelischen Schulordnungen des 16. Jahrhunderts (Gütersloh, 1860), 8, 18. Cited from now on as Vormbaum.Google Scholar

9 Ibid., 68.Google Scholar

10 For the German debate on this issue from about 1800 see Erwin Stein, Wilfried Joest, and Hans Dombois, Elternrecht: Studien zu seiner rechtsphilosophischen und evangelisch-theologischen Grundlegung (Heidelberg, 1958).Google Scholar

11 Reininghaus, Werner, Elternstand (see note 4), 5.Google Scholar

12 in his, Throughout Geist und Gestalt des frühmodernen Staates (Berlin, 1969); and in “Policey und Prudentia civilis ‖” in Strukturprobleme der frühen Neuzeit (Berlin, 1890), 367-79. On the concept of Sozialdisziplinierung in Oestreich's work see now Winfried Schulze, “Gerhard Oestreichs Begriff ‘Sozialdisziplinierung in der frühen Neuzeit,’ “ Zeitschrift für historische Forschung 14 (1987): 265-302.Google Scholar

13 Monumenta Germaniae Paedagogica (from now on MGP) 38: 253-54.Google Scholar

14 Evangelische Schulordnungen, 3 vols. (Gütersloh, 1858-64).Google Scholar

15 Evidence for this development is given in Strauss, Luther's House of Learning, chap. 1.Google Scholar

16 An die Ratsherren, 31.Google Scholar

17 Ibid., 44.Google Scholar

18 Ibid.Google Scholar

19 Vormbaum, 1.Google Scholar

20 E.g., the Schulordnung of the Duchy of Braunschweig 1569; that of Saxony 1580.Google Scholar

21 Vormbaum, 68-69.Google Scholar

22 E.g., Saxony 1528. Ibid., 8.Google Scholar

23 Duchy of Mecklenburg school ordinance for city of Güstrow. MGP 38: 472.Google Scholar

24 Vormbaum, 71.Google Scholar

25 Baden-Durlach school ordinance of 1536. Ibid., 31.Google Scholar

26 Jungfrauen-Schule in Wittenberg, 1533. Ibid., 27-28; Braunschweig school ordinance of 1543. Ibid., 50-51.Google Scholar

27 MGP 38:215.Google Scholar

28 Urban schools generally admitted poor children free of charge “um Gottes willen,” e.g., Rostock, 1534. MGP 38: 122. For the care with which poor boys were selected for the pastorate, see the regulations in the Württemberg school ordinance, Vormbaum, 104. It was often stated that gute und fruchtbare ingenia are found among the poor as well as the rich: e.g., Vormbaum, 70, 102.Google Scholar

29 Desiderius Erasmus, De pueris statim ac liberaliter instituendis declamatio (1529) (Collected Works of Erasmus 26 [Toronto, 1985], 295-346); De recta latini graecique sermonis pronuntiatione dialogus (1528) (ibid., 365-475); Juan Luis Vives, De tradendis disciplinis libri quinque (Antwerp, 1531; English translation by Foster Watson, Vives: On Education [Totowa, N.J., 1971]). Johann Sturm's pedagogical treatises are discussed in Walter Sohm, Die Schule Johann Sturms und die Kirche Strassburgs (Munich and Berlin, 1912). Ultimately these treatises are all based on Plutarch's De liberis educandis, translated by Guarino in 1411, and Quintilian's and Cicero's books on the education of the orator, the former published by Poggio in 1417, the latter recovered in 1422. An argument for a sharp break between Lutheran curricula and late fifteenth-century humanist educational reforms is made by John N. Miner, “Change and Continuity in the Schools of Late Medieval Nuremberg,” Catholic Historical Review 73 (Jan. 1987): 1-22.Google Scholar

30 Latin and Greek authors and titles given in Vives, De tradendis disciplinis, book III, especially chapters 6 and 7.Google Scholar

31 Sohm, Walter, Die Schule Johann Sturms 92.Google Scholar

32 For a discussion of the application of these educational aims to the pedagogy of the Reformation, see Strauss, Luther's House of Learning chaps. 2-4.Google Scholar

33 Vormbaum, 7.Google Scholar

34 Ibid. Repeated many times in other ordinances, e.g., Schleswig-Holstein 1542. Ibid., 36.Google Scholar

35 Valentin Trotzendorf in the school ordinance for the Goldberg Gymnasium, 1563. Ibid., 54.Google Scholar

36 For a discussion of this technique see Anton Schindling, Humanistische Hochschule und freie Reichsstadt: Gymnasium und Akademie in Strassburg 1538–1621 (Wiesbaden, 1977), chap. 5, especially 180-95.Google Scholar

37 Württemberg school ordinance 1559, Vormbaum, 72. For similar sentiments: Hessen 1537 (Ibid., 33), Braunschweig 1569 (MGP 8: 25-26), Pomerania 1563 (Vormbaum, 168), and many more.Google Scholar

38 Vives, De tradendis disciplinis I, 3.Google Scholar

39 “Disciplinam omnem nihil aeque continet atque observatio regularum.” Ratio studiorum (1599) in MGP 5: 395.Google Scholar

40 “Denn Gott ist ein Gott der ordnung, welcher will, dass es wie in allen Ständen, also auch in Schulenstand, mit Unterweisung der Jugend recht und ordenlich zugehe.” From school regulations for the city of Wismar, 1644, MGP 44: 84.Google Scholar

41 Vives, De tradendis disciplinis I, chaps, 4, 6.Google Scholar

42 From school ordinances for the Duchy of Zweibrücken, 1575, MGP 49: 122; 1581, ibid., 142; 1602, ibid., 159.Google Scholar

43 From visitation ordinance for Mecklenburg, 1541, MGP 38: 141.Google Scholar

44 Ibid., 214.Google Scholar

45 Vormbaum, 91-92.Google Scholar

46 Ibid., 247(1580).Google Scholar

47 See the description given by pastor Georg Zeämann of Kempten, in his Schulpredigten of 1618 quoted in MGP Beiheft 1 (Berlin, 1916), 10.Google Scholar

48 E.g., Saxony 1580, Vormbaum, 237.Google Scholar

49 Ibid., 227.Google Scholar

50 Hanover 1536. Ibid., 32.Google Scholar

51 MGP 38: 210. Similarly Mecklenburg 1552, Vormbaum, 64.Google Scholar

52 Vormbaum, 69.Google Scholar

53 From regulations for the Fürstenschulen in Meissen, Pforta, and Grimma, ibid., 268.Google Scholar

54 E.g., in the regulations for special boarding schools for talented poor boys in Württemberg, ibid., 102.Google Scholar

55 On the advisability of teaching the Bible in the ancient languages, see Bugenhagen's memorandum of 1531 in MGP 38: 116-17.Google Scholar

56 Vormbaum, 172-73.Google Scholar

57 Cf. Walter Sohm, Die Schule Johann Sturms, 109-18 on the essentially passive exposure to Scripture given in Johann Sturm's pedagogical program.Google Scholar

58 E.g., Württemberg 1559, Vormbaum, 71.Google Scholar

59 E.g., Schulordnung for the German-language school in Güstrow 1602, MGP 38: 473; Schulordnung for Darmstadt, 1594, MGP 33: 206.Google Scholar

60 E.g., Württemberg 1559, Vormbaum, 160-65.Google Scholar

61 For a very different approach to catechization, one that attempted to engender individual responses to the faith, see John Morgan, Godly Learning: Puritan Attitudes towards Reason, Learning, and Education, 1560–1640 (Cambridge, 1986), passim, especially 186.Google Scholar

62 From David Chytraeus, Der fürnembsten heubtstück christlicher lehr nützliche erklerung (Rostock, 1578), quoted in MGP 38: 336-37.Google Scholar

63 For a discussion of the psychology of learning utilized in the Reformation, see Strauss, Luther's House of Learning, chap. 4.Google Scholar

64 Vormbaum, 32.Google Scholar

65 The unceasing appeals made throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by Lutheran churchmen to parents, to send their children to school, suggests that popular response to educational opportunities was not always enthusiastic. And the evidence in visitation reports makes it possible to argue that schooling was less effective than had been anticipated in producing the hoped-for change in habits. For a discussion of the problem of response to Reformation pedagogy, see Strauss, Luther's House of Learning, chaps. 12-13.Google Scholar

66 Visitation ordinance for the Darmstadt Paedagogium 1655, MGP 27: 135.Google Scholar

67 From regulations for preceptors at the Domschule in Güstrow 1619, printed in H. Schnell, Das Unterrichtswesen der Grossherzogtümer Mecklenburg-Schwerin und Strelitz, MGP 44: 33.Google Scholar