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“Let Us Live with Our Children”: Kindergarten Movements in Germany and the United States, 1840–1914

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Ann Taylor Allen
Ann Taylor Allen*
Affiliation:
University of Louisville
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Extract

Friedrich Froebel, founder of the kindergarten, like other prophets was honored chiefly outside his own country. When the kindergarten, which had become a popular cause among the liberal reformers of 1848, was banned in Prussia in 1.851, kindergarten activist Bertha von Marenholtz-Bülow wrote, “We must seek to gain over foreign countries, so that we may open the way from them for the cause in Germany…. How sad that this is so, and that there is so little independence in our own country.” The foreign country to which this German idea was most successfully transplanted was the United States. After some initial hesitation, the public school authorities in most American states proved quite hospitable to the kindergarten, and by 1914 most American urban school systems had incorporated kindergarten classes on a public, though noncompulsory, basis. In the land of its origin, by contrast, the kindergarten had found far less acceptance. “A great disadvantage,” lamented Eleonore Heerwart, president of the German kindergarten teachers' organization in 1897, “is the isolation of the kindergarten; it gets little help from parents and no help at all from the schools, while in other countries its incorporation into the school has occurred quite naturally.” How can we explain the fact that the kindergarten, in theory and in practice, found greater support in America than in Germany?

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , Spring 1988 , pp. 23 - 48
Copyright
Copyright © 1988 by the History of Education Society 

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References

1 Marenholtz-Bülow, Bertha von Reminiscences of Friedrich Froebel, trans. Mann, Mary (Boston, 1877), 308; Eleonore Heerwart, Fünfzig Jahre im Dienste Froebels, 2 vols. (Eisenach, 1906), 2: 25.Google Scholar

2 Dahrendorf, Ralf Society and Democracy in Germany, English ed. (New York, 1967) 285–314. For a further discussion of public and private spheres see Max Horkheimer, “Authority and the Family,” in Critical Theory: Selected Essays, trans. Matthew J. O'Connell (New York, 1972), 47–128. The ideal of the “unpolitical German” is discussed in Fritz Stern, “The Political Consequences of the Unpolitical German,” in The Failure of Illiberalism: Essays on the Political Culture of Modern Germany (New York, 1971), 3–25. For another discussion of Dahrendorf's thesis in relation to kindergarten movements see Ann Taylor Allen, “Gardens of Children, Gardens of God: Kindergartens and Day-Care Centers in Nineteenth-Century Germany,” Journal of Social History 19 (Spring 1986): 433–50. On the relationship of feminism to public/private issues there are many sources, especially Jean Bethke Elshtain, Public Man, Private Woman: Women in Social and Political Thought (Princeton, 1981), which contains a very useful account of the ways that the status of women has been related to public/private boundaries in Western political thought.Google Scholar

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4 On the development of the Froebel kindergarten in Germany, see (among many other sources): Monika Galdikaitè, Die innere und äussere Entwicklung des Kindergartens in Deutschland (Munich, 1926); Wilma Grossmann, Vorschulerziehung: Historische Entwicklung und alternative Modelle (Cologne, 1974); Gunnar Heinsohn, Vorschulerziehung in der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft (Frankfurt, 1974); Brigitte Zwerger, Bewahranstalt, Kleinkinderschule, Kindergarten: Aspekte Nichtfamiliärer Kleinkinderziehung in Deutschland (Weinheim and Basel, 1980); and Ann Taylor Allen, “Spiritual Motherhood: German Feminists and the Kindergarten Movement,” History of Education Quarterly 22 (Fall 1982): 319–40.Google Scholar

5 The text of the Rudolstadt teachers’ petition is in Erika Hoffmann, Vorschulerziehung in Deutschland: Entwicklung im Abriss (Witten, 1971), 97. On Hamburg Hochschule, see Adolf Diesterweg, “Der Frauen-Bildungsverein in Hamburg,” in Sämtliche Werke, 10 vols. (Berlin, 1972), 9: 142–54; Eduard Spranger, Die Idee einer Hochschule für Frauen und die Frauenbewegung (Leipzig, 1916), 22–40; Catherine M. Prelinger, “Religious Dissent, Women's Rights, and the Hamburger Hochschule für das weibliche Geschlecht in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Germany,” Church History 45 (Mar. 1976): 43–52; and Catherine M. Prelinger, Charity, Challenge, and Change: Religious Dimension of the Mid-Nineteenth-Century Women's Movement (New York, 1987), 94–100. On the repression of Froebel kindergartens see Allen, “Spiritual Motherhood,” 324–26; and Prelinger, Charity, Challenge, and Change, 161–63.Google Scholar

6 The development of the kindergarten is described in many sources, a few of which are: Michael Steven Shapiro, Child's Garden: The Kindergarten Movement from Froebel to Dewey (University Park, 1983); Elizabeth Dale Ross, The Kindergarten Crusade: The Establishment of Preschool Education in the United States (Athens, Ohio, 1976); Nina Vandewalker, The Kindergarten in American Education (New York, 1908). The work of Peabody is described in Bruce Ronda, ed., Letters of Elizabeth Peabody, American Renaissance Woman (Middletown, Conn., 1984); for a description of Peabody's meeting with Marenholtz see Ruth M. Baylor, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody: Kindergarten Pioneer (Philadelphia, 1965), 103–4. Maria Boelte's story is told in an autobiographical article, “Experience of a Kindergartner,” Kindergarten Messenger (Jan.-March, 1897): 34–37. On the lifting of the Prussian ban and the subsequent spread of kindergartens in the German states see Allen, “Spiritual Motherhood,” 163. On the St. Louis experiment, see the fuller discussion below.Google Scholar

7 Teachers’ petition is quoted in Hoffmann, Vorschulerziehung, 50–51; Marenholtz-Bülow, Reminiscences, 130–31. On the philosophy of the free kindergarten see (among many other examples): Bertha Maria von Marenholtz-Bülow, Die Arbeit und die neue Erziehung (Berlin, 1864); Henriette Schrader-Breymann, Der Volkskindergarten im Pestalozzi-Froebel-Hause (Berlin, 1890); Kate Douglas Wiggin, My Garden of Memory: An Autobiography (Boston and New York, 1923); Shapiro, Child's Garden, 85–106; Vandewalker, Kindergarten in American Education, 57–77; Heinsohn, Vorschulerziehung, 48–66; and Allen, “Gardens of Children, Gardens of God,” 440–43. Quotation is from Mary Mann, Moral Culture of Infancy and Kindergarten Guide (New York, 1870), 13.Google Scholar

8 On the ideology of spiritual motherhood and its impact on education see Allen, “Spiritual Motherhood”; and Gerda Tornieporth, Studien zur Frauenbildung: Ein Beitrag zur historischen Analyse lebensweltorientierter Bildungskonzeptionen (Weinheim, 1977), 213–20. On the Pestalozzi-Froebel Haus and its methods see Schrader-Breymann, Volkskindergarten; and Mary Lyschinska, Henriette Schrader-Breymann: Ihr Leben aus Briefen und Tagebüchern zusammengestellt, 2 vols. (Berlin and Leipzig, 1922). On the atmosphere of the institution and its student-faculty relations see Hildegard von Gierke, “Aus der Geschichte des Pestalozzi-Froebelhauses nach Dokumenten und eigenem Erleben” (unpublished typescript, n.d., held in the archive of the Pestalozzi-Froebel Haus in West Berlin); and Ann Taylor Allen, “The City as Household: Henriette Schrader-Breymann and the Pestalozzi-Froebel Haus,” forthcoming in Central European History. On Eliza Ann Blaker and her training school see Emma Lou Thornbrough, Eliza A. Blaker: Her Life and Work (Indianapolis, 1956); for other examples of American kindergarten founders see Marguerite N. Bell, With Banners: A Biography of Stella Wood (St. Paul, 1954); and Winifred E. Bain, Leadership in Childhood Education: Images and Realities (Boston, 1964), a biography of Lucy Wheelock.Google Scholar

9 On the role of the kindergarten in the settlement house movement see Allen F. Davis, Spearheads for Reform: The Social Settlements and the Progressive Movement, 1890–1914 (New York, 1977), 44–47; on Schrader-Breymann's conception of the kindergarten teacher's role see Lyschinska, Henriette Schrader-Breymann, 2: 16; on community outreach programs of the Pestalozzi-Froebel Haus see various issues of the Vereinszeitschrift des Pestalozzi-Froebel Hauses and Allen, “The City as Household”; for examples of similar programs at an American training school see Thornbrough, Eliza Ann Blaker, 20–38. On the career of Patty Smith Hill see Martha King Alexander, Seventy-three Years of Kindergarten in Kentucky (Nashville, Tenn., 1938), 46–78; on that of Anna von Gierke see Marie Baum, Anna von Gierke: Ein Lebensbild (Weinheim, 1954).Google Scholar

10 For a discussion of the petition of the Froebel Society and Falk's response see Allen, “Gardens of Children, Gardens of God,” 443.Google Scholar

11 On the role of unorthodox religious ideas in the early kindergarten movement see Prelinger, Charity, Challenge, and Change, 88–94; on religious preschool education and beliefs in innate depravity see Zwerger, Bewahranstalt, 60–64; Heinsohn, Vorschulerziehung, 43–45; and Allen, “Gardens of Children, Gardens of God,” 433–37; many more sources are cited in this article. On Bissing-Beerberg and the “Oberlin-Verein” see Adolph Freiherr von Bissing-Beerberg, Die grundlegende und gemeindepflegende christliche Kleinkinderschule, nicht nur nützlich, sondern nothwendig (Leipzig, 1874); and Heike Flessner, Untertanenzucht oder Menschenerziehung? Zur Entwicklung öffentlicher Kleinkinderziehung auf dem Lande, 1870–1924 (Weinheim and Basel, 1981), 150–74.Google Scholar

12 On deaconess training see Catherine M. Prelinger, “The Nineteenth-Century Deaconessate in Germany: The Efficacy of a Family Model,” in German Women in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries: A Social and Literary History, ed. Ruth-Ellen Joeres and Mary Jo Maynes (Bloomington, Ind., 1986), 215–29. On the prohibition of kindergartens in rural Prussia see Boelte, “Experience of a Kindergartner,” 34; and Wilhelm Liebknecht, Wissen ist Macht—Macht ist Wissen und andere bildungspolitisch-pädagogische Äusserungen, ed. H. Brumme (Berlin, 1968), 123.Google Scholar

13 On the general development of American religious attitudes see (among other sources): Martin Marty, Righteous Empire: The Protestant Experience in America (New York, 1970); on the issue of innate depravity see Bernard Wishy, The Child and the Republic: The Dawn of Modern American Child Nurture (Philadelphia, 1968), 3–80. On the role of women in creating nineteenth-century religious ideology see Ann Douglas, The Feminization of American Culture (New York, 1977), 87–90. Peabody's religious background is discussed in the introduction by Bruce Ronda to Letters of Elizabeth Peabody, 10–32. Peabody's own views of childhood are expressed in her Lectures in the Training Schools for Kindergartners (Boston, 1893), 14; her views on the function of the kindergarten are in Letters of Elizabeth Peabody, 355.Google Scholar

14 For the heresy trial of Sarah Cooper see Shapiro, Child's Garden, 93. For a general history of church-sponsored kindergartens in America see Vandewalker, Kindergarten in American Education, 77–87, quotation from Judson, 87.Google Scholar

15 German liberals’ hopes for the future of the kindergarten were expressed in Henriette Schrader's memoirs: Lyschinska, Henriette Schrader-Breymann, 2: 14. A much fuller discussion of the liberal kindergarten movement of this period is in Allen, “Spiritual Motherhood,” 330–33.Google Scholar

16 On Wilhelm Liebknecht's relationship to Karl Froebel, see Raymond H. Dominick, Wilhelm Liebknecht and the Founding of the German Social Democratic Party (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1982), 24–27; Liebknecht, Wissen ist Macht—Macht ist Wissen, 123; Adolf Douai, Kindergarten und Volksschule als sozialdemokratische Anstalten (Leipzig, 1976); August Bebel, Die Frau und der Sozialismus (Leipzig, 1922), 450–51.Google Scholar

17 Richter, Eugen Sozialdemokratische Zukunftsbilder, Frei nach Bebel (Berlin, 1892), 23–24; Karl Schrader, “Zur Frauenfrage,” Die Nation (1888), 568–69. On socialist educational thought in general, see Ulrich Bendele, Sozialdemokratische Schulpolitik und Pädagogik im wilhelminischen Deutschland: Eine sozialhistorisch-empirische Analyse (Frankfurt, 1979); on further campaigns by socialist leaders for public kindergartens see Edith Barow-Bernstorff et al., eds., Beiträge zur Geschichte der Vorschulerziehung (Berlin, 1974), 301–13.Google Scholar

18 For an account of the importance of collectivist thought in postbellum reform movements see William Leach, True Love and Perfect Union: The Feminist Reform of Sex and Society (New York, 1980), 133–74, 331–32; on Peabody's thoughts see Ronda, ed., Letters of Elizabeth Peabody, 30–40 and several letters contained in the Peabody Papers, held in the Schlesinger Library at Harvard. Susan Blow's view of the kindergarten is in International Kindergarten Union: Committee of Nineteen, The Kindergarten: Reports of the Committee of Nineteen on the Theory and Practice of the Kindergarten (Boston, 1913), 139–40. William Torrey Harris's ideas on the function of the kindergarten are in his Psychologic Foundations of Education (New York, 1898; reprint 1969), 301–21. Harris's career is described in Selwyn K. Troen, The Public and the Schools: Shaping the St. Louis Public School System (Columbia, Mo., 1975), 99–113. Attitudes of other city governments toward public school kindergartens are described in Marvin Lazerson, Origins of the Urban School: Public Education in Massachusetts, 1870–1915 (Harvard, 1971), 24–55; and Thornbrough, Eliza Ann Blaker, 47.Google Scholar

19 Two views of the evolution of the Prussian Volksschule, describing both the progressive movements of the Vormärz and the conservative developments of the empire, are: Kenneth Barkin, “Social Control and the Volksschule in Vormärz Prussia,” Central European History 16 (Mar. 1983): 31–52, and Folkert Meyer, Schule der Untertanen: Lehrer und Politik in Preussen, 1848–1900 (Hamburg, 1976). On attitude of teachers toward former kindergarten pupils see (among many other sources), “Was fördert die geistige Entwicklung unserer Kindergärten?” Kindergarten und Elementarklasse 2 (1861): 140.Google Scholar

20 Payne, Joseph A Visit to German Schools: Notes of a Professional Tour (London, 1876), 54–55; Carl Cassau, Friedrich Froebel und die Pädagogik des Kindergartens (Vienna, 1882), 13–14; C. L. A. Pretzel, Geschichte des Deutschen Lehrervereins (Leipzig, 1921), 264; Ilse Gählings and Ella Moering, Die Volksschullehrerin: Sozialgeschichte und Gegenwartslage (Heidelberg, 1961), 60–61; Karl Otto Beetz, Kindergartenzwang: Eine Mahnruf an Deutschlands Eltern und Lehrer (Wiesbaden, 1900), quoted in Erika Hoffmann, Vorschulerziehung in Deutschland: Entwicklung im Abriss (Witten, 1871), 50; Heerwart, Fünfzig Jahre im Dienste Froebels, 2: 111; Wilhelm Rein, Deutsche Schulerziehung (Munich, 1907), 42. For further comments by male German elementary school teachers see H. Drewke, Die Lehrerinnenfrage (Bielefeld, 1906); and Walther Hardt, Die Lehrerinnenfrage (Lissa, 1905). I am grateful to James C. Albisetti for sharing some of the results of his research on this question with me.Google Scholar

21 Vereins-Zeitschrift des Pestalozzi-Froebel-Hauses (October, 1896); Paul Zimmer is quoted in Galdikaitè, Innere und aussere Entwicklung, 77.Google Scholar

22 Hamminck-Schepel's comment is in Vereins-Zeitschrift des Pestalozzi-Froebel-Hauses (Apr. 1893), 2–3. The attitude of the American teaching profession toward the kindergarten is described in Shapiro, Child's Garden, 131–93 and Vandewalker, Kindergarten in American Education, 131–98. Hall's comments are in G. Stanley Hall, “The Pedagogy of the Kindergarten,” in Educational Problems, 2 vols. (New York and London, 1911), 1: 5–10. The role of women in the support of public kindergartens is described in David P. Thelen, The New Citizenship: Origins of Progressivism in Wisconsin, 1885–1900 (Columbia, Mo., 1972); and Leach, True Love and Perfect Union, 173–74. For general background on the feminization of the American teaching profession see Kathryn Kish Sklar, Catharine Beecher: A Study in American Domesticity (New York, 1973). By the early twentieth century, women were appointed to school boards in a few areas of Germany, but they could not vote for these or any other local offices.Google Scholar

23 Hall, “The Pedagogy of the Kindergarten,“ 16–17; John Dewey, “Froebel's Educational Principles,” in The School and Society (New York, 1899; reprinted New York, 1967), 116–31; Dominick Cavallo, “The Politics of Latency: Kindergarten Pedagogy, 1860–1930” in Regulated Children, Liberated Children, ed. Barbara Finkelstein (New York, 1975), 159–79. For background on the contribution of progressive educators to kindergarten theory see (among many other sources): Shapiro, Child's Garden, 107–30, 151–93; and Evelyn Weber, The Kindergarten: Its Encounter with Educational Thought in America (New York, 1969), 45–65. The methods of the Pestalozzi-Froebel Haus, for which Hall expressed admiration, are described in Henriette Schrader-Breymann, Volkskindergarten; and Annette Hamminck-Schepel, Ausführliche Bearbeitung der “vier Monatsgegenstände” im Pestalozzi-Froebel-Haus (Berlin, 1893).Google Scholar

24 For a much fuller discussion of the Prussian measures, see Allen, “Spiritual Motherhood,” 334–35. On the decisions of the Imperial School Conference, see Die Reichsschulkonferenz 1919: Ihre Vorgeschichte und Vorbereitung und ihre Verhandlungen (Leipzig, 1921), 691–95 and 938–45. For comments on the deliberations as they affected the kindergarten see Gunnar Heinsohn, Vorschulerziehung und Kapitalismus (Frankfurt, 1971), 65; and Barow-Bernstorff, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Vorschulerziehung, 308–13. Shapiro (Child's Garden, 193) estimates that by 1914 about 12 percent of all American children of appropriate age attended kindergarten, and the percentage was much higher in cities with public kindergarten systems. Zwerger (Bewahranstalt, 60) estimates that at the same time only about 5 percent of all German preschool-age children were enrolled in any institution, and the majorities of these were church-sponsored day-care centers rather than Froebel kindergartens. These figures are not strictly comparable, as Zwerger's includes children from two to five years, but they are the best that I have found.Google Scholar

25 For one recent treatment of the comparative history of feminist movements, see Karen Offen, “Liberty, Equality, and Justice for Women: The Theory and Practice of Feminism in Nineteenth-Century Europe,” in Becoming Visible: Women in European History, eds. Renate Bridenthal, Claudia Koonz, and Susan Stuard (Boston, 1987), 335–75.Google Scholar