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CHAPTER XIV.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE GERMAN SECONDARY SCHOOLS.

THE RENAISSANCE AND THE REFORMATION-THE GERMAN SCHOOLS AND THE REFORMATION-DECLINE OF THE GERMAN SCHOOLS AND THEIR RECOVERY.

THE

HE schools of France and Italy owed little to the great modern movement of the Renaissance. In both these countries that movement operated, in both it produced mighty results; but of the official establishments for instruction it did not get hold. In Italy the medieval routine in those establishments at first opposed a passive resistance to it; presently came the Catholic reaction, and sedulously shut it out from them. In France the Renaissance did not become a power in the State, and the routine of the schools sufficed to exclude the new influence till it took for itself other channels than the schools. But in Germany the Renaissance became a power in the State; allied with the Reformation, where the Reformation triumphed in German countries the Renaissance triumphed with it, and entered with it into the public schools. Melanchthon and Erasmus were not merely enemies and subverters of the dominion of the Church of Rome, they were eminent humanists; and with the great but single exception of Luther, the chief German reformers were all of them distinguished friends of the new classical learning, as well as of Protestantism. The Romish party was in German countries the ignorant party also, the party untouched by the humanities and by culture.

Perhaps one reason why in England our schools have not had the life and growth of the schools of Germany and Holland is to be found in the separation, with us, of the power of the Reformation and the power of the Renaissance. With us, too, the Reformation triumphed and got possession

of our schools; but our leading reformers were not at the same time, like those of Germany, the nation's leading spirits in intellect and culture. In Germany the best spirits of the nation were then the reformers; in England our best spirits, -Shakspeare, Bacon, Spenser,-were men of the Renaissance, not men of the Reformation, and our reformers were men of the second order. The Reformation, therefore, getting hold of the schools in England was a very different force, a force far inferior in light, resources, and prospects, to the Reformation getting hold of the schools in Germany.

But in Germany, nevertheless, as Protestant orthodoxy grew petrified like Catholic orthodoxy, and as, in consequence, Protestantism flagged and lost the powerful impulse with which it started, the school flagged also, and in the middle of the last century the classical teaching of Germany, in spite of a few honourable names like Gesner's, Ernesti's, and Heyne's, seems to have lost all the spirit and power of the 16th century humanists, to have been sinking into a mere church appendage, and fast becoming torpid. A theological student, making his livelihood by teaching till he could get appointed to a parish, was the usual schoolmaster. 'The schools will never be better,' said their great renovator, Friedrich August Wolf, the well-known critic of Homer, 'so long as the schoolmasters are theologians by profession. A theological course in a university, with its smattering of classics, is about as good a preparation for a classical master as a course of feudal law would be.'* Wolf's coming to Halle in 1783, invited by Von Zedlitz, the minister for public worship under Frederick the Great, a sovereign whose civil projects and labours were not less active and remarkable than his military, marks an era from which the classical schools of Germany, reviving the dormant spark planted in them by the Renaissance, awoke to a new life, which, since

*See a most interesting article on Wolf in the North British Review for June 1865. Not only for its account of Wolf, but for its sketch of the movement in the higher education of Germany at a very critical time, this article well deserves studying; and having been obliged to make myself acquainted with many of the matters which its writer touches, I may perhaps be allowed, without appearing guilty of presumption, to add that it seems to me as trustworthy as it is interesting.

the beginning of this century, has drawn the eyes of all students of intellectual progress upon them. Prussia was the scene of Wolf's labours, and the Prussian schools, both from their own excellence and from the preponderating importance of Prussia at the present time, are naturally the first in Germany to attract the observer's attention. Having begun with France, and then proceeded to Italy, which it was desirable to visit before the full heats of summer set in, I could not reach Germany till the beginning of July, when it wanted but a fortnight of the annual school vacation. This fortnight I spent in Berlin, and before the schools closed I visited all the more important of them, and attended their classes as I had attended those of the schools in France and Italy. Then came the holidays, longer than ours because the foreign schools have in their school year only this one break of any importance; at Christmas and Easter they have only a few days' vacation. The holidays not beginning at the same time in North and South Germany, I was enabled, after leaving Berlin, to see some schools at work in the Rhine Province, and later I visited the famous establishment of Schulpforta, and other establishments both in Prussian and in non-Prussian parts of Germany. In general, however, though everywhere I was obligingly received and furnished with all possible information, the holidays, either in prospect, actual, or just ended, interfered so much with my seeing the schools in full operation, that the fortnight I passed at Berlin remained the most valuable part, by far, of my experience in German schools. This being so, and it being evidently convenient to select the school system of some one country of Germany for particular description, and for a representative of that of others where the schools follow, in general, the same course, I will choose that of Prussia for this purpose. As a rule, the secondary schools of Northern and Central Germany are better than those of Southern, and those of Protestant Germany better than those of Catholic. This will hardly be disputed; yet the school system all through Germany is in its main features much the same, and is, in its completeness and carefulness, such as to excite a foreigner's admiration. In Austria this excellent school

system is not wanting; what is wanting there is the life, power, and faith in its own operations which animate it in other parts of Germany. Nowhere has it this life and faith more than in Prussia. It has them, indeed, in other and smaller German territories as well; a Prussian will himself readily admit that the schools of Frankfort,* or of the kingdom of Würtemberg, are as good as his own. But it is in countries of the scale and size of Prussia that a living and powerful school system bears the most noteworthy fruits; and it is in Prussia, therefore, that I now proceed to trace them.

*This was written before Frankfort became Prussian.

CHAPTER XV.

PRESENT ORGANISATION OF THE SECONDARY OR HIGHER SCHOOLS IN PRUSSIA.

THE PRUSSIAN SCHOOLS REPRESENTATIVES OF THOSE OF GERMANY-HIGHER SCHOOLS OF PRUSSIA-GYMNASIEN-PROGYMNASIEN-REALSCHULEN-HÖHERE BÜRGERSCHULEN -VORSCHULEN, OR PREPARATORY SCHOOLS-NUMBERS OF TEACHERS AND SCHOLARS.

HE schools with which we are concerned, the secondary schools as the French call them, the higher schools (höhere Schulen) as the Germans call them, are in Prussia thus classed: Gymnasiums, Progymnasiums, Real Schools, Upper Burgher Schools (Gymnasien, Progymnasien, Realschulen, höhere Bürgerschulen). Above these are the universities, below them the primary or elementary schools.*

At the head of these secondary schools, and directly leading to the universities, are the Gymnasien. The uniform employment of this term Gymnasium to designate them, dates from a government instruction of 1812. Before this they were variously called by the names of Gymnasium, Lyceum, Pædagogium, College, Latin School, and others.

A gymnasium has properly six classes, counted upwards from the sixth, the lowest, to the first (prima), the highest. But, in fact, in all large schools the classes have an upper part and a lower part, and each part has, if necessary, two parallel groups (cœtus). The sixth and fifth classes form the lower division of the school, the fourth and third the middle division, the second and first the upper division. In former times the Fachsystem, or system by which the pupil was in

The middle school (Mittelschule), variously called Stadtschule, Bürgerschule, Rectoratschule, is in truth only an elementary school of a higher grade, and in France is called école élémentaire supérieure, in Switzerland, höhere Volkschule, Secundarschule. A description of a school of this kind will be found in my account of the schools of Canton Zurich.