Early Modern Educational Architectures. The »School Town« of the Francke Foundations in International and Interdisciplinary Perspective

International and Interdisciplinary Conference, 13-15 October 2022, Francke Foundations (House 1)

A copperplate engraving in Johann Friedrich Penthner's »Bürgerliche Baukunst« (1745) shows a putto opening a model of the Halle orphanage and looking out of the window at the original.

An exceptional educational institution of the 18th century were the Glauchaschen Anstalten, today the Francke Foundations, in the city of Halle in Brandenburg-Prussia. Here, young people were educated and trained irrespective of their origins, social status or gender. For this purpose, a school system divided into four types (Elementarschulen, Lateinschule, Königliches Pädagogium, Mädchenschulen) was created, in which real-life lessons, teacher training and the promotion of gifted students were systematically applied. The underlying Pietist educational concept can still be seen in the preserved buildings of the Foundations, which are still used for educational purposes today. But how exceptional were the foundations in an overarching, comparative and international perspective? 

While in the Middle Ages and the early modern period, teaching often took place in one and the same room in a teacher's house, schools today are independent, spatially differentiated and highly specialised institutions whose functions and pedagogical guidelines are reflected in the architecture, room constellations and layouts. Researchers generally see the epochal break from teaching in teachers' homes or in secularised and then converted monasteries to designed and spatially differentiated new school buildings in the period around 1800. The reform pedagogy shaped by the Enlightenment is cited as a decisive factor in this development, which was reflected in the founding of forward-looking schools. Does this paradigm still hold true?

If one looks at the research, one gets the impression that there are a large number of local studies on the history of school construction before 1800 that thus far stand unconnected to each other, in particular in an international perspective. There are, however, hardly any comprehensive or comparative studies on school buildings and educational architecture in the early modern period. Hermann Lange's fundamental book "Schulbau und Schulverfassung der frühen Neuzeit" (School Construction and School Constitution in the Early Modern Period) from 1967 is still a central reference work here. So how can a comparative architectural history of school buildings and educational spaces be conceived on the basis of social, cultural, religious and pedagogical history?

Based on these observations and questions, the international conference addresses educational architecture of the early modern period in theory and practice from an interdisciplinary perspective. At the same time, the aim is to establish an international working context on the topic that links fruitful and differentiated research in various countries.  In the process, concrete architectural examples from different political territories and religious cultural areas as well as different educational concepts come into view. Can independent, differentiated lines of development be discerned in the history of pre-modern school construction? And to what extent can receptions and adaptations be described across countries and cultures?

Programme leaflet (in German)

 

Thursday, October 13th, 2022

1 pm Arrival and Welcome coffee

2 pm Welcoming addresses

Thomas Müller-Bahlke, Director of Franckesche Stiftungen 

Dr. Sebastian Putz, Secretary of State of the State Chancellery and Ministry for Culture of Saxony-Anhalt

Introduction – Holger Zaunstöck, Halle

Openinglecture

School-forming? A look at architectural theory and building practice in the early modern period – Meinrad von Engelberg, Darmstadt

3:30 pm Coffee break

 

Section I: Early Modern Educational Architectures in International Perspective, part 1

4 pm The Early Modern School in England: the architectural resolution of 'state' vs 'private' provision – Maurice Howard, Sussex

4:45 pm The architecture of Jesuit Colleges in the Iberian Peninsula – a brief overview – Rui Lobo, Coimbra

5:30 pm Refreshments/Break

5:45 pm School landscape and school buildings in the Lands of Bohemian Crown in Early Modern Period – Martin Holý, Prague

 

Friday, October 14th, 2022

Section I: Early Modern Educational Architectures in International Perspective, part 2

9:30 am Schools in the early modern Ottoman Empire: architectural, spatial and organizational aspects of education in Cairo, Damascus and Aleppo in the 18th century – Stefan Knost, Halle

10:15 am Modern Spaces of Jewish Educational Institutions in Transition – Ulrich Johannes Knufinke, Braunschweig

11:00 am Coffee break

11:30 am The »Malabarian school building« in Tranquebar, 1741 – Christoph Haar, Leuven

12:15 pm Always a teacher – sometimes a building. Schooling in eighteenth-century Denmark – Charlotte Appel, Aarhus

1 pm Lunch

2:45 pm A (School)House for Everyone? – The Architectural Reception of the Francke Foundations in German-speaking and US-American Pedagogical Discourses at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century – Fanny Isensee/ Daniel Töpper, Berlin

3:30 pm Coffee break

 

Section II – The »School Town« Francke Foundations

4:15 pm The Francke Foundations as a school town – Thomas Grunewald, Halle

5 pm (Indoor) School spaces and behavioural standardisation in Francke's school town – Johannes Süßmann, Paderborn

5:45 pm Refreshments/Break

6:30 pm Evening lecture

August Hermann Francke's Successful Failure and the Transformation from Orphanage to School Town under Gotthilf August Francke – Thomas Eißing, Bamberg

Afterwards reception (ca. 8 pm)

 

Saturday, October 15th, 2022 (Coffee from 9 am at the Event Floor)

Section III – Education for All: an Early Modern Concept? 

9:30 am Concepts of Early Modern Elementary Education: The Improvement of Society through Reading and Writing – Stefan Ehrenpreis, Innsbruck

10:15 am Education for all? Images, Education and Educational Architectures in the Early Modern Era – Christoph Fasbender, Chemnitz

11:00 am Coffee break

11:30 am All Unique? A Contextualization of Pedagogical Uses of Space of the Pädagogium Regium in the 18th Century – Michael Rocher, Siegen

Followed by: joint, thematic walk through the Francke Foundations school town with concluding discussion     

ca. 1:30 pm Coffee and end of conference

Opening Lecture

School-forming? A look at architectural theory and building practice in the early modern period

Meinrad von Engelberg, Darmstadt

The subject of this lecture is the question what architects of the early modern period thought of this building task, which written or pictorially fixed ideals and specifications they followed and whether – if not in theory, then in practice – a fixed, quasi normative type for school buildings emerged.

Here, as always in the epoch, an intensive examination of ancient models and traditions is to be assumed, which already reveals the first problem: no clearly recognizable structural line of tradition leads from the ancient gymnasium to the later Latin school. While palaces, villas, theatres, city gates, market halls, libraries and council buildings, even sacred buildings could easily be connected to a possibly fictitious Roman tradition, Vitruvius does not mention »Schola« as a building task. At the same time, many of these educational institutions, newly created after the Reformation, were set up extremely pragmatically in secularized monasteries, so the majority were not dependent on new buildings. Nevertheless, monasteries in particular offered their own built tradition as homes for instruction, community life, religious education and book culture. So what was the connection between practical planning and building and theoretical reflection on »educational architecture«?

PD Dr Meinrad v. Engelberg studied architecture, art history, classical archaeology and history at the universities of Darmstadt, Vienna, Bonn and Augsburg. He received his doctorate in 2001 in Augsburg under Andreas Tönnesmann with a dissertation on the Baroque reconstruction of medieval churches (Renovatio ecclesiae, Petersberg 2005). Since 2008, he has been an academic councillor at the Department of Art and Architectural History at the TU Darmstadt. He has published survey works on German art history in the Baroque period, on architecture in the early modern period and is particularly interested in the influence of confessionalisation on the history of art and architecture in Central Europe.

Section I: Early Modern Educational Architectures in International Perspective, part 1

The Early Modern School in England: the architectural resolution of ›state‹ vs ›private‹ provision

Maurice Howard, Sussex

The Reformation disrupted the infrastructure of elementary and secondary education in England because so much of this was previously provided by the established church. The dissolution of the monasteries (by the Acts of Parliament of 1536 and 1539, though increasingly historians argue that this was a far more ongoing process) prompted new forms of endowment. Though inspired by central government directives which sought to instil a new national identity, paying for schools at a local level was often at the behest of powerful individuals, who in some cases saw the provision of public services as a new way of ensuring the perpetuation of the memory of their beneficence, and thereby of themselves. The planning of the physical spaces of schools, their architectural character and style, and most especially their site within, or outside, the local community were causes of much contemporary debate. One very significant factor which became apparent as time went by was the nature of the catchment area, since some schools became nationally famous and took in pupils for a national social and political 'class' rather than merely local scholars. This paper will examine some surviving buildings from the sixteenth century and also consider famous lost buildings, such as the site and design of the original Christ's Hospital, to examine how far the state vs private character of educational provision was set down in ways that formed the pattern for the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and beyond.   

Maurice Howard is Professor Emeritus of Art History at the University of Sussex. He has written and contributed to several books on the architecture, painting and applied arts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Amongst several projects at the Victoria and Albert Museum he was Senior Subject Specialist for the Tudor and Stuart sections of the British Galleries. He is a past President of the Society of Antiquaries of London and of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain. 

 

The architecture of Jesuit Colleges in the Iberian Peninsula – a brief overview

Rui Lobo, Coimbra

When St. Ignatius of Loyola established the Society of Jesus, he did not have in mind that it would be dedicated to secular education. The Society's first colleges appeared in the Iberian Peninsula and were communities – »colleges« – of Jesuit students who settled to learn, in ordinary houses, next to the most prestigious universities. It was like this in Coimbra (the first »college« of the Society, founded in 1542), in Valencia (1544) and in Alcalá de Henares (1546). In 1545, St. Francis Borgia, Duke of Gandía, a town near Valencia, would found a college where, for the first time, the Jesuits would give public classes of Philosophy. He soon added the teaching of Theology, thus elevating the college to a first Jesuit »University«, in 1547-49. Other important centers, which gave public classes, were established in the following years in Italy and Iberia, such as the College of Messina, in Sicily, in 1548 (where an attempt was also made to create a University), the Collegium Romanum, in 1551, and the College of Santo Antão, in Lisbon, in 1553. Large classroom courtyards appeared in Portuguese Jesuit structures, such as the College-University of Évora, established in 1559, and the College of Arts II, in Coimbra, built from 1568 onwards (beside the main College of Jesus), which copied previous lay school architectural models. This way, subsequent Jesuit college buildings became structured around well-defined functional areas – the church, the community and the school’s areas. In this communication, we will give an account of this evolution in Jesuit college architecture, which had a fundamental development ground in Iberia. Finally, we will emphasize the monumentality and urban presence that these Jesuit structures would obtain during the 17th century, as demonstrated by the majestic buildings of Coimbra, Alcalá, Salamanca, Lisbon and Madrid, amongst others.

Rui Lobo is an architect and Professor at the Department of Architecture of the University of Coimbra (DARQ-FCTUC). He is also a researcher at the Centre for Social Studies of the same University (CES). He graduated in 1994 and did his PhD in 2010, with a thesis on University Architecture and Urbanism in the Iberian Peninsula of the medieval and early modern eras. He has produced research on history of architecture of the Renaissance, of the Baroque and of the Enlightenment, mainly focusing on University, Jesuit and also Portuguese architecture.

 

School landscape and school buildings in the Lands of Bohemian Crown in Early Modern Period

Martin Holý, Prague

The paper will provide a basic insight into the pre-university school system in Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia and Lusatia in the 16th to early 18th century. In the broader context of European educational history, it will outline its structure and development within the period under study, as well as some of the differences that can be observed in the individual countries belonging to the Czech state. Attention will also be paid to the school infrastructure, especially the buildings in which the schools were housed. These reflected not only practical needs but also the ideas on which education was built. A key phenomenon fundamental to the development of education and its infrastructure was educational patronage across denominations in the period under review. The paper will briefly touch upon this too.

Prof. Dr. Martin Holý, Director of the Historical Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences. As a professor, he teaches at Charles University in Prague and Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem as well. He focuses on cultural history and the history of education in the 15th-18th centuries. He is the author or co-author of eight monographs and dozens of studies in this field. He is a member of a number of scientific and editorial boards, as well as other professional committees in the Czech Republic and abroad.

Section I: Early Modern Educational Architectures in International Perspective, part 2

Schools in the early modern Ottoman Empire: architectural, spatial and organizational aspects of education in Cairo, Damascus and Aleppo in the 18th century

Stefan Knost, Halle

Scholarship about Islamic institutions of learning focused so far mostly on the madrasa and to a much lesser degree on institutions of elementary education known as maktab or kuttāb. The latter was probably attended by a significant number of the male urban population during their childhood, while the madrasa remained a rather exclusive place for the study of religious and legal sciences.

This paper inquires about the places of education in the urban centers of the Arab Ottoman provinces (Cairo, Damascus and Aleppo) in the 18th century. The teaching on the elementary level took mostly place in mosques and sometimes also in the teacher’s house. Cairo represents a special case in this regard, where already in the 15th century the combination of a public fountain (sabil) on the ground floor and a school in the upper floors (sometimes including a teacher’s apartment) gave birth to a particular prestigious architecture. The same functional combination appeared in late 16th century Aleppo as well, although in a much simpler architectural shape.

Public fountains and schools, as most of the religious and educational spheres in the city, were sponsored by religious endowments (waqf, pl. awqaf). The administration of these endowments left a written documentation that is particularly rich for the 18th century and allows us to identify patrons, teachers and the »schools«. Occasionally we find information on the curriculum as well. Finally, we will inquire into the ‘confessional’ character of education in the 18th century Ottoman city and compare Muslim and non-Muslim institutions. 

Dr. Stefan Knost is specializing in the history of the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire, particularly social and legal history, as well as urban history focusing on religious institutions, own research mainly in Arabic, Turkish and French archives on these subjects. His second majors are Art and Architecture of the Bilad al-Sham (Greater Syria) from Ayyubid to Ottoman times and Travel Literature. He is currently working as PI in the research project »The travels of the botanist Carl Haussknecht (1838-1903) into the Ottoman Empire and to Persia (1865 and 1866-1869) – The commented digital edition of his diaries« at the Center for Interdisciplinary Regional Studies at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. He was guest professor at that university’s Oriental Institute and at Heidelberg University, associate researcher at the Orient-Institut Beirut, research fellow at the Toyo Bunko (Oriental Library), Tokyo and at the Institut français du Proche-Orient in Damascus.

 

Modern Spaces of Jewish Educational Institutions in Transition

Ulrich Johannes Knufinke, Braunschweig

"Education" plays a prominent role in Jewish religious and cultural tradition. To »learn« the Torah, to discuss it in intensive intellectual exchange – across times and spaces – and to make its teachings a life practice that creates identity in the social everyday life of the minority, is a core of every Jewish community. Of course, this tradition is constantly changing and taking on new, contemporary forms.

The spaces of Jewish education between the 16th and 18th centuries are manifold: every synagogue was (and is) not only a place of prayer, but also one of teaching and learning; in addition, various other learning spaces developed for specific groups. However, the corresponding rooms and buildings are difficult to grasp materially: Prayer halls, schoolrooms, and other community facilities often had to be established in existing buildings, and even purpose-built structures were usually not allowed to stand out in the townscape. A building typology »Jewish school« is hardly recognizable, only in the course of the Jewish Enlightenment (Haskala) Jewish schools with new pedagogical approaches and educational contents emerged as independent buildings since the end of the 18th century, which, however, were oriented towards the bourgeois schools of the majority.

The article makes an attempt to present various educational institutions of Jewish communities in their function and to identify corresponding spaces and buildings. It also examines the change from traditional religious schools to the educational institutions of the 19th century that could be called bourgeois, when religious and general education visibly diverged.

Ulrich Knufinke studied architecture and German literature at the Technische Universität Braunschweig, where he received his doctorate with the dissertation »Bauwerke jüdischer Friedhöfe in Deutschland« (published in 2007). In 2014, he completed his habilitation at the University of Stuttgart. He is a research associate at the Lower Saxony State Office for the Preservation of Historical Monuments and scientific director of the Bet Tfila – Research Unit for Jewish Architecture at the TU Braunschweig, where he has been teaching as a Privatdozent since 2019.

 

The “Malabarian school building” in Tranquebar, 1741

Christoph Haar, Leuven

The school building of the Danish-English-Halle Mission in Tranquebar in South-East India was erected on Danish colonial territory from 1738 to 1741. The breadth of documentation in the archives of the Francke Foundations is exceptional: to begin with, there is a layout and a perspectival drawing of the building. Moreover, the diaries and letters of the missionaries from Halle contain records of this undertaking – from its financing and the building materials used to accounts regarding the intentions and the purpose behind the construction of the edifice. In my presentation, I will explore how the architectural features and the Hallensian constructors’ statements fit together.

I will examine this by considering specific questions: what materials were used and in what dimensions was the building erected? How were the boys’ and girls’ schools, the courtyards, assembly hall, and the food as well as material chambers arranged? How was the adjacent missionaries’ and teachers’ accommodation attached? What functionality can be identified from this differentiated educational space?

I would then like to situate the »Malabarian School Building« in its local environment through the following investigations: To what extent did the mission architecture fulfil the demands of Tamil, and to what extent of colonial Danish architecture? How did the architecture of the school integrate with that of the town? Did Francke’s school town or, more broadly, the Pietist concept of education serve as a model? In the last part of the presentation, I would like to indicate how the construction of the building can be viewed as an »building act«, i.e. I will show what impact the architecture had on the social fabric of the colonial and missionary environment, especially of the Tamil school children and the teachers. The final result will be an analytical inspection and a cultural contextualisation of the school building in Tranquebar as a contribution to the theme of school architectures before 1800.

Dr. Christoph Haar received his PhD degree from the University of Cambridge in 2015. He then taught and researched at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Goethe University Frankfurt and UC Louvain. He has held fellowships from, among others, the German Research Council DFG (2017-2020) and the EU (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship since 2021). Among his most notable publications is his monograph Natural and Political Conceptions of Community. »The Role of the Household Society in Early Modern Jesuit Thought, c. 1590-1650 (2019)«, and his articles have been published by Brill and Oxford University Press. From August 2022, he will be Assistant Professor for Early Modern History at Julius Maximilian University Würzburg.

 

Always a teacher – sometimes a building. Schooling in eighteenth-century Denmark

Charlotte Appel, Aarhus

Schooling was an extremely varied phenomenon in Denmark around 1700. Teaching of young children took place in different ways depending on whether the children were boys or girls, rich or poor, and whether they lived in urban or rural surroundings. A teacher was always required: without a teacher there was no school. In contrast, schooling could take place without a designated building, either in the children’s own homes, at other parents’ houses, or in the teacher’s living room. Apart from urban grammar schools (for a small part of Danish boys), the state did not regulate schooling as such. All this began to change during the first half of the eighteenth century with new stately initiatives concerning elementary schooling and more school buildings being erected across the country.

Focusing on King Frederik IV’s project of building 240 new schools on his royal estates in 1721 and on King Christian VI’s national school legislation in the 1730s, this presentation will point to important transnational inspiration behind changing ideals and practices, not least from German Pietism. Finally, developments resulting from a second wave of school reforms beginning in the 1780s will be discussed. It was not until the early nineteenth century that the word »school« in Danish became solidly, and maybe even primarily, associated with a building, rather than just the activity of teaching.

Charlotte Appel is an associate professor of early modern cultural history at School of Culture and Society, Aarhus University. She has published extensively on the history of books and reading, schools and education, childhood and church history c. 1550-1850, including the co-edited volume Religious Reading in the Lutheran North (Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2011). Together with Ning de Coninck-Smith, she co-edited and co-authored an award-winning five-volume history of Danish schools (Dansk Skolehistorie) 2013-2015 and published »500 years of Danish school history: methodologies, agencies and connecting narratives« in Historica Paedagogica 2021. Currently, she is researching children’s reading culture 1750-1850 in collaboration with Nina Christensen. With the latter, she published Children’s Literature in the Nordic World (Aarhus University and Wisconsin University Presses) in 2021 and is co-editing a book on Transnational Books for Children, to be published by John Benjamins in 2023.

Section II: The School Town Francke Foundations

A (School)House for Everyone? – The Architectural Reception of the Francke Foundations in German-speaking and US-American Pedagogical Discourses at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century

Fanny Isensee/Daniel Töpper, Berlin

The expansion of mass education was neither a linear nor a short-term process, but took place over a period of almost 150 years. In this process, expertise developed not only on teaching, but on issues of school organization, administration, visitation, and spatial accommodation. From the very beginning the question of the spatiality of school interactions represented a central issue. Criticizing the desolate state of school buildings was a common feature of early reformist initiatives, while educators, both from national and international contexts, have always taken an interest in standards and innovative solutions in school building construction. As an institution the Francke Foundations offered an exceptional case for questions of school accommodation, although an analysis of their international reception has yet to be conducted. Therefore, starting with an overview of the general school building debate around 1800, our paper reconstructs the reception of the Francke Foundations' school building solutions in the German-speaking and US-American world. We will show that the innovative incorporation of a school for the poor, secondary grades, and teacher training – characteristic features of the Francke Foundations – was overshadowed by other architectural innovations pertaining to school buildings, such as the Bell-Lancaster system. While it was received as an exemplary institution, it was not seen as a standard in the German-speaking world either. We will discuss the reasons for the specific reception of the Francke Foundations and further impressions in the outlook of our presentation.

Fanny Isensee studied educational sciences and English studies and has been a research associate in the field of historical educational research at Humboldt University Berlin since the beginning of 2021. Her main areas of work and research are: Historical educational research, in particular institutionalisation processes of the »Jahrgangsklassen« in the USA, small forms of pedagogy, school routes and school transport, philanthropy and education; comparative and international educational research, in particular transatlantic exchange relations.

Daniel Töpper studied Educational Sciences and Slavic Languages and Literatures and has been a research associate and managing director of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Educational Research at Humboldt University Berlin since the beginning of 2022. His main areas of work and research are: Historical educational research, especially institutionalisation history of the »Jahrgangsklassen« in Prussia, small forms of the pedagogy; student grouping, teacher education and school technology; educational research with a focus on gender and gender studies, especially with regard to questions of sex education and media of knowledge transfer.

 

The Francke Foundations as a School Town

Thomas Grunewald, Halle

The Francke Foundations have often been described as a »school town« or a »universal educational cosmos«, with the schools being the focus of interest. The lecture will understand the Foundations in a holistic sense as a »school town«, as a pedagogical space, and will try to grasp the many elements of the orphanage's potential for education and to analyse it against the background of the Pietist concept of education. In doing so, the so-called care facilities of the orphanage will come into view. These, the lecture will argue, not only served to ensure the operational capability of the schools, but were themselves part of the educational process. What role, it can be asked, did the hospital, the dairy or the pharmacy play for the educational goals of the orphanage?

You will find a short CV further ahead.

 

(Indor) School spaces and behavioural standardisation in Francke's school town

Johannes Süßmann, Paderborn

Probably there are no other classrooms of the 18th century, whose architecture is as well documented as that of A.H. Francke’s schools at Halle. Thanks to detailed professional plans of the time, preserved today in the archive of the Francke Foundations, we can even reconstruct the interiors – not only of the classrooms, but also of the refectories and the dormitories. What we find in these sources, is the attempt to direct and control each pupil’s (and each teacher’s) motions in detail as part of a perpetual disciplination of body and soul. Combined with other documents about which motions were allowed and which were forbidden, we may even decipher the architecture of Francke’s schools as an effectful machinery for imprinting a certain habitus on its residents. Its implications and ongoing effects will be discussed in the paper.

Johannes Süßmamm studied history and German Studies at the universities of Munich, Frankfurt/Main and Paris. He then worked, did his doctorate and habilitated in the SFB »Cultures of Knowledge and Social Change« at the University of Frankfurt/Main. Since 2009, the professor of early modern history in Paderborn has been researching, among other things, spatial regimes and the question of how early modern buildings shaped and changed social relations. 

Evening Lecture

August Hermann Francke's Successful Failure and the Transformation from Orphanage to School Town under Gotthilf August Francke

Thomas Eißing, Bamberg

The work of August Hermann Francke (1663-1727) is often illustrated with depictions of the orphanage complex, especially the later so-called Lindenhof, which do not reflect the state of the Glaucha orphanage during August Hermann Francke's lifetime, but visualize a spatial order achieved not until later under his son Gotthilf August (1696-1769). This points to a special phenomenon of August Hermann Francke's reception, which is often told as a continuous success story mainly focusing on his persona.

In contrast, the analysis of the building sequences and the design breaks that can be deciphered from their architecture will show that the primary building intentions changed in a significant way between about 1719 and 1725. This is linked to the assumption that the courtyard buildings constructed up to about 1719 followed a somewhat hidden exemplary nature and a Philiadelphian building idea charged with meaning. The associated semiotization of space is underlined by the models of the planetary system, the Holy Land, the city of Jerusalem, the tabernacle, the so-called Temple of Solomon in the vision of Ezekiel and the model of the orphanage placed in this series, made by Christoph Semler between about 1717 and 1719 (?). At the same time, the models were placed in different locations within the buildings constructed up to that time, so that the models illustrating the path of salvation history and the actual architecture interpenetrate each other. Here, an objective for the actual architecture becomes evident, which, however, was not realized in the initially intended form. On the contrary, the layout of the floor plans and the mixture of functions rather prove the problems with the realization of the intended layout, which led, among other things, to early structural damage. With the construction of the library, other wooden trusses, no longer derived from the courtyard-side dimensions of the orphanage, but singular solid structures were erected. This phenomenon is interpreted as a break or even a failure of Francke's original building intention as a »New Philiadelphian Jerusalem«. It was replaced by a professionalization and economization under Gotthilf August Francke. Now the flexible use of space on the upper floors of the orphanage is abandoned in favor of permanently furnished classrooms, the Wunderkammer in the former dormitory is expanded with the iconic furnishings of Gottfried August Gründler, and Semler's models are brought together here. No less significant is the expansion and concentration of the economy on the southern side of the road called Schwarzer Weg, as well as the acquisition of additional estates outside Glaucha. Thus the transformation to the building ensemble so aptly characterized by Holger Zaunstöck as a »school town« is completed.

Dr.-Ing. Thomas Eißing, Dipl. Holzwirt graduated as cabinet maker in 1984, completed studies at the Forest and Wood Science Institute in Hamburg in 1990/91 with an expertise in dendrochronology. 1991–1993 study of cultural heritage in Bamberg. 1993 establishment of the Dendro-Lab in Bamberg. 1993–1997 DFG-Project »Dendrochronology and timber framing«. 2004 doctorate at the Technical University of Berlin. 2006–2011 DFG Project »Dendroprovenancing in Bavaria«. Research interests in regional dendrochronology, dendro-provenancing and timber rafting. Research on historic timber framings, roof constructions and rural and urban houses. He is Research associate at the Chair of Monument Conservation and Head of the Laboratory for Dendrochronology and Microstructural Science at the University of Bamberg.

Section III – Education for All: an Early Modern Concept?

Concepts of Early Modern Elementary Education: The Improvement of Society through Reading and Writing

Stefan Ehrenpreis, Innsbruck

In all territories of the Holy Roman Empire, a nationwide elementary school system with native-language instruction evolved around 1600. However, surrounding conditions and constraints differed significantly: the extent of school attendance, the teachers' salaries, the control of teaching by town magistrates or village parish priests, the textbooks used, and much more was dependent on local factors. For all early modern denominations, however, the principle applied »that churches and schools stand finely together« as a 17th-century source from the principality of Ansbach once put it. The relation of instruction to religious and ecclesiastical concerns has been a characteristic of elementary education from the 16th century onwards and was supplemented by socioeconomic motives of school attendance not until the late 17th century.

Stefan Ehrenpreis studied history, social science and paedagogy and wrote his doctoral thesis on »Imperial Jurisdiction and Confessional Conflict: The Imperial Court Council under Rudolf II 1576-1612«. In 2007 he habilitated with a thesis on »Cultures of Literacy. Educational Discourse and Elementary Schooling in the Holy Roman Empire, the Dutch Republic and England 1600-1750«. After working at the LMU Munich, the HU Berlin, the University of Bielefeld and the University of Passau, Stefan Ehrenpreis has been a professor at the Leopold Franzens University of Innsbruck since 2014.

 

Education for all? Images, Education and Educational Architectures in the Early Modern Era

Christoph Fasbender, Chemnitz

That the Solarians, the inhabitants of Tommaso Campanella's Civitas Solis (1603/1623), decorated the exterior and interior walls of their town with images whose 'fabulous arrangement' was supposed to be conducive to scholastic learning was not as utopian as the context might suggest: At about the same time (1610), the citizens of the small Hessian town of Alfeld arranged for the exterior walls of their schoolhouse to be decorated with a humanistic pictorial program that reads »like a register of that knowledge which can be acquired in the building itself« (M. Baldzuhn). Both were part of a long tradition. Already a century earlier (1523), the classrooms of the Zwickau Latin School had been decorated mit lieplichen gemelen zur unterweysung am dienstlichesten (with lovely paintings for instruction), which invariably included references to the curriculum.

What is new about the above-mentioned examples is that school knowledge no longer remained within a secluded learning space. In Alfeld, the »knowledge palace« of the Latin school is also presented to those who do not even enter it. »Civic pride« (Baldzuhn)? Finally, in the Civitas Solis, the knowledge that is to be imparted to the students quasi ludendo (playfully) is equally accessible to every passing solarian. The lecture attempts to expose functions of pictorial programs in the context of educational architectures and in regard to the educational programs behind them.

Christoph Fasbender studied German and Protestant theology in Göttingen (doctorate 2000 and habilitation 2007 in Jena). He has been Professor of German Literature and Language History of the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period at Chemnitz University of Technology since 2009. His research focuses on the regional literary history of Central Germany. For years he has also been working on a handbook on the pre-modern schools in Central Germany.

 

All Unique? A Contextualization of Pedagogical Uses of Space of the Pädagogium Regium in the 18th Century

Michael Rocher, Siegen

The Pädagogium Regium of the Halle Orphanage in particular had an extensive 'pedagogical' use not only of the school building, but also of its surrounding spaces. Thus, both the grounds of the orphanage and parts of the city of Halle were directly involved in the school's everyday life. The pedagogical uses of space of the Pädagogium will be compared to those of the other schools on the grounds of the orphanage as well as other comparable schools such as knight's schools and other private schools. Finally, the pedagogical uses of space of the Pädagogium will be contextualized against the backdrop of its time. The question of the uniqueness of the school in relation to Realienpädagogik as well as its position in the teaching and learning market of the Ancien Régime will be highlighted.

Michael Rocher works as a research assistant at the University of Siegen in the DFG-funded research project »Youth Crime in the Saddle Age«. He recently completed his doctorate on the topic »Two model schools of the 18th century? The Pädagogium Regium Halle and the Dessau Philanthropin in Comparison«. He has also been a spokesperson for the Pre-modern Education History Working Group of the Historical Education Research Section in the DGfE since autumn 2021.

Thomas Grunewald studied history, philosophy and economics in Halle and then completed an academic traineeship at the Francke Foundations. Since then he has been working for the Foundations' Administrative Department Research. In 2019, he completed his doctorate with a thesis on pietistic aristocratic networks and diplomacy. After further research on punishment and discipline at the Halle orphanage and on the history of medicine, he is now working on the topics of education and architecture in the early modern period.

Holger Zaunstöck is head of the Administrative Department Research at the Francke Foundations Halle, where a wide range of interdisciplinary and internationally activities from exhibitions to research projects are implemented. He manages the Dr. Liselotte Kirchner-Fellowship Programme. Zaunstöck studied history, social history, and economics at the Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg (1993 M.A.). He obtained the doctoral degree in 1998 with a thesis on the social history of enlightenment societies. After working at the Interdisciplinary Centre for European Enlightenment Studies as scientific coordinator, he scrutinized the emergence of practices of denunciation in 18th-century university towns (Habilitation in 2008). In 2014, he was appointed as extraordinary professor. Recently he works and publishes on the history of collections, architecture, medicine, youth as well as different topics regarding the Halle Orphanage and Pietism in the 18th century.