Frühe Lese- und Schreiblernbücher des 16. Jahrhunderts. Zu Valentin Ickelsamers Die rechte weis, aufs kürtzist lesen zu lernen (1527) und Teütsche Grammatica (1532?)

Abstract

The essay investigates the semantics and pragmatics of two reading and writing manuals of the protestant schoolmaster and grammarian Valentin Ickelsamer (Die rechte weis (1527) and Teütsche Grammatica (1532?), asking for their pedagogical and medial status between school teaching and out-of-school learning. Like other works of early modern instructive literature they emphasized “self-learning” processes, which made them a polyfunctional expedient for private school teaching as well as for informal home schooling or self-education. Methodically, they focused on more effective learning processes using phonetic instead of spelling approaches, which aimed to the insemination of grammatical, etymological and orthographical knowledge as well as to a critical language awareness. Ickelsamer pursued this goal in the framework of the new opportunities of the printing press to make religious and secular knowledge accessible for all laymen by means of a reading and writing manual. Therefore, this type of early modern school manual transgresses the institutional functions attributed to schoolbooks today. In Ickelsamer’s works, literacy appears not only as a mere ‘technique of culture’, but as a theologically and ethically established form of individual formation by linguistic knowledge.