Goethe und Pestalozzi

Abstract

WHEN all Europe was keenly excited by the social and educational work of a schoolmaster in a Swiss country town, Goethe held aloof. Pestalozzi's biographers have not hesitated to ascribe this to want of sympathy with the common people. Goethe, Minister of State and intellectual aristocrat, despised the poor and ignorant, and the Schwärmerei of early-nineteenth-century philanthropy seemed to him exaggerated, if not foolish. Such, at least, is a commonly received account of the matter, and the author of this interesting little book has shown what a libel upon the great man's memory it is. There can be little doubt, however, that Goethe made no effort to cultivate Pestalozzi, and still less that he distrusted Pestalozzian educational doctrine as it came under his notice. It was his misfortune to be acquainted with its weakest points. Goethe had no patience with an educational system which left put of its purview literature and history—everything, in fact, which could not be reduced to an A B C. In his view, geometry and geography, nature-study and language could never be made to fill up this gap, no matter how carefully they were systematised and ordered for school use.