This eBook was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of thefile for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making anentire meal of them. D.W.]
I was well acquainted with the three founders of our institute—Fredrich
Froebel, Middendorf, and Langethal—and the two latter were my teachers.
Froebel was decidedly "the master who planned it."
When we came to Keilhau he was already sixty-six years old, a man oflofty stature, with a face which seemed to be carved with a dull knifeout of brown wood.
His long nose, strong chin, and large ears, behind which the long locks,parted in the middle, were smoothly brushed, would have rendered himpositively ugly, had not his "Come, let us live for our children," beamedso invitingly in his clear eyes. People did not think whether he washandsome or not; his features bore the impress of his intellectual powerso distinctly that the first glance revealed the presence of a remarkableman.
Yet I must confess—and his portrait agrees with my memory—that his faceby no means suggested the idealist and man of feeling; it seemed ratherexpressive of shrewdness, and to have been lined and worn by severeconflicts concerning the most diverse interests. But his voice and hisglance were unusually winning, and his power over the heart of the childwas limitless. A few words were sufficient to win completely the shyestboy whom he desired to attract; and thus it happened that, even when hehad been with us only a few weeks, he was never seen crossing the court-yard without a group of the younger pupils hanging to his coattails andclasping his hands and arms.
Usually they were persuading him to tell stories, and when hecondescended to do so, older ones flocked around him too, and they werenever disappointed. What fire, what animation the old man had retained!We never called him anything but "Oheim." The word "Onkel" he detestedas foreign, because it was derived from "avunculus" and "oncle." Withthe high appreciation he had of "Tante"—whom he termed, next to themother, the most important factor of education in the family—our "Oheim"was probably specially agreeable to him.
He was thoroughly a self-made man. The son of a pastor in Oberweissbach,in Thuringia, he had had a dreary childhood; for his mother died young,and he soon had a step-mother, who treated him with the utmost tendernessuntil her own children were born. Then an indescribably sad time beganfor the neglected boy, whose dreamy temperament vexed even his ownfather. Yet in this solitude his love for Nature awoke. He studiedplants, animals, minerals; and while his young heart vainly longed forlove, he would have gladly displayed affection himself, if his timiditywould have permitted him to do so. His family, seeing him prefer todissect the bones of some animal rather than to talk with his parents,probably considered him a very unlovable child when they sent him, in histenth year, to school in the city of Ilm.
He was received into the home of the pastor, his uncle Hoffman, whosemother-in-law, who kept the house, treated him in the most cordialmanner, and helped him to conquer the diffidence acquired during thesolitude of the first years of his childhood. This excellent womanfirst