Friedrich Wilhelm August Froebel
University of Jena
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Friedrich Froebel was born on April 21, 1782 in Oberweissbach, a village in Thuringia, Germany, the fifth child in a clergyman’s family. His mother died when he was only nine months old, and he was neglected as a child until an uncle gave him a home and sent him to school.
Froebel acquired a thorough knowledge of plants and natural phenomena while at the same time beginning the study of mathematics and languages. In 1797 he was apprenticed to a forester in Thuringia. Two years later, while visiting his brother, Froebel took some courses at the University of Jena.
In 1801 Froebel returned home to be with his ailing father. After his father's death the following year he became a clerk in the forestry department of the state of Bamburg. From 1804 to 1805 he served as a private secretary to several noblemen.
The year 1805 marked a turning point in Froebel's life. He went to Frankfurt intending to become an architect but instead ended up teaching in a preparatory school. The effect of this teaching experience on Froebel was such that he decided to make education his life's work. In 1808 he went to Yverdon, Switzerland, where he tutored boys attending Johann Pestalozzi's institute. Feeling somewhat lacking in his own educational background, he left Yverdon in 1811 and studied at the universities of Göttingen and Berlin until 1816. During this period he briefly served in the army raised by the German states to oppose Napoleon.
In 1816 Froebel opened the Universal German Educational Institute at Keilham, a school based on his own educational theories. Its curriculum was comprehensive in nature, covering all aspects of the student's growth and development - both physical and mental.
In Froebel's major educational work, The Education of Man (1826), he explained the basic philosophy which guided his educational undertakings - the unity of all things in God. This doctrine is evident in his work in the area of early-childhood education, to which he turned his attention in 1836. This culminated in the development of his famous kindergarten in 1840. That same year Froebel began to instruct teachers in the principles and methods of the kindergarten. His Mutterund Koselieder (1843) is a song and picture book for children. He spent the remainder of his life elaborating, propagandizing, and defending the principles and practices embodied in the kindergarten.
In 1849, after spending approximately 5 years touring Germany and spreading the idea of the kindergarten, Froebel settled in Liebenstein. He spent the remainder of his life combating conservative forces critical of his educational theories. These forces managed in 1851 to get the Prussian government to ban the kindergarten on the grounds that it was an atheistic and socialistic threat to the state. This action was based not so much on what Froebel had done but rather on his followers' misrepresentation of his educational ideas. He did what he could to restore confidence in his kindergarten but died on June 21, 1852, some 8 years before the ban was lifted by the Prussian government.
Quotations:
"Play is the highest expression of human development in childhood for it alone is the free expression of what is in a child's soul."
"Children are like tiny flowers: They are varied and need care, but each is beautiful alone and glorious when seen in the community of peers."
"Children must master the language of things before they master the language of words."
"To learn a thing in life and through doing is much more developing, cultivating, and strengthening than to learn it merely through the verbal communication of ideas."
On September 11, 1818, Friedrich Froebel married Wilhelmine Henriette Hoffmeister in Berlin. The union was childless. Wilhelmine died in 1839, and in 1851 Froebel married Louise Levin.
