CHAPTER XIII. A. H. FRANCKE AND THE PIETIST SCHOOLS. THE French and German educational movements at the close of the seventeenth century were both incited by religious motives, both grew steadily in response to the demands of the moment, and, in so doing, independently evolved schools and school-courses of a new kind. But the German movement depended for initiation and continuance much more than the French upon the efforts of one man, and its operations were by no means confined to popular or elementary instruction. On the other hand, while de la Salle's schools were as widely spread as the limits of Roman Catholicism itself, Francke's own institutions never overstepped the bounds of a single German Protestant city, though their example was felt far and wide. The vigorous survival to our own day of de la Salle's Institute and of Francke's establishments at Halle testifies that these reformers laid broad and solid foundations. The career of August Hermann Francke' was of the outwardly uneventful sort which is usually pursued by the university teacher, the clergyman, and the philanthropist. His migrations were from one seat of learning, or pastoral charge, 1 The authority followed in this chapter is Karl Richter's collection of Francke's pedagogical publications, "A. H. Francke, Schriften über Erziehung und Unterricht," Leipzig, 1872. Francke's own Historische Nachricht supplies bibliographical details down to 1697. to another, and the chief vicissitudes of his life were brought about by that spirit of religious faction which was then so easily aroused in Germany. His greatest triumphs were embodied in the many educational, religious and philanthropic institutions with which he endowed the city wherein more than half his days were spent. Born at Lübeck in March 1662, Francke was taken three years later to Gotha, where his father, a capable lawyer, had been appointed to administer the ecclesiastical and scholastic business of that Ernest the Pious whose educational reforms have been described in an earlier chapter. The elder Francke died in 1670, and August's education was carried on privately at home till his thirteenth year, when he entered the Gotha Gymnasium, the theatre of the innovations of Duke Ernest and his collaborator, Andreas Reyher. Both were now dead, but their work remained, and, without doubt, the memory of his one short year in their school played its part in his own plans of twenty years later. His subsequent school and university training were obtained elsewhere; while engaged as a private tutor he took his degree at Leipzig, where he also joined in founding a society to encourage Biblical study. A year later (viz. in 1687) he was studying Scriptural exegesis under Sandhagen at Lüneburg, and here occurred the spiritual experience which he always referred to as his "Awakening," or conversion. Then followed a sojourn in Hamburg and his earliest association with popular education. Moved by the condition of the poor children of the city, this young man of five-and twenty taught many of them in classes set on foot by himself. "Here," he says, "I not only learned patience, charity, and indulgence, whilst struggling against my own manifest faults, particularly in reproving the children-but it also became increasingly evident to me, how corrupt was the customary mode of instruction, and how highly defective the methods in use for the training of children; and this excited in me, even then, the most ardent wish, that God would graciously grant that I might contribute something to the improvement of the method of instructing and educating the young." Francke's spiritual life had been a preparation for the change which, begun at the "Awakening" of 1687-8, was finally determined in the course of a two months' visit to Jacob Spener at Dresden in 1689. In popular estimation, Spener was the founder of a Lutheran sect, the "Pietists," whose best known aims associate them with the later English "Methodists" but, indeed, the essential tendencies of the Pietists are to be traced in German thought to a much earlier period than Spener's, back to Arndt's "True Christianity" of 1605, and thence, outside merely German limits, to the mystics and others who, within and without the Catholic Church, thought of the religious life as, above all, an individual intercourse of the soul with its Maker. Pietism was marked by its deep sense of the personal side of religion, its consequent love of pious exercises in private, its abstention from "worldly" pleasure, and the diligent study of the Bible as the revelation of God's will respecting the individual soul; personal, living faith counted for much in its esteem, theological accuracy and acuteness, as merely intellectual powers, counting for little. Later, it was doomed to pass into formalism and decay, but its most influential days were still to come when Spener and Francke met at Dresden. Spener himself had said, "All hope for the future rests upon this: the world will become what the upgrowing young now are." Francke's task in Halle was accomplished in the same belief. Established as a Privat-dozent at Leipzig, Francke delivered extra-academical lectures on Biblical subjects which aroused so great an opposition from the local clergy that he quitted the city for good. He was equally unfortunate at Erfurt, where the authorities imagined that he intended to found a new sect, and, in the supposed interests of peace, requested him to leave the place. Into the merits of these differences it is not necessary to enquire; but it is noteworthy that at Leipzig one charge against Francke was that he lectured publicly in German instead of academic Latin, a characteristic innovation first introduced in 1688 by the Leipzig professor and future University colleague of Francke, Christian Thomasius. On the very day on which the command to quit Erfurt reached him Francke received a letter from the Court of Brandenburg, intimating that his services were required by its new sovereign, the Elector Frederick, the Hohenzollern prince who in 1700 became the first King of Prussia. Frederick was already pursuing the policy which converted Brandenburg into the strongest state of Northern Europe, industrially, commercially, and martially; he was equally alive to the benefits which might accrue to his subjects from the possession of a university of a modern type, and it was in this connection that Francke's services were desired. The "Friedrich University" of Halle was actually founded in 1694, but Francke received his formal appointment to the Chair of Greek and Oriental Languages at the close of 1691, and began his professorial duties at Easter following. With the appointment to the chair went also the pastorate of the Church of St George at Glaucha, a suburb of Halle. The connection thus established endured till his death; but no more need be said of Francke's University career than that from 1698 till June, 1727, when he died, he was Professor of Divinity, and that in 1716-17 he was Pro-rector of the University. So soon as Francke was well established in his pastoral charge he began that season of extraordinary activity, educational and philanthropic, which gave to Halle a remarkable series of institutions, and assured to Francke himself a very honourable position amongst educational administrators. During this period in his life, which ranges from 1694 to 1712, or 1714, he erected a whole hierarchy of schools, whose scope may be gathered from the following catalogue: i. Elementary Schools: The Poor-School and the Bürger-schule, 1694-5; the Orphanage, 1695. ii. Secondary Schools: Pädagogium, 1694-5, Latin School, 1697, Girls' iii. Training Courses for teachers for the above elementary A dispensary was set up in 1698, a printing-office and book-shop in 1701, and about the same time the beginning of a library and a museum of Art and Natural History. Of the Bible-house for the dissemination of the Scriptures, of the Mission-house for the promotion of missionary work in the East Indies (wherein Francke co-operated with S.P.C.K.), and of the many other enterprises associated with Francke's life in Halle this is not the place to speak. In surveying these achievements it is difficult to decide whether their most surprising feature is their humble beginning, or their rapid growth and speedy adaptation of means to ends. Unlike de la Salle, Francke had no large private fortune to expend upon his benevolent schemes, and he undertook the responsibilities of married life soon (1694) after his settlement at Halle; he therefore looked to the public at large to support his many enterprises. The event amply justified his confidence, and though often reduced to sore straits, his schools, orphanage, and the like were, on the whole, satisfactorily supplied with money. He himself ascribed this result to a special providence exercised in favour of the Halle institutions; it is perhaps not profane to include in that dispensation their founder's own benevolent impulses, unwearied labours, great administrative powers, and business instincts. Francke |