Adolph Douai

Adolph Douai
(Photo: Texas Humanities Resource Center, Austin)

Carl Daniel Adolph Douai (born February 22, 1819 in Altenburg , Duchy of Saxony-Altenburg ; † January 21, 1888 in Brooklyn , New York City , USA ) was a German-American journalist , author , newspaper publisher , social reformer ( Marxist ) and educator , one of the first founders of a kindergarten in the USA.

family

He came from a family of teachers and was the son of the teacher Carl Eduard Douai (1793–?) And Eleonora Scheyer (1797–?).

Douai married Agnes Freiin von Beust (born February 18, 1819 in Dresden , Saxony , † December 13, 1898 in Brooklyn, New York, USA), the daughter of Maximilian, in Moderwitz near Jena (Duchy of Saxony-Altenburg) on September 25, 1843 Freiherr von Beust (? -1832) and Charlotte Freiin von Haacke (1788–1861). The Douai couple had 10 children (2 sons and 8 daughters).

Life

Revolutionary in Germany

At the age of four, Douai is said to have learned to read, write and arithmetic from his father. He attended grammar school in Altenburg and then studied theology , philology and history at the University of Leipzig with a scholarship from the city of Altenburg . In 1841 he went on a study trip of several years, which also took him to the Baltic States to Estonia , where he worked as a private teacher. During this time he did his PhD in Philology at the University of Dorpat . In self-study he acquired extensive knowledge of world literature and modern natural sciences . It was not until 1846 that he returned to his hometown Altenburg, now married for three years, where he successfully ran a new type of private school that he had founded, which deviated from the classical teaching content and gave preference to the natural sciences and modern languages.

He was actively involved in the German Vormärz movement, wrote articles for various newspapers in which he spoke out in favor of revolutionary goals, and was one of the leading republicans in the Duchy of Saxony-Altenburg. In his book The ABC of Socialism from 1851, he leaned closely on the pedagogical views of Friedrich Wilhelm August Froebel (1782-1852). Because of his revolutionary, socialist commitment, Douai was tried at least five times and also received two prison terms, including one year in prison, and a ban on the profession. After his release, like many intellectuals and free thinkers , he emigrated to Texas (see: Forty-Eighters ).

Journalist and educator in the USA

Douai reached Texas in May 1852, first stayed with other refugees briefly in the Latin Settlement Sisterdale (Texas) ( Kendall County ) with Nicolaus Zink (1812-1887) and then settled in New Braunfels in neighboring Comal County , where he immediately founded a school. But already in the following year 1853 he moved to San Antonio (Texas) ( Bexar County ), where he became the editor of the newly founded San Antonio newspaper .

This newspaper initially had educational and literary content, but Douai soon used it as a platform against slavery ( abolitionism ). In a series of editorials he railed against slavery as an evil that was incompatible with the ideals of democracy and called for a nation of “free peasants on their own soil”, which earned him the sharpest protests on all sides. This even went so far that volunteers from the local German “gymnastics club” had to protect his office from angry proponents of slavery.

The general aversion of German immigrants to slavery separated them from their Anglo-American neighbors, and the Germans also differed in language and culture. At that time, however, their everyday life mainly consisted of agriculture, handicrafts and trade, so that they could live relatively independently as a smaller ethnic group.

But after the Texas State Convention in 1854, support for Douai's ideas began to wane even within this group of German immigrants. Several German localities drafted resolutions against his newspaper and merchants refused to place advertisements. The shareholders then decided to sell the newspaper, and Douai bought it together with the American landscape architect and travel writer Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903).

Douai continued his fight against slavery unchanged in the newspaper and finally called for a free state in western Texas in the February 9, 1855 issue. But when the income continued to decline in 1856, he sold his stake to Gustav Schleicher (1823–1879) and left Texas.

Douai went to Boston ( Massachusetts ) in the northern states , where he again founded a school and in 1859, according to Froebel's ideas (probably) the first public kindergarten in the USA - under the patronage of a workers' association he founded (note: Margarethe Schurz already had 1856 set up the first private kindergarten in her house). He joined the new Republican Party and traveled around the country to interest his German compatriots in this party.

But because of his admitted atheism , he got into trouble with his opponents in Boston and left the city again in 1860.

He moved on to Hoboken ( New Jersey ), where he was director of a German school and also chief editor of the New York Democrat . In 1866 he finally moved directly to New York City , where he campaigned for the establishment of kindergartens. He founded several schools, wrote a kindergarten manual in 1871 and formulated guidelines for education. As the leader and teacher of these schools and kindergartens, he always tried to put Froebel's pedagogical guidelines into practice.

From 1868 to 1870 he was the editor of a workers 'newspaper, the New York Workers' Union , and was the leading Marxist in New York. From 1878 until his death in 1888, he and Alexander Jonas co- edited the New York People's Newspaper , one of the longest running newspapers in the United States , for ten years .

In his private life, Douai was an excellent pianist, even performed publicly at social events with other musicians and composed more than 60 pieces of music. During his years in San Antonio he founded the choral society, which he also led himself and whose members he led to New Braunfels in 1853, when the first "Singers' Festival" took place there.

By the end of his life he had written a total of 35 books and his memoirs about his life in Texas.

bibliography

• The ABC of socialism . Altenburg 1851
• The kindergarten. A Manual for the Introduction of Fröbel's System of Primary Education into the Public Schools, and for the use of Mothers and Private Teachers . New York 1871 - Translation into Japanese by Shinzo Seki, Tokyo (Japan) 1876
• Kindergarten and elementary school as social democratic institutions . Leipzig 1876

literature

• Justine Davis Randers-Pehrson: Adolph Douai 1819–1888. The Turbulent Life of a German Forty-Eighter in the Homeland and in the United States . Peter Lang Publications Inc., 2000, ISBN 0-8204-4881-8
• Paul Mitzenheim: Adolf Douai. Mediator of Froebel's ideas to the USA and Japan . In: Helmut Heiland and Karl Neumann (eds.): Friedrich Froebel in Japan and Germany . Weinheim 1998
• Rudolph Bauer : Douai, Adolf , in: Hugo Maier (Hrsg.): Who is who of social work . Freiburg: Lambertus, 1998 ISBN 3-7841-1036-3 , p. 146

Web links

Wikisource: Adolf Douai  - Sources and full texts

Commons : Adolph Douai  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Adolph Douai in the catalog of the German National Library
• Biography of Adolph Douais in the Handbook of Texas (engl.)
• Gerd Hohendorf: Reform pedagogy and workers' movement