Adolph von Bissing on Beerberg

Adolph Freiherr von Bissing auf Beerberg , first name also Adolf , last name also Bissing-Beerberg (born November 3, 1800 at Thomaswaldau Castle / Silesia ; † April 8, 1880 at Beerberg near Marklissa , Lauban district ), was an avid advocate of the Christian school for small children.

Life

He was the son of Colonel and landowner August von Bissing and his wife Auguste von Gröna, an illegitimate daughter of Prince Friedrich Albrecht von Anhalt-Bernburg . After private lessons, he studied law in Göttingen . Subsequently, the nobleman led an eventful social life. During a trip he met the young Polish girl Maria Elisabeth Gotty, whom he married in 1832. At the age of 42 he took over the Beerberg estate. In 1852 he was raised to the Prussian baron class ( Primogenitur ).

He promised his dying daughter Olga that he would take care of the children of Beerberg and set up a Christian school for children there, in the manner of the Württemberg childcare facilities. On September 22nd, 1865, the baron opened such a school, called the Olga School , on his estate :

With this, Bissing was introduced to the work of caring for small children, but now more through a certain compulsion and without suspecting that he would find his master in this work and that his work would have such an outstanding significance in the kingdom of God (Hübener 1888 , P. 75)

He entrusted the management of the facility to a student at the Kaiserswerther seminar, who, in addition to her educational work, was also active in poor, sick and family care as well as in the community. In his book Much Blessings from a Source or the Significance of the Toddler School , published in 1868, he wrote about the meaning and purpose of the Christian toddler school, which he wanted to make a national thing. a .:

1. The toddler school is not a school in the ordinary sense, but a nursing and educational institution for early childhood, is a public nursery under a methodically trained nurse ... 2. It is the basis of the entire public education, the first link in the chain of the educational institutions ... 4. It prepares the field for sowing by making school-age children capable of schooling ... 7. It is the assistant and representative of the mothers and should therefore be called the mother school (Bissing auf Beerberg 1868, p. 2) .

Adolph Freiherr von Bissing-Beerberg called for a consistent expansion of the toddler schools as the basis of the entire public education . The state should support the expansion financially, but hold back on the educational design. He saw the Protestant school for small children as a complement to family education , which in no way affects it, but promotes it,

in that it 'enriches' family education, depending on the domestic circumstances, where it is good, where it is bad, 'improves' it and where it is completely absent, 'replaces' it and thus can substantially improve the moral condition of many families ... You does what the house cannot do and creates what the school needs, and is therefore the necessary link between house and school in that it completes and continues domestic education and at the same time prepares it for school (Bissing-Beerberg 1868, p . 26).

The Freiherr presented his conception of the Christian toddler school in various articles and propagated it in tireless activities: through lecture tours, charity events, through the founding of the magazine Die christliche Kleinkinderschule. Journal for Christian toddler care and education (today: theory and practice of social pedagogy ), in 1870, a central and various provincial and local associations as well as the establishment of training centers for toddler school teachers and deaconesses (Fleßner 1981, p. 149).

At the instigation of Baron Adolph von Bissing auf Beerberg, the central committee of the Oberlinverein for the Christian toddler school in Germany and the Oberlinhaus in Nowawes (today: Babelsberg) near Potsdam were established . His greatest concern was to bring the Christian toddler school thing into close connection with diakonia. Adolph Freiherr von Bissing auf Beerberg said:

The moral and professional training in a Christian mother house, where sisterly intercourse with mutually supportive female colleagues prevails under maternal and domestic care, delivers completely different results than the isolated and merely methodical training in a school house, such as those abroad and in the so-called model schools Seminars are sought; There, mothers are formed through care of the heart and through guidance in domestic affairs, here teachers are formed mainly through spiritual care, there aunts, here young women (quoted in Psczolla n.d., p. 26).

In addition, encouraged by the Silesian conditions with a strong Catholic population, he demanded that the Christian toddler school contribute to religious tolerance, to social reconciliation, as well as to denominational unity:

The Christian school for small children is not only a nursery of faith, but also of genuine tolerance and reconciliation; for it accepts the children of all denominations and impresses on them the basic truths of Christianity without any denominational coloring by teaching only what unites people and not what divides them; she herself takes in non-Christians and cares for all her children with the same love, but also raises them according to the same principle (Bissing-Beerberg 1876, p. 42).

Works

• Much blessings from one source, or the importance of toddler school . In: Schulblatt für die Provinz Brandenburg , vol. 33 (1868), H. 3/4, pp. 195–199. Accessible online
• What is needed or the small children's school and what to do to promote it, together with a report by the teacher Koning on the Beerberg small children's school . Rauhes Haus, Hamburg 1869. Accessible online
• The Christian school for small children, its origin and significance. A memorandum on behalf of the Toddler School Central Committee. Bredt, Leipzig 1872. Accessible online
• The German motherhouse for child and community carers. Another memorandum on the great national matter of the Christian school for small children . Bredt, Leipzig 1873

literature

• Johannes Hübener: The Christian School for Toddlers. Its history and its current status, Gotha 1888
• Johann Gehring: The Protestant child care. Memorandum for its 150th anniversary, Berlin / Leipzig 1929
• Heike Fleßner: Subject discipline or human education? On the development of public education for small children in the countryside (1870–1924), Weinheim / Basel 1981
• Erich Psczolla: Festschrift for the 175th anniversary of the Evangelical Child Care, Witten o. J.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The beginnings from 1871. Oberlinhaus Association, accessed on July 2, 2019 .