August sliding

August Schiebe (born October 2, 1779 in Strasbourg , † August 20, 1851 in Strasbourg) was a German businessman, author and one of the most important German-speaking business school educators of the 19th century. The establishment of the Leipzig commercial college was not his idea, but as the first headmaster and in 19 years of consistent work, he helped the creation of the local Kramer guild to achieve a thoroughly European reputation.

portrait

Life

Schiebe began his career as a businessman in Strasbourg and Frankfurt / M. In 1831 he became director of the commercial college in Leipzig and made it an excellent institution.

Schiebe, who had become fatherless at the age of twelve, had learned about the horrors of the French Revolution in Strasbourg . In 1794 he was drafted into the Strasbourg National Guard as a high school student and deployed to defend Kehl against the Austrians. “His intention to study medicine could not be carried out because his mother had lost her fortune due to the devaluation of paper money. After graduating from high school, he therefore joined a Strasbourg trading company, which, however, gave him little opportunity to learn his trade. After his apprenticeship, he worked in several companies, in particular in a Frankfurt bank, where an important sphere of activity opened up for him. Continuously working on his education, he had acquired a wealth of business practice material for literary work, and this awakened in him the inclination to the subject. He began in Strasbourg, where he had returned in 1807, with private tuition to young merchants, which was soon so appreciated that Schiebe had been devoting himself exclusively to teaching since 1812 and in 1817 opened a (private) business school in conjunction with several teachers The disadvantage of the following years could not last long (Schiebe gave it up again in August 1819; the author). He then worked as a commercial writer, was brought in by the government as an arbitrator ... "

In the early days of anti-SME neo - humanism , the Leipzig Kramer Guild set a sign of bourgeois self-assertion with its new “commercial training institute”: “The inadequacy of ordinary schools”, as an anonymous “announcement” said, “has in almost everyone important places give rise to special institutes, where one can learn what should be in most of the subject matter of the lecture. The trading institutes can also be counted among these, which are now all the more necessary, the more one considers himself entitled to promote knowledge from the merchant "

In the autumn of 1830 Schiebe must have come to Leipzig - at the age of 51 - to give life to the idea of ​​the Kramer Guild and, thanks to his knowledge and skills, to help it achieve a breakthrough. In any case, on January 23, 1831, despite the cholera prevailing in the city at the time, the ceremonial opening of the new educational institution with 65 students in the "apprenticeship department" and 5 students in the "higher department" took place. By Easter these numbers had risen to 89 and 42 students, respectively, due to new registrations. For the school year 1849/50 there are 44 students for the "apprenticeship department" and 79 for the "higher department".

The frequency in the “apprenticeship department” (a commercial “advanced training school” with later language usage), which had meanwhile dropped to 34 students, shows that this branch of school was the “child of pain” Schiebes. Even then, the principals reluctantly released their apprentices from school. The “higher department” (as the second “main department”) was for young people “who were not employed in trading houses, but were intended for the merchant class or for a higher, related trade”. According to today's parlance, it was a three-year vocational pre-school (full-time), in which, according to the statutes of January 23, 1831, young people with a "completed" 14th year could be admitted.

However, because of the different ages, the z. Sometimes there were big differences in their previous education and also because of the different nationalities (which meant the different German states) of the pupils, there were great difficulties in creating a “completed course”, as Wolfrum emphasizes (p. 23). Up until 1863 the printed annual reports “did not contain any information about the subject matter of each class and the teaching objectives”. Schiebe cleverly used the freedom of action thus granted for constant improvisations, with which he was able to balance the different performance levels and still allow the learning progress of an entire class.

Schiebe took over the "higher courses in the trade" itself. “If the pupils have grasped all parts of the science of accounts individually”, the “announcement” goes on, “then offices are set up under the direction of the director, and in each of them a fictitious business is taken as a basis under assumed trade names so that the pupils can themselves train in practical work in context and be able to properly learn leadership, as well as the course of a business ”(p. 654).

The best-known student at the public commercial college, and that at the time of Schiebes, was the Jewish merchant's son Ferdinand Lassalle (1825–1864) from Breslau, who - at the age of fifteen - attended the “higher department” at the request of his father in 1840/41. After being placed in the second class of the “higher department”, Lassalle wrote in his diary: “Who was happier than me?” However, these positive impressions should quickly turn into the opposite. There were arguments about the books he wanted to borrow from the school library, arguments with his "host parents" and classmates and arguments with Director Schiebe, who he believed he hated. And the teacher Friedrich Ernst Feller (1802-1859) even described Lassalle as "dangerous". And so Lassalle's stay at the Leipzig commercial college ended prematurely.

The discipline at the school at the time of Schiebes was strict, but "by no means ... as tyrannical as it has been decried from some quarters". Since the “pupils” came “from all parts of the world”, “minor or major friction between the various nationalities” could not have been prevented without the authority of the director. Because of this "conscientious strictness with which one watched over the moral behavior of the pupils", because of the "good successes of his teaching method", but first of all because of the extensive and successful writing activity of the headmaster (in short: because of his enormous creative power) the good reputation of the institution quickly. And everywhere, valued commercial teachers of “his” school did the rest. Mention should be made of Friedrich Ernst Feller (1802-1859), Carl Gustav Odermann (1815-1904) and Carl August Noback (1810-1870), who spread Schiebes ideas about the organization of a full-time commercial school beyond Saxony.

In December 1849 Schiebe was attacked by a "severe illness" (" chest dropsy ", probably as a result of a heart defect; the author), so that in February 1850 he had to ask for his removal from office. The school board met this with a generous pension promise, so that Schiebe was able to return to Strasbourg with his family at the end of May 1850. His imminent death (at the age of 71) was already expected in Leipzig at the time.

Schiebe did not leave a (printed) “contribution” to a “business curriculum”. But if you look at the list of his school books, it becomes immediately clear that for him the "Contor science" was in the foreground of school activity, that is, the accounting theory , the correspondence theory and the "teaching of the other written work and essays" (Universal Lexicon, Vol . 1, p. 330). So he concentrated on what is visible in commercial activity. But doing business ultimately means that decisions have to be made about scarce resources. Schiebe, however, decided not to deal with what was virtually invisible in commercial activity. To create something like this, he writes, is "a task that would be difficult to solve" (Universal-Lexikon, vol. 2, p. 33). From today's point of view, this is difficult to understand, as the fourth edition of the “Complete Commercial Science or System of Commerce” by Johann Michael Leuchs was published in his day (Nuremberg 1839). And two more pointers are important: (1) This “sliding” way of thinking continued to have an impact right up until the early days of the Leipzig University of Applied Sciences. (Remember Professor Robert Stern (1855–1930) and his controversial "Muster-Kontor", which he did not want to leave behind in the development phase of the "new" business administration , which of course was first introduced by Eugen Schmalenbach (1873–1955) lent name.) (2) Because of its importance among the commercial school educators of the 19th century, Schiebes renunciation of the development of a "commercial business theory" led to what later historiographers of business administration history as a "flattening" of the "business science "(18th century) should refer to" commercial science "(19th century). But if you accept that business administration is the “leading subject” in commercial vocational training, then there is no longer any room for sliding: it stood in the way of “modernization”.

Works

• 24 letters with Mittermaier in the period from 1834 to 1850 (Leipzig)
• Universal encyclopedia of commercial sciences , edited by August Schiebe. Fleischer / Schumann, 3 volumes, Leipzig and Zwickau 1837–1839
• The theory of bills of exchange, presented theoretically and practically , Frankfurt 1818 (3rd edition Grimma 1844)
• Textbook of commercial law with the exception of the law of the sea , Leipzig 1837–1839, 3 volumes
• Office studies with the exception of correspondence and bookkeeping , Frankfurt 1820, 2 volumes (2nd edition Grimma 1867, 2 volumes)
• Commercial letters , Frankfurt 1824 (2nd edition Grimma 1867, 2 volumes)
• Selection of German commercial letters for commercial schools with a. French, English, Italian and Spanish translation of the technical terms used in the letter , collaboration with Carl Gustav Odermann, Leipzig: Gebhardt, 1915, 13th edition, edited by A. Adler
• Commercial letters with the necessary explanation and a French translation of the most common commercial words and phrases , Frankfurt / M. 1825 (With the sixth edition, the book reached a total print run of "more than 10,000 copies" as early as 1848.)
• Textbook of Contor Science , 2nd volumes, Frankfurt / M. 1830 (Before the 7th edition of the 1st part (Leipzig 1871) there is a steel engraving portrait Schiebes.)
• Words spoken on January 23, 1831 at the opening of the public trade school , Leipzig 1831
• First annual celebration of the public commercial college in Leipzig, combined with the inauguration of the house on January 22, 1832 , Leipzig 1832
• About the emergence of commercial accounting , 1832
• Textbook of commercial arithmetic , Leipzig 1834
• The theory of bookkeeping, presented theoretically and practically , Grimma 1836
• The doctrine of trading companies (based on French sources) , Leipzig 1841
• News about the establishment of the public trade school in Leipzig, its progress and work . In: Invitation to the examination in the Public Trade School in Leipzig , Leipzig 1840, pp. 3–16
• The theory of bookkeeping, presented theoretically and practically , Grimma 1836
• Correspondence on commercial legal cases and decisions , Leipzig 1844

literature

• Jelowik, Lieselotte: Legal correspondence of the 19th century: Letters from German and Swiss Germanists to Karl Josef Anton Mittermaier. Vittorio Klostermann, 2001. ISBN 3-46503-152-0
• Keferstein, Horst: August Schiebe, one of the most important successors of JG Büsch in the field of commercial schooling. In: The merchant at all times or book by famous merchants, Second Collection, Leipzig and Berlin 1869, p. 635 f.
• Life sketch in the journal for bookkeeping, 2nd year (1892), p. 223 f.
• Oderman, Carl Gustav: Memories of August Schiebe (fictitious title). In: Schiebe August, Textbook of Contor Science. Part I: Contor science in the narrower sense, fourth, much increased and improved edition, edited by Carl Gustav Odermenn, Grimma 1853, pp. V – X ("Preface")
• Ohnsorg, Johannes .: August Schiebe, because. Director of the public trade training institute in Leipzig. In: The same: Commercial writings, Hamburg 1854, pp. 186–192
• Pierer, Heinrich August: Universal lexicon of the present and past or the latest encyclopedic dictionary. Volume 27, Heinrich August Pierer, Altenburg 1845

Web links

• Detailed article about August Schiebe

Individual evidence

1. ↑ For the history of this school cf. first Rätzer, Manfred: Brief history of the public commercial college in Leipzig . In: Sächsisches Wirtschaftsarchiv (Hrsg.): The Public Commercial College in Leipzig 1831–1950. Festschrift for the 170th anniversary of its foundation . Leipzig 2001, pp. 17–111 (Unfortunately, the author does not use the otherwise usual literature references. It can, however, be assumed that he used the school's three festschrifts for the period before 1931.)
2. ^ Wilhelm Lorey (1873–1955): Public Higher Commercial School ... zu Leipzig 1831–1931 / Festschrift to celebrate the centenary, Leipzig 1931, p. 7 f. Expanded Carl Wolfrum (1825-1907): The Public Handelslehranstalt to Leipzig in the years 1831-1881 ... . Leipzig 1881, p. 16 ff.
3. ↑ See the anonymously published announcement: The public commercial training institute in Leipzig . In: Allgemeine Handlungs-Zeitung, Volume 37, Nuremberg 1830, p. 653/54, here p. 653
4. ↑ "The profession of merchants and traders," writes Ulrike Laufer in her Mannheim dissertation, "was the first to organize schooling for the next generation on its own initiative" (Technology and Education. Civic Initiatives and State Regulations in Vocational and Technical Schools ..., Mannheim 2000, p. 99).
5. ↑ As Wolfrum writes (p. 18), the opening of the school would have been “postponed” (and then perhaps not taken at all) if the preparations for founding the school had not progressed so far.
6. ↑ See the frequency tables in the "Festschrift zum 170th Anniversary ...", pp. 247–250.
7. ↑ This concealed - roughly speaking - the curriculum of a secondary school (two living foreign languages), supplemented by commercial educational content.
8. ↑ See the “Announcement”, also p. 653.
9. ↑ In detail about this Rätzer, pp. 28–35. Source used: Lassalle, Ferdinand: Diary of the Leipzig commercial student May 1840 to May 1841 , Berlin 1918.
10. ↑ It is tragic that Schiebe would have had the following excellent lexical summary of what had previously been achieved three years earlier in Leipzig, the starting point for a (but not) further development of commercial management, taking into account the requirements of the increasingly numerous industrial companies can, did not know or did not take notice: K (arl) H (einrich) Rau: Article “Handelswissenschaft”. In: Er / Gruber: General Encyclopedia of Sciences and Arts . Second section, second part. Leipzig 1828, pp. 380-385. Here it says forward-looking (p. 380): "The science of commerce is therefore the doctrine of doing business as a trade in the most advantageous way."
11. ↑ For the historiographers of the history of business administration, this book marks the climax and conclusion of the “practical science” epoch.