Claus Juergensen

Claus Jürgensen (born May 5, 1803 in Havetoftloit ; † January 11, 1851 in Oersberg ) was a German teacher and school founder.

Live and act

Claus Jürgensen was a son of Johann Christian Jürgensen (* July 22, 1767 in Havetoftloit; † September 26, 1811) and his wife Anna Christina Sophia, née Löck (* 1768 in Fahrenstedt ; † December 6, 1849 in Havetoftloit). His mother married Lorenz Lorenzen in 1818.

Jürgensen grew up in a poor Kätner family and worked in agriculture as a child. He attended the village school of Havetoftloit and then received from the pastor of the village preparation for the teachers' seminar, which he attended from 1822 to 1825 in Todern. Immediately afterwards he followed a call from the Gottorf church visitatorium to Oersberg as a substitute for elementary school teacher Detlev Desler. Desler, whose daughter he later married, represented Jürgensen in the winter of 1826. During this time, Jürgensen attended the Eckernförde model school, where he learned the so-called mutual teaching, which the king supported in particular for single-class village schools.

In January 1827 Desler retired, after which Jürgensen took over his position. He also worked as a sexton and organist in Toestrup . He cultivated the land belonging to his position, the leasehold areas of the pastorate, land he had bought himself in Schweltholm and a parcel in Scheggerott . He was also involved in the “Agricultural Association on the Schlei”.

While Jürgensen's entry into the school service, only the basics of arithmetic, writing and reading were taught at rural elementary schools; however, professional knowledge and political issues were not part of the curriculum. The population was increasingly complaining that these classes failed to take account of changes in the world of work and society. Jürgensen also saw a need for reform and in 1839 founded a so-called Sunday school for rural youth who had left the village school. At first he met tough resistance from the school visitator Christian Ludwig Wiegmann. As the only teacher in the school, he taught agricultural studies and politics.

Jürgensen had such great success with his Sunday school that he gave up his apprenticeship at the village school, closed the Sunday school and instead opened the "Agricultural Educational Institute" in Oersberg in November 1845. It was the third such adult education facility that existed in the duchies. For the school, which was located in a specially built building, he received twice 1500 Marks Courant as a grant from the customs fund of the Schleswig-Holstein Knighthood. The supervisory authority agreed that substitutes could take over Jürgensen's apprenticeship position.

Jürgensen promoted his school with texts in newspapers, in particular the "Landwirthschaftliche Zeitung" and the "Itzehoer Wochenblatt". He had a boarding school and offered the rural youth two years of vocational training for school fees. The curriculum provided practical and theoretical content that took into account the requirements of modern agriculture. The subjects included the "theory of agriculture", animal breeding and medicine, physics, agricultural chemistry, natural history, German language, style and rhetoric, history, mathematics, singing according to grades and propriety theory. Jürgensen also taught the "knowledge of the statistical and communal conditions of the fatherland" as a kind of general political education. In contrast to the higher elementary school in Rendsburg, his facility included arable land for the practical application of the knowledge learned.

The Schleswig-Holstein survey led to the fact that Jürgensen had to cease school operations three years after opening. The majority of the students and the seven permanent teachers joined the army, while Jürgensen himself did not take part in the fighting. Sources indicate that he was politically divided, but increasingly clearly opposed to Danish. So he allowed the Danish language during the founding period of the Sunday School, but forbade it at the later school. On the other hand, he wrote in 1843 in his “Conditions for regular participation in Sunday school lessons” that there was no room for “real politics”. During a meeting on March 27, 1848, he allegedly stood up for arming the population, but stayed away from the Schleswig-Holstein army.

Jürgensen, like his wife and a four-year-old daughter, died of an infectious disease.

family

On February 9, 1827, Jürgensen married Anna Maria Desler (born September 7, 1805 in Oersberg; † January 14, 1843 there). She was a daughter of the Oersberg teacher Detlev Desler (1762-1835) and his second wife Catharina Dorothea Manicus, who died in 1851.

On May 27, 1844, Jürgensen married Dorothea Catharina Marxen (born June 11, 1815 in Kattrott ; † December 7, 1850 in Oersberg). She was a daughter of the parcelist Matthias Marxen and his wife Maria Magdalena Desler. It was a niece of his first wife.

The first marriage had three daughters and four sons, four of whom outlived their father. This included the son Detlev Desler (born April 3, 1827 in Toestrup, † in June 1862 in Itzehoe ). He worked as a teacher and succeeded his father as the head of the school. Later he had a flax breaker in Schweltholm. The year he died he worked as an editor for Itzehoer Nachrichten.

Juergensen's second marriage resulted in a son and two daughters, one of whom was still alive when his father died.

literature

• Wulf Pingel: Jürgensen, Claus . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Wachholtz, Neumünster 1982–2011. Vol. 11 - 2000. ISBN 3-529-02640-9 , pages 199-202.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Wulf Pingel: Jürgensen, Claus . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Wachholtz, Neumünster 1982–2011. Vol. 11 - 2000. ISBN 3-529-02640-9 , page 199.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Wulf Pingel: Jürgensen, Claus . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Wachholtz, Neumünster 1982–2011. Vol. 11 - 2000. ISBN 3-529-02640-9 , page 200.
3. ^ Wulf Pingel: Jürgensen, Claus . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Wachholtz, Neumünster 1982–2011. Vol. 11 - 2000. ISBN 3-529-02640-9 , pages 200-201.
4. ↑ ^{a b} Wulf Pingel: Jürgensen, Claus . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Wachholtz, Neumünster 1982–2011. Vol. 11 - 2000. ISBN 3-529-02640-9 , page 201.