Johann Wilhelm Kuithan

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Johann Wilhelm Kuithan (born February 3, 1760 in Dortmund ; † December 16, 1831 there ) was a Prussian school reformer .

Live and act

Johann Wilhelm Kuithan was born on February 3, 1760 in Dortmund. He was the son of Pastor Caspar Heinrich Kuithan, who worked at the Reinoldikirche from 1748 to 1798, and his wife Elisabeth Judith Kuithan, née Barop. The couple had two other sons. Johann Wilhelm Kuithan attended the Archigymnasium and from 1778 studied theology and classical philology in Göttingen with Christian Gottlob Heyne . In 1781 he passed the theological examination, two years later he became a member of the repetents college. From 1790 to 1799 he was rector at the Latin School in Lünen , from 1799 to 1805 at the Lüdenscheid Higher School and then Professor of Latin and Greek at the Düsseldorf Lyceum .

Kuithan had already come into contact with the school reform approaches of neo-humanism during his student days , and because of their practical implementation in his various stations, he was appointed head of the Archigymnasium in his hometown on January 1, 1807. At that time it was in poor condition; in 1800, for example, there were only sixty students left. Kuithan immediately began to adapt the school program to the needs of early industrialization and the wishes of the commercial middle class. Although himself a classical philologist, he expanded the offer to include newer languages ​​such as English, French and Italian and thus enabled a higher education in Dortmund for the first time without learning the old languages. Bookkeeping, commercial arithmetic, applied mathematics, physics, chemistry, technical drawing and physical exercises were also offered from now on. In addition, Kuithan attached a high school for girls to the grammar school.

In 1808 Kuithan married Henriette Fabricius, daughter of a cloth manufacturer from Burscheid, who was related to the Mallinckrodt and Meininghaus families . The marriage remained childless.

Kuithan's school reforms met with considerable opposition from the Prussian government. This insisted on learning the ancient languages ​​and threatened several times with demoting the Dortmund high school to a middle school. She also attempted to standardize the grammar school system in Westphalia more strongly. Kuithan defended himself against both and also publicly acknowledged his school reform convictions, for example in newspaper articles. His backing in the Dortmund population forced the Prussian government to come to terms with them. The reforms were only abandoned under his successor Bernhard Thiersch. During Kuithan's tenure, the number of students increased to around 160, which is still a manageable number. Kuithan's students included the revolutionary Alexis Heintzmann , the Paulskirche MPs Ludwig Franz Houben , Eduard Hülsmann , Carl Overweg , Julius and Carl Wiethaus as well as the industrialists Friedrich Wilhelm Müser and Gustav Mallinckrodt .

In terms of linguistics, Kuithan put forward the thesis that Westphalian Platt was a pre-Homeric language and that German and Greek would correspond perfectly to one another in lexical terms. These views met with rejection from contemporaries. However, one of his readers was Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , with whom he was in correspondence.

Johann Wilhelm Kuithan died on December 16, 1831 at the age of 71 in Dortmund. His widow set up the Kuithan's Legate, a foundation that financed school fees for poorer townspeople. The city of Dortmund has named a street after him.

Works

  • Johann Wilhelm Kuithan: An attempt to prove that we have original comedies in Pindar's victory hymns, which were sung at banquets, and new basic ideas in Greek prosody . Mallinckrodt, Dortmund 1808.
  • Johann Wilhelm Kuithan: The Teutons and Greeks, one language, one people, a resurrected story . Schultz and Wundermann, Hamm 1822.
  • Johann Wilhelm Kuithan: Some samples from the resurrection of the Greek and Latin languages ​​in Germany . Nedelmann, Dortmund 1825 (program of the Dortmund high school).

literature

Web links

Wikisource: Johann Wilhelm Kuithan  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Werner Sarholz: Kuithan, Johann Wilhelm . In: Hans Bohrmann (Ed.): Biographies of important Dortmunders. People in, from and for Dortmund . tape 3 . Klartext, Essen 2001, ISBN 3-88474-954-4 , p. 124 ff .
personal data
SURNAME Kuithan, Johann Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Prussian school reformer
DATE OF BIRTH February 3, 1760
PLACE OF BIRTH Dortmund
DATE OF DEATH December 16, 1831
Place of death Dortmund