Joseph Lakanal

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Joseph Lakanal General Commissioner in Mainz

Joseph Lakanal (born July 14, 1762 in Serres-sur-Arget , Ariège department , † February 14, 1845 in Paris ) was a French politician . He reformed the school system sustainably.

Life

David d'Angers  : Lakanal (1839).

Lakanal was a professor of first rhetoric and later philosophy with the Doctrinaires ( Pères de la Doctrine Chrétienne ) in various cities in France before joining the French Revolution . There he was a deputy for the department of Ariege in the National Convention , where he joined the Montagnards belonged, and voted for the execution of Louis XVI.

As a member of the Comité de l'Instruction publique (de: Committee for Public Education ) of the National Convention, Lakanal was involved in the publication of a report on the state military schools and described the corresponding institution in Paris as “one of the most obnoxious monuments of despotism to arrogance and raised vanity ”. It can also be traced back to one of his reports that on July 19, 1794 the National Convention legally established the property rights of authors, composers, painters and draftsmen to their works; he himself induced Claude Chappe , the inventor of the telegraph , to hand over the title of engineer as lieutenant of the pioneers.

Education politician

Posterity owes him the preservation of the Jardin des Plantes , which he had reorganized in 1793 under the name Muséum national d'histoire naturelle . At his proposal - Projet d'éducation nationale - the National Convention decided on November 18, 1794 to found 24,000 primary schools to improve public education and reduce the illiteracy rate. In 1795 he let the convention vote on the organization of the Écoles normales (high school for teachers) and a national educational project. In this context he developed an idea that is still used today in the French education debate as an argument for the essential value of education in relation to social progress: “Only analysis is able to recreate understanding and spread its methodology will destroy the inequality of knowledge. "

He also reported to the convention on the creation of an École publique des langues orientales vivantes (de: public school of the living languages ​​of the Orient ).

Re-elected to the Council of Five Hundred , Lakanal worked out the basic rules for the establishment of a national institute, from which the Institut de France would later emerge, and proposed a list of people who were to constitute the core of the staff of this institute members to be elected. This science corps should have three areas: the first dealt with scientific physics and mathematics , the second with political science and philosophy, and the third with literature and the fine arts. After its establishment, Lakanal was elected as a member of the second area and became the secretary of that area.

General Commissioner in the East of the Republic

After being elected twice in a row by Seine-et-Oise as a member of parliament, he refused the office in 1798. A year later he was sent to Mainz in the role of government commissioner in order to reorganize the new departments that had been added to France as a result of the First Coalition War . In 1799 he handed over the office of police chief to Mathias Metternich , who from June 1799, together with Lakanal's private secretary Jean Dagobert d'Aigrefeuille , also became head of a denunciation office of the French administration.

In the First Empire

The coup d'état of 18th Brumaire VIII put an end to his further activities in the Cisrhenan Republic . Bonaparte himself ordered the passionate republican to be recalled. In the First Empire he accepted a teaching position at the chair for ancient languages ​​at the École centrale , today Lycée Charlemagne , in the rue Saint-Antoine and taught at the Lycee Bonaparte as an economist. Finally, in 1809, he took over the post of inspector of weights and measures, while at the same time he was working on an edition of the works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and a treatise on political economy.

emigration

Lakanal's grave / Père Lachaise

As part of the restoration , he emigrated to America, where after wandering around he became President of the University of Louisiana in New Orleans before settling as a farmer in Alabama . There several hundred refugees from Santo Domingo , led by two ex-generals of Napoleon Bonaparte , founded the Vine and Olive Colony in 1817 and received 320 square kilometers from the US government for this purpose. The settlers very quickly gave up olive and wine cultivation in favor of cotton production and made history as some of the first cotton planters in the USA.

After the July Revolution of 1830 in France, Lakanal waited three years for the political situation to stabilize before returning to Paris, where he was given a seat in the Académie des sciences morales et politiques .

Lakanal finally died on February 14, 1845 in Paris, leaving his young wife and her young child in poor circumstances despite his long career, and was buried in the Père Lachaise cemetery. His grave in the 11th section is a free concession on the instructions of the prefect dated February 16, 1847.

Saint-Alvère Castle

The castle of Saint-Alvère, only restored in 1780, was burned down during the Revolution by Joseph Lakanal when it was in the possession of the Lostanges family.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Anna Bütikofer: State and Knowledge Origins of the Modern Swiss Education System in the Discourse of the Helvetic Republic (Prisma; Vol. 1). Haupt, Bern 2006, ISBN 3-258-06941-7 (also dissertation, University of Bern 2004).
  2. ^ Susanne Lachenicht : Information and Propaganda. The press of German Jacobins in Alsace, 1791–1800 (Ancien Régime, Enlightenment and Revolution; Vol. 37). Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-486-56816-7 , pp. 116 and 481 (plus dissertation, University of Heidelberg 2002).
  3. ^ Karl Georg Bockenheimer : History of the city of Mainz during the second French rule (1789-1814) . Verlag Florian Kupferberg, Mainz 1890, p. 93.
  4. ↑ under the pseudonym Marcus
  5. ↑ A history of the French school system from the eve of the French Revolution to 1968. The school system is analyzed with regard to the respective social conditions and taking into account the reform ideas of contemporary theorists. The theories and plans of Rousseau , Bouquier , Joseph Lakanal, Fourcroy , Saint-Simon , Auguste Comte , Émile Durkheim and Alain Savary are examined more closely .
personal data
SURNAME Lakanal, Joseph
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French politician (Comité de l'Instruction publique)
DATE OF BIRTH July 14, 1762
PLACE OF BIRTH Serres-sur-Arget in the Ariège department
DATE OF DEATH February 14, 1845
Place of death Paris