Karl Mager

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Karl Wilhelm Eduard Mager (born January 1, 1810 in Gräfrath , † June 10, 1858 in Wiesbaden ) was an important German school teacher and school politician in the 1840s. He was also a literary and linguist . Mager is significant for social pedagogy because he was the first to use the term “social pedagogy”. Coming from the Hegelian school of thought, Mager is now mostly attributed to Herbartianism .

Life

Karl Mager was born the son of a tailor . At school, the boy, who came from a poor family, was noticed by his teacher, who from then on gave him special lessons. Another teacher later prepared him for the exam for admission to a grammar school in Düsseldorf . In 1828 he began studying natural sciences, philology and philosophy at the University of Bonn , where he met Alexander von Humboldt , who took him on his trip to Russia in 1829 . In 1830 he continued his studies of history and Romance studies in Paris , where he attended courses with François Guizot , among other things . In Berlin he finished his studies in 1834 with a state examination as a grammar school teacher, presumably with a dissertation “De nova piscium distributione”, which has however been lost.

In 1833 Mager took a position as private tutor in Mecklenburg for a year ; in the meantime his first work, Attempt at a History and Characteristic of French National Literature , has appeared, which makes him known among scholars. In 1835 he became a teacher at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Gymnasium in Berlin, which was headed by August Spilleke and was a humanistic high school with a secondary school and a secondary school for girls. In 1837 Mager received a professorship for the German language at the Collège in Geneva and moved to Switzerland. As early as 1838 he applied for dismissal, but failed to take over the chair of philosophy at the University of Lausanne because he was mistakenly viewed as a categorical Hegelian . In 1839 he was given the title of Education Council; In 1840 he received membership in the Frankfurt Scholars' Association for the German Language and in the Academy of Charitable Sciences in Erfurt. In 1842 Mager became a professor of French at the canton school in Aarau. He resigned from this school office in 1844 after his marriage to Mathilde von Heldreich and moved to the vicinity of Zurich .

In 1846 and 1847 Mager took part in various teachers' meetings, including a. in Gotha , and in 1848 became director of the community school in Eisenach - today's Ernst-Abbe-Gymnasium (Eisenach) , inspector of the teachers ' college in Weimar and advisor to the school ministry. One of his co-workers wrote about him: “He had his extensive, learned knowledge [...] with the greatest ease and security, had an excellent memory, great skill in combining together with a good dose of humor. This gave his character a certain originality, which made his lessons doubly attractive. ”In 1852, however, he had to give up school work for health reasons, moved to Dresden in 1854 and in 1856 for a cure in Wiesbaden, where he died in 1858 of a spinal cord disease Suffered for 20 years, which eventually led to paralysis.

Services

Lager's importance for pedagogy is manifold: the foundation of the didactic principle “genetic method” goes back to him. To the systematics of the pedagogy he contributed the principle "relative pedagogy" in contrast to general pedagogy . In 1844 he coined the term "social pedagogy" ( social pedagogy ) as a synthesis of individual pedagogy and state or collective pedagogy . Mager is considered to be a main representative of the community schools - especially with his writing: Die deutsche Bürgererschule (1840) - and therefore a founder of the secondary school system . As a political educator, he fought vigorously for the principle of "self-government" and, accordingly, for state-free schools. From 1840 to 1848 Mager published the journal Pedagogical Revue , which he founded and which was distributed throughout Europe .

“The citizen schools, yes the elementary schools, are as good as the grammar schools; however qualitatively and quantitatively the education that the grammar school achieves may be different from that which the community and elementary school produces: the intelligence of the pupils is the same in all these schools, there is no pariah and should not exist. "

- Karl Mager (1858)

Works

literature

  • Ernst Susemihl (review): KWE Mager: An attempt at a history and characteristics of the French national literature. Along with numerous handwriting samples. Second. Fourth volume, Berlin, 1837, from K. Heymann . In: Halle yearbooks for German science and art . No. 111, May 9, 1838, columns 886-888.
  • Wilhelm Langbein:  Mager, Dr. Karl . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 20, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1884, pp. 57-59.
  • Josef Boesch: Karl Mager (1810-1858) . In: Argovia , annual journal of the Historical Society of the Canton of Aargau, Vol. 68–69, 1958, pp. 507–508 ( digitized version ).
  • Heinrich Kronen: The principle of genesis and the genetic method in pedagogy, didactics, scholasticism (school theory) with Karl Wilhelm Eduard Mager . Ratingen / Düsseldorf 1968
  • Heinrich Kronen: Social Pedagogy. History and meaning of the term . Frankfurt / Main 1980
  • Heinrich Kronen: Who does the school belong to? Karl Magers liberal school theory . Frankfurt / Main 1981
  • Heinrich Kronen:  Skinny, Karl. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 15, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-428-00196-6 , p. 652 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Carsten Müller: Social pedagogy as education for democracy. A conceptual historical draft theory. Bad Heilbrunn 2005
  • Carsten Müller, Heinrich Kronen (Ed.): Social pedagogy according to Karl Mager - sources and discussion . Bad Heilbrunn 2010: Klinkhardt.
  • Robert Weßler: Karl Mager and his structural theory of the educational system . Marburg / Lahn 1968.

Archival material

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Heinz Rosenthal : Solingen. History of a city . Walter Braun Publishing House. Duisburg 1975. Volume 3
  2. uni-due.de (PDF; 40 kB)