Martin Basedow

Martin Basedow

Martin Peter Friedrich Basedow (born September 22, 1829 in Dreckharburg , Lower Saxony , † March 12, 1902 in Adelaide , South Australia ) was a school teacher and head , education minister , journalist and newspaper publisher .

Life

Martin Basedow was the son of Christian Friedrich Basedow, a teacher, and his wife Helena Catherine. He was trained by his father and at the grammar school in Winsen . As a teacher he taught in Vierlande near Hamburg . Basedow was dissatisfied with his income as a teacher and hoped for an improvement by emigrating to Australia. He cast off with the 500-ton barque Pauline on November 21, 1847 in Bremen and arrived on March 31, 1848 in Adelaide in South Australia.

In 1852 he married Johanna Maria Kiesewetter in Tanunda. In 1856 his parents and seven brothers and sisters also came to South Australia. When his first wife died in 1867, he married the widow Anna Clara Helena Schrader († 1921) on February 8, 1868. Basedow had eleven children. Herbert Basedow , one of his children, became a well-known geologist and anthropologist in Australia . When Martin Basedow died in 1902, he left a fortune of £ 14,000.

Journalist and newspaper editor

In 1863 Basedow founded the Tanunda Deutsche Zeitung . For several years he was co-owner and accounting officer of the Süd-Australian Zeitung . In 1870 he gave this newspaper a new name with the Australian German newspaper . In 1874 he moved to Adelaide. There he and his father-in-law Carl Mücke published this newspaper, associated with the regional newspaper Süd-Australische Zeitung . This newspaper in turn was renamed the Australian newspaper in 1875 , at that time the only German-language magazine in South Australia.

Teachers and educators

After his arrival in South Australia Basedow only found a job as a helper on a farm in the Murray River region . On August 5, 1850, his application for immigration was approved and in the same year he opened a school of Lutheran faith in Tanunda . In 1852 he was recognized as a teacher and received an annual salary of £ 100 from the colonial school administration. He had a total of eight students in one class. His school received great recognition from the responsible school inspector and was recognized as the best German school in South Australia. When he left school in 1864, he received an official commendation.

From 1865 he was appointed justice of the peace and from 1864 to 1876 chairman of the Tanduna District Council . 1864-1876 Basedow represented the constituency of Barossa in the lower house of South Australia. In 1868, Basedow became a member of a committee that had the task of formulating a school law for South Australia. He propagated ideas in school education that were unusual at the time: school attendance must be free of charge, compulsory for everyone, broad in terms of content, human and moral. His journalistic and parliamentary experience helped him spread his performance. His views, particularly in education policy, were widely recognized and he was Minister of Education from March 10, 1881 to June 24, 1881. Martin Basedow strove to improve the status and pay of teachers, which in his opinion would lead to greater educational success. He considered the memorization practiced at the time to be counterproductive. He propagated his idea of lifelong learning . The poor qualification of the teaching staff would also be to blame for the poor quality of the training. He also attacked the prevailing idea that raising working class children was a public waste of money. In 1879 he had submitted an amendment to the law that led to the establishment of Roseworthy Agricultural College in 1883 , now a department at Adelaide University . He was the only parliamentary member on the Commission for the Development of Education Laws, which had been set up in 1881. Basedow was a member of the education committee from 1887, which had the task of regulating technical training. In 1890 Martin Basedow visited Europe. In 1891 he presented South Australia on the occasion of the Universal Postal Union Congress in Vienna, which dealt with parcel ships . In 1893 he returned to Australia and was elected to the Legislative Council from 1894 to 1900 for the constituency of the North Eastern District . In the parliaments, he advocated the social regulations developed in Germany that applied to those affected in the event of illness, after an accident, in the event of disability and for adequate old-age insurance. His work Lectures Workers' Insurance was published in Adelaide in 1899. With this he tried to spread his ideas further. He did not stand for election in 1900 because he campaigned for the Boers and not for the English in the Second Boer War . This had made him unpopular with the public.

He campaigned for the preservation of German culture in South Australia, was president and administrator of the German Association, now known as Adelaide German Club in Adelaide. He has also held several positions as a director in private and public institutions in Adelaide.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Ian Harmstorf: Martin Peter Friedrich Basedow (1829–1902) , on adb.anu.ede.com. Retrieved November 2, 2017
2. ↑ Barque Pauline , on theshipslist.com. Retrieved November 2, 2017
3. ↑ Ministers controlling education in SA: Martin Peter F. Basedow {B 6725/8} , at collections.slsa.sa.gov.au. Retrieved November 2, 2017
4. ^ Roseworthy Agricultural College , at University of Adelaide. Retrieved November 7, 2017