Otto Jäger (pedagogue)

Commemorative plaque on Otto Jäger's birthplace, the rectory in Bürg

Otto Jäger , also Otto Heinrich Jaeger (born June 10, 1828 in Bürg ; † August 17, 1912 in Kirchberg an der Jagst ), was a German educator and philosopher .

Life

Otto Jäger, brother of Gustav , son of pastor Karl Friedrich Jaeger , who is known as a local historian , studied philosophy , philology and history at the University of Tübingen , where he won a prize with the book The Gymnastics of the Hellenes . In 1854, on Hermann Köchly's call, he became a gymnastics teacher at the Cantonal School in Zurich and in 1856 he was also professor of philosophy and education at the University of Zurich . His main work was a 700-page doctrine of freedom (1859).

From 1862 he was head of the gymnastics teacher training institute in Stuttgart . As such, he represented a peculiar way of doing school gymnastics that was introduced in Württemberg , with which he sought to put it even more directly into the service of "education for military ability". Their peculiarity consisted in the almost exclusive care of the order and calisthenics to be carried out without equipment or only with the iron rod introduced by Jäger; he vehemently fought against the then common apparatus gymnastics of the "gymnastics father" Friedrich Ludwig Jahn .

In his other smaller writings, which are increasingly difficult to understand due to idiosyncratic language, he advocated a natural, toughening upbringing, for “standing work” and “walking relaxation”.

Works

• The gymnastics of the Greeks . Weychardt, Esslingen 1850; New processing: Heitz, Stuttgart 1881
• The doctrine of freedom as a system of philosophy . Orell Füssli, Zurich 1859
• Gymnastics school for German youth , Leipzig 1864
• New gymnastics school . Bonz, Stuttgart 1876
• The standing work. National education question in 70 sentences from life . Henninger, Heilbronn 1879
• Hercules at the Crossroads , 1880
• The anti-Rembrandt. Bismarck as an educator . Schwalbe, Gotha 1891

literature

• Herbert Witzenmann : Otto Heinrich Jaeger's doctrine of freedom . Spicker, Dornach 1981, ISBN 3-85704-166-8
• Michael Krüger : Otto Heinrich Jaeger - the "Rothstein of the South". On the debate about the Jaeger military gymnastics in Württemberg . In: Sportwissenschaft , 19/2 (1989), pp. 172-193, ISSN  0342-2380

Web links

• Overview of lectures by Otto Jäger (teacher) at the University of Zurich (summer semester 1855 to winter semester 1861)