Quaker community of Minden
In the 19th century, the Quaker community of Minden in the East Westphalian city of Minden in North Rhine-Westphalia was an important base for the Quaker community in Germany.
History of the Quaker School
From around 1796 there was one of the few German Quaker communities in Minden. She repeatedly came into conflict with the authorities, initially because of an unapproved meeting house, later because of the compulsory schooling for children. Initially, the Quakers were pressured for homeschooling their children rather than sending them to school. Thereupon they founded one of the few Quaker schools that should ever arise on German soil, largely financed by Anglo-American and British Quakers.
The Napoleonic Wars and the Wars of Liberation brought the Quakers to the brink of ruin. Their school lessons came to a temporary standstill in 1813 because the children had to be brought to work in order to ensure the bare survival of the families.
Schools were not resumed in Minden until 1821. In the meantime, the children were taught together with those of the Quaker community in Friedensthal near Bad Pyrmont . For this, approval was obtained from the Royal Prussian government commission. The Quakers were expressly forbidden to teach children of non-Quakers.
From 1815, repeated complaints from the Lutheran preacher and teacher Maximilian Linkmeyer led to conflicts with the government. He described the Quaker School as "Winkelschule nonsense" because these children of Lutheran parents taught at their request. Linkmeyer's fear that he would miss out on school fees in this way was void, since the Lutheran parents had to pay school fees even though the children did not attend Lutheran school. The Lutheran school they did not attend was also billed for the Quaker children. In contrast to the Lutherans, however, the parents refused to pay. This led to compulsory seizures with even higher fees. Linkmeyer also feared converting Lutherans.
In 1818 the forced closure was finally ordered. When the Quaker headmaster continued to teach anyway, he was punished with fines and imprisonment. This happened at the decisive instigation of the Lutheran preacher Georg Hanff in his function as the Prussian consistorial and school council of the government in Minden. He was the founder of the forerunner of the royal school in Minden, which still exists today, so that a certain self-interest can be assumed.
Even when school operations resumed in 1821, there was no peace. This time the argument ignited because of the alleged lack of qualification of the teaching staff. The teacher Christian Schelp now also taught in English, but could not prove an exam in the subjects "Singing", "Organ playing" and "Lutheran doctrine"; which was not surprising since Quakers dislike singing like organ playing. The conflict between the school board and the school over its admission dragged on for almost 30 years, until the preacher Hermann Ohly, known for his negative attitude towards the Quakers, unsuccessfully sued the headmaster in court in 1857, and in 1858 he received official permission to run the " Minden Quaker Private School ”.
In the 1870s the school was closed due to a lack of students. As a result of the awakening movement that spread in the Mindener Land and acted as competition , but also due to community exclusions and increasing emigration, the community lost more and more members and died at the end of the 19th century. Today there is no longer a Quaker community in Minden. The Quaker cemetery is only located on Kuckuckstraße.
literature
- Claus Bernet : The history of the Quaker community of Minden. Part 1: From its founding in 1796 to the middle of the 19th century. In: Westphalian research . 60, 2010, pp. 503-527; Part 2: From the middle of the 19th century to its self-dissolution in 1898. 61, 2011, OCLC 829793600 , pp. 445-470.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Claus Bernet: Paedagogica Quakeriana. In: Westfälische Zeitschrift , Association for the History and Antiquity of Westphalia. 159 Volume, 2009, pp. 286-297.
- ↑ Homepage: Cemeteries in Minden. In: bestattungswesen-minden.de, accessed on November 16, 2014.