Wilhelm Benjamin Gautzsch

Wilhelm Benjamin Gautzsch (born February 15, 1771 in Hoya , Hanover ; † October 14, 1835 in Leiden , Holland ) was a Swiss-German educator who also worked in Italy and the Netherlands .

Life

His parents were the Lutheran superintendent Dr. Friedrich Benjamin Gautzsch (1731–1789) and the consistorial councilor Hedwig Maria Ribow. Gautzsch studied 1790-1792 in Helmstedt theology . In 1792 he taught at Pastor Christian Rudolf Karl Wichmann's (1744–1800) educational institution in Celle , and later in Göttingen .

Cantonal school teacher in Aarau and Chur

Aarau, view from Hungerberg (approx. 1820).

In 1800 Gautzsch became a teacher of history and geography at the upper boys' school in Aarau , where the Helvetic Republic had been declared two years earlier . At the same time he was an actuary of the city school and later the canton school commission. In 1801/02 Andreas Moser and Christian Würsten introduced the teaching method of Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi at the city schools . Gautzsch reported on this to the municipality and the community chamber , calling the method “one of the most excellent means of improving elementary education”.

He also taught geography, history and Latin at the canton school , which opened in 1802 . To this end, he taught the numerous Vaudois students the German language. On the occasion of the opening of the institute, the President of the Cantonal Schools Commission (teachers' conference), Georg Franz Hofmann , said in connection with Gautzsch's "geographic, historical and state teaching" that the spirit of the times, which Switzerland could not escape, demanded about the Beyond the limits, a “rapprochement and similarization of people”. Gautzsch and his fellow teachers campaigned for the Deist Moser when he became the target of a smear campaign in the run-up to the counter-revolution of 1802 ( Stecklikkrieg ).

Pastor Peter Saluz, founder of the canton school in Chur.

The poet Franz Xaver Bronner , who came to Aarau in 1803 as a supervisor in a boarding school for cantonal students, describes Gautzsch as a “tall, good-natured man, very diligent in his profession”. When in 1804 a compatriot von Gautzsch, the new humanist Ernst August Evers , became rector of the cantonal school, the mathematician Johann Christian Martin Bartels as well as Gautzsch and Hofmann left Aarau. According to Bronner, they believed "to know the limitations of the Low German Magister, who mostly had little knowledge other than their Greek and Latin school books, and did not want to be subordinate to such a school master".

In the same year Gautzsch was employed at the newly opened Protestant canton school in Chur , where he taught Latin, Greek and French, and later also German, history and geography. Bartels, who married the daughter of Chur rector Peter Saluz (1758–1808) in 1802, probably brokered this position . Gautzsch is likely to have propagated Pestalozzi's method in Chur. He stayed in contact with his institute in Yverdon by name through the Hofmann who worked there. Together with Saluz, he planned to add an elementary class to the canton school. After Saluz's death, he published his biography. In 1810 he achieved that Pestalozzi trained the Graubünden mathematician Christian Tester (1784–1855) to be a teacher.

Private tutor, field chaplain, translator, editor

Swiss mercenaries
in the United Kingdom.

In 1814 the new humanist Luzius Hold (1778–1752) from Arosa , who had helped Evers to expel the Pestalozzians from Aarau, became rector of the canton school in Chur. Gautzsch appears to have been expelled by Hold for the second time, although he had received citizenship of the Canton of Graubünden in 1816 . In 1817 he went to Bergamo as a private tutor , where there was a small Reformed church. But he got into financial difficulties there.

Now Gautzsch remembered his training as a theologian. In 1819 he was accepted into the Rhaetian (Graubünden) synod . 1820-1830 he served as a field chaplain in the Bündner Regiment speaker in the United Netherlands. In retirement in 1833 he translated a one-sided negative account of the French Revolution by Guillaume Antoine Benoît, baron Capelle, a former minister of Charles X. In the same year he became honorary lecturer for High German and Italian at the University of Leiden - an office he did could not practice much longer.

Works

Peace song dedicated to school youth. (Aarau) 1801.
Solemnity speech on Mayen train , given by Friedrich Pfleger and Karl Pfleger, pupils (...) Aarau 1801.
Biography of the blessed professor and pastor P. Salutz. In: The new collector, 4th year, Chur 1808, pp. 289–324; Separate print: Bregenz 1809; Reprint: Bündner Monatsblatt, 1954, pp. 289–312.
Sermon, delivered on August 24th, 1826, on the anniversaries of His Majesty the King of the Netherlands, Wilhelm I 2nd, revised edition, Hague 1831.
Words of true homage. His Majesty the King of the Netherlands, William I, at most of the same birthdays, the 24 ^th August 1832. reverently consecrated by WB Gautzsch, Gewesenem chaplain of the Swiss Regiment n °. 31. Hague. (Poem.)
On the origin and progress of the revolutionary spirit, by a former minister of the King of France. Hague 1833. (Translation by Guillaume Antoine Benoît, baron Capelle: De l'origine et des progrès de l'esprit révolutionnaire. Par un ancien ministre du Roi de France. La Haye 1833.)

literature

Christian Roedel: Pestalozzi and Graubünden. PG Keller, Winterthur: 1960.

Web links

Jaarboekje voor geschiedenis en oudheidkunde van Leiden on Omstreken 1973 (Dutch) p. 109

References and comments

↑ Gautzsch's father published, among other things, the poems The Creation, Bremen 1767, and The Birth of the Redeemer, Bremen 1769.
↑ Roedel, p. 143.
^ Feyerliche opening of the canton school in Aarau. Promoted to print by the new literary society in Aarau. 1802, p. 24.
↑ Roedel, p. 142.
↑ Bartels, like Gautzsch, came to Aarau in 1800.
^ Franz Xaver Bronner: The canton of Aargau. Volume 2, St. Gallen / Bern 1844, p. 14.
↑ 1802/03 no less than 18 Graubünden citizens entered the canton school in Aarau. (Roedel, p. 145 / note 56.)
↑ Compare the review by Karl Heinrich Ludwig Pölitz in: Jahrbücher der Geschichte und Staatskunst (Leipzig), 7 (1834), 1st volume, pp. 59–75.
^ Theodorus Josephus Meyer: Lectors in de modern letteren te Leiden (lecturers in modern languages in Leiden). In: Jaarboekje voor geschiedenis en oudheidkunde van Leiden en omstreken (Yearbook for the history and antiquity of Leiden and the surrounding area), 65 (1973), p. 99–116, here: p. 108 f.
↑ To the Peace of Lunéville .
^ Sons of pastor Johann Jakob Pfleger, who organized the smear campaign against Moser the following year.

personal data
SURNAME	Gautzsch, Wilhelm Benjamin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Swiss-German educator
DATE OF BIRTH	February 15, 1771
PLACE OF BIRTH	Hoya , Hanover
DATE OF DEATH	October 14, 1835
Place of death	Leiden , Holland

[1] Gautzsch's father published, among other things, the poems The Creation, Bremen 1767, and The Birth of the Redeemer, Bremen 1769.

[2] Roedel, p. 143.

[3] Feyerliche opening of the canton school in Aarau. Promoted to print by the new literary society in Aarau. 1802, p. 24.

[4] Roedel, p. 142.

[5] Bartels, like Gautzsch, came to Aarau in 1800.

[6] Franz Xaver Bronner: The canton of Aargau. Volume 2, St. Gallen / Bern 1844, p. 14.

[7] 1802/03 no less than 18 Graubünden citizens entered the canton school in Aarau. (Roedel, p. 145 / note 56.)

[8] Compare the review by Karl Heinrich Ludwig Pölitz in: Jahrbücher der Geschichte und Staatskunst (Leipzig), 7 (1834), 1st volume, pp. 59–75.

[9] Theodorus Josephus Meyer: Lectors in de modern letteren te Leiden (lecturers in modern languages in Leiden). In: Jaarboekje voor geschiedenis en oudheidkunde van Leiden en omstreken (Yearbook for the history and antiquity of Leiden and the surrounding area), 65 (1973), p. 99–116, here: p. 108 f.

[10] To the Peace of Lunéville .

[11] Sons of pastor Johann Jakob Pfleger, who organized the smear campaign against Moser the following year.