From 'Reminiscences of Friedrich Froebel,' by Baroness B. von
Marenholtz-Buelow. Copyright 1877, by Mary Mann. Reprinted by
permission of Lee & Shepard, publishers, Boston.
All that does not grow out of one's inner being, all that is not one's
own original feeling and thought, or that at least does not awaken
that, oppresses and defaces the individuality of man instead of
calling it forth, and nature becomes thereby a caricature. Shall we
never cease to stamp human nature, even in childhood, like coins? to
overlay it with foreign images and foreign superscriptions, instead of
letting it develop itself and grow into form according to the law of
life planted in it by God the Father, so that it may be able to bear
the stamp of the Divine, and become an image of God?...
This theory of love is to serve as the highest goal and polestar of
human education, and must be attended to in the germ of humanity, the
child, and truly in his very first impulses. The conquest of
self-seeking _egoism_ is the most important task of education; for
selfishness isolates the individual from all communion, and kills the
life-giving principle of love. Therefore the first object of education
is to teach to love, to break up the egoism of the individual, and to
lead him from the first stage of communion in the family through all
the following stages of social life to the love of humanity, or to the
highest self-conquest by which man rises to Divine unity....
Women are to recognize that childhood and womanliness (the care of
childhood and the life of women) are inseparably connected; that they
form a unit; and that God and nature have placed the protection of the
human plant in their hands. Hitherto the female sex could take only a
more or less passive part in human history, because great battles and
the political organization of nations were not suited to their powers.
But at the present stage of culture, nothing is more pressingly
required than the cultivation of every human power for the arts of
peace and the work of higher civilization. The culture of individuals,
and therefore of the whole nation, depends in great part upon the
earliest care of childhood. On that account women, as one half of
mankind, have to undertake the most important part of the problems of
the time, problems that men are not able to solve. If but one half of
the work be accomplished, then our epoch, like all others, will fail
to reach the appointed goal. As educators of mankind, the women of the
present time have the highest duty to perform, while hitherto they
have been scarcely more than the beloved mothers of human beings....
But I will protect childhood, that it may not as in earlier
generations be pinioned, as in a strait-jacket, in garments of custom
and ancient prescription that have become too narrow for the new time.
I shall show the way and shape the means, that every human soul may
grow of itself, out of its own individuality. But where shall I find
allies and helpers if not in women, who as mothers and teachers may
put my idea in execution? Only intellectually active women can and
will do it. But if these are to be loaded with the ballast of dead
knowledge that can take no root in the unprepared ground, if the
fountains of their own original life are to be choked up with it, they
will not follow my direction nor understand the call of the time for
the new task of their sex, but will seek satisfaction in empty
superficiality.
To learn to comprehend nature in the child,--is not that to comprehend
one's own nature and the nature of mankind? And in this comprehension
is there not involved a certain degree of comprehension of all things
else? Women cannot learn and take into themselves anything higher and
more comprehensive. It should therefore at least be the beginning,
and the love of childhood should be awakened in the mind (and in a
wider sense, this is the love of humanity), so that a new, free
generation of men can grow up by right care.