Education
"Why do we go to school?--We go to school so that somebody can examine us!--And why do they examine us?--In order that we may fail." Moritz
(Wedekind The Awakening of Spring)
(Wedekind The Awakening of Spring)
Despite its bleak portrayal in Spring Awakening, and the hatred of its students, the German education system in the 19th century was considered one of the best in Europe. Prussia’s illiteracy rate in 1871 was only 12%. An American that observed the German system claimed that German schools were superior to American schools in almost every way. German schools were state sponsored and enforced a strict attendance policy, making it nearly impossible for students to miss school barring grave illness or death. As long as a boy stayed in school until he was at least 16 years old, he would only have to serve one compulsory year in the German military. Most boys like those in Spring Awakening would have spent many more years in school studying in the Gymnasium, a secondary school focused on preparing its students for college. Only about 8% of German boys went on to secondary education after elementary school. After that, only 1-2% would receive their diploma from schools that prepared students to continue on in college. This meant middle and upper class children did not mix with lower class children in schools. A boy could enter university after passing the Abitur exam, which could only be taken after eight years of secondary education. This was later replaced with the class system. If a boy failed a class they could repeat that class. However, repeating entire years’, like Moritz, was also common. Following the timeline in the play, these exams took place in the spring. By the end of the 19th century the average graduation age was around 20 years old. All of this helped shape the school system as one of the main bureaucratic institutions holding the children of Spring Awakening within its death grip. Such a system left no room for personal expression or dissent of any kind, furthering the constrained anxiety teens like those in the play were likely to feel.
The Gymnasiums emphasized a classical education—including Latin, Greek, and much memorization. This is evident in Spring Awakening when the boys recite a Latin translation of the Aenid before and during “All That’s Known.” Subjects such as math and science were also included in the curriculum. Reformers claimed the classical style of education made it too important to learn “great quantities of dead material.” As Melchoir sings, “All they say is ‘trust in what is written.’” The fact that the line is in a song tells us that this feeling should resonate today. Yet, the repression the boys of Spring Awakening faced is on a level that can be harder for students today to understand. After all, today we see more students upset from the idea that their teacher will not simply hand them a good grade in exchange for showing up to class. Conversely, Spring Awakening sees Melchoir attempting to fight for access to more information. While school is the main setting of Spring Awakening, the real education is happening outside of the schoolroom. Instead, school acts as a barrier to our characters getting the knowledge they need. Schools today can feel like this, especially with abstinence only education, but they pale comparison to the restrictions adolescents in the 19th century would have faced. After all, most schools aren’t actively attempting to keep students ignorant of such things. Additionally, with today’s digital culture, most teens aren’t sheltered from such information at all.
Not everyone was blind to the drawbacks of the German education system. However, the criticism did not address some of the most soul crushing aspects. Reformer Gustav Siegbert encouraged a need for more individualized attention in the classroom and smaller class sizes. Those like Siegbert also claimed that more time needed to be made for physical activity. Unfortunately, many of the things that German school reformers criticized about German institutions at the end of the 19th century are becoming very contemporary problems in the American school systems. Test performance continues to be emphasized with national education programs such as No Child Left Behind. Class sizes are rising. The arts, clubs, and other programs deemed “extra” continue to be cut. In 19th century Germany reformers seemed to be most worried about the inclusion of physical activity in day. While at the time it was seen as a way to calm the mind, and hormones, today it ties in with the very real obesity epidemic, even as some schools are being forced to cut P.E. from their budgets. The reforms Siegbert called for a little over two-hundred years ago parallel many contemporary education critiques. The style of education featured in Spring Awakening emphasizes the control of the authority figures. It outwardly seems to promote learning, while also attempting to suppress instances of free-thinking. They use Melchoir’s essay not only to have a scapegoat to pin Moritz’ fate on, but to stop the rebellion of free thought.
The Gymnasiums emphasized a classical education—including Latin, Greek, and much memorization. This is evident in Spring Awakening when the boys recite a Latin translation of the Aenid before and during “All That’s Known.” Subjects such as math and science were also included in the curriculum. Reformers claimed the classical style of education made it too important to learn “great quantities of dead material.” As Melchoir sings, “All they say is ‘trust in what is written.’” The fact that the line is in a song tells us that this feeling should resonate today. Yet, the repression the boys of Spring Awakening faced is on a level that can be harder for students today to understand. After all, today we see more students upset from the idea that their teacher will not simply hand them a good grade in exchange for showing up to class. Conversely, Spring Awakening sees Melchoir attempting to fight for access to more information. While school is the main setting of Spring Awakening, the real education is happening outside of the schoolroom. Instead, school acts as a barrier to our characters getting the knowledge they need. Schools today can feel like this, especially with abstinence only education, but they pale comparison to the restrictions adolescents in the 19th century would have faced. After all, most schools aren’t actively attempting to keep students ignorant of such things. Additionally, with today’s digital culture, most teens aren’t sheltered from such information at all.
Not everyone was blind to the drawbacks of the German education system. However, the criticism did not address some of the most soul crushing aspects. Reformer Gustav Siegbert encouraged a need for more individualized attention in the classroom and smaller class sizes. Those like Siegbert also claimed that more time needed to be made for physical activity. Unfortunately, many of the things that German school reformers criticized about German institutions at the end of the 19th century are becoming very contemporary problems in the American school systems. Test performance continues to be emphasized with national education programs such as No Child Left Behind. Class sizes are rising. The arts, clubs, and other programs deemed “extra” continue to be cut. In 19th century Germany reformers seemed to be most worried about the inclusion of physical activity in day. While at the time it was seen as a way to calm the mind, and hormones, today it ties in with the very real obesity epidemic, even as some schools are being forced to cut P.E. from their budgets. The reforms Siegbert called for a little over two-hundred years ago parallel many contemporary education critiques. The style of education featured in Spring Awakening emphasizes the control of the authority figures. It outwardly seems to promote learning, while also attempting to suppress instances of free-thinking. They use Melchoir’s essay not only to have a scapegoat to pin Moritz’ fate on, but to stop the rebellion of free thought.
Females and Education
The girls in Spring Awakening are not ever depicted in a school. The boys as a whole are first seen in the classroom; the girls are found talking about boys, crushes, and eventual husbands. This gives a good insight into what was valued from each gender. The girls prepared for a household and family as the boys prepared for careers. However, it is important to understand how their education compares to that of the boys, especially as education, or lack of it, often defines the world of an adolescent. Girls did not have secondary schools that would prepare them for higher education until close to the 20th century. Traditionally, female education was to teach girls about religion and to build social skills rather than prepare for a career. Around the end of the 19th, early 20th century more secondary education opportunities began appearing for girls. However, girls could be completed with these secondary schools by the age of 15 or 16, compared to the 18-20 range the boys faced. Women were not often taught the same subjects as the men, including Latin, Greek, math, and sciences. Neither did they have any exams administered by the state with which they had to contend. The attendance policy was not as strict, with parents pulling girls out often and for things like family vacations. Discipline is also recorded as being less harsh. School just did not seem to play as large a role in the everyday lives of girls, or have as lasting an effect. Journals of 19th century German girls do not turn up as many accounts of school as do journals penned by their brothers.
Atmosphere and Discipline
In addition to actual education, the school functioned as a place of socialization and control for young Germans. State education was utilized in Germany, and much of Europe, as a place to teach morality. The system has been described as impersonal and bureaucratic. Boys were forced to study hard and sit exams that would determine a good deal about the rest of their lives. Additionally, an American observer said of German schools that the teachers, “seemed to exert an unhealthy dominance over the students and to use excessively harsh methods of discipline.” A report related by Gustav Siegbert, a 19th century education reformer, tells of a 10-year-old girl beaten on her naked bottom despite her protests by a school inspector. This was abuse that began early. After all, a 10-year old girl is still a primary school student, not a secondary student as Spring Awakening portrays. According to reports, this inspector also happened to be a priest. One schoolmaster is recorded bragging about giving, “911,527 strokes with the stick and 124, 000 lashes with the whip.” Although no timeframe was offered with those statistics, the numbers are still sickening.
Journals of male Gymnasium students are filled with loathing for the Gymnasium, and often antagonistic relationships with teachers. Author Thomas Mann wrote of his time in the German school system: “I detested school. I despised it as a place, criticized the manners of its authorities and found myself in a kind of literary opposition to its spirit, its discipline, its methods of training.” This is a hatred of the school environment that can be hard to understand today, this all-consuming detestation for a place where an adolescent spent most of their life. Yet these are the kinds of feelings Melchoir most likely would have had for the system. After all, he was smart enough to excel within the system, but also smart enough to realize how the system was controlling young minds.
Academic pressure was not only put on students within the classroom. This emphasis on school continued into the home. Students who did not pass were often treated as idiots by their parents. This struggle is seen in Spring Awakening as Moritz attempts to talk to his father about what it would mean if he were to fail. Moritz’ anxiety over this goes beyond fears contemporary students might face in similar situations of being grounded, or facing a parent’s disappointment. In the world of Spring Awakening the failure of a child was an ultimate cause of shame. It is not as shocking Moritz was driven to thoughts of suicide when considering this disappointment, combined with the stifling bureaucratic nature of the school system, and the corporeal punishment. Moritz was not the only German student to consider such actions. In fact, German schools faced an epidemic of suicides at the time of Spring Awakening.
Journals of male Gymnasium students are filled with loathing for the Gymnasium, and often antagonistic relationships with teachers. Author Thomas Mann wrote of his time in the German school system: “I detested school. I despised it as a place, criticized the manners of its authorities and found myself in a kind of literary opposition to its spirit, its discipline, its methods of training.” This is a hatred of the school environment that can be hard to understand today, this all-consuming detestation for a place where an adolescent spent most of their life. Yet these are the kinds of feelings Melchoir most likely would have had for the system. After all, he was smart enough to excel within the system, but also smart enough to realize how the system was controlling young minds.
Academic pressure was not only put on students within the classroom. This emphasis on school continued into the home. Students who did not pass were often treated as idiots by their parents. This struggle is seen in Spring Awakening as Moritz attempts to talk to his father about what it would mean if he were to fail. Moritz’ anxiety over this goes beyond fears contemporary students might face in similar situations of being grounded, or facing a parent’s disappointment. In the world of Spring Awakening the failure of a child was an ultimate cause of shame. It is not as shocking Moritz was driven to thoughts of suicide when considering this disappointment, combined with the stifling bureaucratic nature of the school system, and the corporeal punishment. Moritz was not the only German student to consider such actions. In fact, German schools faced an epidemic of suicides at the time of Spring Awakening.
Primary Accounts from German students
A male student of the German Gymnasium's account of his education:
"Later on, there was endless Latin, and even later, Greek. German and gymnastics were equally valued minor subjects. We had two hours of each per week; only in the higher grades was instruction in German allotted somewhat more time. I wrote many Latin verses – about peace, war, the swimming pool, the lyre, the piano – but I wouldn’t have known whether any poets lived in Germany or what kind, if I did not figure it out from the books that my father put on my mother’s desk. I was capable of calculating the surface area of an ellipse, but I did not have even a rough concept of a square kilometer or the salary of a full professor at university. We wrote Greek exams in the form of translations from German originals without a dictionary, which really constituted a particular waste of both Greek and German, because we did not have what it took for such work – basically we could not read Homer. We learned from Caesar’s De Bello Gallico about the construction of the bridge that Caesar had built for his legions over the Rhine and could name every brace and fret, but we did not know what the structure of the German Reich looked like according to the constitution. We were more familiar with the Second Messenian War than with the Second Silesian War or the Wars of Liberation [from Napoleon], because our history lessons did not include these late events. The historical and political foundations of our lives remained completely unknown to us.However, this was by no means the teachers’ fault; it had to do with the times, and I knew of no Gymnasium where the situation would have been any different. "
"Later on, there was endless Latin, and even later, Greek. German and gymnastics were equally valued minor subjects. We had two hours of each per week; only in the higher grades was instruction in German allotted somewhat more time. I wrote many Latin verses – about peace, war, the swimming pool, the lyre, the piano – but I wouldn’t have known whether any poets lived in Germany or what kind, if I did not figure it out from the books that my father put on my mother’s desk. I was capable of calculating the surface area of an ellipse, but I did not have even a rough concept of a square kilometer or the salary of a full professor at university. We wrote Greek exams in the form of translations from German originals without a dictionary, which really constituted a particular waste of both Greek and German, because we did not have what it took for such work – basically we could not read Homer. We learned from Caesar’s De Bello Gallico about the construction of the bridge that Caesar had built for his legions over the Rhine and could name every brace and fret, but we did not know what the structure of the German Reich looked like according to the constitution. We were more familiar with the Second Messenian War than with the Second Silesian War or the Wars of Liberation [from Napoleon], because our history lessons did not include these late events. The historical and political foundations of our lives remained completely unknown to us.However, this was by no means the teachers’ fault; it had to do with the times, and I knew of no Gymnasium where the situation would have been any different. "
Another boy's account of his school experience:
"To call the town’s high school “humanistic” must have been a misunderstanding, if one understood this to mean instruction with the goal of free and independent thinking and the attainment of a basic education. The “humanistic” element of this school consisted more or less in the instruction of Latin and Greek grammar. We hadn’t the slightest clue of the vitality of these languages, of language as an expression of an intellectual attitude, its logic, its poetic power, and beauty. And so Ovid, Virgil, Cicero, and Homer were nothing more than bothersome schoolwork, sentence constructions that we had to prepare laboriously with a dictionary for the next day, and which passed over us without a trace. With modern languages the situation was quite pathetic. The teachers assigned to instruct them were incapable of speaking them themselves. Hardly any of these stiff, old gentlemen had ever seen France or England, not to mention having any knowledge of French or English literature, or being able to convey to us an image of our neighboring countries. Obviously, for this remote province of Upper Silesia, these teacher-caricatures, who contented themselves each day by covering the prescribed dosage of instruction and then rushing off to their patriotic discussions in the local pub, were just good enough. If we, a small group, moved by our natural, youthful urge towards knowledge, had not taken it upon ourselves to expand our own horizons, we would have grown up like barbarians. Certainly there were better schools elsewhere in Germany. What we heard about the French high school in Berlin, about high schools in Frankfurt, Breslau, and a few other cities, aroused our envy and admiration. But I am afraid that the majority of the schools in small towns, particularly those in the eastern provinces, were more or less like ours."
"To call the town’s high school “humanistic” must have been a misunderstanding, if one understood this to mean instruction with the goal of free and independent thinking and the attainment of a basic education. The “humanistic” element of this school consisted more or less in the instruction of Latin and Greek grammar. We hadn’t the slightest clue of the vitality of these languages, of language as an expression of an intellectual attitude, its logic, its poetic power, and beauty. And so Ovid, Virgil, Cicero, and Homer were nothing more than bothersome schoolwork, sentence constructions that we had to prepare laboriously with a dictionary for the next day, and which passed over us without a trace. With modern languages the situation was quite pathetic. The teachers assigned to instruct them were incapable of speaking them themselves. Hardly any of these stiff, old gentlemen had ever seen France or England, not to mention having any knowledge of French or English literature, or being able to convey to us an image of our neighboring countries. Obviously, for this remote province of Upper Silesia, these teacher-caricatures, who contented themselves each day by covering the prescribed dosage of instruction and then rushing off to their patriotic discussions in the local pub, were just good enough. If we, a small group, moved by our natural, youthful urge towards knowledge, had not taken it upon ourselves to expand our own horizons, we would have grown up like barbarians. Certainly there were better schools elsewhere in Germany. What we heard about the French high school in Berlin, about high schools in Frankfurt, Breslau, and a few other cities, aroused our envy and admiration. But I am afraid that the majority of the schools in small towns, particularly those in the eastern provinces, were more or less like ours."
Part of a German girl's recount of her education:
"[ . . . ] What I learned in my school years [at the girls’ upper school] was minimal, even though I was considered one of the best pupils. “Spatial theory is the theory of space” – that’s how each and every physics class started out. [ . . . ] In history class, I learned and experienced only two periods: the ancient Greeks and, in later grades, the era of Frederick the Great. We acquired no picture of the world or of culture whatsoever. Similarly, I only learned some geography later on in life, at the side of my educated husband, through travels with him. In German class, we had to write essays on “The Apple Tree” and “The Grape Harvest” – I can still see the childlike images before me that were put up in front of our class. In the upper grades, dissecting Schiller’s dramas was a requirement. The only thing I retained was some knowledge in German and French grammar."
"[ . . . ] What I learned in my school years [at the girls’ upper school] was minimal, even though I was considered one of the best pupils. “Spatial theory is the theory of space” – that’s how each and every physics class started out. [ . . . ] In history class, I learned and experienced only two periods: the ancient Greeks and, in later grades, the era of Frederick the Great. We acquired no picture of the world or of culture whatsoever. Similarly, I only learned some geography later on in life, at the side of my educated husband, through travels with him. In German class, we had to write essays on “The Apple Tree” and “The Grape Harvest” – I can still see the childlike images before me that were put up in front of our class. In the upper grades, dissecting Schiller’s dramas was a requirement. The only thing I retained was some knowledge in German and French grammar."
The following links will provide you with access to period textbooks through an open collection offered by Harvard University
German Reader
Reader of Goethe's Work in German
English Language Reader
Latin/Greek text in English
German Reader
Reader of Goethe's Work in German
English Language Reader
Latin/Greek text in English
Additional Images
Information Drawn From
Albisetti, James C. Schooling German Girls and Women: Secondary and Higher Education in the
Nineteenth Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1988. Print.
Breitman, Richard. "Education and Class Cleavage in Late 19th Century Germany." International Labor
and Working-Class History 12 (1977): 19-23. JSTOR. Web. 11 May 2012.
DeMause, Lloyd. "Chapter 6: The Childhood Origins of World War II and the Holocaust."
Psycohistory.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 June 2012
<http://www.psychohistory.com/originsofwar/06_childhoodOrigins.html>.
Else Strack, Ein Leben aus der Erinnerung erzählt für Familie und Freunde [A Life Story Told from
Memory for Family and Friends]. Printed manuscript. Cologne, 1959, pp. 6-8.
<http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=582>
Fishman, Sterling. "The History of Childhood Sexuality." Journal of Contemporary History 17.2 (1982):
269-83. JSTOR. Web. 31 May 2012.
Fishman, Sterling. "Suicide, Sex, and the Discovery of the German Adolescent." History of Education
Quarterly 10.2 (1970): 170-88. JSTOR. Web. 30 May 2012.
Müller, Detlef K., Fritz K. Ringer, and Brian Simon. The Rise of the Modern Educational System:
Structural Change and Social Reproduction, 1870-1920. Cambridgeshire: Cambridge UP, 1987.
Print.
Rudolf Binding, Erlebtes Leben [A Life Lived]. Potsdam, 1937, pp. 75-76. <http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-
dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=563>
Taylor, Tom. "Images of Youth and the Family in Wilhelmine Germany: Toward a Reconsideration of the
German Sonderwag." German Studies Review 15 (1992): 55-73. JSTOR. Web. 31 May 2012.
Taylor, Tom. "The Transition to Adulthood in Comparative Perspective: Professional Males in Germany
and the United States at the Turn of the Century." Journal of Social History 21.4 (1988): 635-58.
JSTOR. Web. 30 May 2012.
Nineteenth Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1988. Print.
Breitman, Richard. "Education and Class Cleavage in Late 19th Century Germany." International Labor
and Working-Class History 12 (1977): 19-23. JSTOR. Web. 11 May 2012.
DeMause, Lloyd. "Chapter 6: The Childhood Origins of World War II and the Holocaust."
Psycohistory.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 June 2012
<http://www.psychohistory.com/originsofwar/06_childhoodOrigins.html>.
Else Strack, Ein Leben aus der Erinnerung erzählt für Familie und Freunde [A Life Story Told from
Memory for Family and Friends]. Printed manuscript. Cologne, 1959, pp. 6-8.
<http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=582>
Fishman, Sterling. "The History of Childhood Sexuality." Journal of Contemporary History 17.2 (1982):
269-83. JSTOR. Web. 31 May 2012.
Fishman, Sterling. "Suicide, Sex, and the Discovery of the German Adolescent." History of Education
Quarterly 10.2 (1970): 170-88. JSTOR. Web. 30 May 2012.
Müller, Detlef K., Fritz K. Ringer, and Brian Simon. The Rise of the Modern Educational System:
Structural Change and Social Reproduction, 1870-1920. Cambridgeshire: Cambridge UP, 1987.
Print.
Rudolf Binding, Erlebtes Leben [A Life Lived]. Potsdam, 1937, pp. 75-76. <http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-
dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=563>
Taylor, Tom. "Images of Youth and the Family in Wilhelmine Germany: Toward a Reconsideration of the
German Sonderwag." German Studies Review 15 (1992): 55-73. JSTOR. Web. 31 May 2012.
Taylor, Tom. "The Transition to Adulthood in Comparative Perspective: Professional Males in Germany
and the United States at the Turn of the Century." Journal of Social History 21.4 (1988): 635-58.
JSTOR. Web. 30 May 2012.