The Social Function of Schools in the Lutheran Reformation in Germany Author(s): Gerald Strauss Source: History of Education Quarterly, Vol. 28, No. 2, (Summer, 1988), pp. 191-206 Published by: History of Education Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/368489 Accessed: 02/05/2008 14:25 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=hes. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We enable the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. http://www.jstor.org The Social Function of Schools in the LutheranReformation in Germany Gerald Strauss One of the most interestingaspects of the GermanReformation for us to ponder is that of the educationalreconstruction attempted in all Lu- theranstates in the sixteenthcentury. Churchmen and politiciansacted in close collaboration,first in responseto the reformistzeal chargingthe Lutheranmovement in its heroic years, later in meeting the procedural obligations laid down for officials in the establishedReformation's in- stitutionalstructure. They agreedon fundamentalobjectives and shared a coherentbody of pedagogicalsuppositions. They had high hopes for the power of educationto directthought and mold behavior.In the new church-statesymbiosis they recognizedunprecedented opportunities for reformand were eager to act on them. For a time, religion and politics moved in unison toward the enactmentof a programof schooling in- tendedin its overallpurpose to conformthe young to approvedpatterns of evangelicaland civic rectitude. Our questionsconcerning a past systemof schoolingare no different from those we ask about one in the present.What does a society wish its schools to accomplish,and what is, in fact, being accomplished?Who speaksfor societyin establishinggoals? Have those who set the objectives formulateda policy?A program?A feasibleprogram? One to be imple- mented by schools adequate to the purpose? A purpose representing concrete interests?Of identifiablesocial groups?With what responses from these groups?And with what consequences-in the short and in the long term-for society itself? The firstthing to note in approachingthe sixteenth-centuryLutheran schooling scene with these questionsis that the evidenceis availablefor supplyinganswers. (This essay's focus on Lutheranregions should not Gerald Strauss is professor of history at Indiana University, Bloomington. History of Education Quarterly Vol. 28 No. 2 Summer 1988 192 History of EducationQuarterly be taken to imply that Catholic and ReformedGermany pursued edu- cational goals essentiallydifferent from those of the evangelicals.)Our sources may not sufficefor a fully differentiatedsocial history of early Protestanteducation; but about objectivesand performance,and about the evaluationof these, we are very well informed.1 Who, then, spoke for society in the makingof educationalpolicy in sixteenth-centuryGermany, and who acted in the implementationof it? Governingauthorities did, and the administrativebodies appointedby them. In other words-to use the correctterminology-Obrigkeit, po- testates, as in Jedermann sey unterthan der Oberkeit, die gewalt uber jn hat and omnis anima potestatibus sublimioribus subdita sit,2 that is to say, sovereignrulers possessing Herrschaft,dominion and power, and the executiveagents and agenciesappointed by themto exercisedominion and power. With respectto schools and schooling, the purview of ter- ritorialand urbangovernments in Germanywas fixed at an earlyjuncture in the chain of events leading to the establishedReformation. This as- signment,or self-assignment,happened because governments, in the dec- ades following the late 1520s, took on the job of directingecclesiastical affairsin their respectivedomains, and educationhad traditionallybeen includedamong ecclesiastical responsibilities. But this assumptionof con- trol did not happenwithout due considerationbeing given to the prob- lems at issue in this turn of events. In principle,instructing the young was the duty and the right of parents.By necessity,however, this obligationnow fell to the state. This was becauseindividual parents could only in exceptionalcases be relied upon to performcompetently the vital-indeed, it was thought to be a fateful-task of child rearing.Luther was his usual emphatic and un- compromisingself on this point. "The common man can do nothing," he wrotein 1524, as he urgedmagistrates to maintainand governschools. "He [the common man] doesn't have the means for it, he doesn't want to do it, and he doesn'tknow how."3The experienceof the early 1520s, particularlythe failureof the communityof Leisnigto appropriatesuf- ficient funds-and Lutherseems for a time to have held high hopes for Leisnigas the model for a reformationon a communalbase-had per- ' For a generalbibliographical introduction to this subjectsee GeraldStrauss, Luther's House of Learning:Indoctrination of the Youngin the GermanReformation (Baltimore, 1978), especiallythe notes to chapter1. 2 FromLuther's German translation of the New Testamentand revisionof the Vulgate, D. MartinLuthers Deutsche Bibel (D. MartinLuthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe [fromnow on WA]) 7: 69 and 5: 645. 3An die Ratsherrenaller Stadte(1524), WA 15: 44. Schools in the Lutheran Reformation 193 suadedLuther that voluntary,participatory procedures were inadequate to the gigantictask of reform.4 Ordinarypeople beingunqualified to undertaketheir own children's upbringing(Luther included auffzihen among the tasks for which he held people generally unsuited) and instruction, governmentwas the only existing alternative.Hence Luther'sexhortation in 1526 to his prince that he must act as "guardian-generalof the young"-"oberster furmund derjugent"-in holdingcitizens to the supportof schools,5a formulation later sharpenedby Melanchthonto "governmentas a common father."6 In 1530 Luthercame out in favor of the use of political force to ensure generalschool attendance,7and this is the position adopted officiallyin the Kirchenordnungen-ecclesiastical constitutions or ordinances- through which governingauthorities in Lutheranterritories and cities regulatedfor their respectivedomains all aspectsof churchand religion, includingschooling. In these immenselyprolix documentswe see church and state actingjointly, with the temporalpart clearlydominant. As early as 1528, Bugenhagen'sordinances for Braunschweigand Hamburgwere confirmedand authorizedby the town councils of these cities,8and sub- sequentecclesiastical constitutions were alwayspublished under the names of the territory'sreigning prince: "Christoph, by the Graceof God Duke of Wiirttemberg,our declarationof doctrines and ceremoniesas they must be believed,kept, and obeyed in the churchesof our principality."9 Schulordnungen-enablingcharters setting up the schools in a given realm-were in nearly all instancesappended to these church constitu- tions. They placed the supervisionof all educationalinstitutions firmly in the handsof princeand magistrates,who were the ownersand wielders of the instrumentsof public power. It is only when seen from the vantage point of a much later period of conflictsbetween church and state, and between individualrights and state power over the control of education, that this amalgamationof schoolingand political sovereigntyseems ominous.10The sixteenth cen- 4 For citationsof all relevantdocuments on this point see WernerReininghaus, El- ternstand,Obrigkeit, und Schulebei Luther(Heidelberg, 1969), 5. 5 Lutherto ElectorJohann, 22 Nov. 1526, WA Briefwechsel4: 134. 6 "Die obrigkeitals gemeinervater." Quoted in WernerReininghaus, ed., Evangelische Kircheund Elternrecht(Luneburg, 1961), 19. 7 Eine Predigt,dass man Kinderzur Schulenhalten solle (1530), WA 30 II: 586. 8 ReinholdVormbaum, Die evangelischenSchulordnungen des 16. Jahrhunderts(Gu- tersloh,1860), 8, 18. Cited from now on as Vormbaum. 9 Ibid., 68. 10For the Germandebate on this issue from about 1800 see Erwin Stein, Wilfried Joest, and Hans Dombois,Elternrecht: Studien zu seinerrechtsphilosophischen und evan- gelisch-theologischenGrundlegung (Heidelberg, 1958). 194 History of EducationQuarterly tury recognized no Elternrecht, no right-statutory or customary-of parents to have their children instructed in private, as opposed to public, schools or to have in some other important way a voice in what their offspring were to learn. Lacking legal grounds on which to challenge state and church control of schooling, opponents had no position from which to wage resistance-except, of course, passively, by indifference and apathy, the traditional weapons of the weak. In any case, nothing written by the educational