Education Society in Modern Germany by Samuel R. H. & Thomas R. Hinton

Author:Samuel, R. H. & Thomas R. Hinton [Samuel, R. H. & Hinton, Thomas R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General
ISBN: 9781136270048
Google: Yb-AAAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-08-21T05:49:33+00:00

Chapter VII

The Religious Factor

Throughout the nineteenth century German education was disturbed by important questions connected with religion. Two fundamental issues were involved. The first was whether education should be controlled by church or state, the second whether the schools should be denominational. These problems were different in different states and were most acute in states with a mixed religious population. They were also intensified by the rise of Prussia, in which about three-fifths of the population were Protestant. Another factor was the close connection between the ruling houses of the north German states and the Evangelical Church.

As we saw in the previous chapter, the first attempt to remove the schools from the control of the church occurred in Prussia in 1787, when Zedlitz created the Secondary School Board under the Ministry of Finance. As a result of this measure, secondary schools in Germany were not, to any great extent, concerned in the denominational conflicts. When the Secondary School Board was absorbed in the education department of the Ministry of the Interior in 1808 under Wilhelm von Humboldt, his aim was to place education solely under the state, but this project did not materialise. With the establishment in 1817 of the Prussian Ministry of Education, elementary education remained closely associated with the church, but at the same time it was controlled by the state. In the ‘Kulturkampf’ in the eighteen-seventies Bismarck used the Liberals’ demand for the complete freedom of education from church influence as a weapon with which to attack the political aspirations of the Catholic Church, and the issue thus broadened out into an ideological struggle. In 1872 Falk, Prussian Minister of Education, secured approval for his law “concerning the supervision of education”, stipulating that all public and private schools were subject to state inspection. It also laid down that the appointment of local and regional school inspectors was to be made by the state and that it could be revoked in the case of part-time or honorary officials (referring to clergy). This was intended as a blow against the Catholic Church, for all Protestant clergy, who inspected schools, were confirmed in office; indeed, as late as 1918 two-thirds of the Prussian elementary school inspectors were clergy. However, a large number of Catholic priests were replaced by laymen. It was only under the Republic that the inspectorate ceased to be predominantly clerical, Article 144 of the constitution stating that school inspection was only to be entrusted to full-time specialist officials. The local clergy remained ex officio members of the school boards in their district, but in January 1941 the Nazis, destroying the last vestiges of the old tradition, forbade priests to act in this capacity.

The idea that schools should be denominational (that is to say, staffed entirely by teachers of a single denomination) was not seriously challenged until, in the wake of the French Revolution, it was argued that education was a matter for the community as a whole and should not be decisively influenced by single elements within it, like religious organisations.

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