Friedrich Froebel

Friedrich Froebel (1782-1852), German educator, the originator of the kindergarten.

Born on April 21, 1782, in Oberweissbach, Froebel was largely self-educated, but was able to study for a few years at the universities of Jena, Göttingen, and Berlin. He tried a number of vocations, including forestry, surveying, and architecture, before discovering his true vocation, teaching. He became an instructor at the Frankfurt Model School in Frankfurt am Main, and from 1806 to 1810 he worked and studied with the noted Swiss educational reformer Johann Pestalozzi at Yverdon, Switzerland. Froebel’s teaching career was interrupted from 1813 to 1815 by service in the Prussian army and by work as an assistant in the Mineralogical Museum of the University of Berlin.

In 1816 Froebel founded, at Griesheim, a school called the Universal German Educational Institute, and in 1817 he moved the school to Keilhau near Rudolstadt. At the institute, Froebel developed ideas for the education of pre-school children aged three to seven. These ideas culminated in his establishing, at Blankenburg, Thuringia, in 1837, the first institution exclusively for the education of such children; for this school he coined the term “Kindergarten”, meaning “children’s garden”.

In spite of interest in Froebel’s work by progressive educators, his ideas, which stressed encouraging the natural growth of a child through action or play, were too novel to be readily accepted by the public, and for a time he found it financially difficult to carry on his school. In addition, he was suspected of sharing the radical political and social views of his nephew, Julius Froebel, a professor at Zurich, and in 1851 the Prussian government banned all kindergartens in Prussia; the ban was not removed until 1860. Froebel lived and worked in Marienthal from 1850 until his death on June 21, 1852. His disciples, especially the Baroness von Marenholtz-Bülow, caused kindergartens to be established throughout western Europe and the United States in the 1850s and in Germany after 1860.

Froebel is considered one of the greatest contributors of the 19th century to the science of education. The institution of the kindergarten has spread over the entire world and Froebel schools still exist. Among Froebel’s principal writings are The Education of Man (1826; trans. 1885) and Mother Play and Nursery Songs (1843; trans. 1906).