In a pamphlet of 1524, on the need of establishing schools, Luther spoke some emphatic and impressive words.[1]

There could be nothing worse, he declared, than to abuse and neglect the precious souls of the little ones; even a hundred florins was not too much to pay to make a good Christian of a boy; it was the duty of the magistrates and authorities to whom the welfare of the town was confided to see to this, the parents being so often either not pious or worthy enough to perform this office, or else too unlearned or too much hampered by their business or the cares of their household. The well-being of a town was not to be gauged by its fine buildings, but rather by the learning, good sense, and honourable behaviour of the burghers; given this the other sort of prosperity would never be lacking. Luther dwells on the urgent need of studying languages and sees an act of Providence in the dispersion of the Greeks whose presence in the West had been the means of giving a fresh stimulus to the study of Greek, and even to the cultivation of other languages. Without schools and learning no men would be found qualified to rule in the ecclesiastical or even in the secular sphere; even the management of the home and the duties of women to their families and households called for some sort of instruction.[2]

Owing to their innate leaning to savagery the German people, above all others, could ill afford to dispense with the discipline of the school. All the world calls us “German beasts”; too long have we been German beasts, let us therefore now learn to use our reason.[3]

He speaks of the educational value not only of languages but of history, mathematics and the other arts, but above all of religion, which, now that the true Evangel is preached, must take root in the hearts of the young, but which could not be maintained unless care was taken to ensure a supply of future preachers.

He gives an excellent answer to the objection: “What is the good of going to school unless we are thinking of becoming parsons?” The wholesale secularisation of ecclesiastical benefices had resulted in a great falling off in the number of scholars, the parents often thinking too much of the worldly prospects of their children. Luther, however, points out that even the secular offices deserve to be filled with men of education. “How useful and called for it is, and how pleasing to God, that the man destined to govern, whether as Prince, lord, councillor or otherwise, should be learned and capable of performing his duty as becomes a Christian.”[4]

This booklet, which is of great interest for the history of the schools, was translated into Latin in the same year by Vincentius Obsopœus (Koch) and published at Hagenau, with a preface by Melanchthon.[5] It also became widely known throughout Germany, being frequently reprinted in the original tongue. As the title shows, Luther addressed himself in the work “To the Councillors of all the townships,” viz. even to the Catholic magistrates among whom he stood in disfavour. He declares that it was a question of the “salvation and happiness of the whole German land. And were I to hit upon something good, even were I myself a fool, it would be no disgrace to anyone to listen to me.”[6]

In thus calling for the founding of schools Luther was but reiterating the admonition contained in his writing “To the German Nobility.” Such exhortations were always sure to win applause, and served to recommend not only his own person but even, in the case of many, his undertaking as a whole.[7] In his rules for the administration of the poor-box at Leisnig Luther had been mindful of the claims of the schools, nor did he forget them in the other regulations he drew up later. In his sermons, too, he also dwelt repeatedly on the needs of the elementary schools; when complaining of the decay of charity he is wont to instance the straits, not only of the parsonages and the poor, but also of the schools. “Only reckon up and count on your fingers what here [at Wittenberg] and elsewhere those who bask in the Evangel give and do for it, and see whether, were it not for us who are still living, there would remain a single preacher or student.… Are there then no poor scholars who ought to be studying and exercising themselves in the Word of God?” But “hoarding and scraping” are now the rule, so that hardly a town can be found “that collects enough to keep a schoolmaster or parson.”[8]

Many wealthy towns had, however, to Luther’s great joy, taken in hand the cause of the schools. Their efforts were to prove very helpful to the new religious system.

In the same year that the above writing appeared steps were taken at Magdeburg for the promotion of education, and Cruciger, Luther’s own pupil, was summoned from Wittenberg to assume the direction. Melanchthon and Luther repaired to Eisleben in 1525, where Count Albert of Mansfeld had founded a Grammar School. In some towns the Councillors carried out Luther’s proposals, in others, where the town-council was opposed to the innovators and their schools, the burghers “set at naught the Council,” as Luther relates, and erected “schools and parsonages”; in other words, they established schools as the best means to further the new Evangel.[9] At Nuremberg Melanchthon, a zealous promoter of education, exerted himself for the foundation of a “Gymnasium” which was to serve as a model of the new humanistic schools of the Evangelicals, and which was generously provided for by the town. May 6, 1526, saw the opening of this new school. Learned masters were appointed, for instance, Melanchthon’s friend Camerarius, the poet Eobanus Hessus and the humanist Michael Roting. In 1530 Luther speaks of it in words meant to flatter the Nurembergers as “a fine, noble school,” for which the “very best men” had been selected and appointed. He even tells all Germany, that “no University, not even that of Paris itself, was ever so well provided in the way of lecturers”; it was in no small measure owing to this school that “Nuremberg now shone throughout the whole of Germany like a sun, compared with which others were but moon and stars.”[10]

Yet it was certain disagreeable happenings at Nuremberg itself which led him to write in 1530 his second booklet in favour of the schools. In the flourishing commercial city there were many wealthy burghers who refused to send their children to the “Gymnasium,” thinking that, instead of learning ancient languages, they would be more usefully occupied in acquiring other elements of knowledge more essential to the mercantile calling; by so doing they had raised a certain feeling against the new school. Many were even disposed to scoff at all book-learning and roundly declared, as Luther relates, “If my son knows how to read and reckon then he knows quite enough; we now have plenty German books,” etc.[11]

In July of the above year, Luther, in the loneliness of the Coburg, penned a sermon having for its title “That children must be kept at school.” The sermon grew into a lengthy work; Luther himself was, later on, to bewail its long-windedness.[12] This writing, taken with that of 1524, supplies the gist of Luther’s teaching with regard to the schools.

As regards the question whether all children were to be forced to go to school, in this writing Luther does not speak of any universal compulsion; only “when the authorities see a capable lad”[17] does he wish coercion to be applied to the parents. In his first writing on the schools likewise, he had not advocated universal compulsion but had merely pointed out that it was “becoming” that the authorities should interfere where the parents neglected their duty;[18] he does not say how they are to “interfere,” but merely suggests that one or two “schoolmasters” should be provided whose salary should not be grudged.

“Hence it is incorrect,” rightly remarks Kawerau, “to represent Luther as the harbinger of universal compulsory education.”[19]

Fr. Lambert of Avignon, in his ecclesiastical regulations dating from 1526, indeed sought to establish national schools throughout Hesse, but his proposals were never enforced. It was only at the beginning of the 17th century that Wolfgang Ratke (Ratichius, †1635), a pedagogue educated in the Calvinistic schools, established the principle of universal education which then was incorporated in the educational regulations of Weimar in 1619.[20] But the Thirty Years’ War put an end to these attempts, and it was only in the 18th century that the principle of compulsory State education secured general acceptance, and then, too, owing chiefly to non-Lutheran influences.

Before entering further into the details of Luther’s educational plans we must cast a glance at a factor which seems to permeate both the above writings.

Polemical Trend of Luther’s Pedagogics

If we seek to characterise both the writings just spoken of we find that they amount to an appeal called forth by the misery of those times for some provision to be made to ensure a supply of educated men for the future. Frederick Paulsen describes them, particularly the earlier one, as nothing more than a “cry for help, wrung from Luther by the sudden, general collapse of the educational system which followed on the ecclesiastical upheaval.”[21] They were not dictated so much by a love for humanistic studies as such or by the wish to further the interests of learning in Germany, as by the desire to fill the secular-government berths with able, “Christian” men, and, above all, to provide preachers and pastors for the work Luther had commenced and for the struggle against Popery. The schools themselves were unobtrusively to promote the new Evangel amongst the young and in the home. Learning, according to Luther, as a Protestant theologian expressed it, was to enter “into the service of the Evangel and further its right understanding”; “the religious standpoint alone was of any real interest to him.”[22]

Melanchthon’s attitude to the schools was more broadminded. To some extent his efforts supplied what was wanting in Luther.[23] His object was the education of the people, whereas, in Luther’s eyes, the importance of the schools chiefly lay in their being “seminaria ecclesiarum,” as he once calls them. With him their aim was too much the mere promoting of his specific theological interests, to the “preservation of the Church.”[24]

Hence the two writings differ but little from his usual polemical and hortatory works. They do not make of Luther the “father of the national schools,” as he has been erroneously termed, because, what he was after was not the real education of the masses but something rather different; still less do the booklets, with their every page reeking of the Word of God which he preached, make him the father of the modern undenominational schools.[40]

In fact, elementary schools as such have scarcely any place in these writings. What concerns him is rather the Latin grammar schools, and only as an afterthought does he passingly allude to the other schools in which children receive their first grounding.[41]

Luther’s standpoint as to the Church’s need of Grammar Schools is always the same, even when he speaks of them in the Table-Talk.

“When we are dead,” he says for instance, “where will others be found to take our place unless there are schools? For the sake of the Churches we must have Christian schools and maintain them.”[42]—“When the schools multiply, things are going well and the Church stands firm.”[43]—“By means of such cuttings and saplings is the Church sown and propagated.”—“The schools are of great advantage in that they undoubtedly preserve the Churches.”[44]

“Hence a reformation of the schools and universities is also called for,” so he writes in a memorandum,[45] immediately after having declared, that “it is necessary to have good and pious preachers; all will depend on men who must be educated in the schools and universities.”[46]

For this reason, viz. on account of the preparation they furnished, he even has a kind word for the schools of former days.

He recalls to mind, that, even in Popery “the schools supplied parsons and preachers.” “In the schools the little boys learnt at least the Our Father and the Creed and the Church was wonderfully preserved by means of the tiny schools.”[47]—Of a certain hymn he remarks, that it was “very likely written and kept by some good schoolmaster or parson. The schools were indeed the all-important factor in the Church and the ‘ecclesia’ of the parson.”[48]

When, in his exhortations, Luther so warmly advocated the study of Latin and of languages generally, he was merely keeping to the approved traditional lines. Although he values ancient languages chiefly as a means for the better understanding of Scripture, he is so prepossessed in their favour in “worldly matters” that he even praises Latin at the expense of German. He is particularly anxious that Latin works should be read; among themselves the boys were to speak Latin. Recommending the study of tongues, he says: “If we make such a mistake, which God forbid, as to give up the study of languages, we shall not only lose the Gospel but come to such straits as to be unable to read or write aright either Latin or German.” The education of earlier days had not only led men away from the Gospel owing to the neglect of languages, but “the wretched people became mere brutes, unable to read or write either Latin or German correctly, nay, had almost lost the use of their reason.” It was statements such as these which drew from Friedrich Paulsen the exclamation: “Hence Christianity and education, nay, even sound common sense itself, all depend on the knowledge of languages!”[49]

Well founded as were Luther’s demands for a Latin education, yet we find in him a notable absence of discrimination between schools and schools.

Even in the preparatory schools he was anxious to see the study of languages introduced, and that for the girls too. Boys and girls, he says, ought to be instructed “in tongues and other arts and subjects.” He was of opinion, that, in this way, it would be possible from the very first to pick out those best fitted to pursue the study of languages and to become later “schoolmasters, schoolmistresses or preachers.”[50] He even appeals to the example of olden Saints such as Agnes, Agatha and Lucy when urging that the more talented girls should receive a grounding in languages.[51] “It would undoubtedly have been quite enough had the less ambitious children been taught merely to reckon, and to read and write German.” “Luther’s action in having as many children of the people as possible taught languages … and his warfare against the use of German in the schools, whether in the towns, the villages, or the hamlets, was all very unpractical.… He had come to the conclusion that German schools, for one reason or another, were unsuited to be nurseries for the Church (‘seminaria ecclesiæ’), hence his effort to transplant into the Latin grammar schools every sapling on which he could lay hands.”[52]

In his two appeals for the schools in 1524 and 1530 Luther is less explicit in his requirements than the regulations for the Visitation. According to him, apart from the languages, it is the text of Scripture which must form the basis of all the instruction.

Holy Scripture, especially the Gospel, was to be everywhere “the chief and main object of study.” “Would to God that every town had also a school for girls where little maids might hear the Gospel for an hour a day, either in German or in Latin.… Ought not every Christian at the age of nine or ten to be acquainted with the whole of the Gospel? Young folk throughout Christendom are pining away and being pitiably ruined for want of the Gospel, in which they ought always to be instructed and exercised.”

“I would not advise anyone to send his child where Holy Scripture is not the rule. Where the Word of God is not constantly studied everything must needs be in a state of corruption.”[54]

In the event, the Bible, together with Luther’s Catechism which had to be committed to memory, and the hymn-book, became the chief manuals in the Lutheran schools. On these elements a large portion of the young generation of Germany was brought up.

In his suggestions on the instruction to be given in the Latin schools (for in reality it was only of these that he was thinking) Luther classes with languages and other arts and sciences “singing, music and mathematics as a whole.”[61] Greek and Hebrew no less than Latin would also be indispensable for future scholars. He further wished the authorities to establish “libraries” to further the studies; not, however, such libraries as the olden ones, containing “mad, useless, harmful, monkish books”—“donkey’s dung introduced by the devil”—“but Holy Scripture in Latin, Greek, Hebrew and German, and any other languages in which it might have been published; besides these the best and oldest commentaries in Greek, Hebrew and Latin, and furthermore such books as served for the study of languages, for instance, the poets and orators,” etc. “The most important of all were, however, the chronicles and histories … for these are of wonderful utility in enabling us to understand the course of events, for the art of governing, as also for perceiving the wonderful works of God. Oh, how many fine stories we ought to have about what has been done and enacted in the German lands, of which we, sad to say, know nothing.” In his appreciation of the study of history and of the proverbial philosophy of the people Luther was in advance of his day.

Owing to his polemics the judgment he passed on the olden libraries was very unjust; the remaining traces of them and the catalogues which have been published of those that have been dispersed show that, particularly from the early days of Humanism, the better mediæval collections of books had reached and even passed the standard Luther sets up in the matter of history and literature.

Very modest, not to say entirely inadequate, is the amount of time Luther proposes that the children should daily spend in the schools. Of the lower schools, in which Latin was already to be taught, he says, it would be enough for “the boys to go to such a school every day for an hour or two and work the rest of their time at learning a trade, or doing whatever was required of them.… A little girl, too, could easily find time to attend school for an hour daily and yet thoroughly perform her duties in the house.” Only the “pick” of the children, those, namely, who gave good promise, were to spend “more time and longer hours” in study.[62]

From all the above it is plain that there is good reason for not accepting the extravagant statement that Luther’s writings on education constitute the “charter of our national schools.” Others have extolled him as the founder of the “Gymnasium” on account of his reference in these works to the Latin schools. But even this is scarcely true, for, in them, the author either goes beyond the field covered by the Gymnasium or else fails to reach it. The Protestant pastor, Julius Boehmer, says in the popular edition of Luther’s works:[63] “It will not do to regard the work (”An die Radherrn“) as the ‘Charter of the Gymnasium,’ as has often been done, seeing that, as stated above, it is concerned with both the Universities and the lower-grade schools.”[64]

As to attendance at the Universities, of which Luther also speaks, he asks the authorities to forbid the matriculation of any but the “clever ones,” though among the masses “every fellow wanted a doctorate.”[65]

What he says of the various Faculties at the Universities is also noteworthy. With the object of reforming philosophy and the Arts course he wishes that of all the writings of Aristotle, that blind heathen master, who had hitherto led astray the Universities, only the “Logica,” “Rhetorica” and “Poetica” should be retained; “the books: ‘Physicorum,’ ‘Metaphysicæ,’ ‘De anima’ and ‘Ethicorum’ must be dropped”; curiously enough these are the very works on which Melanchthon was later on to bestow so much attention. We know how hateful Aristotle was to Luther, because, in his heathen way, he teaches nothing of grace and faith, but, on the other hand, extols the natural virtues. Luther’s impulsive and unmethodical mode of thought was also, it must be said, quite at variance with the logical mind of the Stagirite.

According to Luther “artistic education must be wholly rooted out as a work of the devil; the very most that can be tolerated is the use of those works which deal with form, but even these must not be commented on or explained.”[66]

“The physicians,” he says, “I leave to reform their own Faculty; I shall see myself to the lawyers and theologians; and, first of all, I say that it would be a good thing if the whole of Canon Law from the first syllable to the last were expunged, more particularly the Decretals. We are told sufficiently in the Bible how to conduct ourselves in all matters.” Secular law, so he goes on, has also become a “wilderness,” and accordingly he is in favour of drastic reforms. “Of sensible rulers in addition to Holy Scripture there are plenty”; national law and national usage ought certainly not to be subordinated to the Imperial common law, or the land “governed according to the whim of the individual.… Justice fetched from far afield was nothing but an oppression of the people.” Theology, according to him, must above all be Biblical, though now everything is made to consist in the study of the Book of Sentences of the schoolman, Peter Lombard, and of his commentators, the Gospel in both schools and courts of justice being left “forlorn” in the dust under the bench.[67]

He rightly commends the Disputations, sometimes termed “circulares,” held at the Universities by the students under the direction of their professor; it pleased him well that the students should bring forward their own arguments, even though they were sometimes not sound; for “stairs can only be ascended step by step.” The Disputations, in his view, also accustomed young men to “reflect more diligently on the subjects discussed.”[68]

To conclude, we may say a few words concerning the incentives he uses when urging parents to entrust their children to the schools.

Here Luther considerably oversteps the limits. In one passage, for instance, he thinks it his right to threaten the parents with the worst punishments of hell should they refuse to allow gifted children to study, in order to place them later at the service of the pure Word of God, or of the Christian rulers, as though forsooth parents and children had no right in the sight of God to choose their own profession. “Tell me what hell can be deep and hot enough for such shameful wickedness as yours?” “If you have a child who studies well, you are not free to bring him up as you please, nor to treat him as you will, but must bear in mind that you owe it to God to promote His two rules.” Should the father refuse to allow the boy to become a preacher, he says, then, so far as in him lies, he was really consigning to hell all those whom the budding preacher might have assisted; compared with such a crime against the common weal the “outbreaks of the rebellious peasants were mere child’s play.” This he says in a printed letter addressed in 1529 to the town commandant, Hans Metzsch of Wittenberg, which served as a prelude to his pamphlet “Das man Kinder zur Schulen halten solle.”[69] The writing is solely dictated by Luther’s bitter annoyance at the dearth of pastors and the indifference displayed within his fold.

In this letter, as in both his works on the schools, Luther, whilst dealing with the excuses of the parents, at the same time throws some interesting sidelights on the decline in learning and its causes.

The Decline of the Schools Following in the Wake of the Innovations

In the above letter to Metzsch Luther briefly gives as follows the principal reason for the decay of learning: People were in the habit of saying, “If my son has learnt enough to gain his living then he is quite learned enough.”[70]

The contempt for learned studies was “largely due to the strongly utilitarian temper of the age.” “Owing in the first place to the flourishing state of the towns in the 13th and 14th century, and further to the influence of the great political upheaval which resulted from the discoveries and inventions of the day, a sober, practical spirit, directed solely to material gain, had been aroused throughout a wide section of the German nation. Preference was shown for the German schools where writing and reckoning were taught and which prepared children for the calling of the handicraftsman or the merchant.”[71] Against this tendency of the day Luther enters the lists particularly in his second work on the schools dedicated to the syndic of Nuremberg; at the same time he deals, not in the best of tempers, with the objections advanced by the merchant and industrial classes.[72] He speaks so harshly as almost to place in the same category those who refused to bring up their children “to art and learning” and those who turned them “into mere gluttons and sucking pigs, intent on food alone” (to Metzsch). “The world would thus become nothing but a pig-sty”; these “gruesome, noxious, poisonous parents were bent on making simple belly servers of their children,” etc.[73]

It is a question, however, whether the development of the material trend, so surprisingly rapid, with its destructive influence on study was not furthered by the religious revolution with which it coincided. Luther had sapped the respect which had obtained for the clerical life and for those callings which aimed at perfection, while at the same time, by belittling good works he loosened the inclinations of the purely natural man; by his repudiation of authority he had produced an intellectual self-sufficiency or rather self-seeking, which, in the case of many, passed into mere material egotism, though, of course, Luther’s work cannot be directly charged with the utilitarianism of the day.

What, however, made his revolt to contribute so greatly to the decline of learning was its destruction of the wealth of clergy and monks, and its confiscation of so many livings and foundations established for educational purposes. By far the greater number of students had always consisted of such as wished to obtain positions in the Church among her secular clergy, or to become priests in some monastery. The ranks of these students had been thinned of late years now that the Catholic posts no longer existed, that the foundations which formerly provided for the upkeep of students had disappeared and that an avalanche of calumny and abuse had descended on the monasteries, priests and monks.[74] In addition to this there was the fear aroused in Catholic parents and pastors by the unhappy controversies on religion, lest the young should be infected in the higher schools these being so frequently hot-beds of the modern spirit, of hypercriticism and apostasy. Then, again, there was the distrust, springing from a similar motive, felt by the Catholic authorities for the centres of learning, and their niggardliness in making provision for them, an attitude which we meet with, for instance, in Duke George of Saxony. This was encouraged in the case of the rulers by the fear of social risings, such as they had experienced in the Peasant War, and which they laid to the charge of the new ideas on religion.

Among those favourable to Lutheranism the Wittenberg professor himself awakened a distaste for the Universities by telling them they must not allow their sons to study where Holy Scripture “did not rule” and “where the Word of God was not unceasingly studied.”[75] No one ever depreciated the Universities as much as Luther, who principally because their character was still Catholic, was never tired of calling them the “gates of hell,” and places worse than Sodom and Gomorrha.[76] Nor did he stop short at the condemnation of their religious attitude. Luther’s antagonism to the whole system of philosophy, which the Universities, following the example of Aristotle and the schoolmen, had been so criminal as to admit, to the liberty they allowed to crazy human reason in spiritual matters, and to their championship of natural truth and natural morality as the basis of the life of faith, all this, when carried to its logical conclusion, necessarily brought Lutheranism into fatal conflict with the learned institutions.