Elementary School Teachers as »Knowledge Collectors« During the German Empire

Project Description

The collections of the German School Museum, founded in 1876 and transformed into the German Teachers' Library in 1908, are the historical core of the BBF today. They include a broad spectrum of pedagogical texts, primers, reading and arithmetic books, teaching aids, a collection of old prints, manuscripts, and a collection of periodicals.  This book publication aims to give new insights into these collections. It does not just examine them from a purely library-historical perspective but also focuses on their protagonists from a social and knowledge-historical perspective: the elementary school teachers organized in the Berlin Teachers' Association (until 1918 exclusively a male organization), who acted both as collectors of books and as producers and recipients of knowledge. 

This study examines the creation and development of the book collection during a period of profound change in the knowledge requirements of primary school teachers. This change was driven by rapid social and economic-technological modernization and the differentiation of school subjects. Were the collection and its sub-collections the result of a targeted collection strategy that aimed to create a specific collection context? How were the books and texts made accessible and to whom? Which specific pedagogical-professional canon of knowledge, structural conditions, situational restrictions, professional views, and subjective-personal collecting interests can be traced in this library of the Berlin teachers' association? Which role did the book read by teachers and the teachers' library play as a place of reading and knowledge acquisition?

The study employs library metaphors such as knowledge repositories and a broader sociological concept of knowledge to examine the book collection and its actors on two levels. First, it considers the »content« of the collections. Second, it assesses their social and cultural significance for the elementary school teachers organized in the teachers' association. With this dual focus on the information provided, processed and received and on the orientation and power of action associated with this knowledge for the teachers of the elementary school system, the study aims to follow and expand previous research approaches to the history of the elementary school and teacher training in the German Empire.

Project Management

Dr. Monika Mattes

Project Details