“Wie einen feinen jungen Baum …”: nature, the fallen man, and social order in Martin Luther’s works on education (1524–1530)

ABSTRACT

Martin Luther’s reflections on education and schooling are summarised in two short texts (Wittenberg, 1524 and 1530) addressed respectively to the municipal authorities and to parents. Nevertheless, the subject of education permeates his whole work, emerging in several other treatises and commentaries. His passionate eloquence refers often to nature as a repertoire of metaphors and a conceptual tool. In this paper, we will attempt a close reading of some key passages, focusing on the two thematic axes of “human nature” and “natural and social order”. According to Luther, “human nature” is the fallen nature of the sinful man, but also a nature full of potentialities unchained by the grace of Christ. Its development through education aims primarily at setting the man in his “natural order”, i.e., the “social order”. From that moment on, Bildung has the special duty to discover and make possible one’s own Beruf, which makes the man able to accomplish his function in society and adhere to God’s design. Education, therefore, is both the caring action that develops the sprout in a “beautiful tree” and a necessary act of violence, replicating the complexity and ambiguity of the laws of nature.

KEYWORDS:

• Lutheran pedagogy
• early reformation
• Sozialdisziplinierung
• nature
• literacy

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Notes

¹ “To the councilmen of all cities in Germany, that they should establish and maintain Christian schools.”

² “A sermon, that people should keep children in school.”

³ D. Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, vol. 20 (Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus, 1898), 190. This series was published from 1882 to 2009 and is known as “Weimarer Ausgabe” (from now on WA).

⁴ Friedrich Gedike, Luthers Pädadogik oder Gedanken über Erziehung und Schulwesen aus Luthers Schriften gesammelt (Berlin: Johann Friedrich Unger, 1792), 37.

⁵ D. Martin Luthers sowol in Deutscher als Lateinischer Sprache verfertigte und aus der letztern in die erstere ubersetzte sämtliche Schriften, herausgegeben von J. Georg Walch (Halle in Magdeburdischen: Johann Justinus Gebauer, 1741).

⁶ The book was republished several times with improvements and additions and re-proposed in a later version with the title Memoirs of Eminent Teachers and Educators with Contributions to the History of Education in Germany (Hartford, 1876 and 1878). Barnard translated the passage as follows, simplifying the syntactic asymmetry of the original: “a young man, thus hedged about, and cut off from society, is like a young tree, whose nature it is to grow and bear fruit, planted in a small and narrow pot.” Henry Barnard, German Educational Reformers (Hartford: Editions of the American Journal of Education, 1863), 136.

⁷ As summarised by Jürgen Oelkers: “Die Frage, ob der Heiligen Schrift für den christlichen Glauben Vorrang zukommen solle, ist nichts Neues und hat schon in der christlichen Antike zu zahlreichen Diskussionen geführt; neu ist der unbedingte Vorrang der Schrift, die lesen zu können, den Glauben erst ermöglicht. Niemand kann auf Gnade hoffen, dem die Schrift verschlossen bleibt. Nur in ihr zeigt sich Gott, durch sie spricht der Geist, und deswegen hat die Kirche keine Autorität aus eigenem Recht. Der Glaube, anders gesagt, kann nicht rituell nachgeahmt, sondern muss mit persönlicher Bildung errungen werden und durchzieht die ganze Lebenspraxis, also nicht nur den Gottesdienst”. Jürgen Oelkers, “Sola scriptura: pädagogische folgen von Luthers Rede an die Ratsherrn,” Rassegna di Pedagogia,/Pädagogische Umschau 74, no. 3–4 (2016): 306–7.

⁸ An die Radherrn aller stedte deutsches lands: das sie Christliche schulen auffrichtenn vnd halten sollen. Martinus Lutther (Wittenberg 1524); WA 15, 35. Here we will always quote from the original editions, which have no page numbers, adding the references to the WA for easy location of the passages.

⁹ “… stabilis evi et fluxi temporis interstitium, et (quod Persae dicunt) mundi copulam, immo hymeneum, ab angelis, teste Davide, paulo deminutum”: Oratio de hominis dignitate (1496), in Pico della Mirandola, De hominis dignitate, Heptaplus De Ente et uno, e Scritti vari, ed. Eugenio Garin (Firenze: Vallecchi, 1942), 101.

¹⁰ Von der Conciliis und Kirchen, (Wittenberg: Hans Lufft, 1539); WA 50, 652.

¹¹ An die Radherrn aller stedte Deutsches lands; WA 15, 33–4.

¹² Gerald Strauss, “The Social Function of Schools in the Lutheran Reformation in Germany,” History of Education Quarterly 28, no. 2 (1988): 194.

¹³ Eine Predigt/Mart. Luther/das man Kinder zur Schulen halten solle, (Wittenberg 1530); WA 30 II, 556–7.

¹⁴ Eine Predigt das man Kinder zur Schulen halten solle; WA 30 II, 530.

¹⁵ John Witte, Jr., “The Civic Seminary: Sources of Modern Public Education in the Lutheran Reformation of Germany,” Journal of Law and Religion 12, no. 1 (1995–1996), 174–5.

¹⁶ Steven Ozment, “Family, Religion, and the Making of Godly Citizens: A Case Study from the 1530s,” Paedagogica Historica 35, supp. 1 (1999): 29–30.

¹⁷ An die Radherrn aller stedte Deutsches lands; WA 15, 41.

¹⁸ Eine Predigt das man Kinder zur Schulen halten solle; WA 30 II, 579–80.

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Luana Salvarani

Luana Salvarani is Associate Professor of History of Education and Juvenile Literature at the University of Parma, Italy. She holds a PhD in theory and tradition of texts and a degree in music composition. Her research path through the history of education started with some critical editions of sixteenth-century works (Antonio Possevino S.J., Juan Huarte, Francesco Negri) and later focused on early Reformation and Counter-Reformation with a focus on Protestant and Jesuit college theatre. Another research path follows the educational history of nineteenth-century America with special attention to popular literature and novels for the young, a subject on which she has written two books in Italian along with several articles. Her most recent book provides an account of Early Reformation pedagogy focusing on texts by Luther and Melanchthon.