From record keeping to a new knowledge regime: the special school pupil as a new pedagogical object in Prussia around 1900

ABSTRACT

The history of the Hilfsschule (special school) is contested and multifaceted. For the German context, most research to date has focused on institutions or professional pioneers in special education. This paper, through a “New Historicism” perspective, asks how a group of pupils, described as “retarded”, could become a new pedagogical object within a discourse among teachers, psychiatrists, school doctors and local administrations at the end of the nineteenth century. Linking national and local discourses, this paper analyses the emergence of the special school pupil (Hilfsschulkind) in Germany within a broader discourse of educability as well as through knowledge practices, namely record-keeping systems.

KEYWORDS:

• Special education
• Prussia
• record-keeping
• New Historicism
• school hygiene

1. “New Historicism” as a research approach in the history of special education

The history of special education is often told as “a history of service providers”,¹ while others explain the development of special education within a wider historical perspective of ideas of education.² Research on the elementary school system rarely mentions the relation to the upcoming special schools at all.³ In all cases the “emergence” of a new type of pupil is not the main focus – therefore there is a lack of understanding of context in which a new type of pupil was brought up, who the involved actors were and what kind of knowledge was used for their characterisation. Deeper insight into the emergence of separate schooling for special children has been gained through research inspired by a cultural-constructivist perspective on disability focusing on “conceptions of the diverse handicaps [that] arose as a function of time, place, culture, religion, and more”,⁴ since “[d]isabled individuals and groups became the object of representations, classifications and services that served to construct and regulate ideas of normality”.⁵ Relying on this perspective this paper thus asks: how did so-called “retarded” pupils emerge at the end of the nineteenth century in Germany as a group that had to be dealt with by teachers and school administrations alike?⁶ The period of investigation in this paper is therefore limited to 1860–1914.

Such a history of the special school (Hilfsschule) demands new contextualisation as proposed by the “New Historicism” approach developed largely by Stephen Greenblatt in the 1980s. The interpretative practice of “New Historicism” centres on dynamics of circulation, exchange, negotiation and struggle between the discursive and non-discursive formations of a culture, ignoring previously existing specific motives within certain historical epochs.⁷

Looking at education history through this lens expands the interpretation of historical sources beyond the textual level by contextualising them to questions of knowledge production.⁸ It readopts approaches from history of ideas (without necessarily embracing their underlying theoretical premises and claims to truth) and supplements them with the research perspectives of the cultural turn and postcolonial studies, which also consider the production and networking of knowledge incorporating the emergence of ideas or “dispositifs” into their analyses (without following a preordained argumentative logic of texts).⁹ This opens up windows on knowledge practices, knowledge orders and knowledge regimes which led to the construction of the special school pupil (Hilfsschulkind) towards the end of the nineteenth century in Germany. To enable this investigation the analysis will focus on new normative justification orders,¹⁰ where the special school pupil can be understood as a Foucauldian “dispositif” encompassing state and municipal management practices in the education, social and health sectors and the knowledge systems serving them. This focus of research is closely linked to the approach of “paper technologies”¹¹ which allows one to understand knowledge production through a perspective on how, by whom and when certain knowledge on a new type of pupils has been brought up, how it was connected to certain scientific practices and how it had been adopted in a network of knowledge exchange.

1.1. Research on the German special school

The monographs and overviews in German published so far have confined themselves to presenting either a primarily profession-related perspective on the special school¹² or an analysis predominantly oriented towards the social history of these schools and their pupils¹³ without paying attention to the interdisciplinary discourse informing the emerging “dispositif”. In these depictions, the special school pupil appears as a new addressee of pedagogical intervention that was created out of the steadily increasing performance demands of the regular primary school system.¹⁴ However, this picture is contradicted by the research on primary schools that sees the elementary school (Volksschule) as having had, primarily, an educational and not an allocative or selection function nor clear standards of achievement.¹⁵ Additionally, no hints can be found for regular teachers in Germany asking for differentiation among their pupils within the elementary school system, besides age and grade level.¹⁶ Instead, the discourse on non-regular educability and the call for the new type of school, so-called special schools, was mainly promoted by special education teachers. These findings are in contrast to others, where the introduction of compulsory education led to the call of special schooling for “’incorrigible, backward and otherwise defective pupils’”.¹⁷ In the German case, this fell in the midst of the question of new social orders and expanding the schools on the local level due to the immense growth of population in the industrial age and was a central topic of communal administrations (not teachers’ organisations).

Therefore, the previous focus on professionalisation and social history needs to be supplemented by aiming on “new normative justification orders” that appeared in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in newly secular states as they were dealing within the process of industrial revolution, accompanied by huge hygienic, housing and welfare problems.¹⁸ These crises of modernisation were noticeable in the new industrial cities and were culturally expressed within the so called “discourse of the fin de siècle”, characterised through descriptions of a loss of traditions and by scepticism towards the technical innovations of the industrial revolution.¹⁹

A teacher for deaf children and an activist for introducing special schools (Hilfsschulen), Heinrich Kielhorn, gave a speech at the 1887 to Congress of the German Teachers’ Association²⁰ in which he referred precisely to these images of loss of traditional values in order to argue for the necessity of establishing special schools. In the presentation, after which the teachers attending voted for establishing special schools in all larger German cities, he drew a picture of the weakening of social institutions such as schools, families, churches and prisons.²¹

According to Foucault the new age of modernisation was characterised by less cruel punishment and more internal discipline.²² This led to the idea of more (moral) education and less total exclusion as a main topic of legitimising new orders at the time of the industrial revolution in Europe, accompanied by a process of secularisation. Especially within the establishment of secular nations, modern states were forced to declare new legitimacies.²³ So instead of traditional institutional power such as visible cruel punishment the new legitimation of modern states was secured by promising welfare, health, education, (more) democracy and infrastructural supply (schools, water, transportation, information, electricity),²⁴ accompanied by a rising standard of bureaucracy. Compulsory schooling reached significant importance within establishing new normative justification orders.

1.2. Methods and sources

To illuminate the question on knowledge about special education pupils and their separate schooling on national and local (in Berlin and Frankfurt/Main, two industrialised cities in Prussia) discourses and practices were taken into account. Within the “New Historicism” perspective objects, actors, and texts are taken into consideration to describe the production of “ideas” and their incorporation into practices and institutionalisation processes in the context of publications by teachers’ associations, magistrate minutes, statistical data collection, the personal record forms of pupils and even museum objects and documents relating to school buildings in possibly new constellations between which knowledge circulates.²⁵ The local history perspective aims at specific visible spaces where national discourses and local practices interfere in the field of educational policy,²⁶ since there was a high level of autonomy given to municipal school administrations in Prussia.²⁷

The central sources providing material for the Berlin area are the archived pupil forms of the XV. Hilfsschule in Berlin-Tiergarten. The archive holdings for this school contain inventory and pupil lists²⁸ and pupil records for individual children grouped in folders by birth year.²⁹ For the Frankfurt area, the sources analysed were files from the city archives of Frankfurt am Main, especially from the school supervisory authority (Schulamt), the city schools board (Schuldeputation) and the public welfare authorities. In addition, sessions of the Berlin House of Representatives relating to the school system, documents on international education exhibitions and on the 1911 hygiene exhibition in Dresden were evaluated, as were administrative ordinances relating to hospitals, lunatic asylums, sanatoriums and reformatories.

In both sub-projects, these archival records were contextualised by drawing on the writings of relevant local actors such as school physicians and paediatricians, teaching association members, educators and academics.

2. The discourse: educability in the context of the establishment of special schools

The first thread that needs to be taken up to reconstruct the special school pupil and his/her special schooling is the topic of (in)educability, which is closely connected to retardation (in contrast to educability) and the studies investigating its aetiology.

The issue of ineducability was a pedagogical-psychiatric variation of the problem of legal capacity that foregrounded mental and moral development (as opposed to the juridical perspective and its concern with soundness of mind as a consideration in determining culpability³⁰). Ineducability was widely discussed in Europe and the US.especially within the discussion of limitations of improvement.

The question of educability had been connected more closely to the issue of moral development than to intelligence. Experimental forms of treatment in so-called asylums for idiotic children mixed the disciplines of education and healing practices and drew on the knowledge of both pedagogy and medicine.³¹ The two-volume work by Jan-Daniel Georgens and Heinrich Marianus Deinhardt, “Special education” (Heilpädagogik), giving “special consideration to idiocy and idiot asylums” (1861/63), is a prominent example from Austria, as well as Séguin’s sensualistic approach in France and in the US.³²

In the nineteenth century, questions about distinguishing “idiocy” (Idiotie) or “imbecility” (Imbezillität) from mental illness, their genesis and treatment were situated in the context of psychiatry and special education and linked to the wider context of research exploring functions of the mind such as thinking, feeling, will and language and their links to brain structures.³³ Besides the discussion on demarcation and on causes and effects the discourse on educability in Germany stayed within questions on moral improvement rather than intelligence: idiocy was seen as a lack of willpower in the German-language special education discourse in the nineteenth century.³⁴ The will was also seen as a “superordinate instance bundling, controlling, organizing and regulating physical and mental powers and directing them towards specific goals”.³⁵ This topology also influenced the theoretical concept of ”developmental retardation” (Entwicklungshemmung) elaborated by special education authors in German-speaking countries in the first half of the twentieth century and intended to encompass the dimension of moral development, including the use of reason.³⁶

It was supplemented by a discourse on classifying degrees of “idiocy” that continued throughout the entire nineteenth century and ultimately led to a tripartite classification ranging from severe to moderate to mild forms.³⁷ The mildest forms, “feeble-mindedness” (Schwachsinn) and “retardation” (Schwachbefähigung), were soon to become the terms to describe pupils in need of special education in special schools, a school for so called “slow learners” who marked the border between elementary schools (Volksschulen) on one side and asylums on the other side and also described the border between potential moral subjects and the insane.³⁸

In summary, this discourse brought up an image of children who did not belong in regular schools. This was embedded in a psychiatric discussion closely connected to the idea of moral insanity at the end of the nineteenth century. The scientific differentiation in mild, moderate and severe cases opened up a window for borderline cases, such as pupils who should attend a special school who were labelled as being “slightly retarded” .

The connection between moral development and mental retardation gives a first hint to the reflection of the construction of the special educational object.

2.1. The International Hygiene Exhibition in Dresden in 1911

Focusing on the knowledge production of a new type of pupil, the International Hygiene Exhibition in Dresden in 1911 serves as an example that within a period of 30 years the “special school dispositif” (Hilfsschuldispositiv) had been established in Germany.³⁹ It became visible at the Exhibition in Dresden where a whole room was dedicated to displaying a comprehensive collection of the newly developed instruments of special education pedagogy (Hilfsschulpädagogik) as a relevant facet of school hygiene.⁴⁰

Dr Selter, a lecturer in hygiene at the University of Bonn, in his exhibition guide listed the following exhibits pertaining to special education: photographs and drawings of special school buildings, photographs of the habitual characteristics of the pupils, special school curricula as well as teaching and learning materials, samples of work by special school pupils and pupils’ records, statistics on German special schools, information on training courses for special school teachers, instructions and medical apparatus for examinations of special school pupils conducted by school physicians, graphs comparing special school pupils and pupils at regular schools by height and weight, family trees of special school pupils, tests measuring fatigue and memory, information on the relationship between special school pupils and the military authorities as well as laws and regulations concerning the “Hilfsschule” in Germany, Austria, Hungary, Switzerland, France and England.⁴¹

In 1911 this exhibition assembled a collection that illustrated the teaching and diagnostic tools of the discipline of special school pedagogy (Hilfsschulpädagogik), the institutionalisation of the special schools and the development of the profession of the special schoolteacher (Hilfsschullehrer) in Germany. Within a span of approximately 30 years, the process of founding and constructing the special school, its clientele and its personnel had come to its provisional end. At the intersection of regulatory measures, poor law provisions, pedagogical discourses and the political activities of various actors, a discipline had emerged that now launched itself onto the world market with its borrowings from medicine, psychiatry and pedagogy. It is also noticeable that the section of the exhibition dealing with school hygiene dramatically contrasted sources of danger and means of protection and cast the special school firmly in this latter role. The juxtaposition of near innumerable pictures of the supposedly anomalous physiognomy of the special school child and disparate medical devices for measuring children’s bodies left exhibition-goers in little doubt as to the danger that seemingly needed to be contained and managed for the sake of protecting the general public within a social hygiene approach.⁴² By analogy with Foucault, this materialised image can be called “special school dispositif” as

a thoroughly heterogeneous ensemble consisting of discourses, institutions, architectural forms, regulatory decisions, laws, administrative measures, scientific statements, philosophical, moral and philanthropic propositions – in short, the said as much as the unsaid.⁴³

3. Practices: the psyche – from operations to record-keeping⁴⁴

A significant contribution of knowledge and knowledge production about the Hilfsschulkind can be found within the psychiatric discourse: at the end of the nineteenth century, some surgeons began to see the partial removal of skull bones as a promising intervention that could counteract mental retardation in children with microcephaly by giving the brain room to grow.⁴⁵ This hope was, however, not borne out in subsequent assessments of the affected patients; no improvements in their mental abilities were detected.⁴⁶ The psychiatrist Wilhelm Weygandt commented in 1900:

It is to be hoped that these operations, a product of the wishful thinking of over-eager surgeons, do not reappear, as their only possible justification could only be attempted from the unmedical standpoint that an intervention threatening a high mortality rate and, moreover, having no significant prospects of success may be undertaken with particular insouciance when just such unsocial lives as the idiots are affected.⁴⁷

While these formerly so boldly undertaken operations ceased to be performed, the approach taken towards children with microcephaly by dauntless surgeons is nevertheless illustrative of a fundamental problem of psychiatry: the question of localising and explaining the genesis of mental illnesses. The brain was foregrounded by relevant theories and the available findings on the physiology of the cerebral cortex attracted considerable attention in this light; it appeared that intellectual and mental anomalies could seemingly be traced back to this area. But the merest of glances at Emil Kraepelin’s influential textbook (1896) already suffices to show that psychiatry had considerable reservations about the local distribution of brain processes postulated by pathological anatomy.

The discrepancy between the materiality of the brain and the psychological phenomena of the life of the mind created the twilight zone within which psychiatry manoeuvred and sought to navigate a multitude of individual phenomena. To avoid being defeated by the sheer variety of these individual phenomena and develop a system of classification that conveyed the rigour of a scientific approach, it was important, and not only to Kraepelin, “to gradually tease out regularities and fundamental truths and thus to structure series of observations that belong together”.⁴⁸ It was anticipated that patiently accumulating and classifying observations would lead to the sought-after clarity: “Experience at the bedside of patients itself becomes our teacher here”.⁴⁹ The same kind of observation, note-taking and systematising insights gained was also taking root in pedagogy at this time.

3.1. On the history of pedagogical observation

In the course of the eighteenth century, observation in the sense of a specific mode of seeing that generated order and led to the production of illustrations and also written notes on what had thus been ascertained evolved from an epistemological practice used in the empirical natural sciences into a central method for producing (new) knowledge.⁵⁰ In medicine and psychiatry, a system of record-keeping that facilitated the systematic ordering of observations and their documented results emerged⁵¹ – an Aufschreibesystem (“system of writing down”), as Friedrich Kittler, borrowing from Daniel Paul Schreber, described the “network[s] of technologies and institutions that allow a given culture to select, store, and process relevant data” and constitute discourse networks.⁵²

In pedagogy, too, the importance of self-observation and of observing others as a technique for making new discoveries increased.⁵³ Observation was used as a relevant method both in educational theory, which sought to make deductions about the “nature” of human beings that could guide the educational process, and in an educational practice that drew on observations to document, reflect on and legitimise pedagogical practices. Observation became an established and recommended practice from as early as the initial decades of the eighteenth century in Pietist and philanthropic educational institutions modelled on the family and had been more and more focused by means of specific forms at the end of the nineteenth century. Observation, along with transferring its results into case histories and characterisations of pupils and documenting them in tables and reports, was now an established and recommended practice⁵⁴ and served, at the same time, to generate knowledge: recognising each individual child and the introspection of the childish soul provided departure points for pedagogical interventions.⁵⁵

However, this pedagogical practice could not continue when mass schooling began towards the end of the nineteenth century: with classes of over 60 children, individualised pedagogy was impracticable. It was within special schools, where terminology as well as the categorisation of children relied heavily on psychiatry, that the practice of recording observation in individual case files made its way into the school system.⁵⁶

Looking at local practices it can be shown that the record forms for special school pupils (Personalbogen für Hilfsschulen) became a crucial practice for the construction of the special school pupil in Prussia long before special schools had been adopted in German school law in 1938. The two cases, Frankfurt and Berlin – two industrialised cities in Prussia – are examples of the integration of the object of the special school pupil in school administrative processes through a specific form, proposed by the “Special School Teachers Association of Germany” (Verband der Hilfsschulen Deutschlands, VdHD), founded in 1898. In both cities, at the end of the nineteenth century, at the same time as compulsory schooling was being enforced, statistical surveys began to identify potentially feeble-minded students in elementary schools. They were initiated by the local authorities for the poor, who were interested in identifying educationally capable pupils in institutions for reasons of cost savings. The record forms for special school pupils combined findings about the individual learning process, individual behaviour and family background and focused on these topics simply by reserving space for them. In this way a corpus of knowledge was created and given an orderly, consistent shape by means of structuring the process of observation and writing. As indicated above, the forms were derived from the medical-psychiatric writing system and were used across all of Prussia in a standardised and binding version from 1913 on.⁵⁷

The way these files were used as “little tools of knowledge”, stabilising the category of the “special education pupil” (and promoting a certain professionality of special education teachers), will be analysed in the following section.⁵⁸

3.2. Local knowledge practices: the use of record forms for special school pupils in Berlin

October 1898 marked a turning point in the treatment of “backward” (zurückbleibende) children at the municipal schools in Berlin.⁵⁹ After having sent the children considered “feeble-minded” to the Dalldorf Asylum for almost 20 years, separate classes were created within the municipal school system, which kept those children within the regular system of municipal schools.⁶⁰ It was envisaged that these special classes would either support children in such a way that it would become possible for them to follow lessons in the regular classes again or, if this was unsuccessful, would provide them with the kind of support in the special class that would prepare them sufficiently for their lives after school during compulsory schooling. It was intended that this would be achieved partly through small class sizes with at most 12 children⁶¹ and anticipated that these smaller classes would enable individualised teaching tailored to children’s specific abilities. At the end of each semester, a report had to be written on each child that was intended to be used by the school inspector to appraise each child’s learning progress and decide whether or not individual children were to be referred back to the “main” classes.⁶² The decision on whether children should be assigned to special classes in the first place was also made by the inspector with support from the school principal and the school physician. The basis for making this decision was an individualised system of record-keeping, using record forms for special school pupils, that was introduced shortly after the special classes were established.⁶³

Unlike the asylum in Dalldorf, the special classes were not linked to a mental hospital or asylum and consequently were not part of the writing apparatus (Aufschreibesystem) that organised administration as well as knowledge within these institutions. Instead, they were part of the regular primary school system and their record-keeping was regulated by the school authorities. In Prussia, the General Regulations for Primary Schooling (Allgemeine Bestimmungen für das Volksschulwesen) applied uniformly across the entire state from 1872 on. The regulations specified tables and lists to be kept by every teacher – in addition to the school chronicle – which included a register of pupils, a teaching report and a list of absences.⁶⁴ Teachers were expected to enter information into multi-page tables, sometimes bound together, on an ongoing basis. A statistical overview of class sizes, absences and promotions to the next class could be gleaned from these data but did not supply the information that was now required to produce a report on each special class pupil.⁶⁵ The record-keeping system used by the municipal schools focused on the mass administration of children and chiefly on ensuring compliance with compulsory school attendance. The performance of individual pupils was not tracked as relevant; pupils were simply assigned to the next class (or not) on the basis of examinations at the end of the school year.⁶⁶

No predefined procedure existed for determining which children should be assigned to the special classes or for producing the half-yearly reports that were intended to illuminate their learning progress.

Otto Hintz, a Berlin school principal, was one of the most active voices in the Berlin controversies about special classes. Shortly after their introduction, a special class was established at the 158th municipal school, where he was headmaster.⁶⁷ Right from the first year, he had a personal document created for each child in the special class. To begin with, the parents of each child were questioned and “everything worth knowing about the child’s past” was entered into this document. Hintz envisaged that further entries noting “observations of a favourable and unfavourable nature” on a child’s body and mind would be added to this record over time.⁶⁸ Drawing on this accumulated stock of information to create the short summary characterising each child that was prescribed by the regulations governing special classes could then be accomplished with ease.

The official record forms for special school pupils that were introduced shorly after consisted of four printed pages and were divided into two parts in both their form and their content. The first two pages comprised a report from the headmaster of the municipal school and the competent school physician. This part ended with the judgement of the school inspector on whether the child was to be assigned to a special class – a decision made purely on the basis of the paper report, without the inspector actually seeing the child.⁶⁹

In addition to the core information in the record (“Forename and surname”; “Date and place of birth”; “Residence”, “Occupation of father”) the teacher noted several pieces of information about the pupil’s school career to date. Besides a question requiring a general assessment of moral conduct and character of the child, the form required the principal to gather and record information on particular “mental deficiencies”, “reasons for backwardness” and information on the child’s “domestic situation”. In relation to this latter aspect, the questions about “nutrition status”, “tobacco and alcohol consumption” and any paid work carried out by the child were of interest. The first page of the printed form ended with a space for the headmaster’s signed and dated recommendation that a child should or should not attend the special class.⁷⁰

The form, with this assessment already included, was then passed to a school physician, who was to fill in its second page. The section assessing the pupil’s prior medical history is structured in the greatest detail. Besides the parents “economic situation” (wirtschaftliche Lage), “hereditary burden” (hereditäre Vorbelastungen), the pupils first tooth, the time he had started to walk and speak as well as further illnesses posed required information. At the bottom of the page, the school physician had to enter his recommendation and then sign and date the form. The form the physician’s “judgement” was expected to take was not specified in more detail on the form, but, as a rule, doctors did not provide a diagnosis such as “weakly gifted” (schwachbegabt) or “feeble-minded” (schwachsinnig) on the form but merely adjudicated on whether or not the pupil in question should be placed in an special class.

The second page ended with the judgement of the school inspector, who was tasked with making the definitive decision on the class the child should be placed in. If an inspector decided, based on the reports made by the principal and the school physician, that a child should be assigned to a special class, the record forms for special school pupils and the task of filling in its second half – dedicated to the special class teacher’s observations of the child during his/her time in the special class – was passed to the respective teacher. Both remaining pages consisted of a grid divided into eight rectangles. In the left-hand column, the teacher was supposed to note down his or her “observations” of the child in question at half-yearly intervals, and it can be seen from the surviving forms that teachers filled in these sections very reliably. As a rule, however, these entries did not contain individual observations, but rather evaluations of the individual children’s conduct, attention and progress.

The actual observation of the children, the practice used by teachers of special classes to legitimise their claims to possessing special knowledge and skills,⁷¹ was actually rather meagre. The tiny space provided for entering observations (about two × three centimetres per half-year) only underscores this. But the fact that individualised and individualising records were kept at all and that numerous pieces of personal information on each child were recorded was an innovation in the context of municipal schools. Apart from the annual examinations regulating children’s promotion (or not) to the next class in the municipal school, children were not otherwise monitored individually and information about them was not recorded over extended periods of time.⁷²

The right-hand column on the form was reserved for the school doctor, who was also expected to enter observations at half-yearly intervals, although this frequency was observed much more rarely. The last item on the form was a small section at the bottom of the final page in which teachers could enter a pupil’s chosen occupation or their transfer to further training options on leaving the special class. As well as indicating whether pupils were transferring back to the main classes at the municipal school, going on to continue special schooling or being transferred to an idiot asylum, teachers had a space to note “desired occupations” or “other remarks”.⁷³

Like the pupils themselves, their record forms for special school pupils remained part of the municipal school system after the children had been assigned to special classes. But the special class pupils formed a special group at the levels of both teaching and administration. This is visible both spatially, given their assignment to separate classrooms, and in the individualising records kept.

Despite the rather vague criteria for describing the “feeble-minded” child offered by the record forms for special school pupils, experts, including the Berlin school inspector Paul von Gizycki, considered the forms the only reliable basis “for discerning the mental and physical condition of a child more precisely” and determining appropriate “pedagogical treatment” accordingly.⁷⁴ At the same time, Gizycki emphasised that the forms represented “a vast field of work” and that the “sum of observations collected there” would change child psychology, but also primary school pedagogy.⁷⁵ The standardised forms made it possible for different people in different places to work on the same case (even if they had never met) and to jointly arrive at a result: did a child need to be taught in a special class or not? The pupil records kept in this way were able to structure the communication between various different experts, as well as to stabilise the image of “feeble-minded” pupils within the school system.

3.3. Local knowledge practices: the use of pupil record forms in Frankfurt

The power of record forms for special school pupils as an objectivised knowledge base for administrative decisions – referrals to the special school – is also illustrated by the following example from Frankfurt. The letter cited below was received by the regional government in Wiesbaden on 30 March 1908.⁷⁶

Dear Sirs,

Please excuse me being so free and bothering you yet again, but my child Wilhelm, 7 years going to school, never had any bad reports and was not absent until now that he is in the class of the teacher Bauerschmidt, who is very vengeful towards me and my boy because I am also poor but do not put up with everything as I know that my boy is not bad, I would like to make a heartfelt plea to you to help me and to investigate the matter as I am on my own and my husband has already been in the public hospital […, illegible] -witted since August, and I have no support at all from him.

I would like to ask you to enquire with Mr Busch Miss [… (illegible)] at the Hölderlin school what I write to you is not a lie I am poor but fair.

The issue is a bad report that I do not accept I have not signed it.

In the hope that you fulfil my wish Signed with thanks Mrs B.[…] ⁷⁷

Two days later, the Wiesbaden government asked the Frankfurt schools board (Schuldeputation) for an explanation and the board in turn passed the request for clarification onto August Henze, the headmaster of the Wiesenhütten school. Henze, for his part, had no knowledge of a certain Wilhelm B., let alone of an unfair school report, and turned to the teacher mentioned in the letter, Bauerschmidt, to request the preparation of a report for the Wiesbaden authorities. This highly official request elicited the following report on the matter from the teacher:

In order to give the “most esteemed authority” a picture of the mental abilities of the pupil Wilhelm B.[…], the undersigned includes an extract from the boy’s record form for special school pupils below: In the list of suggested candidates for the special school at Easter 1902, the doctor’s verdict given, based on an examination, is that the boy presents a picture of pronounced imbecility that justifies his admission to the special school after only one year. The form itself contains a remark by the school physician: ‘physically and mentally retarded’. The mother is also described as mentally inferior there, which presumably suffices to illustrate the merit of the complaint.⁷⁸

His poor progress is indicated by the following remarks entered in the personal record form by his former class teachers:

Winter 1904: He can hardly follow in reading and arithmetic.

Autumn 1905: Reading and arithmetic are scarcely adequate.

Easter 1906: Made no progress at all in the summer.

March 1907: Will not be promoted [to the next class].

Autumn 1907: Reading, writing and arithmetic can be described as sufficient.

The remark of Mrs. B.[…] in her complaint that her son had not received a bad report in seven years is refuted by the attached annex [StAFfm, Schulamt 4612b], which shows that the autumn report issued by Miss Ruckes is almost completely identical with the Easter report issued by the undersigned in terms of the performance recorded. Mrs B. […] still, on the contrary, owes the undersigned thanks, as promotion to the next class was not envisaged at all and was only carried out because of the anticipated small size of the class in the final year.

Most humbly yours, Bauerschmidt, teacher.⁷⁹

That the teacher, Bauerschmidt, based his argument entirely on the child’s personal record is a rather remarkable feature of his report. He seems to have hoped that this strategy would enable him to present incontrovertible facts rather than subjective impressions to the authorities in Wiesbaden and allow him to withdraw behind these facts and divert attention away from his person to some degree; he had, after all, been accused of pursuing a personal campaign of revenge against the pupil. But the incident nevertheless illustrates the increasing potency of the record forms for special school pupils, which attained the status of containing knowledge in an objectivised form precisely because countless specific questions needed to by answered by entering a brief observation. Although the teacher had only been teaching Wilhelm B. for a short period of time, it was possible for him to draft a characterisation of the boy’s mental and physical constitution, embedded with information about his family background, using notes made over multiple years by different people.

After Bauerschmidt had written his report and submitted it to the headmaster, the headmaster examined the boy himself again and reported back to the Wiesbaden authorities. In a cover letter accompanying Bauerschmidt’s report, the headmaster states:

I examined the boy myself this morning again and can only agree with the testimony. This is now the third time in the course of a school year that Mrs. B. […] has presented herself to the authorities with information that does not correspond to the truth. Henze.⁸⁰

On 15 May 1908, Mrs B. was summoned to speak to the school board. The teacher’s report and the headmaster’s note that the woman was known for being a malcontent suggest that the outcome of the matter was virtually an inevitable conclusion. The record of the interview states:

Mrs. B.[…], a woman of very limited mental abilities, repeatedly voiced her dissatisfaction with the teacher, Mr Bauerschmidt. It was pointed out to her that it was up to her and her two boys to fulfil the school’s well-founded requirements in the best interest of her boys. It was also necessary to reproach her for her boys having been arrested by the police on multiple occasions. She then declared that she would strive for a better relationship with the school in the future.⁸¹

The mental inferiority of Mrs. B., as noted in her son’s record and cited by the teacher, was taken as evidence of her inability to attend to the welfare of her children. This example of a record form for special school pupils being processed clearly demonstrates not only that the now formalised diagnosis “in need of special schooling” was irrevocable, but also that the record forms for special school pupils were considered suitable for conveying an adequate degree of legitimacy onto abstract administrative procedures.

After what has been said so far, it appears that another narrative – and possibly a contrasting one – can be told alongside the well-worn narrative from the historiography of special education in Germany about “feeble-minded” children who could not keep up with the pace of learning in regular schools and thus constantly hindered other children and the teachers: a new story told from a medical-psychiatric perspective in which the regular school played its part in a ubiquitous culture of testing by providing a space in which the identification of the “feeble-minded” was made possible by a system of long-term observation. The record forms for special school pupils kept on individual children followed the psychiatric writing system and were embedded in the discourse network of psychiatry.

Knowledge about the fabricated “feeble-minded” pupil thus unfolded along a path aligned with psychiatric nosology and linked to questions of educability and ineducability. A chain of events, created by cumulative entries in record forms for special school pupils, secured knowledge about the subjects of special education through their sheer quantity. The fabrication of knowledge through record forms for special school pupils emerged twofold. As the Berlin case shows, the form as a pre-print, in which the relevant criteria for being deemed “feeble-minded” or “retarded” had been established a priori, had knowledge-generating functions. At the same time, by circulating through the school system, the knowledge on how a special school pupil was to be detected circulated. The Frankfurt case, on the other hand, highlights the knowledge power structures embedded in the form: by producing a supposedly objective observation on a single case, which could be passed on between different institutions and professions over time.

The pre-printed form served – and still serves today – as an administrative document mapping out the contours of the special school pupil, the special school teacher (Hilfsschullehrer) and the special school as an institution type. Not by coincidence did the “Special School Teachers Association of Germany” (Verband der Hilfsschulen Deutschlands, VdHD) choose to engage in intense correspondence from 1907 onwards with the Prussian Ministry of Religious, Educational and Medical Affairs pertaining to the introduction of a standardised record form for special school pupils across all of Prussia. This lobbying effort was successful in 1913.⁸²

4. Knowledge practices – knowledge orders – knowledge regimes: the special school pupil as a new pedagogical object

It appears, when considering the thesis advanced by prior research that the special school pupil emerged in the context of rising performance requirements in the regular system of compulsory education in the elementary schools, that this was not the sole driving force behind the development of the “special school dispositif”. This is especially true for not having clear standards for educable and non-educable pupils in regular schools. The special school pupil was characterised as having weak school performance connected to weak morals due to a problematic family background (instead of low intelligence as a primary factor) and therefore this “dispositif” is rather a regulation for standardised behaviour and appearance than for academic achievement. The knowledge about the special education pupil fabricated within psychiatric knowledge practices led to the invention of the record forms for special school pupils. This new tool can be understood as a “little tool of knowledge” because it served as a form to gather and organise information on the new group of pupils – without having clear definitions beforehand. This new pedagogical knowledge is closely connected to the normative order problem accompanied by the industrial revolution and fits into Depaepe’s description of social abnormality among children.⁸³ The special school pupil seems to have emerged out of a network of activities (“knowledge practices”) linking various actors, efforts to order social affairs, ambitious schemes in the area of poor law, statistical data collection, and pedagogical ideas. Connections to the disciplines of pedagogy, psychiatry and medicine gave the special school pedagogy new specific contours, culminating in its presentation at the International Hygiene Exhibition in 1911. The special school pupil appears here as a symbol of a problematic situation that could only be addressed by a social hygiene approach. The development of this situation was attributed (as Kielhorn had explained in his 1887 speech) to traditional institutions such as churches, schools and families allegedly having lost their traditional functions in society at times of the industrial revolution, where “the production of good citizens and decent personalities” was needed.⁸⁴ This was the context in which special school pedagogy was able to portray itself as an invaluable resource and accumulate the power to shape the coming developments (“knowledge regime”):

The bigger the cities are, the more the dregs of the population settle in them; the more poverty and depravity they harbour. And it is precisely these strata that supply the most feeble-minded children. […] Life is a struggle! Whoever does not remain upright and does not continue charging forward in battle will be trampled underfoot if no compassionate arms pick him up and carry him to one side. Who is more present in the surging of this struggle than we educators of the people? Come on then! Let us lift up and set aside those who are too weak to endure in the storm!⁸⁵

It is obvious that the special school pupil, as Kielhorn dramatically pointed out, was viewed as requiring constant monitoring and supervision and not as a subject expected to become capable of “care of the self”.⁸⁶

The image of a special school pupil as a “dispositif” emerged through new knowledge practices by the record forms for special school pupils. This form served as a special diagnostic instrument and was filled in by school physicians and special education teachers for legimatising special schooling. This process was based on knowledge orders (educational, medical and psychiatric knowledge), stabilising the contours of the special school pupil and the special school by gathering statistics and a new profession. This knowledge regime stabilised itself at the mutually interdependent local and national levels of pedagogical and administrative practices that took root and were flanked by the national activities of the “Special School Teachers Association of Germany” (Verband der Hilfsschulen Deutschlands, VdHD). It further contributed to the emergence of a consistent depiction of the special school pupil in a robust network of mutually interconnected knowledge with its own professional language and specific practices:

In fact, an object’s reality depends on the extent and robustness of the broadest network of the objects in which it is inscribed. This network is made up of stabilized connections, of routinized equivalences, and words to describe them. It forms a language: that is, a discernible set of bonds that make things hold .⁸⁷

This new knowledge network, together with its practices used in the record form for special educational pupils, was important for the construction of the special school pupil at the end of the nineteenth century and creates new “normative orders” legitimised via knowledge and administrative practices. And in the context of the discourses on modernisation, the new technological solutions deployed to solve problems, among them descriptive statistics, administrative decisions and new forms of organisation like special classes and schools, at the end of the nineteenth century introduced a new logic of knowledge regimes: the relevant circulation processes (as “New Historicism” would describe them) between administrative bodies, new actors and pedagogical discourses contributed to the functional and knowledge-based differentiation of society as a defining feature of modernity by creating both professionals on one side and clients/patients on the other.⁸⁸ The perspective of New Historicism allows for a wider perspective on the development of special schooling by focusing on knowledge production, knowledge circulation and knowledge of the special school pupil and for linking this to broader reforms such as the hygiene movement.

Acknowledgements

We are indebted to Stefan Wünsch, a member of the project team, for his stimulating research contributions on the history of the special schools in the region around Frankfurt am Main. We also extend heartfelt thanks to Heinz-Elmar Tenorth, Patrick Bühler, Marcelo Caruso, Sabine Reh, Lilli Riettiens and Christian Stöger for their inspiring, critical and helpful comments on this research project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

Funding for this article was provided through the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft DFG) under the project number 5517250102.

Notes on contributors

Vera Moser

Vera Moser, *1962, studied special education at Goethe University Frankfurt and Philipps-University Marburg, doctorate in 1994 with a thesis on the history of special education in the age of enlightenment, habilitation in 2002 with a thesis on the disciplinary identity of special education, 2003–2010 professor for special education at Justus Liebig University Gießen, 2010–2020 Professor of Pedagogy for Learning Difficulties and Rehabilitation Science at the Humboldt University of Berlin, since 2020 Professor of Inclusive Education (Kathrin and Stefan Quandt Research Foundation Professorship) at Goethe University Frankfurt. She is the Founding Director of the Center for Inclusion Research at Humboldt-University Berlin, director of the Graduate School “Inclusion – Education – School”. Long-term research on the history and theory of special needs education and on inclusive schooling, professional and organisational development.

Jona T. Garz

Jona T. Garz is a Post-Doc at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, working on the history of out-of-home care in the National Research Programme 76 “Coercion and Care”. Jona holds an MA in Theology and recently finished a PhD on the history of knowledge of “feeble-mindedness” in the nineteenth century. Jona’s research interests include the history of knowledge as well as histories of psychological diagnostics.

Stefanie Frenz

Stefanie Frenz studies Special Education and German at Humboldt-University Berlin. She graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in 2020 and is currently completing a Master’s programme. From 2017 to 2021, Stefanie Frenz was a student assistant in the research project “Profession and Normative Orders in the Development of the Urban Special School”.

Notes

¹ Safford, Philip L., and Safford, Elizabeth, J., A History of Childhood and Disability (New York/London: Teachers College Press, 1996), vii. See for example Rotatori, Anthony F., Obiakor, Festus E., and Bakken Jeffrey P., History of Special Education (Advances in Special Education Vol. 21) (Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2011); and Ellger-Rüttgardt, Sieglind, Geschichte der Sonderpädagogik (München: Reinhardt, 1998).

² Winzer, Margret A., The History of Special Education. From Isolation to Integration (Washington DC: Gaulladet University Press, 2002).

³ Mamadaliev, Anvar M., Svechnikova, NataliaV., Ermachkov, Ivan A. and Médico, Aude, “The German System of Public Education in the Period between the 15th and early 20th Centuries”, European Journal of Contemporary Education 8 (2019): 943–950.

⁴ Safford, Philip L., and Safford, Elizabeth J., “History of Childhood & Disability”, v.

⁵ van Drenth, Annemieke and Myers, Kevin. “Normalising Childhood: Policies

and Interventions Concerning Special Children in the United States and Europe (1900–1960)”, Paedagogica Historica 47 (2011): 724, 719–727, doi:10.1080/00309230.2011.621197.

⁶ This approach is similar to Ian Copeland, The Making of the Backward Pupil in Education in England, 1870–1914 (London: Woburn, 1999).

⁷ Hebel, Ulrich, “Der amerikanische “New Historicism” der achtziger Jahre. Bestandsaufnahme einer neuen Orthodoxie kulturwissenschaftlicher Literaturinterpretation”, in: Amerikastudien – American Studies 37 (1992): 325–347, here: 333; see also: Pieters, Jürgen, “New Historicism: Postmodern Historiography between Narrativism and Heterology”, History and Theory 39 (2000): 21–38. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2677996; Gallagher Greenblatt, New Historicism, 11.

⁸ See Asiner, Martin, Stephen Greenblatt and the New Historicism (Amazon e-book, 2020).

⁹ Thomas, New Historicism, 25 defines New Historicism in the context of postmodern theory as follows: “New Historicism suggests the newest of the past, whereas postmodernism suggests the pastness of the new”.

¹⁰ On the term Rechtfertigungsnarrativ (orders of justification) see Forst, Rainer, Normativity and Power: Analysing Social Orders of Justification (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017)

¹¹ See Hess, Volker, and J. Andrew Mendelsohn, “Case and Series: Medical Knowledge and Paper Technology, 1600–1900”, History of Science 48 (2010): 287–314; Bultman, Saskia, and Geertje Mak, “Identity in Forms: Paper Technologies in Dutch Anthropometric Practices around 1900”, International Journal for History, Culture and Modernity 7 (2019).

¹² Ellger-Rüttgardt, Sieglind, Der Hilfsschullehrer. Sozialgeschichte einer Lehrergruppe (1880–1933) (Weinheim: Beltz, 1980); Andreas Möckel, Geschichte der besonderen Grund- und Hauptschule (Heidelberg: Winter, 2001); Andreas Möckel, Geschichte der Heilpädagogik (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2007); Fittje, Hans, Beiträge zu einer Revision der Hilfsschulgeschichte von den Anfängen bis 1918 (Diss. Universität Oldenburg, 1986); Synwoldt, Jochen, Die schulische Bildung behinderter Kinder und Jugendlicher: Entwicklung des Sonderschulwesens von Berlin (Northeim: Northeim, 1998); Ellger-Rüttgardt, Sieglind, Geschichte der Sonderpädagogik (München: Reinhardt, 2008); and Hänsel, Dagmar, and Schwager, Hans-Joachim, Die Sonderschule als Armenschule: Vom gemeinsamen Unterricht zur Sondererziehung nach Braunschweiger Muster (Bern [u.a.]: Lang, 2004).

¹³ Jantzen, Wolfgang, Sozialgeschichte des Behindertenbetreuungswesens (Munich: DJI, 1982); Altstaedt, Ingeborg, Lernbehinderte. Eine kritische Entwicklungsgeschichte eines Notstandes: Sonderpädagogik in Deutschland und Schweden (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1977); Fittje, Hans, Beiträge zu einer Revision der Hilfsschulgeschichte von den Anfängen bis 1918 (Diss. Uni Oldenburg, 1986); and Pfahl, Lisa, Techniken der Behinderung. Der deutsche Lernbehinderungsdiskurs, die Sonderschule und ihre Auswirkungen auf Bildungsbiografien (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2011).

¹⁴ Descriptions of the special school (Hilfsschule) given by its protagonists also focus strongly on its role in the upbringing of children (Möckel, Geschichte der Heilpädagogik; Ellger-Rüttgardt, Geschichte der Sonderpädagogik).

¹⁵ See especially Kuhlemann, Frank-Michael, Modernisierung und Disziplinierung. Sozialgeschichte des preußischen Volksschulwesens 1794–1872 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1992); Geißler, Gert, Schulgeschichte in Deutschland. Von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart (Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang, 2011).

¹⁶ Moser, Vera, and Frenz, Stefanie, “Profession und normative Ordnungen in der Entstehung der urbanen Hilfsschule: Die Modernisierung der Regierung des Sozialen. Oder: Die Entstehung einer pädagogischen Tatsache”, in Das (A)normale in der Pädagogik, ed. Vera Moser and Jona Tomke Garz (Bad Heilbrunn: Klinkhardt, in press).

¹⁷ Osgood, Robert L., The History of Special Education. A Struggle for Equality in American Public Schools (Westport: Praeger Publishers, 2009), 43.

¹⁸ On the concept of modernisation, see for instance Bayly, Christopher Alan, Die Geburt der modernen Welt (Frankfurt/Main: Campus, 2006); Gall, Lothar, Europa auf dem Weg in die Moderne 1850–1890 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2009); Wehler, Hans-Ulrich, Nationalismus. Geschichte, Formen, Folgen (Munich: Beck, 2011); and Wehler, Hans-Ulrich, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte, Vol. 3. Von der “Deutschen Doppelrevolution” bis zum Beginn des Ersten Weltkrieges 1849–1914 (Munich: Beck, 1995).

¹⁹ Laqueur, Walter, Fin de Siècle and Other Essays on America and Europe (New York: Taylor & Francis, 2018).

²⁰ Weiß, Martin, and Frühliger, Max, “Die Verhandlungen der XXVII. Allgemeinen Deutschen Lehrerversammlung zu Gotha: Stenographischer Bericht der Rede von Lehrer Kielhorn zur Hilfsschule”, Deutsche Lehrerzeitung 39 (1887): 307–313.

²¹ See Garz, Jona Tomke, Moser, Vera, and Wünsch, Stefan, “Die ‘Kielhorn-Rede.’ Ursprungsmythos der deutschen Hilfsschule”, in Prüfen, Testen, Auslesen und Zuweisen. Zum Inklusions-Paradox des Schulsystems zwischen 1860 und 1960, ed. S. Reh, P. Bühler, M. Hofmann and V. Moser (Bad Heilbrunn: Klinkhardt, 2021), 29–45.

²² Foucault, Michel, Surveiller et punir : Naissance de la prison (Paris: Gallimard, 1975); Foucault, Michel, Les Anormaux. Cours au Collège de France, 1974–1975 (Paris: Gallimard, 1999).

²³ Hien, Josef, The Return of Religion? The Paradox of Faith-Based Welfare Provision in a Secular Age (MPIfG Discussion Paper, 2014): https://www.mpifg.de/pu/mpifg_dp/dp14-9.pdf

²⁴ Charles, S. Meier, Leviathan 2.0. Inventing Modern Statehood (Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University Press, 2012).

²⁵ See Jordan, Stefan, Theorien und Methoden der Geschichtswissenschaft (Paderborn: Schönigh, 2013).

²⁶ Brakensiek, Stefan, “Regionalgeschichte als Sozialgeschichte. Studien zur ländlichen Gesellschaft im deutschsprachigen Raum”, in Regionalgeschichte in Europa, ed. Stefan Brakensiek and Axel Flügel (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2000), 197–251, here: 251.

²⁷ See Kuhlemann, Frank-Michael, “Niedere Schulen”, in Handbuch der deutschen Bildungs-geschichte Band IV 1870–1918, ed. Christa Berg (München: Beck, 1991), 179–217; see also Zumhof, Tim, ”Kulturpoetik und Historische Bildungsforschung. Die Bedeutung des New Historicism für die pädagogische Historiographie und die ideengeschichtliche Forschung in der Erziehungswissenschaft”, Zeitschrift für Pädagogik 66 (2020): 421–444, doi: 10.3262/ZP2003421.

²⁸ Landesarchiv Berlin (Berlin State Archive, hereafter: LAB), A Rep 020–52 XV. Hilfsschule Tiergarten, Nr. 1–3.

²⁹ LAB, A Rep 020–52 XV. Hilfsschule Tiergarten, Nr. 6–20.

³⁰ Ebershold, Günther, Mündigkeit. Zur Geschichte eines Begriffs (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1980).

³¹ Gstach, Kretinismus und Blödsinn. Zur fachlich-wissenschaftlichen Entdeckung und Konstruktion von Phänomenen der geistig-mentalen Auffälligkeit zwischen 1780 und 1900 und deren Bedeutung für Fragen der Erziehung und Behandlung (Bad Heilbrunn: Klinkhardt, 2015).

³² Georgens, Jan-Daniel, and Deinhard, Heinrich Marianus, Die Heilpädagogik mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Idiotie und der Idiotenanstalten (Leipzig, 1861/63). Séguin, Edouard, Traitement Moral. Hygiène et éducation des idiots et des autres enfants arrières (Paris: Baillière, 1864). See also van Drenth, Annemieke, “Sensorial Experiences and Childhood: Nineteenth-Century care for Children with Idiocy”, Paedagogica Historica 51 (2015): 560–578, doi:10.1080/00309230.2015.1019711.

³³ Gstach, Kretinismus and Blödsinn.

³⁴ Hoffmann, Thomas, Wille und Entwicklung. Problemfelder – Konzepte – Pädagogisch-psychologische Perspektiven (Wiesbaden: Springer, 2013).

³⁵ Gstach, Kretinismus and Blödsinn, 114.

³⁶ See Moser, Vera, “Die wissenschaftliche Grundlegung der Heilpädagogik in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts”, Heilpädagogische Forschung 24 (1998): 75–83.

³⁷ Störmer, Norbert, Innere Mission und geistige Behinderung (Münster/Hamburg: LIT, 1991); Gstach, Kretinismus und Blödsinn.

³⁸ See Foucault, Michel, Les Anormaux. Cours au Collège de France, 1974–1975 (Paris: Gallimard, 1999)

³⁹ This is about 20 years earlier than similar developments in England and the Netherlands, see: van Drenth, Annemieke, and van Essen, Mineke, “Dutch Special Education Schools for Children with Learning Disabilities in the Interwar Period”, Paedagogica Historica 47 (2011): 805–824, doi:10.1080/00309230.2011.621203.

⁴⁰ Other countries presenting at the Exhibition were Austria, Hungary, Switzerland, France and England. See Selter, Hugo, Der Stand der Schulhygiene. Nach den Vorführungen auf der Internationalen Hygiene-Ausstellung Dresden 1911. Zugleich ein Führer durch die Gruppe “Schulhygiene” der Ausstellung (Dresden: 1911), 87–97.

⁴¹ Ibid., 87–97.

⁴² Wünsch, Stefan, Dresden – Cassel – Brüssel – Berlin – Frankfurt. Ein Reisebericht (unpublished manuscript from the German Research Foundation (DFG) project “Profession and normative orders in the development of urban special schools (Hilfsschulen): Modernizing social governance”), 2018.

⁴³ Foucault, Michel, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and other Writings, 1972–1977, trans. Colin Gordon, Leo Marshall, John Mepham, and Kate Soper (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), 194.

⁴⁴ Parts of this section are based on the work of Stefan Wünsch on the project mentioned in footnote 1.

⁴⁵ Starr, Moses Allen, Brain Surgery (New York, 1893), 137–138.

⁴⁶ Kraepelin, Emil, Psychiatrie. Ein Lehrbuch für Studierende und Ärzte (Leipzig, 1896), 814.

⁴⁷ Weygandt, Wilhelm, Die Behandlung idiotischer und imbeciller Kinder in ärztlicher und pädagogischer Beziehung (Würzburg, 1900), 31.

⁴⁸ Kraepelin, Psychiatrie, 3.

⁴⁹ Kraepelin, Psychiatrie, 8.

⁵⁰ Daston, Lorraine, “The Empire of Observation, 1600–1800” in Histories of Scientific Observation, ed. Lorraine Daston and Elizabeth Lunbeck (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 181–213.

⁵¹ See Cornelius Borck and Armin Schäfer, ed., Das psychiatrische Aufschreibesystem: Notieren, Ordnen, Schreiben in der Psychiatrie (Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink, 2015).

⁵² Kittler, Friedrich, Discourse networks 1800/1900, trans. Mark Metteer with Chris Cullens (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990), 369.

⁵³ See the example of Carl Philipp Moritz in Reh, Sabine, “Beobachten und aufmerksames Wahrnehmen. Aspekte einer Geschichte des Beobachtens” in Beobachtung in der Schule – Beobachten lernen, ed. Heike de Boer and Sabine Reh (Wiesbaden: Springer, 2012), 3–25.

⁵⁴ Pethes, Nicolas, “‘Und nun ihr Pädagogen – beobachtet, schreibt!’ Zur doppelten Funktion der Medien im Diskurs über Erziehung und Bildung im 18. Jahrhundert”, in Jenseits von Utopie und Entlarvung. Kulturwissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Erziehungsdiskurs der Moderne, ed. Eva Geulen and Nicolas Pethes (Freiburg: Rombach, 2007), 49–68.

⁵⁵ Berdelmann, Kathrin, “‘Sein Inneres kennen wir nicht, denn es ist uns verschlossen.’ Schulische Beobachtung und Beurteilung von Kindern im 18. Jahrhundert”, Zeitschrift für Grundschulforschung 9 (2016): 9–23, here: 10–11.

⁵⁶ For a more detailed history of the circulation of knowledge between psychiatry and special education in Prussia see Garz, Jona Tomke, Zwischen Anstalt und Schule. Eine Wissensgeschichte der Erziehung schwachsinniger Kinder in Berlin 1845–1914 (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2022).

⁵⁷ Ibid.

⁵⁸ Becker, Peter, and Clark, William, Little Tools of Knowledge: Historical Essays on Academic and Bureaucratic Practices (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2001).

⁵⁹ This section has been previously published in German as part of the chapter “Ein neues Aufschreibesystem? Der Personalbogen für Kinder der Nebenklassen”, in Garz, Zwischen Anstalt und Schule, 2022.

⁶⁰ Magistrat der Stadt Berlin, “Allgemeine Bestimmungen über den Nebenunterricht an den Gemeindeschulen”, Zeitschrift für die Behandlung Schwachsinniger und Epileptischer (Organ der Konferenz für das Idiotenwesen) 14 (1898): 77. There are multiple reasons for this decision besides psychiatric knowledge circulation into municipal administration and pedagogy. By 1890 school attendance had increased to 100%, possibly leading to more children lagging behind the average, especially when they were working part time. See Kuhlemann, “Niedere Schulen”, 1991. Special classes were also part of a compromise to stall a larger municipal school reform. See Garz, 2022.

⁶¹ Ibid.

⁶² For the first 3 years of special classes the Berlin Magistrate published statistics, stating that roughly 8% of all pupils in special classes were transferred back to the main classes. See Magistrat der Stadt Berlin, Bericht der Schuldeputation 1898/1899; 1900; 1901. No statistics on the matter were published after 1901.

⁶³ See for the regulations: Magistrat der Stadt Berlin, Bericht der Schul-Deputation1898/1899 (Berlin, 1899).

⁶⁴ Adolf Liese, ed., Allgemeine Bestimmungen über das preußische Volksschul- Präparanden- und Seminarwesen vom 15. Oktober 1872, nebst verschiedenen Prüfungsordnungen dem Schulaufsichtsgesetze (Heuser: Leipzig, 1887).

⁶⁵ On the practices and significance of tables and statistics in (higher) schools at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, see Lindenhayn, Nils, Die Prüfung. Zur Geschichte einer pädagogischen Technologie (Göttingen: Böhlau, 2019), 193–205.

⁶⁶ Magistrat der Stadt Berlin, Berliner Gemeinderecht. Schulverwaltung. Abteilung 1: Volksschulen, Taubstummen- und Blindenschule 3 (1913): 111–112.

⁶⁷ Berliner Lehrerverein, Verzeichnis der Rektoren, Lehrer und Lehrerinnen an den Berliner Gemeindeschulen (Berlin, 1898), 23.

⁶⁸ Anonymous, “Über die Nebenklassen für schwachbefähigte Kinder”, Zeitschrift für Schulgesundheitspflege 12 (1899): 529–530.

⁶⁹ LAB, A Rep. 020–52 No. 8, unpaginated, all quotations hereafter ibid.

⁷⁰ It was stated on the printed forms that the section with the school’s report on the child was to be completed by the school principal. However, the completed forms that have survived suggest that the information was largely provided by teachers. It was the teachers, after all, who saw the children day after day. The principal merely signed the reports that had already been prepared.

⁷¹ See Fuchs, Arno, “Der gegenwärtige Stand der Hilfsschulfrage”, Die Deutsche Schule 6 (1902): 153–163, 218–228; Horrix, Hermann, “Der Personalbogen in der Hilfsschule”, in Bericht über den Sechsten Verbandstag der Hilfsschulen Deutschlands zu Charlottenburg (Hannover: 1907) 25–61.

⁷² Magistrat der Stadt Berlin, 1913, 112–113.

⁷³ The background to this was that the Städtische Schuldeputation (city school board) recorded the desired occupations of all outgoing pupils from 1901 on.

⁷⁴ Gizycki, P. von, “Die Entwicklung des Unterrichts für Schwachsinnige Kinder in Berlin”, Blätter für Volksgesundheitspflege 2 (1902): 225–229; 241–244.

⁷⁵ Ibid., 244.

⁷⁶ This section is a translation of an unpublished manuscript by Stefan Wünsch: “Frankfurter Auftakt und Drei Vorfälle”, dated 19 March 2019.

⁷⁷ Institut für Stadtgeschichte (Institute for the History of Frankfurt, hereafter: StAFfm), Schulamt 4612a (no pagination), letter dated 30 March 1908.

⁷⁸ StAFfm, Schulamt 4612 (no pagination), report by Bauerschmidt dated 8.4.1908.

⁷⁹ Ibid.

⁸⁰ StAFfm, Schulamt 4612 (no pagination), letter by Henze dated 8.4.1908.

⁸¹ StAFfm, Schulamt 4612 (no pagination), record of the interview dated 15.5.1908.

⁸² Ministerium der geistlichen Unterrichts- und Medicinal-Angelegenheiten, “Betrifft Einführung eines einheitlichen Personalbogens für alle Hilfsschulen”, Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz I. Rep. 76 II neu Sekt. 1 Teil I Nr. 50 Bd. 4 (1913): fol. 454–457.

⁸³ Depaepe, Marc, “Soziale Abnormität und moralische Debilität bei Kindern. Ein Diskussionsthema auf internationalen wissenschaftlichen Zusammenkünften am Anfang dieses Jahrhunderts”, Paedagogica Historica 25 (1990): 185–209, doi:10.1080/0030923900260210.

⁸⁴ Risto Rinne and Joel Kivirauma, “The Historical Formation of Modern Education and the Junction of the ‘Educational Lower Class’: Poor Education as the Denominator of Social Position and Status in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries in Finland”, Paedagogica Historica 41 (2006): 61–77, doi:10.1080/0030923042000335466.

⁸⁵ Kielhorn, Heinrich, “Schule für Schwachbefähigte Kinder (Verhandlungen der 27. Allgemeinen Deutschen Lehrerversammlung zu Gotha)”, Allgemeine Deutsche Lehrerzeitung 32 (1887): 307–313.

⁸⁶ See Sarasin, Philipp, “Ordnungsstrukturen. Zum Zusammenhang von Foucaults Diskurs- und Machtanalyse”, in Methoden und Kontexte. Historiographische Probleme der Bildungsforschung, ed. R. Casale, D. Tröhler and J. Oelkers (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2006).

⁸⁷ Deroisière, Alain, The Politics of Large Numbers. A History of Statistical Reasoning, trans. Camille Naish (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 333.

⁸⁸ Stichweh, Rudolf, Inklusion und Exklusion. Studien zur Gesellschaftstheorie (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2016), 24.