When the newly appointed professor of medicine at the University of Rinteln, Johann Peter Lotichius (1598-1669), delivered an oration entitled "Oratio super fatalibus hoc tempore academiarum in Germania periculis" ("Oration on the pernicious dangers to the universities of contemporary Germany") at said university in February…

The article will discuss some central relations between political authoritarianism and right-wing education in the interwar period. Then it is asked why these concepts and powers are renewed in today' s politics and education. And in the end it shows what research gaps exist and how the articles of this special issue could fill them.

From its very beginning, the Protestant Reformation adopted the theatre as one of its educational tools. Together with choral music, visual arts, and preaching, Luther, Melanchthon, Oekolampad, and other Reformers promoted both the cultivated school theatre and the popular street theatre in order to spread the new faith, create a community ethos,…

"Life reform" is an umbrella term used for describing the movements critical of modernisation whose main features were the desire to return to nature and naturalness, to self-healing and finding lost integrity again. They also have close ties to the educational reforms of the time. These movements were particularly active in the German,…

After the revolution in 1918, many reformist teachers were convinced that they could put into practice their dreams of a free and independent school in a democratic republic. Four state schools in Hamburg became anti-authoritarian school communities, in which teachers, parents and students experimented with revolutionary concepts of education. For…

Germany's well-established, and often envied, public elementary schools of the early twentieth century, encompassing the years from the late German Empire through the Weimar Republic, were both centers of reform pedagogy and sites of persistent confessional religious education. This article uses schoolbooks, curricula and pedagogical literature to…