About Friedrich Froebel

Friedrich Froebel was born in 1782 in Oberweisbach, in what is now East Germany. He was the third son of a Lutheran Minister. While he was still an infant, his mother died and his father remarried. Once his father's second wife had a child, Friedrich was neglected and at age 11, a bachelor uncle, also a Lutheran Minister, took over the upbringing and education of the young Friedrich.

When he was fifteen years old, Friedrich was apprenticed to a Forester. He began a life-long study of botany and biology. This period of his life no doubt influenced his views on the important affect of nature on young children. To Froebel, nature revealed God's laws of growth and development.

After a short time of study at the University of Jena, Froebel became a teacher. He said afterward that in teaching, he found himself - like a duck who takes to water! He tutored two boys and took them with him to visit Pestalozzi's school at Yverdon, Switzerland where he stayed for two years. He studied further at the Universities of Berlin and Gottingen. One of his fields of study was architecture.

From 1813 to 1814, he served in the Prussian army fighting against Napoleon. There he met two friends who were to remain with him throughout his lifetime and supported him in all his educational endeavors - Langenthal and Middendorf.

For a time he became an assistant in the Mineralogical Museum in Berlin. His interest in the form and shape of crystals later led to the invention of his Gifts, the toys he devised for children. The toys were to help children understand many things about their world.

From 1816 to 1837 Froebel gave his time and energies to education and to his schools. In 1826 he published his first book, The Education of Man .

It was in 1837 when Friedrich Froebel was fifty-five years old, that he formulated his ideas for the Kindergarten. "Eureka", he shouted as he walked one day with his friend Middendorf, "I have it. My newest institution shall be called a Kindergarten." The Kindergarten was to be a garden of children, a place where each child could be fully developed according to his true potential.

The first kindergarten was opened in Blankenburg in 1837. The years until his death in 1852, Froebel devoted both to making the Kindergarten known, and to training mothers and kindergartners (child nurturers) for this important work. Froebel's wife faithfully carried on his work after his death.