Johann Bernhard Basedow and Daniel Chodowiecki, Elementary Work (1774)
Abstract
In his Method Book [Methodenbuch] from 1770, educational reformer and pedagogue Johann Bernhard Basedow (1724–90) wrote, “Experience shows how much children like anything that looks like a picture, even when only everyday things or things to which they are usually indifferent are portrayed. The observations and moral doctrines that accompany such illustrations are more vivid than otherwise….” Images featured prominently in Basedow’s Elementary Work [Elementarwerk], which was published in 1774, the same year that he founded a progressive school known as the Philanthropinum in Dessau. Basedow’s four-volume Elementary Work included nearly 100 copperplate engravings by Daniel Chodowiecki (1726–1801). The images below, taken from volume 1 of Elementary Work, cover a range of topics: clothing, animals, anatomy, and trades.
Source
Tab. III. a) Examples of most of the different articles of clothing. B) Mistakes, whereby children spoil their clothes. Elementary Book XV.
Tab. VIII. Animals a) above, beekeeping. Elementary Book XXIV. – a) below, silk farming. Elementary Book XXV. – b) the fox with its prey. The sea eagle and the sea falcon. Other types of foul. The marmots. The anteater. Elementary Book XXVI. – c) The fish with its fins, gill cover etc. The mussel or oyster. The eider. The toad. The frog. The snake. The spider. – The swan with webbed feet. The long-legged heron. The otters and the beavers. Elementary Book XXVII. – d) The camel with its driver. The grand elephant. Its trunk. Its load. Its driver. Elementary Book XXVIII.
Tab. XI. The human body. a) Two human figures showing the external parts. A human skeleton. Presentation of the trachea and the position of the lungs in relation to the heart. The lungs in larger view. The digestive tract from the mouth to the rectum. Two larger illustrations of the heart (one with the septum between the two chambers of the heart). The circulatory system. The external musculature. A cripple, who has no hands and feet, but who is able to eat independently. Elementary Book XXXVII to XL. – b) A sick person with a doctor and a friend. A table with medicine. A child being given medicine. – c) Another child being treated by a doctor. One of the doctor’s instruments. A woman having her vein opened. Elementary Book XLIII.
XXI. Continuation of the previous. – a) The cabinetmaker with his apprentices. Elementary Book LXXXVI. – b) Work on a building by bricklayers, laborers, carpenters, stonemasons and on the scaffolding. Elementary Book LXXXVII. – c) Work in the printing shop, Elementary Book LXXXVIII. – d) The dangerous way of life of miners, roofers, and seafarers. Elementary Book LXXXIX.
Source: Des Elementarwerks ... Band: Ein geordneter Vorrath aller nöthigen Erkenntniß; Zum Unterrichte der Jugend, von Anfang, bis ins academische Alter, Zur Belehrung der Eltern, Schullehrer und Hofmeister, Zum Nutzen eines jeden Lesers, die Erkenntniß zu vervollkommnen. In Verbindung mit einer Sammlung von Kupferstichen, und mit französischer und lateinischer Uebersetzung dieses Werks/[Johann Bernhard Basedow und Daniel Chodowiecki]. Leipzig and Dessau: Crusius, 1774. Halle, Saale: Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Sachsen-Anhalt. Available online at: http://digital.bibliothek.uni-halle.de/hd/content/pageview/2060305
Further Reading
Jürgen Overhoff, “Franklin’s Philadelphia Academy and Basedow’s Dessau Philanthropine: Two Models of Non-Denominational Schooling in Eighteenth-Century America and Germany,” Paedagogica Historica 43, no. 6 (December 2007), pp. 801–18.
Reinhard von Stach, “Das Basedowsche Elementarwerk,” Paedagogica Historica 14, no. 2 (January 1974), pp. 458–96.