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

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

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.

Johann Bernhard Basedow and Daniel Chodowiecki, Elementary Work (1774), published in: German History Intersections, <https://germanhistory-intersections.org/en/knowledge-and-education/ghis:image-185> [November 29, 2023].