Lecture by Sabine Zahn at the Adolfinum on the occasion of a school project at Zahn's Family Day 2012

 

First of all, on behalf of the Zahn family, I would like to express my sincere thanks to the Adolfinum for this celebration. My special thanks go to Mr. van Stephoudt, the director of the Adolfinum, who energetically and creatively took the initiative, developed a school project and invited us here. I would also like to thank the students and teachers of the Adolfinum who have organized the program for this afternoon.

The meeting of the Zahn family in Moers this weekend gave me reason to get in touch with the Adolfinum. Dr. Johannes Zahn, my great-grandfather and direct ancestor of most of our family members present here, worked here. Johannes Zahn was director of the Adolfium for 30 years, from 1870 to 1900.

School yesterday - school today is the name of this event, where I would like to tell something about school yesterday in connection with the life and work of Johannes Zahn.

Who was Johannes Zahn?

He was born in Dresden in 1828, the eldest son of the pedagogue Franz Ludwig Zahn and his wife Anna, née Schlatter, and came to Moers in 1832 because his father had taken over the management of the Protestant teacher training college as successor to its founder, Adolf Diesterweg.

The Zahn family remained in Moers for almost the entire 19th century and also shaped the history of the city in many ways.

Johannes Zahn passed the Abitur in 1845, so he was also a so-called G8ter. He studied theology and classical philology first in Bonn, then in Berlin, finally deciding on philology in 1848 and completing his studies.

Until 1865, i.e. for 17 years, he taught at his father Franz Ludwig Zahn's educational institution in Moers. In addition, he received his doctorate in 1857 on the Greek grammarian Aristonico and passed the grand state examination of the senior teacher examination in Bonn in 1857.

In 1859 he married Laura Wintgens, the daughter of the factory owner Heinrich Wintgens, who at that time lived with his family in Moers Castle. With her, Johannes Zahn had 10 children, 4 sons and 6 daughters, of whom 2 sons and a daughter died in infancy and another daughter fell into the castle moat while skating and drowned.

In 1865 Johannes Zahn became a senior teacher at the Gymnasium in Barmen, and in 1870 he returned to Moers as director of the Adolfinum. He held this position until 1900, when he retired at the age of 72. In the last year of his life he moved to Düsseldorf, where he died of a stroke in 1905.

So much for his most important stations in life.

In order to evaluate his achievements for the Adolfinum, one must know that the school was at that time an independent institution, only slightly subsidized by the city of Moers. The director, supported by a Scholariat - a kind of board of trustees consisting of him and four other dignitaries - determined the program and profile of the school. At that time, this also included the decision on the canon of subjects, the teaching content, the examination regulations, the hiring of teachers, the admission of students, the school rules, which also referred to the life of the students outside the school, and the ethical-religious principles and practices.

The director was also responsible for the financing, which at that time, in addition to the rather small municipal subsidy, was largely ensured by donations from the citizens of Moers and especially from former students.

The school depended on its reputation, especially because of its existentially important external impact, and on out-of-town students who came to Moers specifically because of the Adolfinum, for Moers at that time had only 3,500 to 4,000 inhabitants in total and could neither fill its own grammar school with a sufficient number of students nor could it afford a grammar school.

The school director was a member of the town council and represented the interests of his school in the political arena and also to the Prussian supervisory authorities and the Ministry of Education in Berlin. Johannes Zahn was virtually revered by the citizens of Moers because of his striking and witty public statements and thus also achieved quite a large willingness to donate for the Adolfinum among the population. He also became active in other political areas. Sent to Berlin to negotiate on behalf of the city of Moers, he succeeded, together with the mayor of the time, in getting Moers connected to the railroad network. As a result, Moers received its first rail line to Krefeld, an extremely important economic factor at the time.

But back to the school: in the Adolfinum there was thus a far-reaching self-administration, which allowed the school to develop highly independently and to become nationally known and much admired for its special profile and high level.

At the beginning of his time of service at the Adolfinum, Johannes Zahn ensured that the Prussian Provincial Authority - the supervisory authority for the school system at that time - elevated the Adolfinum to a humanistic grammar school in the first place. Before that, for many years it had only been a so-called Progymnasium, i.e. a kind of higher secondary school.

The Adolfinum now focused on Latin, ancient Greek and history. These were also the subjects that Johannes Zahn taught and in which he was masterly and at a high scientific level. Even as a student, he is said to have translated the Gospel of John from Luther's translation into Latin. According to former students, he spoke Latin just as well as German and also brought everyday questions and above all conversations, i.e. spoken language, into the Latin lessons.

He taught his high school students free speech, paying attention not only to the content and language, but also to the expression, manner of speaking, and posture of the speakers. An academic should master the art of public speaking, was his opinion.

Johannes Zahn was characterized by a comprehensive, deep faith and a thoroughly Christian, evangelical worldview. "Living and finding faith in everyday life" was his motto. After all, he came from a family of Protestant pastors, and his worldview had been extremely strongly influenced by his father, Franz Ludwig Zahn.

Johannes Zahn was also a pedagogue through and through and must have really loved his students. He always spoke with pride of "his boys". It was a sign of mutual solidarity that many of his students maintained contact with the Adolfinum and also with him personally far beyond their school days. Johannes Zahn is described as often grumpy and easily angered. Above all, however, he must have possessed the great gift of teaching in a vivid and captivating manner and of conveying even difficult subject matter in an interesting way.

Incidentally, Johannes Zahn was also committed to the education of girls; the Adolfinum was, of course, reserved solely for boys at that time. He promoted the founding of a secondary school for girls, as it was called at the time, and for many years took over its management in addition to his other duties.

And how do I know all this, although I did not know and experience my great-grandfather myself?

My grandfather, Hans Zahn, who, by the way, was a student at the Adolfinum from 1885 to 1895, passed it down to us. He wrote an extensive article about his father, which can be read in a commemorative publication of the Adofinum. He also told that his father really glowed when he could teach something to the youth. Humanism, Christian faith and - I call it his pedagogical mission - these were the determining poles of Johannes Zahn, which also had a lasting influence on the orientation and development of the Adofinum.

School yesterday School today - a look at problems and arguments of past times often reflects surprising parallels to issues of our time, may the social situation between today and then also be very different.

Johannes Zahn was the only one involved who vehemently opposed the plans to nationalize the Adolfinum, which then took place in 1892 after all. Resistance to public sponsorship seems absurd today, since for us this is virtually the natural state of a school.

The Adolfinum needed a new building, which was built in 1896. For this purpose, the school had to rely on Prussian state funding, since neither the city of Moers nor the school itself could finance the construction costs. The Prussian state, for its part, was interested in unifying the administration and thus also the school system, which was entirely under the control of the Prussian Ministry of Education.

So why did Johannes Zahn not want his school to be nationalized? He argued that nationalization would bring with it an overpowering bureaucratization that would distract from the educational and subject-specific work with the students and burden the school with many additional administrative tasks. He also feared the loss of the independence and above all the Christian orientation of the Adolfinum through rigid, general regulations, which could in particular impair the nationally recognized, specific profile of his school. Nevertheless, he had to come to terms with this new order in his last years in office.

Whether or not he correctly assessed the future with his arguments - that can only be judged by the Adolfine, first and foremost the educators and students who teach and learn here today.

I hope you could also learn a little bit about the Adolfinum of that time through my small contribution about Johannes Zahn. Anyway, thank you for your attention!

 

Moers, September 21, 2012