Bewertungen des Johann Amos Comenius
Zusammengestellt von Werner Korthaase, Berlin
Von jeher, fährt er fort, sei das Bestreben der Menschen dahin gegangen, diesen Übeln abzuhelfen, und er zeigt mit großem Verstande sowohl was man bisher dazu getan und auf welchen Wegen man es angegriffen habe als auch weshalb diese Mittel unhinreichend oder unwirksam geblieben. Indessen sei der Mut nicht aufzugeben, sondern zu verdoppeln. Manche Krankheiten tilge die Zeit. In der verdorbenen Menschheit sei der Trieb zu ihrer Verbesserung unaustilgbar und auch in den wildesten Abwegen wirksam. Nur müsse die Menschheit ihr wahres Gute sowie die Mittel dazu ganz und rein kennen lernen. Sie müsse von den Ketten böser Gewohnheiten befreit werden und nicht eher nachlassen, bis sie in einer Allgemeinheit zum Zwecke gelange. [...] Glauben Sie nicht, dass dergleichen utopische Träume, wie man sie zu nennen pflegt, nutzlos seien: die Wahrheit, die in ihnen liegt, ist nie nutzlos.
Johann Gottfried Herder, Weimar, 1795
In my next two papers I am going to discuss and—what shall I say?—experiment with an old but neglected idea, an idea that was first broached I believe about the time when the State of Connecticut was coming into existence and while New York was still the Dutch city of New Amsterdam. The man who propounded this idea was a certain great Bohemian, Komensky, who is perhaps better known in our western world by his Latinized name Comenius. He professed himself the pupil of Bacon. He was the friend of Milton. He travelled from one European country to another with his political and educational ideas. For a time he thought of coming to America. It is a great pity that he never came. And his idea, the particular idea of his we are going to discuss, was the idea of a common book, a book of history, science and wisdom, which should form the basis and framework for the thoughts and imaginations of every citizen in the world. In many ways the thinkers and writers of the early seventeenth century seem more akin to us and more sympathetic with the world of to–day, than any intervening group of literary figures. They strike us as having a longer vision than the men of the eighteenth century, and as being bolder—and, how shall I put it?—more desperate in their thinking than the nineteenth century minds. And this closer affinity to our own time arises, I should think, directly and naturally, out of the closer resemblance of their circumstances. [...] He realized as we do that the outlook for humanity is a very dark and uncertain one unless human effort is stimulated and organized. He traced the evils of his time to human discords and divisions, to our political divisions, and the mutual misconceptions due to our diversity of languages and leading ideas. In all that he might be writing and thinking in 1921. And his proposed remedies find an echo in a number of our contemporary movements. He wanted to bring all nations to form one single state. He wanted to have a universal language as the common medium of instruction and discussion, and he wanted to create a common Book of Necessary Knowledge, a sort of common basis of wisdom, for all educated men in the world.
Herbert George Wells, London, 1921
He introduces the whole modern conception of the educational process, and outlines many of the modern movements for the improvement of ecudational procedure. What Petrarch was to the revival of learning, what Wicliffe was to religious thought, what Copernicus was to modern science, and what Bacon and Descartes were to modern philosophy, Comenius was to educational practice and thinking.
Ellwood Patterson Cubberley, Stanford, 1920
A great injustice has been done to the work and memory of Comenius in the failure to understand that he was more than a schoolman and that his lifelong devotion to education was based on his desire to lay the foundations for the larger scheme which he developed simultaneously with his works on education. [...] This was the great task to which Comenius dedicated his life—the creation of a Universal College, a Pansophic College, a Temple of Universal Wisdom, ‘a structure of truth, human and divine’, which would take all knowledge as the sphere of its activities and in which learned men from all over the world would cooperate. It was not, however, the accumulation of knowledge for its one sake in which Comenius was interested, but its unification, coordination and advancement for human welfare and universal peace. In expressing his hopes Comenius speaks as any contemporary would speak to us to-day: [...] More than three centuries separate the age of Comenius from that in which we live. Comenius may have expressed his ideas in a mold which differs from ours; his faith may have been rooted in sanctions which a world, become skeptical and cynical, has questioned. We may know more of the hidden causes of things than even the optimistic age of Comenius considered possible. And yet we may well ask ourselves whether, with all the apparatus of knowledge and learning and with all the equipment for modern methods of investigation, we have advanced much further toward the realization of the hopes which Comenius entertained for an understanding world of peace and universal brotherhood. The world, again enveloped by the destructive flames of a devastating war which threatens to end in the destruction of ourselves and the universe, is once more setting out on the same quest which Comenius as real for our day as he was for his and gives him his rightful place among those who have labored for an internationally ordered world.
Isaak Leon Kandel, New York, 1942
Now that we live again in a world full of war, persecution, and forced migration, our sympathy for the suffering and hopes of the men living in the Thirty Years’ War has received new strength. The more deeply we ourselves feel the plight of humanity, the more we understand the seeming paradox in the soul of Comenius.
Robert Ulich, Cambridge, Mass., 1945
We have today the United Nations as a platform for peace. But we are still far removed from the dreams of Comenius who urged real world unity.
Frederick Mayer, Redlands, 1960
Sie können sich die Freude nicht vorstellen, die Sie mir mit Ihrer Schrift über Comenius gemacht haben. Von jeher habe ich empfunden, dass die Geschichte der Philosophie Comenius nicht den Platz angewiesen hat, der ihm zukommt. Er ist doch der erste, der sich mit den Problemen der Entwicklung der menschlichen Gesellschaft beschäftigt hat. Er hat sich an die Gebildeten seiner Zeit gewandt und von ihnen verlangt, dass sie sich mit den Problemen, die Lösung verlangten, beschäftigten. Er hat ihnen die Probleme geschildert und den Weg der Lösung gesucht. Er war ein Wissender und bemühte sich, ein Hoffender zu bleiben. In seinen Analysen herrscht Klarheit und herrscht Tiefe. Er hat als erster die Bedeutung des Internationalen erkannt. Das Große an ihm ist, dass er unermüdlich war. Er hat die Aufgaben, mit denen sich die Philosophie in der Welt abgeben muss erkannt, während die gewöhnliche Philosophie dabei verblieb, mit sich selber beschäftigt zu sein. Er ist der erste Philosoph, der sich genötigt fühlte, sich mit dem Problem des Friedens fort und fort zu beschäftigen. Bei ihm wagt sich die Philosophie auf das Gebiet der Politik. Er war kein Träumer.
Friedensnobelpreisträger Albert Schweitzer, Lambaréné, 1965
John Dewey is sometimes called the ‘founder of progressive education’. However, Comenius had earlier advocated a return to the ancient practice of learning by doing. Long before the science of psychology testified to the importance of child growth and development, theories of learning, role of motivation, and individual differences and needs, Comenius had considered them [...]. The list of Comenius’ innovations presently found in education is almost endless.
Edward J. Power, Boston, 1969
Eine oft übersehene Schlüsselstellung in der Entfaltung und Vermittlung der Friedensidee nimmt Johann Amos Comenius ein. Die Bedeutung des Comenius ist um so höher einzuschätzen, als er die Friedensidee im erzieherischen Grundzusammenhang entwickelt.
Hermann Röhrs, Heidelberg, 1975
International education has its roots in the 17th century, when John Amos Comenius, a Moravian churchman and teacher, put forward one of the first and most lasting hopes of international education. He envisioned an international Pansophic College dedicated to the advancement of mutual understanding among peoples. In succeeding centuries Montaigne, Rousseau, Kant, and Fichte envisioned international educational cooperation as a step in the direction of world peace.
The New Encoclopaedia in 30 Volumes, Macropaedia,
15th ed., vol. 9, Chicago, Geneva 1982, p. 736
Die Menschheit ist somit eingeladen, sich ein neues Schicksal zu schmieden. Obwohl Comenius manchmal eine platonische Terminologie verwendet, ist seine Vision der Welt nichts weniger als eine statische, in der die Ordnung ein für allemal festgelegt wäre, und in der dem Menschen nichts anderes übrig bliebe, als sich in sein Schicksal zu fügen. Er besitzt das Empfinden für die Veränderung, für das Werden, die Möglichkeit des Menschen, sein Leben umzugestalten. Andererseits macht er dieses Reformwerk zur Angelegenheit aller, die neuen, soeben erst entdeckten Völker eingeschlossen, weil alle irgend etwas beizutragen haben, was die anderen bereichern kann. Es ist hochbedeutsam, den Respekt zu sehen, mit dem Comenius über diese Völker spricht und das Interesse, welches er für ihre Sprachen zeigt. Er bekräftigt ohne Unterlass die grundlegende Gleichheit aller Völker des Planeten, eine Gleichheit, die aus der Identität der menschlichen Natur hervorgeht.
Denis Huisman, Paris, 1984
In another area on which UNESCO is focussing its attention, the quality of education, Comenius was astonishingly far-seeing. [...] Perhaps the strongest link between the thinking of Comenius and the educational agenda for the 21st century will be the emphasis placed on global or international education. For who can doubt that, beyond the often disconcerting ebb and flow of local political changes, the fundamental movement of our time is towards globality, towards a world whose parts are more and more organically interrelated. This movement—linked among other things to the fabulous developments in transportation and communications in this century—is powerfully reinforced by the growing consciousness of common environmental problems that could threaten our survival as a species. Global education, revised to take account of new political realities, will be of increasing importance in the curriculum of the 21st century both in order to foster international awareness and at the same time to promote and protect the world's irreplaceable heritage of cultural identities and values in the face of reductive and standardising trends. Comenius, simultaneously world citizen and defender of his national language and culture, can serve here once again as a guide by pointing the way to a necessary synthesis.
Federico Mayor, Paris, 1992
The Reunification of Europe from the 1990s has led to proposals for a European educational synthesis around the ideas of Comenius which are not confined to his Czech homeland.
Martin McLean, London, 1995
He was a genius in mastering many languages, in developing his philosophy of pansophism, but most of all he was a pedagogical genius with a deep understanding of the educative process and with a grasp of didactical principles and notions. His thinking, therefore, has the same validity in our time as during his own time. He is one who has drawn up the most complete and most universally valid picture of education with regard both to individual development and to the role of education in the life of the individual and in society.
Torsten Husén, Stockholm, 1999
Comenius war in jedem Sinne ein Vorläufer. Wie ein Seher erblickte er in finsterster Dunkelheit unter stürmischen Gewitterwolken während des furchtbaren, dreißig Jahre währenden europäischen Krieges ein künftiges neues Europa des Friedens. Seine Art auszugleichen ist ebenfalls bemerkenswert, bedenkt man, dass seine Denkrichtung pansophisch und religiös gewesen ist: Er verfällt nie in metaphysische Abstraktionen oder in sektiererische Polemiken [...], und mit Recht erkennt man in ihm heute nicht nur einen bedeutenden Interpreten der europäischen, sondern sogar der Weltkultur.
Mauro Laeng, Rom, 1999
Woher kommt all dieses Interesse für einen Denker, der von unserem hic et nunc durch vier Jahrhunderte getrennt ist? Woher kommt diese Faszination, die sein Denken bis heute auf uns ausübt? [...] Viele seiner Ideen wirken in Brasilien projektiv, denn der Demokratisierung der Erziehung, der Chancengleichheit für alle – omnes onnia omnino! –, kommt höchste Aktualität in einem Land zu, in dem noch immer 15 Millionen Analphabeten leben, 16% der Bevölkerung! [...] Zu Beginn des dritten Jahrtausends werden in Brasilien eindringlich zwei Paradigmen der Pädagogik diskutiert. Neue Tendencen werden bemerkbar: ganzheitliche Betrachtungsweise, Globalisierung, Friedens- und Umwelterziehung. Das sind die Ideen des Comenius.
B. Sampaio de Araújo, Salvador, Bahia, 1999
Seine häufig gerühmte Pädagogik läuft – was viele nicht wissen, weil ihnen der Überblick über sein gesamtes Werk fehlt – auf diese universale Besserung hinaus. Toleranz hieß für den universalistischen Denker Comenius dabei in keinem Fall, von der Wahrheitssuche abzulassen. Er verabscheute Lüge und Heuchelei, Verrat und Unterjochung anderer, Schwächerer. Das große Leitmotiv all seiner Wertungen war ihm eine aktive Beteiligung aller an der möglichst gründlichen Besserung aller Dinge (omnes omnia omnino). Er setzte auf den Mut und die Konsequenz in dem Bemühen, an der Verwirklichung der großen Welteinheit aller Menschen zu arbeiten [...]. Es ist leicht einzusehen, dass eine derartige Zielsetzung am Beginn des neuen Jahrtausends für die Menschheit keineswegs obsolet und dass es nicht nur für Pädagogen wichtig ist, sich mit dem Oeuvre des Johann Amos Comenius ernsthaft geistig zu befassen.
Dagmar Čapková, Praha, 1999
Die moderne Wissenschaft befindet sich heute in einem unübersehbaren Dilemma. Unsere Weltlage – Friedlosigkeit, Begrenztheit der Energievorräte, Schwierigkeiten der ausreichenden Ernährung der explosiv wachsenden Weltbevölkerung – zwingt sie dazu, unter Einsatz all ihrer Mittel die Forschung voranzutreiben. Dabei stößt sie an Grenzen – ökologische, moralische, gesellschaftliche – , die allen Fortschritt der Wissenschaft auch infrage stellen. [...] Comenius – durch die Katastrophe des Dreißigjährigen Krieges hellhörig gemacht – hat die Gründungsphase unserer modernen Wissenschaft im 17. Jahrhundert höchst wachsam mitvollzogen, sich an ihrer Genese auf seine Weise beteiligt und sich argumentativ mit ihren Gründungsvätern, Bacon und Descartes, auseinandersetzt. [...] In dieser Kritik ahnt er all die Probleme voraus, die uns heute offen vor Augen liegen. Sein Wissenschaftskonzept, das die soziale Verantwortung in das wissenschaftliche Forschen hineinnimmt, stellt einen alternativen Denkweg der Moderne dar, der – weithin verdrängt – heute mit Blick auf unsere Weltsituation dringend erneut bedacht werden sollte.
Klaus Schaller, Bochum, 2000
Heute werden wir nach schlimmsten Verirrungen, ernüchternden Erfahrungen sowie manchen Enttäuschungen mit Bildungsreformen an die uneingelösten Versprechen früherer bildungsoptimistischer Jahrhunderte erinnert. Will man mit der Aussicht auf Gewinn über Fragen der allgemeinen Bildung und ihre Zielsetzung diskutieren, muss man den Mut haben, zurückzukehren „zu den Anfängen“. Zu diesen Anfängen der europäischen modernen Bildungskonzeption gehört J. A. Comenius.
Heinz-Elmar Tenorth, Berlin, 2000
Einen weiteren Bezug zur Gegenwart bietet die Art und Weise, wie Comenius Europa erlebte, sowohl als Zone von Streit und Intoleranz als auch von Frieden und Universalität. Für europäische Polyglottie gab er ein großartiges Beispiel, von dem er sich erhoffte, dass selbst Kinder es schon befolgen würden. Auch heute ist Erziehung zur Mehrsprachigkeit ein wichtiger Faktor der europäischen Integration, auch für die Millionen Menschen, die wie Comenius als Migranten leben.
Franz Pöggeler, Aachen, 2000
One last thought and image sums up for me the importance of Comenius as a guide for scholars. In The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of Heart the pilgrim is taken to see the scholars at work. The scholars are eating books (metaphorically), but the way of eating varied. Most scholars, the foolish ones, ate as much, as rapidly, and from as many different books as possible. They consumed all without reflection or critique. Then they literally reguritated what they had consumed. The wise ate slowly, meditatively, and carefully from fewer, but better books. The activity nourished them so that they shone with vitality and spoke with well-reasoned conviction. Rather than using scholarship to impress themselves and others with their learning, they used scholarship to grow healthy, strong, and wise. Such scholars can use their knowledge to reform the world. Comenius calls us to follow the path of the wise.
Craig D. Atwood, Wiston-Salem, USA, 2000
Comenius gilt in der Pädagogik bzw. Erziehungswissenschaft als einer der großen Klassiker, der im übrigen im europäischen Raum den Gedanken systematischer Unterrichtung als erster formulierte. Damit steht er am Anfang eines Modernisierungsprozesses von Schule und Unterricht, der in seiner Endphase zu einem entfalteten staatlichen Unterweisungssystem geführt hat. Es steht außer Frage, dass sich das Studium der Schriften des Comenius auch in der Erziehungswissenschaft, in der Historischen Pädagogik, eher noch am Anfang befindet. Diese Tatsache ist dem Umstand geschuldet, dass nur ein Bruchteil des Werkes des Comenius in deutscher Sprache zur Verfügung steht.
Dieter Lenzen, Berlin, 2001
Comenius intended through his educational procedures all men to have a clear awareness of their needs, namely a clear goal in life, not only for the betterment of this life, but also for the hereafter. His education was intended to popularize the sublime goal of the rediscovery of humanity and the reconstruction of human society.
Wearer of the UNESCO-Comenius-Medal Sook Jong Lee, Yongin-Shi, 2001
The fate of the work of Comenius and the echo of his thoughts in the epochs of cultural history following his death suggest the answer to the question what possibly would make him famous nowadays. At the same time that is the question what part of his work is still valid in our time. Are his answers to human problems felt to be valuable still today as well as regarding the relation between mankind and the world as regarding the eternal world of God? Full of vitality without any doubt remains the message of his pedagogy which he strove for in order to make learning and teaching easier und more effective, to educate personalities able and willing to improve the world for coming generations.
Martin Steiner, Prague, 2002
Tolerance, Reform, and Scholarship: J. A. Comenius,
Bengt Skytte, G. W. Leibniz, and Daniel Ernst Jablonski
By Werner Korthaase, Berlin
In the history of European scholarship, April 22, 1667, can be regarded as a remarkable day. This was the day on which the Great Elector, Frederick William (1640-1688), ruler of the Electorate of Brandenburg, one of the states of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation (from which Prussia, one of the most powerful states of the modern era, would later emerge,) put his signature to the plan for a “Universal University of Peoples, Sciences and Arts”.
The proposed seat of this “Universal University of Peoples, Sciences and Arts”, on which barely imaginable privileges were to be bestowed, was Tangermünde on the Elbe. This small, but beautifully situated town, which Emperor Charles IV had once intended to make a royal seat for the northern parts of his kingdom of Bohemia (which at this time included Brandenburg), in addition to his capital in Prague, was now to be Brandenburg’s city of scholarship, open to the world. Magnificent buildings were planned for this “Universal University of Peoples, Sciences and Arts”: factories, museums, laboratories, artists’ studios, prayer rooms and lecture halls, hostels and hospitals, bathhouses, orphanages, libraries, printing houses, collections of curios, pharmacies and arsenals, store rooms, riding arenas and columned halls, botanical gardens, menageries, regularly laid out squares and streets, shady avenues, promenades, artistic fountains and bridges. Provision was to be made for the employment of secretaries, scribes, administrators, treasurers, librarians, printers, organists and musicians, pharmacists and doctors, cooks, vintners, hunters and fishermen, wood carriers and stable boys, and even brewers and night watchmen. Scholars were assured that they would enjoy self-government, religious tolerance and long-term exemption from taxation (Arnheim 1908, Erman 1792).
Is it possible that the Great Elector, who ruled over a patchwork territory devastated by the Thirty Years’ War, was prepared to accept and finance all of this, and to renounce the right to make university appointments—a right which he had hitherto exercised with some rigour? This sensational plan caused considerable disquiet, particularly among the churches, which favoured confessional separation, and were horrified by the idea that even Jews, Arabs and other “non-believers” from all over the world were to be given an academic home in Brandenburg of all places—and on fairy-tale terms which were beyond the wildest dreams of the professors at the Electorate’s three small universities in Frankfort on the Oder, Königsberg and Duisburg. Yet despite the elements of reverie contained in the plan, it should not be assumed that the signing of the document can be put down to nothing more than a whim on the part of the Elector. For immediate attempts were made to attract scholars from all over the world, regardless of their estate or faith. Moreover, Fredrick William, who had introduced a modern, centralised administration in Brandenburg-Prussia, had great ambitions for his country. He attached great importance to education and, in 1655, had founded the University of Duisburg
The “Universal University of Peoples, Sciences and Arts” is easily recognisable as a “concentration of all scholarly Utopias and social thought from Bacon to Comenius” (Carl Hinrichs 1964). However, like the “Design for a Universum Collegium” (which had earlier failed to rouse much enthusiasm in London), it was not, contrary to the opinion of the day, the brainchild of a “highly imaginative Swede”. The Swede in question was the exiled Bengt Skytte (1614‑1683), a former protégé of Queen Christine of Sweden, Governor of Estonia, Chancellor of the Swedish University of Dorpat and Marshal of Sweden. Bengt was the son of the renowned Swedish statesman, Baron Johan Skytte (1577-1645), the tutor of Gustav Adolf of Sweden (1594-1632), a friend and admirer of Francis Bacon (1561-1626), and a man who as Chancellor of the University of Uppsala had only appointed academics committed to a spirit of intellectual tolerance. A Swedish historian concludes: “One may safely say that in his early years Gustavus Adolphus learned more of religious tolerance from the humanist Skytte than from any one else. They also remained friends. Skytte was sent as an ambassador to the Netherlands and England to pursue important negotiations, and later, as the leading spirit at the University of Uppsala he became an outstanding man in the history of education and learning in Sweden” (Gunnar Westin 1932). Both Johan and Bengt Skytte were also “steadfast supporters” of the Scottish clergyman, John Dury (1595-1680). They welcomed Dury’s efforts to achieve peace and unification among the protestant Churches. John Dury was in close and frequent contact with Comenius. Such was their friendship that Comenius sent his foster-son, Peter Figulus, to accompany Dury on his travels throughout Europe.
The former Chancellor of the University of Dorpat, Bengt Skytte, expanded the dimensions of the “Universal University of Peoples, Sciences and Arts”, making it a prohibitively expensive Utopia (in relation to what the small state of Brandenburg could afford). However, he owed the idea to someone else—to Johann Amos Comenius (1592‑1670)—of whom he had been a passionate adherent since his youth. Comenius, an educational and political reformer, who was known across Europe, had also been known to Bengt’s father, who had given him protection in Sweden. He was the last bishop of the Bohemian-Moravian Unity of Brethren (Unitas Fratrum), a man devoted to the pursuit of conciliation among Christians. Bengt even followed him in 1651 to the distant Transylvania, at that time almost the equivalent of a journey to the Orient, only to be able to speak with him for a few days (Anders Grape 1966). It is not unlikely that the planned foundation of an academy was one of the main topics of their discussions.
Skytte was the author of the “Design for a Universum Collegium”, which was circulating in London in 1660 and 1661 shortly before the foundation of the Royal Society. Despite his attempt to promote it, however, it did not enjoy great success. The “Design” was without doubt an elaboration of Comenius’s ideas for a pansophic academy, although many of the details reflect Skytte’s concern to provide for himself—he was hoping to be appointed as director of the academy—and to obtain a variety of royal privileges. It begins with the observation that “many disciplines and arts, and extraordinary Matters, very worthy of use and even of reward, remain either utterly ruined, or never before discovered—or if they have been discovered, imperfect for the most part”. This leads Skytte to conclude that “buildings, houses, courts, promenades, gardens, preserves, pastures, fields, lands, waters, rivers, hunting, fishing [...] privileges and laws” are necessary for the promotion of arts and sciences. He then goes on to make detailed proposals. The original document continues:
“We grant that all men skilled and devoted to the disciplines, arts and extraordinary matters, whatsoever their circumstances or nationality, may freely come to this place, where they might be able to engage in and continue the disciplines and arts, and extraordinary matters, alone or with others; to treat and work carefully upon their further preservation and augmentation, and with respect to use to confer with others on production; to explore and even to form the natural from the scientific and artificial, and the scientific and artificial from the natural; to join the arts to a discipline, praxis to theory; and to distribute and bring forward every single matter to the highest grade of perfection, induced as much as can be, for the use and service of human kind.” Nine further points follow, which need not be cited here (see Donald R. Dickson 1998).
Skytte it appears had tendered his proposals to King Charles II, and was seeking a royal patronage for his “grandiose scientific academy”, “organised on a luxurious scale”, “totally impracticable, and opportunistic” (Charles Webster 1975). Someone must have told the celebrated chemist and natural philosopher, Robert Boyle (1627-1691), about it, since he was ready to support the scheme financially. However, by the beginning of April 1661 “no further progress had been made with Skytte’s proposals due to opposition from the other virtuosi” (John James O’Brien 1964; Margery Purver 1967), who instead found the Royal Society without any help from the Swedish aristocrat.
Since the 1640s, Comenius the “pansophic” reformer, had been regarded as one of the spokesmen of a movement for a universal reform of education. Comenius had enthusiastic promoters in England, who hoped that he “would be God’s instrument in promoting the public good by repairing the defects in learning through his new methods”. His demands can even be found in the reform literature of the English Puritan Revolution. His Panegersia (Universal Awakening), which was published in Amsterdam in 1557, and again in 1662, made a passionate call for immediate measures to overcome the deplorable state of affairs in science, politics, and religion: “I shall address the scholars amongst you as teachers of mankind who share in my counsel and my search for improvement, the churchmen who are prominent in abhorring transitory things and leading other mortals unto immortality, and kings, princes, and magistrates who nurture mankind in their way and are ever anxious to restore and maintain good order” (Comenius, Panegersia 1657). And in 1668, after the Great Elector’s approval of the Tangermünde project, Comenius’s Via lucis (The Way of Light), a work dedicated to the Royal Society of London, appeared in Amsterdam. In this work, he emphatically recommends the foundation of a publicly financed universal college, the “Collegium lucis”, for all peoples, which, taking no account of national, confessional or other boundaries, was to be directed against “our weakness, or our lack of interest”, and lead to a “friendly alliance of wise men throughout all nations”. The fame of this Via lucis, which Comenius had written in London as early as 1642 in the time of hope and illumination, stems “largely from his calls for an international research college, an alliance among the learned throughout Europe”. According to his proposal every European nation “would maintain a number of gifted men as fellows without imposing definite duties on them” (Donald R. Dickson 1998). The London Royal Society had been in 1668 in existence for eight years. Comenius was evidently “under the impression that the Royal Society is the inheritor of the earlier labours of himself and his friends” (Frances Yates 1999).
There can, therefore, be no doubt about the intellectual origins of the sensational Brandenburg plan of 1667 of Baron Bengt Skytte to found an international academy of sciences.
A Comenian “pansophic” society of scholars—incomparably different from all later academies, whether in Paris, London, Berlin or St. Petersburg—was unthinkable without tolerance, freedom of research—and piety. Since the beginning of the century, various ideas had been expressed concerning the foundation of learned societies and universal academies of scholars. These ideas were now “summarised by two leading men of the 17th century, by Johann Amos Comenius and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716)” (Carl Hinrichs 1964), but the “loss of piety” was obvious in the now founded academies. Leibniz has, of course, been the subject of numerous works. Since Leibniz’s interest in establishing academies has been treated extensively elsewhere, there is no need to go into it here. However, the little that has been written about Comenius and Brandenburg-Prussia remains inadequate. It is therefore necessary to draw attention to the ties between Comenius and Brandenburg, for Bengt Skytte is likely to have invoked Comenius’s name, knowing that the Great Elector was well informed about his life and works.
This bishop of the Bohemian-Moravian Unity of Brethren, driven out of Bohemia and Moravia by the Habsburg Counter-Reformation, spent most of his over forty years’ exile in Poland, where he wrote the majority of his works, some of which are still being printed today. However, as a young preacher, he also came to Berlin on diplomatic missions. He negotiated with Ladislav Velen von Žerotín, a political and military leader of the Bohemian anti-Habsburg émigrés. Comenius was given an audience by the Elector’s wife. In addition, he had numerous acquaintances in Brandenburg and, towards the end of his days, planned to move there in order to escape further persecution, from which even Amsterdam did not offer complete protection. In fact this plan was not realised. However, that it was earnestly intended is suggested by the fact that his widow would later live in Berlin, indeed at the home of a renowned Berlin court preacher, underlining Comenius’s ties with the elite group of Brandenburg court preachers. It was also no coincidence that Comenius’s son-in-law, Peter Figulus (1619‑1670), was appointed court preacher in Memel in East Prussia (Adolf Patera 1892; Milada Blekastad 1969; Vladas Pupšys 2002). One of Comenius’ grandsons, Daniel Ernst Jablonski (1660‑1741), was even to become the “premier” court preacher and vice-president of the Academy of Sciences in Berlin. Over many generations, indeed, his family was destined to play a remarkable role in Prussian Calvinist church elite (Rudolf von Thadden 1969; W. Korthaase 1993).
Let us, however, return to our topic of “Tolerance, Reform and Scholarship”, to those themes which were of overriding importance for Comenius, the “man of yearning”, throughout his life. His grandson, too, would attach great importance to tolerance and scholarship, but did not take the same interest in reform.
Even his “Precursor of the Pansophy” (Prodromus pansophiae), which was written in 1639 before his stay in London, reveals his conviction that every scholar who had something important to say must take part in the deliberations on the improvement of the condition of mankind, regardless of whether he was “a Christian or Moslem, Jew or heathen”, whether “Pythagorean, Academic, Peripatetic, Stoic, Essene, Greek, Roman, ancient or modern, doctor or rabbi”. For all “talented minds, all peoples, sects and eras” were obliged to fill the “treasury of total wisdom” with their knowledge, to the general profit of humankind.
It is certainly not necessary to comment on the sensational or Utopian elements of this concept. Suffice it to point out that while this was being written in 1639, the Catholic and Protestant armies were destroying each other on the battlefields of the Thirty Years’ War, and devastating the territories of their opponents. For Comenius, therefore, tolerance and the advancement of scholarship were the pre-requisite of any improvement of the catastrophic economic, social, and moral conditions which had been brought about through the Thirty Years’ War. He was thus tireless in pressing for “general deliberations” on the “improvement of human affairs,” proclaiming what he believed to be both a fundamental insight and the condition of reasonable action: “We are all citizens of one world, all of the same blood. To hate another man because he was born somewhere else, because he speaks another language, because he thinks differently about things, because he understands more or less than you do—what foolishness! Let us stop! For we are all human beings, and therefore all imperfect, and we all need to be helped” (Comenius, Panegersia 1657). This and scientia universalis was the premise on which all of his plans for an emendatio rerum humanarum were based.
Following the failure of the Puritan Revolution, this kind of “baroque project” was soon forgotten in England. However, the Great Elector did not think it out of place in Brandenburg. The seal for the “Universal University of Peoples, Sciences and Arts” had already been decided—the portrait of the elector sitting on the throne, holding in one hand the sceptre, in the other hand the temple of wisdom, while Pallas and Minerva stand on both sides with branches of laurel (Erman 1792). However, doubts arose as to the practicability of the project, and these were compounded by pressing problems of state. Nevertheless, it remains a remarkable fact that the Great Elector of Brandenburg agreed to the broadminded demand for tolerance, and that he felt that founding a “sophopolis” was a goal worth pursuing. Had Bengt Skytte shown more restraint in his demands for privileges, the Comenian Academy of Science might well have been established. It should, however, be pointed out that Leibniz, who would later become president of the Brandenburg-Prussian Academy of Sciences, knew of the Great Elector’s plan for a “Universal University” in Brandenburg, for it had been intended to offer him a position there despite the fact that, at the age of twentyone, he was only just embarkling on a career of scholarship. He was also well informed about Comenius’s other major ideas (Konrad Moll 2002). Although the plan for a Universal University in Brandenburg was never realised, it was nevertheless a curious episode, and was to bring Leibniz and Daniel Ernst Jablonski together to work on a joint project—in a cause which had the highest priority for Comenius: the establishment of a “Union” of the mutually hostile Protestant confessions, and the foundation of an academy of sciences. Jablonski wrote that it was a cause of “special pleasure” to him to learn that his “late grandfather Comenius” had had the honour of being “acquainted with” Leibniz. He recalled the “pansophic ideas which the late Comenius had expounded” in earlier days, which had spread so far that “by means of such pansophy all Christian religions were to be united” (Jan Kvačala 1902).
Leibniz, the universal genius, and Jablonski, Comenius’s grandson, were the joint founders of the Brandenburg‑Prussian Academy of Sciences. Leibniz became president, Jablonski vice-president. Jablonski prepared the memorandum for the academy, which on March 19th, 1700, was presented for signature to Elector Frederick III (Leonhard Stroux 2002).
The ties between Comenius and G. W. Leibniz have been well researched by Frank E. Manuel and Fritzie P. Manuel. In Leibniz, they argue, “the philosopher, theologian, mathematician, diplomat, physicist, jurist, historian, and visionary are united”. “The man of universal knowledge was a man of the universal utopia, bombarding princes throughout Europe with schemes of political reorganization, with plans for the founding of universities, the advancement of science, the conversion of non-Christians, the unity of Churches.” Leibniz, they point out, “constantly argued the necessity of deliberate organization of the scientific enterprise in order to save Europe, a mission of science that could be mocked when it appeared in the diffuse writings of a Comenius, but had a different resonance in the memoranda of a man whose scientific genius was universally recognized. Though Leibnizian science was far closer to what the members of the Royal Society called science than to the natural-philosophy fantasies of the first half of the century, it was not wholly divorced from the more ambitious Pansophic projects. Coming at the end of the seventeenth century, Leibniz towered above the multitude of Pansophic utopians. He alone was capable at one and the same time of sustaining the ideal of Comenius and his forerunners und working out the laborious details for its achievement through philosophy, theology, a new logic, an ars combinatoria, diplomacy, and concrete scientific investigation. Leibniz had a monarchical image of science before him and he doubtless drew from earlier models, Bacon’s New Atlantis, Campanella’s House of Inventions, Andreae’s Christianopolis, Comenius’ grand design for a Pansophia.” “In many of his memoranda Leibniz communicates his appreciation of the limitless creative capacities of men in all stations of life. Since their inventiveness often remained dormant, his utopia fostered and encouraged creativity through special institutions. Simultaneously, the mysterious hieratic aura surrounding elitist scientific discovery was to be dispelled by persuading scientists to set down in detail the particular circumstances of the inventions—not omitting an account of their psychological state at the instant of discovery—in order to learn how to maximize ingenio. Finding out the Neigung, inclination, of each individual student was one of the first and crucial obligations of the educational system, an idea that had been winning adherents in Central Europe ever since Comenius had begun to preach” (Frank E. Manuel 1979).
This is not the place to report about the difficult beginnings of the Brandenburg-Prussian Academy, or the numerous indignities which it would suffer at the hands of Frederick III’s successor. The bizarre and “extremely voluntaristic” King Frederick William I, who was convinced that only soldiers were of importance for the common good, regarded scholars as useless. After Leibniz’s death, he would humiliate the Academy, appointing court jesters as its presidents. Any attempt to compare the Berlin Academy with the Royal Society in London fails to recognise the realities in Brandenburg-Prussia in those years. Had it not been for Jablonski, the Brandenburg-Prussian Academy would certainly have died in its early years. That is the fitting conclusion of Adolf Harnack (1851-1930), the renowned historian of the Prussian Academy, a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences and president of the Kaiser Wilhelm Academic Society. For Jablonski was “highly esteemed” by the Soldier King, “patient and—when necessary—obedient and malleable” (Adolf Harnack, vol. 1, 1900). Leibniz’s star was soon to sink in the Prussian state. Indeed, it had never really shone—a fact which some, who are unaware of the real course of events, are reluctant to recognise. It was two “foreigners”, who spoke Czech as their mother tongue, who saved the Academy in Berlin from ruin, two of Comenius’s grandsons. For Daniel Ernst Jablonski was able to draw on the support of a reliable colleague, the Academy’s “permanent secretary”, whose appointment he had, happily, been able to push through against Leibniz’s wishes at the time of the Academy’s foundation. The secretary was his brother, Johann Theodor Jablonski (1654‑1731), author of “Allgemeines Lexicon aller Künste und Wissenschaften” (Leipzig 1721), with whom, over decades, the vice-president and later president of the Academy jointly managed the affairs of the Berlin Academy of Sciences. During the last three decades of his life Johann Theodor Jablonski devoted his entire energy to the Berlin academy (Werner Hartkopf 1992, Adolf Harnack, vol. 1, 1900). The academy had to finance itself and he was responsible for its numerous and complex economic enterprises. At the same time he conducted the greater part of the correspondence with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. On June 2nd, 1669 in Amsterdam, now well advanced in years, Comenius wrote “with failing hand” (senili manu) this counsel for life in an album for his young grandson Johann Theodor Jablonski: “Shun youthful passions and aim at righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call upon the Lord from a pure heart” (Juveniles cupiditates fuge, sed sectare justitiam, fidem, charitatem pacemque cum omnibus, qui invocant Christum ex corde puro) (Loos 1906).
Did Daniel Ernst Jablonski recall his grandfather’s ideals? Did he attempt somehow to approach those ideals, under totally different social and intellectual conditions? This question is not easily answered, for detailed research is still to be done on this major figure of eighteenth century cultural history.
He never published an essay about his grandfather, despite the fact that he had nearly all of his works in his extensive private library (Jablonski 1742), and also knew where he could find a handwritten copy of his unprinted main work, and would easily have been able to see it, viz at the Francke Institute (Franckesche Stiftungen) in Halle on the Saale, with the founder of which, August Hermann Francke (1663-1727), the prominent religious leader, educator and social reformer, he had excellent relations. However, we should not forget that he lived in quite a different age from that of his grandfather, under very different circumstances. For this reason, his writings contain no sharply worded threats against princes and states of terrible divine punishment, should they fail to keep the peace and observe tolerance. Nor do we find even the mildest chiliastic reference to the coming millennium of Christ on earth, an event which Comenius had ardently hoped for, and for which he strove until the last hours of his life. A Prussian court preacher in Frederick William I’s military state could not afford to think of Comenian Utopias; he was expected to stabilise the power of the state, not to foster, let alone to rouse, the chiliastic yearning of the masses. This is why he would teach: “The common peace is the main purpose of the government. Common peace cannot be preserved without soldiers.” For Jablonski, the people were no longer a reflection of divine goodness and wisdom, but rather a “many-headed wild animal, difficult to restrain: a restless sea, hard to keep in check. If there were no Kings and Princes, how could the world survive?” However, he also preached about peace and this, he explained, was “to be sought in every possible way”, for war brings the risk of “damage and loss”. He praised the “love of peace”, Solomon describing as “the most peace-loving” of all kings, and “at the same time, the happiest of all”. God, in all of his threats and promises, had always regarded peace as a “blessing and grace”, and war as a “curse and punishment” (Daniel Ernst Jablonski 1728).
This did at least echo the once so powerful appeals for peace made by his grandfather, whom it was now safer not to mention, because in the new age of Enlightenment, anyone who pleaded with the forcefulness of Comenius for a radical reform of society would no longer have been understood. A writer like Pierre Bayle (1647-1706), for example, author of the widely disseminated Dictionnaire historique et critique ridiculed Comenius. Sophie Charlotte (1668-1705), Princess and later Queen of Prussia, who set the tone in cultural matters at the royal court, was an enthusiastic devotee of Bayle, and was doubtless familiar with his disparaging words on Comenius, the grandfather of her court preacher. However, neither his Calvinist theological coldness, nor his acceptance of the conditions of an absolute monarchy prevented Jablonski from helping distressed members of his church in other countries, and from working for religious and academic tolerance, wherever and whenever this was possible.
This was surely a reminder of the powerful calls for peace which his grandfather had once made. The citation illustrates the transformation in the way of thinking which had occurred. For D. E. Jablonski absolute monarchy was a reality, and the sole context in which any kind of gratifying action was possible. However, it is necessary to point out that there was also another Comenius, with whom his grandson was hardly at odds. For Comenius certainly did not call for the implementation of the unattainable, but rather considered the realities of society, state and church in his day. After all, he was the last active bishop of his scattered church in exile, and as such responsible for the many distressed emigrants, for which reason he had no choice but to pursue Realpolitik. As with so many great intellects of the past (and indeed the present), so with Comenius it seems that the irreconcilable fused to form an indissoluble unity. This is evident in many of his writings, for example in this citation from a non-pansophic work. In “An Exhortation of the Churches of Bohemia to the Church of England”, dedicated to the “High and Mighty Great Monarch of Great Britain Charles II”, he writes:
„But yet I query, Whether or no, if a Civil Society be well, and rightful, preserved in one place by Monarchical Government, (where the people commit their safety to some one person as the ablest and wisest.) In another place by Aristocratical Government, (where the care is committed to some few of their own, as able and wise.) In another by Democratical Government, (where the people govern themselves by turns.) Religious Society may not be in like manner so provided for, i.e. whether Episcopal Government may not as well be endured, where it hath long been, as Consistorial where that obtains; and Presbyterian or Classical where that is in use: It seems probable it may be so, for as much as every one of these Governments hath some good in it, conducing unto the publick good, so it be guarded from abuse, v.g. The goodness of Monarchy is an uniting vertue, preventing the ruine that may quickly arise from differences, by reason of the multitude of counsels: The goodness of Democracy is a diffusive vertue, suffering no member to be easily overslipt in the dispensation of the common Cause of Interest: The goodness of Aristocracy is a collective vertue, knitting together Superiours with Inferiours, and Inferiours with Superiours; and causing many Members to keep themselves under one, and one to diffuse himself unto many. Hence some Nations have pleased themselves with one, others with this, or that; and so it is at this day: and they all keep up themselves in their several Forms of Government, the one, and the other; which is an argument, that there is in each one of them a proper and peculiar vertue, to contain humane Society within its due bounds; by the bonds thereof: Only indeed, through abuse admitted, Monarchy easily degenerated into Tyranny, Aristocracy into Oligarchy, and Democracy into Anarchy, which is worse than any Tyranny“ (Comenius: An Exhortation, London 1661).
During the reign of the “Soldier King”, Frederick William I, Jablonski was the “oldest” and thus the “premier” Berlin court preacher. As the foremost of all Calvinist, Prussian court preachers, he was close to the monarch. Acting on the latter’s instructions, he was even obliged to monitor the publications of the Lutheran church, which in Prussia was numerically dominant. From the Lutheran standpoint, this was unreasonable, and yet never a cause of serious contention with the Calvinist court preacher. This, it has been suggested, can be explained by the tolerant and “undogmatic attitude” he had acquired during his youth in the congregations of the Unity of Brethren (Unitas Fratrum) in Poland, and that he had remained largely untouched by the confessional controversies in the German sister churches, with regard to which he was “detached and neutral” (Rudolf von Thadden 1959). Both his “tireless striving to unify them”, and his efforts to “protect the distressed”, were in keeping with this “practical standpoint in religious matters.” According to a 20th century church historian, all of these ideals, were slow to develop among the “quietist and self-preoccupied” Lutherans in the Prussian state of that day. For Jablonski, on the other hand, who thought in a “European dimension”, and whose “ecumenical Protestantism” lacked any strong national leanings, they would have been a “matter of course” from his “earliest youth” (Adolf Harnack, vol. 1, 1900). And this is also why, for a period of several decades, he worked with unflagging commitment for a “Union” of the Lutheran and reformed churches. Indeed, following the example of the Anglican church, to which he felt a close affinity. He even recommended the reintroduction of the office of bishop in Prussia, although without success. In a letter to one of his Anglican correspondents on 31 July 1697, lamenting the discarding of episcopacy by Protestant churches on the continent, he “gave the key to his life-long endeavour for Protestant union on the basis of the restoration of the episcopal order in those churches which had been deprived of it at the Reformation. He was an indefatigable apostle of union, discouraged by neither personal nor political vicissitudes of fortune; and it was his chief ambition to unite Lutheran and Reformed churches within the dominions of the electors of Brandenburg and Brunswick.” And it was not until 1817 that the Union which he had striven for became reality.
Through a combination of offices and responsibilities, which was unique in the history of the Prussian state, it was even possible for Jablonski to become active across national boundaries. For this doctor of Oxford University and admirer of the Anglican Church (Norman Sykes 1950) was not just the “premier” Prussian court preacher and vice-president of the Academy of Sciences. (from 1733, indeed, its President). He was also the director of the Academy’s “Classis Historica-Philologo-Ecclesiaticae & Orientalis”, and in addition bishop of the Unity of Brethren “in Greater Poland and Polish Prussia”, that is of a religious community which traced its roots to the pre-Lutheran Czech Reformation of John Hus (1369-1415), a community which in its own view, and in contrast to later reformed faiths, could take pride in an unbroken succession of bishops going back to the days of the apostles. Jablonski was therefore a genuine bishop, not merely one who had been appointed on the prerogative of an absolute ruler. The Office of a bishop in the Polish Unity of Brethren created a bond between the Berlin Calvinist court preacher and what was left of the Unity of Brethren in Lithuania, Poland, Bohemia, Moravia, Hungary, Transylvania and even England. Oppressed Protestants in other countries often begged him to exercise the moderating influence of Prussian diplomacy, which he often succeeded in doing (Hermann Dalton 1903; Jan B. Čapek 1960).
“Tolerance, reform and scholarship” in Prussia? The Prussian state did not offer the scope for reforms of a Comenian dimension. Yet as already suggested, Jablonski was undoubtedly able to work in the interests of tolerance. Let us take a final look at his academic writings. On the one hand, he wrote as a church historian of the Slavic Protestant churches (in this he stood in the tradition of similar writings by Comenius). On the other hand, he wrote as a philologist.
Despite his numerous, time-consuming professional obligations, he pursued his interest in philology with a passion which also reminds us of his great ancestor, and equally of the latter’s fundamental belief in the need for international scholarly co-operation. And let us keep in mind that Comenius wanted to incorporate Jewish scholars in his pansophic academy. This was not possible in the Brandenburg-Prussian Academy. However, as court preacher and president of the Academy he spent most of his limited free time working together with Jewish scholars and printers on a new Hebrew edition of the Old Testament (“Biblia hebraica ex recensione Dan. E. Jablonski, theologi Brandenb. 1699”), and went as far as to bring out a reprint of the lengthy so-called Babylonian Talmud, an ambitious undertaking which would lead him into financial difficulties, as he borrowed money in order to carry out this project. In Brandenburg at that time, Jews were not permitted to establish Hebrew printing houses. For this reason, Jablonski obtained Hebrew letters from Amsterdam, and opened his own print-shop in a small building next to his house, in which he employed several Jewish printers, of whom the most important was Judah Loeb ben David Neumark, the author of “Shoresh Yehudah”. Jewish scholars, once they had heard of this print-shop, came to Jablonski’s house in Berlin from “far afield”, and requested the printing of psalm books, the Talmud and Targum (Hermann Dalton 1903). “This was so in the first Hebrew printing‑house in Berlin, owned by the professor and court preacher, Dr. Daniel Ernest Jablonski (1660-1741). Jablonski, previously associated with universities in Holland and England, settled in Lissa in 1686, and from there moved to Berlin. In 1700, he became a member of the Academy of Sciences in Berlin, and personally became involved with Hebrew printing in that city. [...] An early attempt to print the Talmud in Prussia was made by R. Wolf ben Meshullam Zalman Mirels, who requested permission to do so from Frederick I. Frederick refused to authorize this publication of the Talmud. Jablonski, however, was more successful; he was instrumental in securing approval for Michael Gottschalk, the Frankfort on the Oder printer, and Johann Christoph Beckmann, professor of theology at the University of Frankfort on the Oder, to publish the Frankfort on the Oder Talmud (1697-99). Jablonski’s opinion was requested by Frederick after Gottschalk and Beckmann had sought permission to print the Talmud. Jablonski’s measured response was, overall, positive; he found the Talmud to be, with reservations, a work of value, and recommended that Frederick approve the request to republish that work. Jablonski afterwards printed the first Frankfort on the Oder/Berlin Talmud together with Gottschalk (1715-22)” (Marvin Heller 1999).
A longer version of this article is printed in “Studia Comeniana et historica”,
vol. 69-70, Uherský Brod 2003. References have been omitted from the present text.