Negotiation and punishment in the school and education system from the end of the 17th to the beginning of the 19th century

• Applicant: Dr. Michael Rocher
• Subject Area: General Education and History of Education ; Early Modern History
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 558020716

The assumption that rigid and arbitrary punitive practices on the part of teachers were commonplace in the historical school sector from the Middle Ages to the 19th century has been widespread in research right up to the present day. Older studies in particular noted a break around 1800: Only from this point onwards would there have been a lasting softening with regard to punitive practices towards children and pupils. Michel Foucault's image of a sudden change in penal practice from the pre-modern ‘spectacle of torture’ to a more subtle system of ‘subjugation’ and ‘control’ after 1800 also contributed to the understanding of this period as one of comprehensive transformation. Even if Foucault himself understood this change to be anything but progressive, his theses also implicitly support the modernisation narrative that links a narrower so-called ‘saddle period’ between 1770-1830 with the replacement of a previous ‘dark’ age. More recent research has increasingly cast doubt on this picture. With regard to educational punishment alone, continuities in the debates can be detected back from the beginning of the 19th century to the late Middle Ages. However, there is still no study that traces historical school punishment practices before 1800 on an empirical basis. To this end, punishments and the associated practices must be understood as a socially multidimensional phenomenon that cannot be narrowed down to a power-versus-power dichotomy due to the diversity of those involved (pupils, teachers, supervisors, management, priests, school inspectors, parents). Punishment was always embedded in a multi-layered communicative process in which it always had to be legitimised and justified. In order to capture this from multiple perspectives, punishment at school is analysed at three institutional levels in different geographical areas over a longer period of time. The three institutional levels are the higher school sector, the lower school sector and the educational sector, which is summarised here under the generic term orphanages, as well as "correctional"-houses and the first institutions for neglected young people. The geographical areas analysed in the project include institutions in Berlin and the Kurmark, Vienna and Lower Austria, the Duchy of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel and selective examples from the Duchy of Saxe-Weimar. This broad approach makes it possible to analyse punishments of minors according to social status, age, gender and also denomination. In order to critically scrutinise the above-mentioned postulate of transformation around 1800, a longer period of investigation is chosen, which, including the so-called Sattelzeit from 1770 to 1830, encompasses a period preceding it back to the end of the 17th century.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: France
• Cooperation Partner: Professor Dr. Falk Bretschneider