nurturing children to be inquisitive and open to the world
Barop married Emilie Dorothea Froebel, daughter of Johann Christian Ludwig Froebel on 11 Jul 1831 at Keilhau. Emilie Dorothea Froebel was born on 11 Jul 1804 at Osterode and died on 18 Aug 1860 at Keilhau
Barop was a nephew of William Middendorf.
Source: Portrait of Johannes Arnold Barop, Director of the Kindergarten in Keilhau
Friedrich Froebel took on his share in solving social problems, because of his understanding of Christian responsibility.
He described the development of each person as the unification of existence.
Each individual is created in the image of God, and is responsible for consciously expressing this inner nature.
Froebel created a “living memorial” for the 300th anniversary of the Reformation by educating two descendants of Martin Luther in his school at Keilhau.
Georg Luther went on to study theology. Ernst Luther made the sphere, cylinder and cube as the gravestone for Frobel, designed by Wilhelm Middendorf.
As a devout man and a philanthropist, Friedrich Froebel created ways for individuals to live together in peace and harmony with each other and nature.
As we relate to persons from different cultures, how can we enable each person to say freely what he or she thinks, to be accepted with his or her particular gifts, and to become fully co-responsible?
Students and academics flocked to join this unit of volunteers founded in February 1813 as Königlich Preußisches Freikorps von Lützow (Royal Prussian Free Corps of Lützow), which was mostly composed of craftsmen and laborers.
Inspired with the Romantic nationalism of the times and irresistibly attracted towards a body consisting of volunteers drawn from all social classes, many of them made a vow to neither cut their hair nor their beards until they had liberated Europe. In their distinctive black uniforms, members of the Lützow Free Corps were remarkable for superior activity, energy, and enterprise.
When the summons “To my People” called the German youth to war, Froebel had already entered his thirty first year, but this did not prevent his being one of the first to take up arms. It was in the Lützow Free Corps that Friedrich Froebel formed life long friendships with Wilhelm Middendorf and Heinrich Langethal. Sitting around camp fires they shared their vision for building a better world, where everyone lived together in peace and harmony.
After the Peace of Paris, the young friends parted. They vowed eternal fidelity, and each solemnly promised to obey the other’s summons, should it ever come. As soon as Froebel took off the dark uniform of the black Jagers he received a position as curator of the museum of mineralogy in the Berlin University, which he filled so admirably that the position of Professor of Mineralogy was offered to him from Sweden. But he declined, for another vocation summoned him which duty and inclination forbade him to refuse. His three nephews were in need of an instructor, after their father died in 1813, during the typhus epidemic after the Battle of Leipzig. There was great joy in the village of Griesheim, when Middendorf saw here the realization of the ideal which Froebel’s kindling words had impressed upon his soul beside many a watch fire.
Theodor Körner wrote songs and poems to celebrate and encourage his fellows, often accompanying himself on the guitar. Many of these poems were later published by his father in the collection Leyer und Schwerdt (modern Leier und Schwert, “Lyre and Sword”) (Berlin, 1814).
On August 26 an engagement took place at the forest of Rosenow near Gadebusch, in which Körner fell. Theodor Körner died at the age of twenty-one, and was buried under an oak in the village of Wöbbelin, about a mile from Ludwigslust.
Albertine Froebel 1801-1880 was a daughter Friedrich Froebel’s older brother, Christian.
Albertine married Wilhelm Middendorf
Beautiful family festivals cast a beneficent light, from time to time, like brilliant sparks of illumination, over the whole lives of the united friends of education. Such irradiation shone out on the 16th of September, 1825.
On that day were betrothed the two friends of Froebel, Heinrich Langenthal and the foster daughter of Frau Froebel, Ernestine Crispine, and William Middendorf and Albertine, daughter of Froebel’s eldest brother.
The pupils of the Institute had made a path on the celebration of this festival, for the ascent of the encircling mountain, that the happy couples, in the beginning of this most important era of their lives, might be able to look down from that height on the result of many years of effort. There was inward and many-sided joy on that day in the quiet, peaceful valley in the Thuringian forest.
This happy day was followed by a second, an ascension day in 1826, the day of marriages.
