Stephan Ludwig Roth
Stephan Ludwig Roth was a Transylvanian Saxon Lutheran pastor, educator, and political reformer active in the Principality of Transylvania during the first half of the 19th century. He was a prominent advocate for educational modernization based off Pestalozzian principles into Saxon schooling. He also politically campaigned for Romanians to be recognized in Saxon and the coexistence of Transylvania's multiethnic population of Hungarians, Romanians, and Transylvanian Saxons. His reformist activism brought him into conflict with the Hungarian authorities during the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, and he was executed by the Hungarian revolutionary forces under the command of Lajos Kossuth in 1849. He later became a posthumous martyr amongst the Transylvanian Saxons for his progressiveness and advocating for a multiethnic empire.
Educated in Hermannstadt during his primary years, he later attended the University of Tübingen studying theology. After graduating, he worked at Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi's institute in Yverdon, before returning to Transylvania in order to spread Pestalozzi's educational and linguistic ideas. He began his career as a gymnasium professor in Mediasch and was later a Lutheran pastor in Nimesch and Meschen. During his time as pastor, he addressed a wide range of issues, which led to him becoming a political reformist. He published his ideas on guilds and promoted agricultural ideas to address rural policy. He became widely known for his 1842 publication Der Sprachkampf in Siebenbürgen, which addressed the Transylvanian Diet amongst debates over what should be the official language of Transylvania. During the Hungarian Revolution in 1848, he was appointed by the Habsburg government as the Commissioner for the 13 Saxon villages in Nagy-Küküllő, but was later arrested by Hungarian revolutionaries and executed by firing squad. Though widely commemorated later for his progressive ideals among the Transylvanian Saxons, his legacy remains complicated by present-day historians. He has been criticized more recently for his writing on Jewish people for perpetuating antisemitic stereotypes and opposing Jewish emancipation. Roth's life and work, however, continued to be studied as part of Transylvania's history, both educationally and politically, and he continues to be widely commemorated.
Early life
Stephan Ludwig Roth was born on 24 November 1796 in Mediasch in the Principality of Transylvania. He was the son of Marie Elisabeth Roth and Gottlieb Roth, the rector of the Mediasch Gymnasium. He had two other siblings: Therese, who was older than Stephan, and Maria who was two years younger than him. In terms of his ancestry, one part immigrated from Hamburg and the other came from Liegnitz, but most were local and were from the earliest Transylvanian Saxon settlers and came from Mediasch. His grandfather through his paternal side was Stephan Rothmann, a shoemaker, and his maternal side was a pastoral family that had held village pastorates like Martin Fay. Early on during 1803, his father was elected pastor of Kleinschelken to succeed Johann Gunnesch, who was his father's father-in-law, so the family moved there, with the city eventually becoming Roth's village home and the place he did his early schooling.He eventually transferred from the syntax class of Mediasch to Hermannstadt High School in May 1809, where he became part of the "Selekta" and a student inspector. During his time there in Hermannstadt, he became close to his brother-in-law, Bergeileter, who held the post of principal of the Hermannstadt Gymnasium and who influenced him to improve his intellectual development. In 1815, after Bergleiter died, Roth also became student librarian of the school before his examinations on 22 July 1816. His final topic for the examinations was written in Latin over the natural order of the cosmos and disciplined thinking, which was a reflection of the nationalist spirit that was at Hermannstadt Gymnasium. He passed the matura with first class with eminence.
Tübingen and years with Pestalozzi
To follow in his father's footsteps and enter the clergy, he applied for a scholarship at the Tübingen Theological Seminary, which was accepted in August 1816 by Frederick I of Württemberg as a special favor. On 26 September 1816, he was informed and granted a two-year stay as a guest student at Tübingen. However, he did not start at the university until 3 May 1817. This was further compounded by the fact he acquired an illness in Mediasch during the winter of 1816-1817, and he finally departed for the university from 11-14 June 1817 by horse.The journey from Mediasch in June 1817 to Tübingen to 11 October 1817, took the better part of a few months, which allowed him to reflect deeply and which he later called his "educational journey". He spent time in Pest and Vienna, where he reflected on Romanticism and agricultural advancements that were not seen in Transylvania at the time. At this point, he considered himself a citizen of the Kingdom of Hungary, referring to himself on passports as an "Austrian native son" who liked the House of Habsburg. He stated in his diaries that he believed that liberal progress could be made among the Habsburgs, despite the climate at the time, and praised the reforms of Emperor Joseph II. He took a more theological approach than being supranationalist and was rationalist, which reflected rationalist Enlightenment ideas, which were formulated by the philosophy of Immanuel Kant through Blumenlese. He finally arrived in Linz on 11 October, but took a detour and went by foot leading him to arrive in Tübingen on 27 November 1817, and he was finally matriculated on 1 January 1818 in the subject of theology.
In a formative event in his life, on 19 July 1818, he met Wilhelm Stern while in Karlsruhe on vacation with friends to visit philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Stern taught Latin and Greek with Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi. This led him to engage in conversations during September at the university with Professor Holzmann, who was from Karlsruhe and had previously lived near Pestalozzi. Not even a few months after arriving at Tübingen to study theology, he interrupted his studies again, inspired by his conversations with Holzmann, and arrived in Yverdon on 1 October 1818 and was greeted by Pestalozzi and his associate Josef Schmid. At this point, his wish was to become an educator of the people, spurred on by Pestalozzi's direction in Switzerland. He went with Pestalozzi soon after to visit two collaborators of his, Niederer and Krüst, who had founded their own educational institution after working with Pestalozzi in Yverdon, which greatly inspired Roth. On 25 December 1818 Pestalozzi formally asked Roth's father to approve a one-year stay for Stephan at the institute stating it would benefit the future of education in Transylvania, with Roth writing back a few days later stating his motivation was out of personal affection for him and a deep commitment to educational reform that Pestalozzi was developing. His father quickly approved this request, and on 1 January 1819 he became a "member of the household", which meant he had received private instruction and could live in the castle at Yverdon where the institute was housed. He was initially tasked with teaching Latin using Pestalozzi's method to the townspeople. He was thus part of a philological team under Pestalozzi that created methods and textbooks for foreign language teaching alongside Stern, Meyer Marx, and Hirt. However, he was the one who took a central position under Pestalozzi because he came from a region where multiple languages were spoken, which enabled him to understand multilingual acquisition better, like John Amos Comenius or even Pestalozzi himself. During this time, he created an unpublished Latin textbook and mnemonic-based Latin teaching experiments, with both being delayed for the completion of Der Sprachunterricht, which was seen as being a potentially important contribution.
In August 1819 he retreated to Bullet, and began drafting a work that Pestalozzi had commissioned him to write on teaching classical languages This work, which became known as Der Sprachunterricht, was developed mostly towards the end of 1819 and was translated into French and English to provide instructions on learning languages using Pestalozzi's method. However, in January 1820, he fell seriously ill with a chest and stomach infection and paused work on Sprachunterricht, which eventually made Roth's father write to Pestalozzi demanding he return home. Sprachunterricht itself was never finished and only survived in handwritten versions as a manuscript, unlike his colleagues' works, like Marx's method for teaching ancient language. Thus, it remained unknown to anybody until 1928, when Otto Folberth printed it in Werke II with its partial translations. On 5 April 1820 Pestalozzi granted Roth's leave and gave a testimonial which praised his mnemonic devices and improving language instruction and the application of these principles to Latin teaching, before Roth departed on 6 April.
Return to Transylvania and Mediasch
He then returned home to Transylvania, staying in Freiburg where he was offered an invitation to teach at a lyceum in London which he declined, for a while before moving. He made frequent stops during this journey, notably visiting Philipp Emanuel von Fellenberg at his Hofwyl School with the goal of getting his knowledge on how to recruit an agricultural student trained there to work in Transylvania. He also wants to learn himself through Fellneberg the new agricultural methods. He also did research on the Bell–Lancaster method, which had recently been developed, when he went to Fellenberg. Fellenberg, wanting him to stay, offered him a teaching position at his school but Roth declined citing his parent's desire for him to return and went to Basel to eventually go through Karlsruhe to Tübingen. Between 26 June and 30 June 1820, while staying in Tübingen, he wrote his dissertation on philosophy titled "The Nature of the State as an Educational Institution for the Human Calling", which was formally accepted on 4 July, and he was given his doctorate. His main goal in writing his doctorate was to impress upon the Viennese government that he could establish a teacher training institute in Transylvania, inspired by Pestalozzi, and he declined other teaching positions again, like at Hermannstadt Gymnasium. He was then instructed by the Hofkanzlei to establish a formal plan for the school, which he presented to Count Samuel von Teleki in August, but did not receive a response for a while, so he returned home to Transylvania in September 1820. The government would eventually issue a decree forbidding Roth from using his doctorate in Transylvania.Finally, not receiving a response, he spoke with the superintendent of schools in Transylvania, who stated that he was against Pestalozzi's teaching methods. He claimed they were only for "feeble-minded people" and that the people of Transylvania were gifted, but noted that Pestalozzi's ideas had come into fruition with the younger generation, especially in Hermannstadt. The next few months became a difficult time in his life: the superintendent refused to acknowledge his idea because of what Roth called a biased "reviewer guild in Göttingen", and his fiancee broke off their engagement as she did not want to struggle in a foreign land with no money. He tried advocating for a teacher training institute and a school journal, which eventually led him to accept a relatively modest teaching position at the Mediasch Gymnasium, which he recounted with bitterness in his diaries. Since he saw no path forward with introducing anything, he instead resolved to finally get Der Sprachunterricht published and establish an educational institute in Kleinschelken. Although he was listed as a teacher at this point, he was not assigned anywhere as he did not accept an assignment until his rank was formally clarified - which he was confused about. To make matters worse, his bid to establish the institute in Kleinschelken dramatically failed and collapsed due to a lack of funding.
In December 1822, he formally took the position at Mediasch and was assigned to teach history, periodology, and style. He also began to introduce gymnastics into the curriculum, which was the first time the class had ever been part of instructions in a school in Transylvania. During the year 1823 little is known about him, besides that he continued with the education of the young people, which was met with success, especially for his lectures on general and national history. He also completed the manuscript for Sprachunterricht at this time, but struggled to get it published due to the increased hostility to Pestalozzianum ideas thanks to Pestalozzi's former assistant, Johannes Niederer, attacking the viewpoint. In the classroom, he also heavily started applying Pestalozzi's pedagogical basic idea while also helping with practical training for people going into the trades and for future teachers looking to teach at grammar schools. Lastly, he started his three-volume work "History of Transylvania", which was made in response to Martin Felmer's work and was intended to be the new standard for the history of Transylvania. It covered the earliest records of its existence to 1699, which was based off an earlier manuscript from 1822.
Finally, in 1828, he became vice-principal of the gymnasium in Mediasch. He was promoted to rector of the institution on 13 April 1831. Important during his brief term as rector was that, contrary to the custom implemented at the time, all topics were discussed in Latin. His school reforms during this time were also particularly notable: he was the first to include music in a Transylvanian school curriculum and proposed establishing a citizens' school and allowing rural schoolteachers to attend urban schools. His introduction of music is of particular note. During his time in Yverdon, he had visited Hans Georg Nägeli's music institute, which viewed music as a form of social practice and human development.