FRANCKE, AUGUST HERMANN. — Protestant theologian and educator, born in Lübeck on 12 March 1663, died in Halle on 8 June 1727. He studied theology at Erfurt, Kiel, and Leipzig, and in the latter city founded, together with P. Anton, the Collegium philobiblicum for the study of Sacred Scripture. In 1688 he met Spener, enthusiastically embraced his Pietist doctrines, and received his assistance in advancing the Collegium. Appointed magister at the University of Leipzig, he was obliged to leave it because of his Pietist doctrines; the same thing happened to him at the University of Erfurt, where he had been invited. Meanwhile Spener, who had also been forced to leave Leipzig, had persuaded the then elector (1688–1701) and later first king of Prussia (1701–13), Frederick I, to found the Faculty of Theology at the University of Halle, and summoned F. there along with various other Pietist professors, who made that Faculty the stronghold of Pietism.
F. became famous not only as a propagator and defender of Pietism, but chiefly for his philanthropic and educational institutions. F. also wished to combat the people’s religious ignorance, and excluded the dissemination of the Bible as an effective means of achieving this aim, assisted in this by his friend Baron von Constein (1682–1730), who had thousands of copies printed. Some attribute to F.’s personal influence the vocation of the first Lutheran missionaries, Ziegenbalg and Plutschau, and that of Count Zinzendorf, founder of the Moravian Brethren.
F. began by attending to elementary education, opening a free school for the poor as early as 1695; then, in response to the requests of well-to-do families, another school, the German school, for which tuition was charged; and subsequently, so as not to wait for the beginning of elementary schooling to instill religious feeling in the pupils, he established the orphanage (1628). For higher education he opened the Paedagogium for well-to-do pupils who intended preferably to pursue professional training, and the Latin school for those who, without neglecting the sciences, devoted themselves rather to literary subjects.
Teachers still had to be trained, and for them he founded an institution divided into two branches: the Seminarium praeceptorum for future teachers of the elementary classes, and the Seminarium electorum for those of the higher classes.
As supplements to the schools, he established a printing press, a library, a bookshop, and a pharmacy. The institution flourished remarkably, so that at F.’s death the Paedagogium had 82 pupils, the Latin school 400, the elementary schools 1,725, and the orphanage 134; while the male and female teachers numbered more than 200.
According to F., the principal end of education is the honor of God and the living knowledge of Jesus Christ; consequently, three hours each day were devoted to religious instruction, one to communal prayer, and only three to the other subjects. Sundays and feast days were no exception, nor even periods of recreation, during which games were forbidden because play distracts from the thought of God; instead, the time was occupied with work at the lathe, etc. Instruction was to be intuitive; accordingly, a botanical garden, a cabinet of physics and natural history, and a laboratory of chemistry and anatomy were attached to the Paedagogium. In maintaining discipline, gentleness was to prevail.
F. must certainly be numbered, despite the excessive amount of time devoted to religious instruction and prayer and the abolition of games, among the truly great and effective educators, since he succeeded in joining instruction and education in perfect harmony, founding the latter upon the sole firm basis of religion studied and lived.
His ideas are set forth in his work: Öffentliches Zeugnis von Wort, Werk und Dienst Gottes (Halle 1792), divided into four parts, of which the first is particularly important: Kürzer einfaltiger Unterricht, wie die Kinder zur wahrenen Gotteslighet und christlicher Kindheit eingeführt sind; and the fourth: Von der Erziehung der Jugend.