X.-KRUSI, PESTALOZZI'S FIRST FELLOW-WORKER PESTALOZZI'S INSTITUTE at BurGDORF 433 PROPERTY OF THE Pestalozzi: His Life and Work. CHAPTER I. PESTALOZZI THE CHILD. Influence of home on his character; influence of school and of a visit to the country. To help the poor, he decides to be a village pastor. IN 1567, Antony Pestalozzi, a Protestant refugee from Chiavenna, and his wife Madeline de Muralt, of Locarno, also an exile from her country through having adopted the reformed faith, found refuge in the town of Zurich. From them was descended Andrew Pestalozzi, who was a pastor at Höngg near Zurich, and the grandfather of the subject of this biography.1 Andrew's son, John Baptist, was a surgeon of good standing in Zurich, and had acquired some reputation as an oculist; he had married Susanna Hotz, of Richterswyl, a beautiful village on the edge of the lake of Zurich. Susanna was a sister of the well-known Dr. Hotz, and the niece of the General Hotz who was killed at Schoennis in 1799. Henry, the subject of this biography, was the son of John Baptist Pestalozzi, and was born on the 12th of January, 1746. His early home and the circumstances of his childhood had so great an influence on his character that we must give some account of them. In the middle of the town of Zurich stands a large bridge, used as a market for flowers, fruit, and vegetables, and con 1 The parish registers of Höngg afford evidence of the mistake of those biographers who call this pastor Hotz and make him the maternal grandfather of Pestalozzi. necting a small square on the left bank of the Limmat with the square in which the Town Hall stands on the opposite side. Not far from the latter building and the quay there is a small, old-fashioned square called Rüdenplatz, leading, on the south, into a very narrow street. The corner house frouting the street is the house where Pestalozzi was boru. It is numbered five, and bears the date 1691; the ground-floor, which is now used as a warehouse, was probably in 1746 the shop where, according to the custom of the time, the chirurgeon John Pestalozzi sold his simples and his drugs. It was an old custom in Zurich for every house to have a name and sign; that in which Pestalozzi's parents lived was called The Black Horn.1 Henry was only just five years old when his father died, leaving a widow and three children (two boys and a girl), but very little fortune. Baptist, the eldest boy, died young; the girl, Barbara, eventually married a Mr. Gross, a merchant in Leipsic, and corresponded all her life with her brother Henry, to whom she was very much attached. Susanna Pestalozzi was a gifted woman and an admirable mother. Having been well brought up herself, she now thought of nothing but her duty to her children, and it was undoubtedly the educational advantages of Zurich that made her prefer this town to the pleasanter and easier life she might have led near her brother at Richterswyl. She must, however, have succumbed under the difficulties of the task she had set herself, had it not been for the devotion of a faithful servant. But here we will quote from Pestalozzi's own account of his early education: "My mother devoted herself to the education of her three children with the most complete abnegation, foregoing everything that could have given her pleasure. In this noble sacrifice she was supported by a poor young servant whom I can never forget. During the few months she had 1 Some have maintained that Pestalozzi was born at the Red Lattice, 23, Münsterstrasse, a house which bears the inscription, Honour to God alone, 1664, and which is a little lower down than the one occupied by his friend Lavater. This is a mistake, for it is contradicted not only by local tradition but by Pestalozzi's own statements, as we shall see. 1t is true, however, that at the age of eighteen Pestalozzi lived with his mother at the Red Lattice. |