Beschreibung
Rare first edition of all four parts of Pestalozzi's famous novel foreshadowing the themes of his later pedagogical work. Pestalozzi had planned a fifth and sixth volume, but the manuscript of the fifth was lost on his 1804 trip to Paris and it is not known if a sixth was ever written. 'After the failure of his agricultural and his manufacturing projects, Pestalozzi focused on literature as a means of reform. Lienhard und Gertrud, the first part of which was published in 1781, sketches a first paternalistic attempt to solve the problem of freedom and virtue. Its plot centres on the village of Bonnal, ruled by corrupt residents. The decline was precipitated by the failures of the former bailiff. The current bailiff Carl Arner, grandson of the fallible bailiff, represents the ideal Christian-republican magistrate. He takes political and pedagogic measures against the grievances. He curtails the privileges of the rich residents in order to provide the other residents with the means for economic self-sufficiency; he thus promotes republican ideology . Beginning in 1782 3, Pestalozzi began to develop an interest in the Berlin Enlightenment, particularly its theories of natural law and the social contract. At the same time, he distanced himself from the political situation in the Swiss republics and sympathized with enlightened absolutism, hoping that he would be considered for the post of a counsellor for public education at the Austrian court. Accordingly, the socio-political context in the following three parts of Lienhard und Gertrud (1783/85/87) changes. While in the first part Bonnal is clearly identifiable as a Berne bailiwick, the setting has changed now to a distant court with intrigues and internal power struggles. Correspondingly, Pestalozzi portrays human nature as pre-social and selfish; these features are overcome in the social condition where people are socialized through coercion and discipline. The means to achieve this is the village school .' (Dictionary of Eighteenth-Century German Philosophers). PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: 4 volumes, 8vo, [xvi], 379, folding table of music; [xii], 366; [xvi], 416; [xii], 484 pp., contemporary cloth, spines faded and slightly rolled, later labels, foxing throughout with heavier spots in places and occasional small waterstains, 2 leaves with marginal tears (one with some loss of text, the other not), no stamps or inscriptions, overall a very good set, most uncommon. Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers ABE-1473427989472
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