Enlightened absolutism and education in Germany – the theoretical writings of Karl Abraham von Zedlitz und Leipe (1731-1793) Prussian Minister of Justice and Education

Abstract

For almost twenty years von Zedlitz was responsible for the elementary, high school and higher education system in Brandenburg–Prussia. As a practical expert in the administration of the educational system, he initiated a series of reforms in the path of enlightenment but without abandoning the fundamentals of absolutism. As his king Frederick the Great, von Zedlitz was a typical representative of the enlightened absolutism in Germany. Consequently the tension between enlightenment and absolutism is a characteristic of his conceptions of politics and education. In his few and infortunately almost unknown theoretical writings of 1776/77 and 1787, he proposes an educational system in accordance with the structure of a society in which the individuals were classified by birth status. In the course of time, however, von Zedlitz progressively interpreted the existing social categories (classified by birth) by the criterion of prospective profession, and thus he began to blur the sharp social borders between bourgeoisie and nobility because they should jointly occupy the leading positions in society and in government and administration – even before the French Revolution of 1789.