Wolfgang Ratke

Wolfgang Ratke or Ratichius ( born October 18, 1571 Wilster / Holstein, † April 27, 1635 in Erfurt, Germany ) was a German educationalist and teacher of the Baroque period.

Life

After initial education at the Hamburg Johanneum he studied in Rostock and Helmstedt mathematics, philosophy and theology. He held afterwards in Holland and studied several recent (French, English and Italian ) and old ( Latin, Greek and Chaldean ) languages.

Ratke invented following the philosophy of Bacon, a new teaching method especially for language teaching, which he gathered in Frankfurt in 1612 the German Reich stands presented. He proceeded from the idea of "Tabula Rasa ". He demanded that the elementary education should teach especially the mother language and natural history. His proposals have been discussed widely, but picked up only reluctantly.

In 1618, he was appointed by Ludwig von Anhalt to Köthen. Ratke set up in Köthen schools for boys and girls. Classes were held in classes according to his didactic principles. This learning contexts was placed on clarity and mother-tongue education great value, preferred to the memorization. Among the committed of Ratke to Köthen teachers was also the teacher of Christian Gueintz hall.

The furnished by Ratke specially for the production of textbooks ratichianischen didactics Princely printing was the first German educational publisher. Books published respectively in parallel editions in German and the original language, because the ratichianische teaching method required that the student should familiarize you with the text in German translation before he was confronted with the foreign language.

He was one of the founders of modern pedagogy Through its activities. The term " teaching " was first introduced by him. End of 1619 heresy, fraud and belonging to him was accused of the Rosicrucians, and he was therefore held captive for nine months in the tower of the castle Warmsdorf. Following an unsuccessful attempt in Halle ( Saale) Magdeburg and to gain a foothold, he reformed in 1624 the girls' school in Rudolstadt.

After the intervention of Sweden in the event of war he tried to win Gustav II Adolf and the Swedish chancellor Axel Oxenstierna for his school program.

Ratkes teachings influenced, inter alia, Johann Amos Comenius and worked well into the pedagogy of the Enlightenment (Johann Bernhard Basedow and Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi ).