Samuel Heinicke
Samuel Heinicke ( born April 10, 1727 at Nautschütz Zschorgula, Circle Weissenfels ( the Electorate of Saxony ), † April 29, 1790 in Leipzig ), son of Anspänners and court aldermen [ sic] Samuel H. ( 1697-1752 ), and Maria Rosina, born Thieme ( † 1770), was known as an educator and " inventor " of the German method of deaf education.
Military service and studies
With 23 years Heinicke left the parental home, because he was denied as the intended heir to study. and went to Dresden, where he entered the service of the Life Guards of the Elector Friedrich August II of Saxony.
Heinicke was formed there autodidactically, trying only to the services as a musician and as a teacher of writing and music. He was among other children also have a deaf boy to school, which he published after the 1692 textbook that coming from Schaffhausen Dutch physician Johann Conrad Ammann ( 1669-1724, also known as Jean Jacques Amman known) in the spoken language taught. Heinicke desire to devote himself entirely to the work as a teacher, was frustrated by the outbreak of the Seven Years' War in 1756, there has been denied from military service him farewell.
The defeat of the Saxon army at Pirna brought Heinicke in Prussian prisoner of war. Since he was threatened with the confiscation to the Prussian military, he fled to Jena, and studied philosophy, mathematics and natural philosophy at the local university. After his marriage in 1754 with Johanna Maria Elizabeth Kracht, he moved in 1758 with his wife and son to Hamburg and from 1760 to 1768 served Heinicke the Danish Treasurer Carl Heinrich of mold man as steward and private secretary.
As a successful schoolmaster
1768 was Heinicke schoolmaster and choirmaster at St. John's church in Eppendorf (Hamburg). In the village school Heinicke taught soon the deaf son of the lease miller. This child he brought the language in their written form and so the boy could take the confirmation in writing as a result of Heinicke efforts. After this success, Heinicke had in 1774 already five deaf students who were living with him in the vestry. Broad public caused a stir while the successes of the Baroness Dorothea von Vietinghoff (1761-1839), the sister of the legendary Julian of Kriidener and daughter of one of the richest men in Russia, emerged with their fast uptake and their intelligence. Thus, the Heinicke 's school greater attention has been given and Heinicke used this with publications to his teaching method. From 1777 he worked exclusively as a deaf teacher.
Not the then-common spelling and memorization difficult texts such as the Catechism should therefore be goal of teaching, but the recognition of syllables and words and the comprehension of simple texts first. Heinicke tried to make the children associated with the words, concepts by immediate intuition, images and gestures accessible. He looked gestures only as geringklassiges tool that should be used by his students not too often. Since the training of pronunciation required a lot of time, the subject matter could be limited only to the essentials. Disadvantage for a more comprehensive training was that students usually stayed only a short time, about two to four years at the school. Nevertheless Heinicke found imitators and method was effective.
Heinicke then had a desire to return back to the Electorate of Saxony. In a petition he turned to the local electors, who allowed him to emigrate with his bank to Leipzig. In 1778 he moved with his family and nine students to Leipzig, where he founded the " Chursächsische Institute of mutes and other persons afflicted with speech disabilities ", which was state-sponsored and supervised.
Professional successor of the family
Samuel Heinicke daughter from his first marriage, Julia Caroline married Ernst Adolf Eschke (1766-1811) later school inspector and director of the first " Deaf and Dumb Institute " in Berlin, today's Ernst -Adolf- Eschke School
1778 married Heinicke in Hamburg in second marriage Anna, widow Morin ( 1757-1840 ), with whom he had one son and two daughters, one of which was a Amalie Regina married, with Carl Gottlob Empire ( 1782-1852 ), the later director of the " deaf and Dumb Institute " in Leipzig.
Honors
On the occasion of his 200th birthday, a memorial stone was erected in 1927 in his honor in his birthplace. The park next to St John's Church in Eppendorf bears his name as well as the Samuel Heinicke -Realschule Munich. In 1894 in Vienna, Rudolf -Fuenfhaus ( 15th district ) was named the Heinickegasse after him. In Frankenthal (Pfalz ), the Samuel Heinicke street bears his name near the Palatinate Institute for Hearing and Communication.