FAREWELL TO THE EDUCATIONAL STATE - THE P EDAGOGICAL CLAIMS OF 19TH-CENTURY IMPERIAL GERMANY

The school system of the Wilhelmine era has repeatedly been surveyed. However, the pedagogical claims of that time, which aimed at progress by ensuring control, loyalty, and discipline, may be shown not only in the systemic and hierachic connection between social and school struc tures, in school-political decrees, didactic objectives, conference pr oceedings, or school books - i. e., by following the ''classic'' track of educational-historical research - but also in youth-, sports- and military-oriented political initiatives that are instructive regarding aspects of historical mentality. Even the aesthetic staging and sacra lization of the Wilhelmian era in architecture and the national-integr ative culture of festivals and memorial days demonstrate that this was supposed to be an educational state meant to further a specific ideol ogy. During the First World War, this claim even led to first concepts of a state youth-organization.