Footnote 12 Amongst educationists there was a strong tendency through the 1960s to criticize Neuhumanismus and its ideal of the general education of the individual, on the grounds that it was too focused on an apolitical Innerlichkeit (an inward turn of mind) rather than current social and political realities. Footnote 11 Certain ideologies that pervaded the institution of Latin teaching were also increasingly seen as out of place, notably the idealization of conservative Roman values.
The heavy weight of military topics (especially in the almost inevitable reading of Caesar’s Gallic War, but also in other authors, such as Livy) was much criticized. Footnote 10 The subject matter and its interpretation came under scrutiny. The difficulty of Latin and its role as a subject that marked out the best pupils, which had often been touted as positive qualities, came to be regarded negatively as elitism and socio-economic selection unsuited to a democratic school system. Latin was criticized as irrelevant to the modern world and to pupils’ requirements as future members of the workforce and contributors to the economy. There was nothing new about the status of Latin as a focus for arguments in favour of educational reform during the 1960s, Footnote 9 though a large number of educationists opened up the debate on new fronts. Footnote 7 It was not until the ‘crisis’ of the ancient languages in the early 1970s that the ‘neue Fachdidaktik’ caused radical changes in the teaching of ancient languages, amongst which was a departure from the format and content of the traditional textbook ( Übungsbuch). Although there were some attempts to modernize the teaching of Latin in the years leading up to 1970, the first step in abandoning the legacy of the Third Reich was to re-build Latin teaching on the foundations laid in the Weimar Republic. Footnote 6 This criticism was aimed primarily at the Humanist Gymnasien, where the classical languages were the backbone of a child’s education.
Footnote 5 Classical Humanist education came under fire for what was perceived as its moral ineffectuality in having been unable to prevent the barbarism of National Socialism from taking hold. Footnote 4ĭespite briefly flourishing in West Germany in the 1950s, Latin was widely criticized after the Second World War as a subject unsuited to educating the future citizens of a modern democracy: it was irrelevant to modern society, narrow in its content (‘war and grammar’), provided material that was unsuitable or unpalatable for children and was a distraction from learning modern languages. The main sources for tracing the history of Latin teaching in the classroom in this period are textbooks, though the ‘triangle’ of pedagogical developments, academia and broader social and cultural changes is always to be kept in view. Footnote 3 The main thread is the representation of Germani in school education, but a detailed study of this subject reveals much about attitudes towards Classical teaching and scholarship more broadly. Footnote 2 The minority status of Latin teaching in the German Democratic Republic means that the available sources for the place of Germani in Latin teaching are mostly to be found in the Federal Republic during these years.
Subsequent developments are the subject of another detailed study. Footnote 1 This article shows how material tainted by its appropriation in National Socialist ideology was handled in the Federal Republic of Germany in the years between 1945 and German reunification. The present article serves as a sequel to an earlier publication which traced the representation of Germani in German Latin textbooks from the 1870s until 1945.
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