Margarethe meyer schurz

Margarethe Meyer Schurz used the training she gained in Germany to create the first kindergarten in the United States. After settling in Watertown, Wisconsin, Schurz created a German-language kindergarten in , which continued to run until German-language schools were closed during World War I. Schurz also taught her methods to Elizabeth Peabody, who set up the first English-language kindergarten in Boston in After moving to Washington, D.

Credited with establishing the first kindergarten in the United States, Margarethe Meyer Schurz was born on August 27, , in Hamburg, Germany, the youngest of four children. Her mother died at her birth. Her father, Heinrich Meyer, a prosperous, socially liberal Jewish merchant, opened his home to artists and intellectuals. Margarethe grew up immersed in progressive ideas, such as uniting the small autonomous German states into one democratic country.

When Friedrich Froebel came to Hamburg to lecture on his new theories of educating children, Margarethe and her older sister, Bertha, attended his classes, becoming kindergarten enthusiasts.

Margarethe meyer schurz: Credited with establishing the

Bertha and her husband, Johannes Ronge, an ex-priest and revolutionary, were forced to leave Hamburg after the German revolution failed. Settling in London, in an area populated by German refugees, they opened a kindergarten. In , Margarethe came to assist.