Pre-reform professionals: multilingual Northern German language teachers (ca. 1850-1875)

ABSTRACT The second half of the 19th century saw a shift in the professionalisation of German language teachers. This general tendency was visible in the northern German merchant cities as well. There, ‘national’ (i.e. native speaker) teachers were replaced by modern foreign language experts trained at Prussian universities. Between the autodidacts and the fully trained academics, there was a generation of English teachers who were exceptional in quite a few respects. They were multilinguals who, based on their oral competencies, were able to hold their lessons in the target language; this pre-reform ‘direct method’ forms an exception in the grammar-translation dominated German language education of the 19th century. Rather than drawing their teaching methodology from neo-humanist sources, they adapted primary school methods of teaching standard German to regional (‘Low-German’) speakers. The multilingual teachers taught modern foreign languages in a likewise multilingual pre-national context. What is also striking is that they combined the elements of today’s language teacher education – studying at university, training at seminars and spending time abroad – before a standardised language teacher education was developed. Abbreviations: MFL: modern foreign language(s); CLIL: Content and Language Integrated Learning; L1: First language; L2: Second language(s)