The center of the manual training movement in Germany”

In the decades around 1900, reformers in virtually all industrialising countries debated boys’ manual training as a new subject for primary education. This contribution discusses the German debates on and institutions of manual training from a transnational perspective. The focus is on the German Association for Manual Training founded by Emil von Schenckendorff in 1886 and its Training College for Teachers established one year later in Leipzig, which notably organised summer courses where teachers received supplementary training in manual skills. The Training College soon developed into a centre for manual training instruction of European and global significance. This article discusses the Training College in Leipzig as a portal for educational globalisation. Its two directors Woldemar Götze and Alwin Pabst, on the one hand, transferred Scandinavian, French and American ideas and practices to the German context. On the other hand, foreign experts visited and referred to the Training College in order to enhance reforms in their respective countries. Especially after his trip to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in 1904, Pabst enthusiastically embraced American education and – albeit with limited success – planned to transform the Training College into a model school and new education research centre. Moreover, Pabst theoretically reflected on processes of cultural development and cultural transfers, largely following the ideas of historian Karl Lamprecht. Manual training, in this respect, appeared as a panacea for constructing a genuinely modern and cosmopolitan society

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