Johann Ernst Plamann

Johann Ernst Plamann (22 June 1771, Repzin – 3 September 1834, Berlin) was a German child educator. He based his work on the ideas of Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi and Friedrich Ludwig Jahn. Among his pupils was future German chancellor Otto von Bismarck.

Plamann attended the Joachimsthal Gymnasium and studied theology at the University of Halle. At the age of 26, he was at Berlin, teaching in private schools, reading Greek and Latin classics. A growing interest in education received an impulse when he made the acquaintance of the poet Christoph August Tiedge, who advised him to read the works of Pestalozzi. Plamann was so deeply impressed by what he read that, in May 1803, he set out for Switzerland with borrowed money, and was cordially received by Pestalozzi. The two men became friends.

Plamann returned to Berlin, and at once applied for royal permission to establish an institution where the new Swiss system could be introduced. By this time “Leonard and Gertrude” had made its author known in the Prussian capital, and great hopes were founded on Pestalozzi's reformation: the requisite warrant was issued to the applicant before the end of 1803. Plamann's institute opened in the autumn of 1805. The public authorities gave Plamann's enterprise material support, paying him to train students and teachers in the methods that he practised.

Among the teachers were Friedrich Friesen, Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, Wilhelm Harnisch, Karl August Gottlieb Dreist, Ernst Wilhelm Bernhard Eiselen, Karl Friedrich von Klöden, Friedrich Fröbel, and Ernst Ferdinand August. An ardent Pestalozzian, Plamann was sometimes in conflict with subordinates who attached more weight to the fundamental ideas of the new education than to a minute observance of its method, but he would give a free hand to those who showed capacity and life.

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