Childhood and Early Youth 45this.^69 In any case, he would soon get to know Pietism from a different
perspective.
School Years (1732-1740): "In the Servitude of the Fanatics"If Kant was "touched by feelings of the highest gratitude" whenever he
thought of the education he received in the house of his parents, he was
horrified when he remembered his school years at the Collegium Frideri-
cianum. Hippel, later one of Kant's closest friends, reported that
Herr Kant who also experienced these torments of youth in full measure, used to say
that terror and fear would overcome him as soon as he thought back to the slavery
of his youth, and this even though he remained in the house of his parents and only
went to a public school, namely the then so-called "Pietistic hostel," or the Collegium
Fridericianum.^70
A similar sort of sentiment was also expressed by David Ruhnken, one of
Kant's school friends. He begins a letter to Kant, dated March 10,1771, say¬
ing: "Thirty years have now passed from the time we both groaned under
that gloomy, yet useful and not objectionable, discipline of the fanatics."^71
Kant was not as charitable as Ruhnken, and he did not think highly of
the moral education he received in the "Pietistic hostel." In the "Lectures
on Pedagogy" he felt it necessary to point out that "many people think their
youth constituted their best years, but this is probably wrong. They are the
hardest years because one is very much subject to discipline, seldom has a
friend, and even less often has freedom."^72 This may sum up his view of
his youth in a rather restrained way. He felt that the kind of discipline he
experienced amounted to a particularly harsh form of slavery that was not
only not very useful, but also positively harmful. "In school there is coer¬
cion {Zwang), mechanism, and the shuttle of rules (Gängelwagen). This
often robs people of all the courage to think for themselves, and it spoils
the genius."^73 Indeed, his later enthusiasm for educational reform, and es¬
pecially his unparalleled efforts on behalf of the Institute of Dessau under
the leadership of Basedow, goes to show how little he thought of the kind
of education that children received at the Collegium Fridericianum.
What was this education that Emanuel received? He first went to school
in the outer city, namely to the so-called Hospitalschule. This school was
connected with St. Georg's hospice. It had one teacher, usually an unor-
dained minister whose duties also included weekly visits to the city jail.
Kant's teacher was Ludwig Boehm, a candidate in theology, who held this