422 i Flora Unveiled
made up of students at two to four levels, which were extremely difficult to teach,
Sprengel proposed substituting four smaller classes, each composed of students at the
same level. To make room for the additional classes Sprengel proposed doing away with
the morning worship class, substituting instead a short prayer before each of the lesson
periods.^36
This was a rather daring proposal. One can easily imagine the grumbling it provoked
from the conservative town councilors, let alone from the Lutheran School Superintendant,
Pastor Daniel Friedrich Schulze, who were unaccustomed to dealing with headmasters
with ideas of their own. No doubt Sprengel’s self- confidence derived from his strong family
credentials, and, in the end, his superiors reluctantly allowed him to implement the two
reforms he requested. “We put up with both of them,” Pastor Schulze wrote grudgingly.
The incident provides a window on a surprising aspect of Sprengel’s personality not appar-
ent from the sketchy information we have about his early years, but which is essential to
understand his subsequent boldness as an innovator in floral ecology despite the lack of any
formal training in botany.
Whatever hopes he may have had that his reforms would make his job as Headmaster
any easier were soon dashed. Struggling to maintain student discipline and bedeviled by the
same parental interference that had driven away his predecessor, he began to show signs of
stress. In 1782, Pastor Schulze reported that Sprengel was reprimanded on numerous occa-
sions for being “cruel when disciplining the students and treating his lessons arbitrarily.”
The Superintendent went on to list several alleged examples of Sprengel’s harsh punish-
ments, which he seemed to mete out regardless of the parents’ status. For example, one day
he made the mayor’s son stand during an entire lesson and later struck the boy with a stick
near his eyes, causing sufficient damage to require medical attention. The nine- year- old son
of a town councilor was allegedly beaten so badly that the boy could not lie down for several
nights. A church official’s son was pursued and beaten black and blue for stealing plums
from Sprengel’s tree. A shoemaker’s son, who had not understood what Sprengel had said
in class and had asked another student, was struck about the head with a stick until he bled.
He also lit into another shoemaker’s son for snatching a paper from a boy on the street, caus-
ing bruises and contusions on the boy’s back and shoulders. Finally, Schulze reported that
Sprengel administered thirty- one strokes to another student for playing a prank at school.
Nothing of what is known of Sprengel’s early years prepares us for such abusive behavior.
Indeed, we have only Schulze’s word that the incidents actually occurred. It is possible they
were based on hearsay or blown out of proportion by Schulze, who may have been biased
against Sprengel. The fact that Sprengel managed to keep his job despite Schulze’s allega-
tions may indicate that such beatings, even if true, were not considered beyond the pale.
However, according to Zepernick and Meretz, Sprengel was in “a particularly poor mental
and spiritual state” during 1782, and in addition was suffering from serious eyestrain and a
host of other physical ailments, real or imagined.^37
Increasingly desperate and fearful of losing his position, Sprengel sought the advice of
Dr. Ernst Ludwig Heim, the distinguished district medical officer in Spandau. The choice
of Heim, who was only three years older than Sprengel, could not have been better. Like
Sprengel, he had attended the University of Halle, and the two may even have known each
other during their college days. They hit it off immediately, and Heim soon became a role
model and father figure to Sprengel.