Das Realschulwesen in Preussen: Schulentwicklung und Sozialstruktur der Realschulabiturienten der Rheinprovinz in der 2. Halfte des 19. Jahrhunderts.

Ever since the 1977 publication of Detlef K. Muller's massive study of secondary education for boys in nineteenth-century Berlin, Sozialstruktur und Schulsystem,(1) efforts to test, revise, or challenge its controversial theses have been a major focus of research for scholars interested in German educational history. The three books under review, despite their great differences in length, topic, and sophistication, all contribute to this ongoing debate. That by Lundgreen, Kraul, and Dirt does more, establishing a new standard for scholarship on education and social mobility.

By shifting attention from governmental decrees and "required" curricula to the realities of enrollment patterns and informal tracking in the schools, Muller discovered that until around 1870 the classical Gymnasien in the Prussian capital served a much more diverse clientele than had previously been suspected. He argued, in fact, that during this period the Gymnasien functioned more as "comprehensive schools" than as institutions devoted primarily to preparing graduates for the universities. From this perspective, Muller viewed the development of a more differentiated system of Prussian secondary schools - the creation of the semiclassical Realgymnasium after 1859 and of the modern Oberrealschule after 1882, as well as the granting to their graduates of nearly equal privileges in the universities and civil service after 1900 - not as a broadening of access and an encouragement of pluralism, but rather as a strategy of social defensiveness on the part of the educated elite of Imperial Germany. As Muller put it in an English summary of his book, the effect of the reforms of the Wilhelmine era was "to replace a system which promoted social mobility and involved educating school children in socially heterogeneous groups by types of schools designed to reproduce specific classes and social groups."(2) He supported this assertion with extensive statistics concerning the social origins of pupils and graduates of the different types of schools. In subsequent publications, Muller has applied this general thesis to developments in nineteenth-century Germany as a whole.

Exner-Seeman's work, an unrevised dissertation from the University of Heidelberg, is concerned only with the last aspect of Muller's interpretation, the social origins of secondary school graduates. As the subtitle of his book indicates, he focuses primarily on the graduates of the semiclassical and modern schools in the rapidly industrializing Rhine province during the second half of the nineteenth century. Because the provincial records have not survived, he had to reconstruct the numbers and origins of the Abiturienten from the annual reports of schools in eighteen cities, ranging from Saarbrucken in the south through Trier, Koblenz, Aachen, and Cologne to the booming urban areas of the Ruhr.

The first one hundred pages of Exner-Seeman's book provide a capsule history of the development of the various Realschulen in Prussia, one written without reference to my own work or any other relevant publications in English.(3) The second half of the book reports his findings in a repetitive, city by city account. His results depend very heavily on his model of social stratification, especially his insistence, in contrast to Muller, that "not all university graduates belong to the upper class." (p. 125) By relying on income levels more than professional prestige as criteria for social status, Exner-Seeman arrives at the somewhat surprising conclusion that in most Rhineland cities a higher percentage of Realgymnasium graduates than of Gymnasium graduates came from the upper class. Thus his work does not confirm Muller's view of the creation of alternative tracks in the late nineteenth century as leading to a more socially exclusive Gymnasium.

The fatal flaw in Exner-Seeman's work, which his own data reveal, is that, given the much larger numbers of Gymnasium than of Realgymnasium or Oberrealschule graduates, a significantly higher number of upper-class sons graduated from the classical than from the semiclassical or modern schools. For example, in the city of Dusseldorf he reports that from 1882 through 1901, 26.8 percent of Realgymnasium graduates came from the upper class, whereas for the years from 1885 through 1901 14.4 percent of Gymnasium graduates did so. Yet these percentages mask the fact that in a shorter period more than three times as many upper-class boys graduated from the classical as from the semiclassical schools, 68 Abiturienten versus 22. (pp. 136-40) What meaning to attach to such differences was debated over a decade ago when Peter Lundgreen challenged Fritz Ringer's notion of a "horizontal segmentation" in German secondary education between Gymnasien for sons of the educated bourgeoisie and Realgymnasien for sons of the propertied.(4) That Exner-Seeman pays no attention to this debate severely limits the value of his contribution. So does his decision to conclude his work around 1900 rather than to provide a more meaningful test of Muller's thesis by examining the effects on the secondary schools up to 1914 of the significant broadening of access to university studies at the turn of the century.

Ulrich Herrmann's study of the neighboring Prussian province of Westphalia, a revised and shortened (!) version of a dissertation completed under Muller's direction at the Ruhr University of Bochum, is a very different book from Exner-Seeman's. Although entitled a "social history of the educational system," it pays no attention to the social origins of pupils or, except in the most general way, to changes in Westphalian society during the course of the nineteenth century. Herrmann's theme is the gradual emergence of the "system" of secondary schools in a specific region, which he contrasts with the work of unnamed other scholars who have treated ministerial decrees and decisions of school conferences as true expressions of what went on at the local level. In addition to the type of annual reports used by Exner-Seeman, the main sources for Herrmann's work are the records of the Provincial School Board of Westphalia, especially the reports on the current conditions in local secondary schools that it submitted every few years to the Ministry of Education in Berlin.

Herrmann organizes his book partly by chronology, partly by the different types of secondary school, beginning with the Gymnasien and then turning to the emergence of semiclassical and modern schools. What one might expect to be the final chapter from a student of Muller's, on "the structural change in the spectrum of school types at the end of the nineteenth century," is followed by an examination of the function of so-called "rectors' schools" in rural areas, which offered the equivalent of the first few grades of secondary schools to boys who could later go on to regular institutions in larger towns. The book ends not with a conclusion, but with a statistical appendix that includes 12 of the book's 16 figures and 61 of its 111 tables, most dealing with enrollments in various schools.

The lack of a conclusion leaves the reader wondering precisely what contribution Herrmann believes all of his data make. Perhaps the most valuable insight concerns the differences in the types and structures of schools between Catholic and Protestant areas. Herrmann suggests that although the Protestant Gymnasien in Westphalia during the first half of the century did serve the multiple functions mentioned by Muller, the three Catholic ones in Munster, Paderborn, and Amsberg did not. The latter group never instituted parallel classes for boys not interested in a classical Abitur, which most of the Protestant schools did. Catholic loyalty to the ancient languages was also evident in the smaller Westphalian towns, where the six- or seven-year Progymnasien were overwhelmingly Catholic. Even in the early twentieth century, "transfer pupils from Catholic rectors' schools in the district of Arnsberg entered Gymnasien three times as often as any other type of secondary school, whereas those from Protestant rectors' schools chose a Realgymnasium or Realschule almost five times as often." (p. 521)

Other modifications or revisions of Muller's views must be teased out of the text. Herrmann's assertion that the Protestant Gymnasien of the early nineteenth century could not have survived if they had tried to "limit their educational function to preparing prospective university students" (p. 122) suggests that their functioning as "comprehensive schools" was a matter of necessity, not choice. The complaint by the Provincial School Board in 1826 that classes at the Catholic Gymnasium in Munster were "overloaded with pupils who do not want to study at a university" and who would be better off at another type of school (p. 99) also indicates that interest in establishing separate tracks to reduce enrollment in the classical schools existed well before the last decades of the century. On the other hand, the creation of parallel classes in the Minden Gymnasium in the wake of a petition from parents who "demanded greater attention for their sons not planning to study" (p. 131) reminds us that exclusion from the classical track did not necessarily require manipulation from above.

Herrmann comes closest to explicit support for Muller's views when he points out how references to curricular requirements for certain career or university privileges could serve as "camouflage" for decisions based on considerations related to social status and school structure. Yet he does not say that the educational administration, the teachers, or the upper classes relied on such camouflage, but instead rather vaguely attributes this strategy to "the Gymnasien" themselves. (p. 193)

A similar ambiguity arises in Herrmann's discussion of the "qualifications crisis," or overcrowding of the professions, a central issue in Muller's interpretation of the true goals of the Prussian school reforms at the end of the century. He cites a report from the Provincial School Board in 1883 that noted how during a period of recession prospects for secure appointments in the civil service were leading "many elements who do not belong there into the middle grades of the Gymnasium." Relegated to a footnote is another passage from the same report in which the Westphalian authorities rejected increasing tuition to drive such pupils out of the Gymnasium because "through the relatively low cost of the education that our secondary schools offer it becomes possible for many outstanding talents from the lower classes to work their way up, so that fresh forces become available to the state." (p. 363) That Herrmann prints but does not comment upon this striking defense by Prussian educational officials of social mobility through education seems to suggest a challenge to his advisor's views of government policy in that era. Yet the lack of clearly articulated conclusions, as mentioned above, leaves the reader uncertain as to what Herrmann intends his work to communicate.

The work by Lundgreen, Kraul, and Ditt bridges the two provinces examined by Exner-Seeman and Herrmann, examining educational opportunities and social mobility in Duisburg, an industrial city in the Rhineland, and Minden, a Westphalian administrative center. Each had a population of about 12,000 in 1850, though Duisburg grew almost seven-fold by 1900 whereas Minden only doubled. Both towns had Gymnasien with parallel Realklassen that developed after 1859 into independent Realgymnasien. Minden possessed in addition a Burgerschule, or middle school, that offered schooling more advanced than in the general elementary schools.

The authors begin with two major questions: 1) How dependent were educational opportunities on social origins? and 2) how dependent were chances for social mobility on social origins and levels of education? In a methodological introduction, Lundgreen points to the need to examine not just the pupils in the secondary schools but those at all levels of the school system to answer questions about relative educational opportunities. To investigate the effects of social origins and schooling on mobility, the authors used city directories to trace when possible the occupations of former pupils when they had reached the age of thirty. Lundgreen also highlights the ways in which availability of places in different kinds of schools and changes in the overall occupational structure had an impact on the level of mobility possible through education.

For each of the two cities, the authors developed a sample of 4,000 schoolboys from the period from 1830 to 1900. These samples included approximately 80 percent of all pupils at the secondary schools, 50 percent of those at middle schools, and 10 percent of the much larger number at elementary schools. They were able to trace the occupations at age thirty of about 2,000 members of the Duisburg sample, 900 of those from Minden. The model of social status used for both the boys' fathers and their later careers is clearly explained in an appendix; in contrast to that employed by Exner-Seeman, it does include all members of the Bildungsburgertum among the upper class.

A review can provide only a sample of the richness of the authors' findings. Examination of enrollments at the Minden Gymnasium led Ditt to conclude, contrary to Muller's views, that that school "neither was a differentiated comprehensive school at the beginning of the nineteenth century nor became toward the end of the century a school for sons of the educated." In fact, "during the second half of the nineteenth century the proportion of upper-class sons among the pupils in the middle and upper grades of the Gymnasium and Realgymnasium fell markedly." (pp. 70-71) About one third of the sons of Minden's upper class never entered a secondary school but instead attended the Burgerschule. When toward the end of the century population growth outstripped places in the secondary schools, "relative participation in secondary education declined" for all social groups. (p. 79) Yet because of changes in the occupational structure, the chances for maintaining or improving status across generations rose slightly. (p. 92)

Kraul provides an interesting study of grades in Minden, where teachers in the secondary schools appear to have been much tougher than their colleagues at the elementary level. In general, she suggests that in the secondary schools "the portion of the variation in grades attributable to the father's occupation is extremely small," or, in other words, that boys from different social groups tended to receive about the same grades. (p. 105) Boys from the upper classes and the more educated middle classes also were held back a year at some time during their schooling at only a slightly lower rate than other pupils. (p. 112)

In the longest section of the book, Lundgreen reports on the research on Duisburg, makes comparisons between the two cities, and draws some more general conclusions. He notes that in Duisburg during the Second Empire, 42 percent of sons of Bildungsburger obtained the Abitur, while 30 percent of sons of Besitzburger did so; comparable figures for Minden, with a somewhat larger upper class, were only 25 and 12 percent. Not only did large majorities of the upper-class boys who entered secondary schools thus fail to graduate, but Lundgreen calculates that as many as 30 percent of the sons of Bildungsburger left without attaining the various privileges granted after completion of the sixth year. (pp. 122-23) Such boys ended up being downwardly mobile, with 25 to 28 percent of the sons of educated fathers in Minden moving down to the middle classes; in Duisburg, the comparable figure was at times as high as 50 percent, later settling around 30 percent. Smaller numbers, of course, fell into the lower classes.

The overwhelming majority of boys from the lower classes attended elementary schools, but Lundgreen finds that for between 7 and 13 percent of them this did not prevent upward mobility into the new middle class. Such climbers far outnumbered their lower-class brothers who reached this level via a middle school. In Minden, 5 percent of lower-class boys attended the Burgerschule and rose into the new middle class, yet 12 percent received this more advanced education but remained in the lower class.(p. 165) In Duisburg, where a middle school was founded much later, comparable figures were 2 percent for each group.

Lundgreen's general conclusion is that "as with the chances for education, the chances for mobility of the different social classes in Minden and Duisburg present a similar picture of stable inequality."(p. 168) Opportunities were not being closed off, as Muller argued, but neither were they opening up to any significant degree. Lundgreen does not allow this rather pessimistic conclusion, however, to obscure the reality of downward mobility for many upper-class boys in cities such as Minden and Duisburg or the fact that the 5 to 8 percent of the middle-class boys who rose in social status, largely if not entirely through attendance at secondary schools, ended up providing approximately half of the upper class of the next generation. (p. 169)

Taken together, these three books demonstrate the immense stimulus to research that Muller's Sozialstruktur und Schulsystem continues to provide. Local studies of other regions of Germany, especially those in the former German Democratic Republic, may result in further slight modifications of our understanding of social reproduction and mobility through education during the nineteenth century. It is doubtful, however, that any will surpass the methodological sophistication and careful research of Bildungschancen und soziale Mobilitat in der stadtischen Gesellschaft des 19. Jahrhunderts by Peter Lundgreen, Margret Kraul, and Karl Ditt.

Department of History Lexington, KY 40506-0027

ENDNOTES

1. Detlef K. Muller, Sozialstruktur und Schulsystem: Aspekte zum Strukturwandel des Schulwesens im 19. Jahrhundert (Gottingen, 1977).

2. Detlef K. Muller, "The Qualifications Crisis and School Reform in the Late Nineteenth Century," History of Education 9 (1980): 315. For further elaboration of Muller's views and some critical responses to them, see also Detlef K. Muller, Fritz Ringer, and Brian Simon, eds., The Rise of the Modern Educational System: Structural Change and Social Reproduction, 1870-1920 (Cambridge, 1987).

3. James C. Albisetti, Secondary School Reform in Imperial Germany (Princeton, 1983).

4. Fritz K. Ringer, Education and Society in Modern Europe (Bloomington, IN, 1979); Peter Lundgreen, "Bildung und Besitz-Einheit oder Inkongruenz in der europaischen Sozialgeschichte," Geschichte und Gesellschaft 7 (1981): 262-75; Ringer, "Bestimmung und Messung von Segmentierung: Eine Teilantwort an Peter Lundgreen," Geschichte und Gesellschaft 8 (1982): 280-85.