In Switzerland our enterprise did not develop as rapidly as we desired, in spite of the sanction of the Council of the Canton.  The institution at Willisau gained unlimited confidence there; but the malevolent opposition of the clerical party secretly flourished as before, and succeeded in depriving it of all aid from more distant places.  Under these circumstances we could not attain that prosperity which so much activity and self-sacrificing work on the part of our circle must otherwise infallibly have brought.

Ferdinand Froebel and Middendorff remained in Willisau.  Froebel and his wife went to Burgdorf, to found and direct the proposed Orphanage.[139] In his capacity as Director, Froebel had to give what was called a Repetitive Course to the teachers.  In that Canton, namely, there was an excellent regulation which gave three months’ leave to the teachers once in every two years.[140] During this leave they assembled at Burgdorf, mutually communicated their experiences, and enriched their culture with various studies.  Froebel had to preside over the debates and to conduct the studies, which were pursued in common.  His own observations and the remarks of the teachers brought him anew to the conviction that all school education was as yet without a proper foundation, and, therefore, that until the education of the nursery was reformed nothing solid and worthy could be attained.  The necessity of training gifted capable mothers occupied his soul, and the importance of the education of childhood’s earliest years became more evident to him than ever.  He determined to set forth fully his ideas on education, which the tyranny of a thousand opposing circumstances had always prevented him from working out in their completeness; or at all events to do this as regards the earliest years of man, and then to win over the world of women to the actual accomplishment of his plans.  Pestalozzi’s “Mothers’ Book” (Buch der Muetter) Froebel would replace by a complete theoretical and practical system for the use of women in general.  An external circumstance supervened at this point to urge him onwards.  His wife grew alarmingly ill, and the physicians prescribed complete absence from the sharp Swiss mountain air.  Froebel asked to be permitted to resign his post, that he might retire to Berlin.  The Willisau Institution, although outwardly flourishing, was limited more and more narrowly by the bigotry of the priests, and must evidently now be soon given up, since the Government had passed into the hands of the Jesuit party.  Langethal and Ferdinand Froebel were nominated Directors of Burgdorf.[141] Middendorff rejoined his family at Keilhau.  Later on, Langethal split off from the community and accepted the direction of a girls’ school in Bern (that school which, after Langethal, the well-known Froehlich conducted); but Froebel never forgave him this step.  Ferdinand Froebel remained, till his sudden and early death, Director of the Orphanage at Burgdorf.  A public funeral, such as has never found its equal at Burgdorf, bore witness to the amount of his great labours, and to the general appreciation of their value.