The management of the school was henceforward in the hands of a man of character, while the extensive knowledge and the excellent method of a well-trained scholar had been obtained for the educational department.  The new institute now prospered rapidly.  The renown of the fresh, healthful life and the able tuition of the pupils spread far beyond the limits of Thuringia.  The material difficulties with which the head-master had had to struggle after the erection of the large new buildings were also removed when Froebel’s prosperous brother in Osterode decided to take part in the work and move to Keilhau.  He understood farming, and, by purchasing more land and woodlands, transformed the peasant holding into a considerable estate.

When Froebel’s restless spirit drew him to Switzerland to undertake new educational enterprises, and some one was needed who could direct the business management, Barop, the steadfast man of whom I have already spoken, was secured.  Deeply esteemed and sincerely beloved, he managed the institute during the time that we three brothers were pupils there.  He had found many things within to arrange on a more practical foundation, many without to correct:  for the long locks of most of the pupils; the circumstance that three Lutzen Jagers, one of whom had delivered the oration at a students’ political meeting, had established the school; that Barop had been persecuted as a demagogue on account of his connection with a students’ political society; and, finally, Froebel’s relations with Switzerland and the liberal educational methods of the school, had roused the suspicions of the Berlin demagogue-hunters, and therefore demagogic tendencies, from which in reality it had always held aloof, were attributed to the institute.

Yes, we were free, in so far that everything which could restrict or retard our physical and mental development was kept away from us, and our teachers might call themselves so because, with virile energy, they had understood how to protect the institute from every injurious and narrowing outside influence.  The smallest and the largest pupil was free, for he was permitted to be wholly and entirely his natural self, so long as he kept within the limits imposed by the existing laws.  But license was nowhere more sternly prohibited than at Keilhau; and the deep religious feeling of its head-masters—­Barop, Langethal, and Middendorf—­ ought to have taught the suspicious spies in Berlin that the command, “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,” would never be violated here.

The time I spent in Keilhau was during the period of the worst reaction, and I now know that our teachers would have sat on the Left in the Prussian Landtag; yet we never heard a disrespectful word spoken of Frederick William IV, and we were instructed to show the utmost respect to the prince of the little country of Rudolstadt to which Keilhau belonged.  Barop, spite of his liberal tendencies, was highly esteemed