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Decorations on the Pestalozzi house


The house where Pestalozzi — the founder of modern pedagogy — died was highlighted in the decoration plan for the Jugendfest in Brugg. More on Pestalozzi here.

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5 comments:

Joan Elizabeth said...

I love the handing baskets seen in Europe. We don't decorate out cities in the same way here.

Halcyon said...

Very nice. I love all the colorful flowers.

Kris McCracken said...

I love the colours.

Conchscooter said...

I've never heard of Giovanni Enrico Pestalozzi which, as he encouraged education for all (I think, the English and Italian versions of his biography are ungrammatical or at best obscure) is ironic. Johan Heinrich sound like unlikely first names for a last name ending in "...lozzi." Them Teutonic Swiss lay claim to everything.

Z said...

Conch: Exactly how J. H. Pestalozzi was christened, I don't know for sure. However, in my experience, it is quite common for immigrants to use locally-appropriate first names for their offsprings. Or, the children modify their names themselves. I certainly saw examples of both of this in the US, and I see it in Switzerland. Thus, that Pestalozzi, born to a family settled in Zürich, could have German "christian" names doesn't strike me as too strange. I've found a rather detailed work on the immigrant Pestalozzi branch written by a family member. They seem to have originted in Chiavenna or Gravedona. The book (in digital form, freely available, see link below) is in German, but with Google translator, an interested person could find it useful.

It seems that by the 1500s there was a growing community of reformed Italian immigrants in Zürich (you do know about Zwingli, I'm sure). J. H.'s forebears seem to have moved somewhere around there or earlier. I didn't read the aforementioned text for too long; I have blog posts to put together!

And as for the fact that you hadn't heard about him, all I'll say is that I'm finding that prejudice has kept many cultures from accepting or crediting/promoting the progresses and discoveries made in other cultures.

Two links:

Pestalozzi World (A charity based in the UK, so the grammar should be alright. This link takes you to a bio of Pestalozzi, but it's also interesting to read about the projects of this charity).

Pestalozzi Familienbuch
The geneology "book" I mentioned above.