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THE KINDERGARTEN IN AUSTRIA. 367 
older ones got too unruly, their untaught teachers took to primers and 
arithmetic and spoiled them for school. 
Again it was Josef Wertheimer who came to the rescue. Assisted by 
his wife, he had found means to build the first Kinderbewahranstalt, 
which was established in its own house and dedicated to the rites of the 
Froebelian system. The empress undertook the patronage of it, and it 
was touching to hear her say to the wife of Joseph Wertheimer, a childless 
wife like herself: ¢“ We both, as well as your husband, have the mission 
;0 offer to other people’s children the devotion which we were deprived 
of giving to our own ones.” This Bewahranstalt, which celebrated its 
fiftieth anniversary this year, where I had my initiation in charity work, 
was built exactly to its purpose. In the midst of the Leopoldstadt, a 
densely populated district, it provides a spacious hall, large rooms, a well- 
kept garden with a vast lawn and shady grounds which are kept open from 
morning till evening. Two hundred and fifty to three hundred children 
are here taken in to get a wholesome dinner for a nominal price, and food 
for the poorest is dispensed. 
This Bewahranstalt was conducted from the beginning on rational 
pedagogic notions, but its great importance as the first kindergarten in 
Austria dates from 1863, when its present principal, Mr. Fisher, and his 
wife took the management of it. This excellent pedagogue, who has had 
-he distinction to be appointed honorary vice-president of the Educa- 
tional Congress, was the first to introduce the Frocbelian system, and to 
change it into a real Volks-kindergarten—kindergarten for the people. 
Very soon some private kindergartens were opened in different Austrian 
owns, but all of them were sadly in want of assistance. We had the 
garden, but we had no gardeners except the few principals, most of them 
only book taught. 
To better this state of things, Wertheimer, after having celebrated the 
;wenty-fifth anniversary of his foundation, went to Gotha to study the 
seminary and training-school under August Koehler. Before the end of 
1868 he and the ladies’ committee in charge had the satisfaction of opening 
the first seminary for kindergartners in Austria, with eight pupils, under 
the management of Mr. Fisher and his wife. Up to this date nearly seven 
hundred kindergartners and trainers have graduated from there, and have 
aelped to propagate the system over the whole Austrian realm. The 
course of instruction is of one year’s duration, and the applicants must be 
at least sixteen years old. I am happy to say that the standard for their 
graduation is a sufficiently high one, and that the ethical side of their 
vocation is duly impressed on them. 
A most important era for the kindergarten was in 1872, under the min- 
ister for public instruction, Stremayer, when a statute was elaborated by 
a committee of school authorities which regulated the management of 
kindercartens, Bewahranstalten, and seminaries for kindergartners under