Although the early history of progressive education is often associated
with John Dewey in America, the author argues convincingly that the
pedagogues in the elementary schools in the big cities of Imperial
Germany were in the avant garde of this movement on the European
Continent. Far more than a history of ideas, this study provides the
first comprehensive analysis of the culture wars over the schools in
Germany in the 1920s. Going up to the Nazi seizure of power, the
author's narrative sheds new light on the courageous defense of the
republican state by the progressive educators in the 1930s and the
relationship between the traditionalists' opposition to school reform
and the attraction of certain sections of the teaching profession to the
Nazi movement.