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In the autumn of 1825 Langethal became engaged to my wife's adopted daughter, who had come with her from Berlin; and Middendorff became engaged to my brother's eldest daughter. Ascension Day 1826 was the wedding-day for both couples. Heaven blessed each marriage with a daughter, but took back to itself the little one of Langethal.
When Friedrich Froebel came back from Berlin, the idea of an institution for the education of little children had fully taken shape in his mind. I took rooms for him in the neighbouring Blankenburg. Long did he rack his brains for a suitable name for his new scheme. Middendorff and I were one day walking to Blankenburg with him over the Steiger Pass.
It was here that Langethal introduced me to a university friend of his at Berlin, the young Middendorff, a divinity student from the Mark. Keeping together in a merry little society till the middle of the lovely spring night, we united again next morning in a visit to the splendid cathedral of Meissen.
Middendorff, and he alone, generally succeeded in quieting them, a feat which might seem incredible to all but those who have known the fascination of Middendorff's address. Sometimes quite moving scenes occurred, full of forbearance, trustfulness, and noble sentiment, on the part of workmen who had come to ask us for their money.
Man and the education of man was the subject which occupied us long and often in our walks, and in our open-air life generally. It was particularly these discussions which drew me forcibly towards Middendorff, the youngest of us.
Its immediate outcome was a warm friendship between Krause and Froebel; the latter, with Middendorff as his companion, journeying to Göttingen to make the philosopher's personal acquaintance, in the autumn of 1828. Long discussions on education took place at this interesting meeting, as we know from Leonhardi, Krause's pupil.
I was led to this conviction on another ground, as follows: Although my friends Langethal, Middendorff, and Bauer served with me all through the war in the same corps, and even in the same battalion, we were a great deal apart towards the close of the campaign, especially at the time we were quartered in the Netherlands, so that I, at all events, at the disbanding of the corps, knew not whither the others had gone.
Middendorff had sacrificed his entire inheritance from his father, but the purchase of the ground and the erection of necessary buildings called for considerable sums, so that Middendorff's addition to the capital had disappeared like drops of water falling on a hot stone.
Ferdinand Froebel and Middendorff remained in Willisau. Froebel and his wife went to Burgdorf, to found and direct the proposed Orphanage. 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.
It was only possible for Middendorff to reach me by April 1817, and Langethal could not arrive until even the following September. The latter, however, sent me, by Middendorff, his brother, a boy of eleven years old; so that I now had six pupils. In June of the same year family reasons caused me to move from Griesheim to this place, Keilhau.
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