Gymnasium Instructional Materials at the Russian Academy of Science

Abstract

The article reproduces the way that textbooks were chosen and used in the Gymnasium of the Academy of Sciences throughout the 1730s. To research into the topic, the authors applied such original German documents as T. S. Bayer’s manuscript Gegenwärtige Einrichtung des Gymnasii (1731); J. E. Fischer’s project Vorschlag wie das gymnasium und die schulen zu St. Petersburg einzurichten that was published but has been rarely used yet (1733); Formula Gymnasii (1735) and G. W. Krafft’s regulations Reglament der Gymnasii (1739). There is also provided a novel valuable supplement to the regulations as Catalogus der Bücher, die nach Anzeige des Reglament in dem Gymansio sollen gebraucht werden here. Written in German, that paper is held now in the St. Petersburg Branch of the Archive of the Academy of Sciences. The critical analysis of the textbooks mentioned in the documents makes it possible to realize the logic and dynamics of the changes in a native literature and didactic standard, as well as to see the successive replacement of foreign textbooks by the ones published in Russia. The novel information about the academic books of the Gymnasium is supposed to be interesting for historians of pedagogy, linguistics, foreign languages teaching, logic, geography, etc.

Keywords: textbooks, Academy of Sciences, T. S. Bayer, J. E. Fischer, J. M. Gesner, grammars, Gymnasium of the Academy of Sciences, G. W. Krafft, lexicons, G. Stolle.