[116] This young girl, the adopted daughter of the first Madame Froebel, was named Ernestine Chrispine, and afterwards married Langethal.  Froebel’s first wife, Henrietta Wilhelmine Hoffmeister, was born at Berlin 20th September, 1780, and was therefore thirty-eight at the time of her marriage.  She was a remarkable woman, highly cultured, a pupil of Schleiermacher and of Fichte.  Before her marriage with Froebel she had been married to an official in the War Office, and had been separated from him on account of his misconduct.  Middendorff and Langethal knew the family well, and had frequently spoken with Froebel about this lady, who was admired and respected by both of them.  Froebel saw her once in the mineralogical museum at Berlin, and was wonderfully struck by her, especially because of the readiness in which she entered into his educational ideas.  When afterwards he desired to marry, he wrote to the lady and invited her to give up her life to the furtherance of those ideas with which she had once shown herself to be so deeply penetrated, and to become his wife.  She received his proposal favourably, but her father, an old War Office official, at first made objections.  Eventually she left her comfortable home to plunge amidst the privations and hardships of all kinds abundantly connected with educational struggles.  She soon rose to great honour with all the little circle, and was deeply loved and most tenderly treated by Froebel himself.  In her willingness to make sacrifices and her cheerfulness under privations, she set them all an example.  She died at Blankenburg in May 1839.

[117] The expected dowry was never forthcoming, which made matters harder.

[118] Christian had already assisted his brother at Griesheim, and before that, to the utmost of his power.  The three daughters were (1) Albertine, born 29th December, 1801, afterwards married Middendorff; (2) Emilie, born 11th July, 1804, married Barop, died 18th August, 1860, at Keilhau; (3) Elise, born 5th January, 1814, married Dr. Siegfried Schaffner, one of the Keilhau colleagues, later on.

[119] Johannes Arnold Barop, Middendorff’s nephew, was born at Dortmund, 29th November, 1802.  He afterwards became proprietor and principal of Keilhau.

[120] March 1828.

[121] This excellent man was drowned in the Saale while bathing, soon after this letter was written.

[122] He always regarded himself as perfectly tolerant.

[123] Froebel moved from Griesheim to Keilhau in 1817.

[124] In 1820.

[125] It was in 1828 that Barop formally and definitely joined the Froebel community.

[126] The long turmoil of the Napoleonic wars, the outcome of the French Revolution, ceased in 1815; and the minds of the students and the other youths of the country, set free from this terrible struggle for liberty, turned towards the reformation of their own country.  Many associations were formed:  perhaps here and there wild talk was indulged in.  The Government grew alarmed, and though the students had invariably acted with perfect legality, all their associations were dispersed and forbidden.