Hurray school!

Aa, Aa. The Bohemian children simultaneously learn to read in two languages, the letters of two different alphabets from the primer published in 1855 in Litoměřice, that is Leitmeritz. Half-Czech and half-German Bohemia still holds the promise of a little Switzerland in Eastern Europe. There is still a chance that there would be no Kampf um Kinder, nor Sudetenland fusillade, nor Lidice, nor Terezín, nor Brno death march, nor deportation of the Germans. Sitting in the pose of a wise teacher, the beggar waiting for alms seems to give alms himself on the first page of the book. The examples were chosen from the similar words of the two languages, which are thus mostly those of foreign origin. Through their illustrations, the Arab, the Armenian, the aloe, the ananas, the American Indian, the wealth of the great world, the Bohemian sea comes to life in the elementary school of Leitmeritz, that is, Litoměřice.


Anna counts well, she nicely pays attention to everything. When she finishes counting, she plays with the little bird sitting on her hand. The doggy begins to bark, because no one plays with him. However, Zdenka still has to go on counting. The Množilka v obrazech, that is Illustrated multiplication table, published in 1890 in Jindřichův Hradec, shows in the box space of the 15th-century Netherlandish Annunciation paintings the Jungfrau playing with the little bird. Zdenka is probably hampered by the spinning in the counting.


The primer, published in 1903 in Prague, was most probably the only tool for the rural teacher, who wrote in careful handwriting in its wide margins the texts to be dictated, and the scores of the songs to be taught, and even such little notes among the pictures, like not to forget to explain why is there no k at the end of v klobouce (in the hat) and why is there one at the end of u klobouku (at the hat).


In the header of the timetable of the municipal school of Líšná for the year of 1923-1924, the two greatest Czech educators, J. A. Comenius and – you surely would have not have thought so – T. G. Masaryk, urge the little Czechoslovak schoolboys: “To be wise – all depends on this!” and “Education is for everyone!” The majority of the classes were writing and reading, counting, and grammar. Twice a week, religion (Roman Catholic as well as “Czechoslovak” – the latter refers to the Czechoslovak Hussite Church, created in 1919, together with the new state); and three times, civics, which demonstrates the significance of the new state.


Gesundheit und Nachstendienst, health and the service of neighbor. In 1937, in the school of Opava/Troppau, even the smallest one knows how to properly brush your teeth. She explains it to the others, who, standing with a toothbrush and a mug, are eager to try it, following the figures of the Zahnhygienische Wandtafel.


Other children go for a walk. Not just any manner of walking, but walking in rhythm. Trompeter werden wir, im Takt marschieren wir. We will be trumpeters, we will march in one rhythm. Durch das Dorf marschieren wir. We march through the village. The youngsters marching with swastika flags and SS runes are greeted by the passers-by and given flowers by the girls like in 1938 in Asch and Machendorf. In the 1939 Prague publication of Hirts Schreiblesefibel, popular all over the Reich.


Elsewhere, the letters also go for a walk. On the pages of Kulihráškův národní slabikář. Veselá knižka pro nejmenší čtenáře a jejích maminky (Little Pea’s national primer. A merry booklet for the smallest readers and their moms), published in 1940 in occupied Prague, each letter is a separate individual, with firm goals. The adventures of letter p. The children walked on a dusty road. There was also p. He asked them: Where do you go? We go to Prague! I also go with you, said p. And so he went. When he came to Prague, he looked at everything. He also went up to the Hradčany with the children. Prague opened in front of him. P’s eyes were round with astonishment. He had never seen anything like this beauty. He stared in fascination, he even forgot that he had escaped from a primer. [This is the only sentence without a letter p]. This was where Little Pea found him. Together they looked at Prague, and they said: “It is wonderful, our Prague!”


In the painting New student in the school, made around 1820, every figure is also a separate individual, with a definite goal. The teacher eagerly stares at the full basket standing in front of him, containing a goose, a loaf of bread, and several bottles of wine, the traditional gift to the teachers (cf. the Hungarian way of saying I have not bought my certificate/licence/diploma for a goose). The careful mother with a convincing smile points at the same with her right hand, while with the left she pushes forward, into the teacher’s benevolence, the frightened boy. The boy greets the teacher with his hat raised to his chest, but with his eyes he already seems to be checking his future classmates. The classmates are clearly evaluating the content of the basket, probably also concluding from it the social status of the new schoolmate. Only the head popping up from behind the mother’s skirt contemplates the scene serenely and without interest, or perhaps he is somewhere completely else in thoughts.

The exhibition of the Comenius Museum in Prague presents the start of the school in Bohemia over a century, with the help of one-time primers, photos and school supplies. The medieval vaulted space was set up as a classroom, with old benches, reading and calculating chalkboards. Even a stuffed little schoolgirl is on display under glass, one of the last individuals of a dying breed.

And the final tableau illustrates with the photographs of the first day of school for three Czech generations – 1906, 1920, 1955 – the practical application of the presented objects.

Walking through the exhibition, two things become apparent. One is, how much the accessories of school-starting have remained much the same over the last one and half century: primer, timetable, bench, schoolbag. And the other, how precisely this puritanical and conservative set of accessories always reflects the actual spirit of the period and politics. About which the parents of the current school beginners could say more.

Petr Velkoborský: Little schoolboy, 1987

My first day at school!

from the flea market of Berlin

The enemy

Avoid alcoholic drinks!

The first glass Sober Mike at the age of 20 and 32 The blessings of a sober life

The last glass Drunkard Steve at the age of 20 and 32 The consequences of drinking

It is for several years now that this picture has been on the wall of the old Swabian house along the Danube * to where traditionally around this time, the end of June the Budapest-Nagymaros birthday cycling tour starts, which is such a prominent occasion that one comes home for it even from the shores of a much larger water. As we are languishing there on the porch, our eyes meet above the glass now the honest look of Sober Mike, now the watery gaze of Drunkard Steve, one bringeth fear, the other joy to me, and it is not impossible that as a consequence of the pedagogy of persuasion and deterrence one or two beer less is grabbed than could be justly taken after seventy kilometers of cycling.


This was also the purpose of the committee of the Ministry of Education which in some early year of the 20th century commissioned the design and publication of this artwork. It was surely not later than 1920, because the publishing Polatsek’s Bookstore still worked in Temesvár instead of Timişoara. But by searching for the title of the poster we find that already since 1910 it regularly featured on the lists of school supplies. In 1910 it was for example included among the school supplies requested from the Ministry by the Simontornya elementary school. In 1912 it was the only wall panel in the possession the elementary school of the Eastern Hungarian Tuzsér, and knowing well the region we find this a reasonable choice. And it was also listed together with two other posters – on the breeding of silkworms and on the operation of the steam engine – in the minutes of nationalization of the Calvinist elementary school of Dad during the short-lived first Communist proletarian dictatorship in March-July 1919. We hope it had a positive influence on the commissars. I wish there were such a panel at that time also in the Schalkház Hotel of Kassa, transformed into the House of the Soviet where, according to the daughter of the owner – Sára Schalkház/Salkaházi, shot into the Danube in 1944 for saving Jews –, People’s Commissar Jenő Landler and his staff kept drinking day and night in the middle of the general prohibition until the Czech army kicked them out from Upper Hungary, modern Slovakia.


But we also have an earlier date for this wall panel. Its scenes are included as separate illustrations in the popular anti-alcohol booklet by the pioneer of Hungarian temperance movement, Dr. Fülöp Stein: Az alkohol (Budapest 1906). Each was provided with a detailed description which cannot be very different from how they were presented by the teacher in the elementary schools.

“This is the sad picture of the drunkard’s household. The yard and the house are destroyed, rain is falling through the roof, the barn is dilapidated. The children are dirty and ragged, and they are wasted by much starvation. Their mother is perching ill on the doorstep, and the father looks at their misery with a distraught look.”

“How different is this picture, all joy, courage, good humor, the signs of external and internal order. The father watches with delight the well-being of his family. Is there anyone who would not recognize which of the two fathers is a drunkard and which a sober one? Anyone seeing and examining these two pictures will need no further explanation on which lifestyle to adhere.”

“Few people guess when they give the first glass to their children, so they would have a better mood, how fatal it can become for the further life of the child, and that the last glass of the frozen drunkard is the direct consequence of that first glass”

However, the panel is most likely not earlier than 1898. It was then that the Armand Colin & C[ompagn]ie of Paris published for the schools a wall poster which surely served as a model for the Hungarian version. We know that the anti-alcohol illustrative materials brought from the Paris world exhibition of 1901 formed the founding stock of the showroom of the Social Museum under the Rumbach street 5 seat of the Grand Templar Masonic Temperance Lodge, and although there was nothing left of the collection after the bomb hit in 1944, the Colin poster was almost surely among them.

“Here’s the enemy: the alcohol!”

However, this poster, composed by Doctor Galtier-Boissière, does not exactly illustrate the same as the Hungarian one. Although it also focuses on the difference of pre-and post-alcoholism physiognomy, nevertheless the two side panels make distinction between natural or good alcohols (beer, wine, cider and perry) and artificial or bad alcohols distilled of sugar beets, potatoes or, horribile dictu, wheat. The previous ones only make a guinea pig pleasantly dizzy and sweetly fall asleep, while the latter cause it convulsions and to snuff it. This scientifically indefensible distinction lived on in the French education until the 1950s, obviously due to the influence of the wine lobby.


A unique feature of the Colin tableau is the comparison of the look of the healthy and alcoholic internal organs, stomach, liver, heart, kidneys, brain, which must have been a great deterrent: a French gentleman is always solicitous about the public appearance of his kidneys. These were not taken over to the Hungarian poster, but they do figure in the form of a photo series in Stein’s book.

“Omnibus to Charenton! [the mental hospital]
By change through alcohol or directly through absinthe.”

The Hungarian poster is dominated instead by scenes of life. This idea could also take its origin from the back side of Colin’s tableau, which represented in four stations how the drunkard loses his will, his dignity, his judgment and, finally, his common sense.


However, their direct source must have been something else. Among the illustrations of Stein’s booklet we also find a complete life story of an alcoholic from the first glass to the last convulsion, and they are quite similar to the career summarized in two pictures on the Hungarian poster. Some research will reveal that these illustrations come from the elementary school book Histoire d’une Bouteille, “History of a bottle” by J. Baudrillard. In fact, the French temperance societies achieved in 1895 that a mandatory course was introduced in the elementary schools on the dangers of alcohol – of bad alcohol! –, equal in rank to geography or mathematics.


Moreover, the face of the protagonist, Jean-Louis at the age of 20 is confusingly similar to Sober Mike, while as a 40-year old alcoholic to Drunkard Steve.


This book shows in twelve pictures the path of the drunkard from family happiness through the fall and decay to the prison and death. The illustrations were originally black and white, and the kids had to color them, thereby carefully committing to memory each deterrent detail. For the adults they were also sold in the form of color postcards.

A happy family

The first step

Bad habits

On Pay Day

The alcoholic rage

The drunkard makes scandal

The way to craziness

The crime

On the tribunal

And despite the theatrical compositions, even though we know well that it is propaganda, this series of images does not remain ineffective on us either, for we know that what they represent was reality for thousands of families.

The woman reduced to misery

Madness

Death of the drunkard (delirium tremens)

Not for school but for life we learn.