Philipp Emanuel von Fellenberg

Philipp Emanuel von Fellenberg (1771 to 1844) was a Swiss educator and agronomist from Bern. After legal studies at Tübingen and a short, disillusioning spell of diplomacy in the years of the French invasion, he decided to devote himself wholly to the education of the young, and in 1799 he bought the estate of Hofwyl near Bern. There he built a cooperative boarding school in which pupils combined manual labour on the land with literary and scientific study, so that their work helped pay for their keep and many did not have to pay tuition. Influenced by Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, he allowed neither corporal punishment nor rewards, and his school is described as the first agricultural school. He also founded an orphan asylum in 1804, a colony for poor boys in 1816 and a vocational school. Hofwyl drew pupils and visitors from across Europe and inspired similar schools in Britain and Australia, though it closed only four years after his death in 1844.