About the Fellenberg biography and collection

Philipp Emanuel von Fellenberg was born into a sophisticated patrician family in Bern in 1771. Since his father, Daniel Fellenberg, was a Professor of Law, his education was geared towards a career in public service. Therefore, he spent a year at Pfeffel’sches Institut in Colmar (1785/86) before studying law and philosophy in Tübingen from 1791 on. After some educational trips he returned to Switzerland in 1795. Three years later he worked in the Bernese Erziehungsrat and then at the Swiss embassy in Paris as Legationssekretär. There was a brief cooperation with Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi in 1804/05. However, due to differing views of managing a pedagogical institution, this cooperation was short. In 1808 Fellenberg and his wife Margarethe Tscharner established the Institut für Söhne höherer Stände at the Wylhof estate in Münchenbuchsee (BE). The estate known as Hofwil became home to several educational institutions in the following years such as an agricultural institute (1807-1848), an institute for girls' education (1824-1839), a secondary school (1830- 1846) and an infant school (1841- 1844). What was new about Fellenberg's pedagogical concept was that it combined physical and intellectual activity and encouraged individual development in a liberal environment instead of relying on authoritarian principles.

From 1825 on Fellenberg was also a member of the Bernese Grosser Rat, the Verfassungsrat and the Erziehungsrat. He was involved in setting up the cantonal school system and influenced the educational law in the 1830s.
After the city refused to fund the Fellenbergian institutions, they were closed by 1848. Only the teacher training college remained in Hofwil.

The Fellenberg Library was incorporated in the University Library Bern in 1897. It contains 4,487 books and is stored as a complete collection using the original classification. More than half of the books date back to the 19th century, 2,000 volumes are from the 18th century and a few are from the 17th and 16th centuries. Fellenberg's classification covers the fields of law, politics and economics, language,literature, and pedagogics. The collection is uniformly bound and has owner's stamps.