Berthold Otto als Lateindidaktiker

Overview & Synopsis

This study on Berthold Otto as a Latin didactician explores the hitherto little-known writings on Latin teaching by the German pedagogue of the Reformpädagogik-movement (New Education Movement) Berthold Otto in the historical-didactic context of their emergence and from the methodological-didactic perspective of modern Latin teaching. In this way, it makes a novel contribution to understanding Otto as an important player in the pedagogy of his own time on the one hand and as an innovative didactician on the other. The core concern of the work is to trace Otto’s methodology for teaching Latin on the basis of his two Latin textbooks as well as the numerous explanatory preparations for original Latin writers written in Latin, the so called Tirocinia. The dissertation also highlights Otto’s unique features in the context of Latin didactics around 1900 and explores the potential inherent in these writings with regard to modern foreign language didactics in the field of Latin. In doing so, it was possible to highlight the significant potential of Otto’s work with regard to modern concepts such as internal differentiation, language education, inclusion and learner autonomy. The project encompasses the core areas of the history of ideas / intellectual history, historical educational research, philological text analysis as well as didactic methodological criticism of Otto’s approach and its updating for the requirements of modern teaching.