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GUNTHER LIST he history of deaf people in Germany does not readily lend itself to thrilling historical narrative, such as that found, for example, in Harlan Lane's When the Mind Hears (1984), in which he describes the French and American roots of the deaf community. Every plausible history needs a subject with which the reader can identify . In Lane's book, this role is filled by the deaf community itself. His narrative gains excitement from the dramatic fight of the deaf minority in France and the United States for linguistic, cultural, and social autonomy during the nineteenth century. Even after the Milan Congress of 1880 halted-for a time-the growth of deaf culture , the reality of the past hundred years remained through the legacy of the Abbe de I'Epee, who founded an educational model based on sign language in Paris during the 1770s. Fresh historical strength could be gained from evoking this memory. In Germany, by contrast, there were no such dramatic beginnings for the education of deaf children. In fact, the history of deaf people in Germany can more appropriately be termed a history of modernization-one that must be viewed within the context of an increasingly industrialized society-rather than a history of educational method or linguistic theory. After 1880, the educational strategy that triumphed over sign language throughout Europe was called the "German method," also known as oralism. Samuel Heinicke, the German contemporary of de I'Epee, founded a school in Leipzig that became a countermodel to de I'Epee's school. Heinicke's educational system became known as the "German method" because of its absolute opposition to the French sign language method advocated by de I'Epee. Although German-speaking Switzerland and Austria first followed the French tradition, they soon turned to the German method. It is, therefore, legitimate to say that this method arose from a unity of German-speaking countries. Following Heinicke's institutionalization of oralism, the history of the deaf community worldwide became one of collective submission to the languages of hearing majorities, a history of systematic oppression of natural signing in schools. Prometheuslike educators claimed to breathe into deaf people, through oralism, a sort of divine breath that would finally make them human beings. To quote an oralistic scholar of our times, "Signing must be inhibited if the student is to acquire oral language and grow into human society" (Krohnert, 1966, p. 173). Oralism has its longest history in German-speaking countries, a tradition that has lasted for 200 years. The Oralistic Tradition and Written History Is the German method typically German? In view of the almost worldwide recognition and practice of oralism today, it is hardly worthwhile to attribute its development to German cultural characteristics. Neither could Heinicke nor his successors be considered less moral than de l'Epee, in view of their engagement in religious and educational activities. Reactionism-a movement toward a less advanced condition-also is not a plausible explanation for the development of oralism. On the contrary, I am afraid we have to accept the fact that in the society of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries , oralism was considered more up-to-date than de I'Epee's model. This modern character, in fact, helps explain the attractiveness of the German method at that time. From today's perspective, it was a dubious and threadbare modernity, based not on teaching methods or linguistic theory, but on the idea of assimilating a particular minority group-deaf people-into society. But that is the material from which the history of the suppression of the deaf community is made. For this ideal of social assimilation to become realized, the framework of industrialization was needed. The appropriate conditions for oralism occurred first and most conducively in Germany. The Confirmation Model De I'Epee and Heinicke had very different views about how deaf people could be assimilated into society-based, in part, on their religious beliefs. In de I'Epee's school, the souls of deaf people were rescued by integrating them into French civilization, with the help of their own language. Heinicke advocated a similar spirit of bourgeois enlightenment, although his educational model was based on the necessity of private education for deaf children of the aristocracy. This education was inevitably oralistic because speech was legally required for one to claim one's inheritance. From the Protestant perspective also, education must inevitably be oral, because in no other way could children be granted "confirmation," the ritual entrance...

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