German Geographers and German Geography 333 



edge to a certain region of the surface 

 of the earth, the so-called " I^ander- 

 kunde " of German geography, which 

 is no longer a mere description of the 

 different countries, but a scientific in- 

 vestigation of their characteristics. It 

 is quite significant that no other lan- 

 guage has an exact s5monym of this 

 denomination, a fact which more than 

 anything else shows that it is a German 

 specialty of entirely German origin. 

 The " Landerkunde," so often called 

 very inadequately ' ' descriptive geog- 

 raphy," is represented at German uni- 

 versities, as well as general and S3^stem- 

 atic geography. Every professor will, 

 beside these courses, devote a large part 

 of his time to a single countr}^ or conti- 

 nent, which always is the most inter- 

 esting part of the whole study. 



ELEMENTARY TEACHING 



In school geography ' ' Laiiderkunde ' ' 

 is of course the dominant subject, to 

 which all general geography has only a 

 subordinate and tributary relation ; for 

 to children's e5"es we must never pre- 

 sent the dry and, to them, sterile facts of 

 sj'stematic knowledge. It is applied 

 science which fits a child's understand- 

 ing and rouses his interest. If w^e want 

 children to pay attention to effects and 

 causes we must let them see things 

 and incidents in which they operate, 

 give them a picture of concrete life, not 

 abstract reflection. Now, in order to 

 thus embody the principles of geogra- 

 ph}", no better means can be found than 

 ' ' Landerkunde. ' ' A course in geog- 

 raphy that opens with a definition of 

 geography and of the primary notions of 

 the geographic vocabularj^, and w^hich 

 gives an introductory course on the prin- 

 cipal subjects of general ph3^sical geog- 

 raphy^ before taking up the study of a 

 definite part of the earth, would not only 

 be ver}'- unpsychological, but do also 

 the greatest harm to geography itself. 

 For to the 3'oung learner who has to 



put such gereralizations into his brains 

 without enough knowledge of details to 

 make him feel their general truth geog- 

 raphy will appear nothing but a com- 

 plexity of phrases to be learned by heart, 

 and this preconception will cause him to 

 look at all the following geographic 

 data from a wrong position ; all the spe- 

 cial facts will be received by him only 

 as illustrations of the preceding princi- 

 ples, just as formerly in the teaching 

 of languages the spoken language ap- 

 peared onh' as a collection of examples 

 to appl)^ grammatical rules ; but this 

 was putting the cart before the horse. 

 This same mistake has often made geog- 

 raphy a very dull subject, while it can 

 be one of the most interesting, even for 

 young minds. The secret of a successful 

 teacher of geograph^^, as of languages, 

 is to give the pupil a whole and living 

 unit, of which his imagination may get 

 hold, and to present the unit so that he 

 will feel the leading principles before he 

 has learned them separately. Thus their 

 necessity impresses itself upon his mind 

 spontaneousl}^ instead of being demon- 

 strated to him as a scientific Credo. 



In such a course it is then not per- 

 mitted to treat a continent or a state or 

 another district first physically and 

 afterward, perhaps a year later, politic- 

 alh', or even, as I have seen in text- 

 books, first politicall}^ and then physic- 

 ally, or to treat the subject b}^ classifying 

 the details under special headings, as 

 relief, watershed, productions, dwelling- 

 places, etc., through which the causal 

 connections are inevitably torn asunder. 

 Instead of this the teacher will, after a 

 short general surve}^ of the whole, divide 

 it up into a number of smaller units or 

 natural regions, within which he will 

 treat the different topics and their mu- 

 tual influences upon each other. He 

 will make, as it were, a horizontal sec- 

 tion through the vertical columns of the 

 topics named above, and work out the 

 picture given by each of these sections 

 as an individual subject and in its rela- 



