Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, a Swiss teacher, born in Zurich, Jan. 12, 1746, died in Brugg, Feb. 17, 1827. He was naturally feeble, and grew up awkward and clumsy, His education was meagre, especially in the common branches, but he was tolerably familiar with the classics. The reading of Rousseau's Emile induced him to abandon legal and historical studies and engage in educational reform. With a view to extensive experiments, he purchased a barren tract near Birr in the canton of Aargau, commenced a madder plantation in 1767, in connection with a mercantile firm in Zurich, and erected a villa which he named Neuhof. The plantation failed, but he continued his farming operations, and in 1775 opened a school for poor children, and soon had 50 pupils. His plan was to make it a manual labor school, employing the children in summer in field work, in winter in spinning and other handicrafts. Instruction was to alternate with labor in the summer, and in the winter the teaching, which was chiefly oral, was to be communicated while they were at work. The school failed through financial and industrial mismanagement, and in 1780 he was compelled to break it up. He was at this time reduced to great extremities, his property and that of his wife being exhausted.

Near the close of the year 1780 he published in Iselin's Ephemerides " The Evening Hour of a Hermit." It contained a series of aphorisms on education, and produced a decided effect in Germany and Switzerland. In 1781 appeared the first part of his Lienhard unci Gertrud, which at once established his reputation as a writer; its object was to enforce the importance of home education and the evils of dissipation, and it has been translated into most of the languages of Europe. The agricultural society of Bern awarded Pestalozzi their great gold medal and a vote of thanks. In 1782 he published Chris-toph und Else, a supplement to his " Leonard and Gertrude," but far less popular. Several other of his works of a philosophical character were published between this period and 1798. He also edited during a part of this time Das Schweizerblatt fur das Voile. In 1792 he visited Germany. He was about to open an educational institution in the canton of Aargau when, in September, 1798, Stanz in TJnterwal-den was burned by the French, the entire canton laid waste, and a multitude of orphan children were left homeless.

Legrand, then at the head of the Swiss directory, called upon Pestalozzi to go to Stanz and take care of those destitute children, and for ten months he taught, fed, and trained 80 children, under the most difficult and distressing circumstances. He was interrupted by the French, who in their retreat visited Stanz again, and turned the convent where Pestalozzi was teaching into a hospital. After a few months he obtained permission to teach in a primary school at Burgdorf, in the canton of Bern. A year later an attack of pulmonary disease compelled him to relinquish his labors, and about the close of 1800, with Krusi, Tobler, and Buss, he opened an educational institution at Burgdorf, which may be regarded as his first systematic attempt to reduce to practice the principles of education shadowed forth in his " Leonard and Gertrude" nearly 20 years before. He now gave to the world a full exposition of his edifbational views in Wie Gertrud Hire Kinder lelirt (" How Gertrude teaches her Children," Bern and Zurich, 1801). This work had a wide circulation, and attracted not only private friends of education, but deputations from several of the European governments, to visit the institution at Burgdorf. In 1804 another revolution occurred in the government, and the castle at Burgdorf which Pestalozzi had hitherto occupied being wanted by the Bernese government, he removed his school to Buchsee, where the government assigned him a monastery, close by Hofwyl, the estate of Fellenberg, who soon came to have a controlling interest in the management of the school.

Pestalozzi found "the methods of management introduced by Fellenberg so different from his own, that in 1805 he removed his institution to Yverdun in the canton of Vaud. Teachers were sent to him for instruction, and the Pestalozzian system was formally adopted by the Prussian and other German governments. But dissensions soon sprang up among his teachers. Schmid, indispensable to Pestalozzi for his financial skill and executive ability, was haughty, stern, and overbearing; and in 1810 a disturbance occurred, which was only quieted by his leaving the institution. There was no one left who could fill his place; Pestalozzi himself had no skill in financial management or discipline, and in 1814 the downward tendency of the institution necessitated Schmid's return. In 1816.12 of the teachers, unable to remain with Schmid, resigned at once; among them were Kriisi and Buss. This was followed by a seven years' lawsuit, arising out of the pecuniary affairs of the institution, which was finally settled by arbitration.

Meantime the school was losing ground; a poor school at Clindy, intended as a sort of appendage to the institution at Yverdun, was maintained for five years, but in 1825 was broken up, and Pestalozzi retired to the home of his grandson at Neuhof, where he wrote his Schwanengesang (" Song of the Dying Swan") and Meine Lebensschicksale ate Vor-steher meiner Erziehungsanstalten in Burgdorf und Iferten ("Fortunes of my Life, as Principal of my Educational Institutions at Burgdorf and Yverdun"). A complete edition of his works, some of which are philosophical or political, was published simultaneously at Stuttgart and Tubingen (15 vols., 1819-'26), the profits of which he devoted to the school founded in 1818. L. W. Seyffarth has edited a new edition (16 vols., Brandenburg, 1871-'2.) For an outline of his principles, see Education, vol. vi., p. 414. - See Pestalozzi's Selbst-Mographie (1826); Biber, Beitrag zur Bio-graphie Heinrich Pestalozzi's (1827; English translation, " Life and Trials of Henry Pestalozzi," Philadelphia, 1833); " Pestalozzi and Pestalozzianism," edited by H. Barnard, LL.D. (New York, 1859); and Morfs Zur Biogra-phie Pestalozzi's (1864-'6).