Bernhard Heinrich Overberg

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Bernhard Heinrich Overberg (1 May 1754 - 1826) was a German Roman Catholic ecclesiastic, educator and author.

[edit] Biography

He was born of poor parents in the peasant community of Höckel, near Osnabrück, and became a pedlar like his father. At fifteen a priest prepared him for college, and he studied with the Franciscans in Rheine. From 1774 he studied in Münster, and was ordained priest in 1779. As curate in Everswinkel he did such good work in teaching religion that the vicar-general, Freiherr von Fürstenberg, offered him the position of director of the normal school, which he was about to found in Münster.

Thenceforth he was Fürstenberg's right hand in the reorganization and reformation of the schools. In 1783 he settled in Münster, where his first duty was to conduct a course of practical and theoretical study for schoolteachers during the autumn vacation. This institution was known as the Normalschule. The village schools at that time were very poor; in Prussia a number of discharged non-commissioned officers made a pretence of teaching, while in Westphalia, mere day labourers wielded the "stick" (of class discipline).

His aim was to educate and instruct teachers and to improve their wretched material circumstances. All the teachers were to take part in the course at public expense. The course closed with an examination, and those who passed it obtained an increase in salary. As Overberg considered it best to separate the sexes in his schools, he instructed a number of women teachers who eagerly accepted the work. He really created the profession of female lay-teacher. At first, Overberg himself instructed the teachers, giving five lessons daily between 21 August to November, and teaching method as well as the various school subjects. Later he employed an assistant teacher. Soon his normal school was attended by young people who wished to become teachers. This normal school, therefore, became what is now known in Germany as a Seminary, and had more than 100 pupils (at first 20-30). Besides teaching in this school he gave instruction in the catechism for twenty-seven years in the Ursuline convent without remuneration. Every Sunday he recapitulated all that he had lectured upon during the week in a public lecture which was attended by people of all classes, especially by students of theology.

In 1789, Princess Gallitzin chose him as her confessor. He influenced her entire activity, and met in her company the most important men of the times. By his tactful kindness he brought about the conversion of Count Friedrich Leopold von Stolberg. He remained director of the normal school even when he became regent of the ecclesiastical seminary in 1809, before which he had been for some time synodal examiner and member of the Landschulkommission. In 1816 he was made a consistorial - and school counsellor, in 1823, honorary rector of the cathedral, and in 1826, shortly before his death, Oberconsistorialrat.