Officially, Switzerland has not yet reached unanimous agreement as to what is to be celebrated in this year of 1998: the 200-year anniversary of the Helvetic Republic or the 150-year anniversary of the Swiss Confederation.

For the Swiss discussions on (school) education, both of the dates are very important. In the Helvetic Republic, the attempt was made to unify in a system the numerous local school reforms under new political framework conditions, while the Swiss Confederation is an expression of that liberal movement that had its beginnings in the Helvetic Republic and that led significantly to the establishment of the Swiss public schools. In other words, from a history of education perspective, rather than representing alternatives, there is continuity between 1798 and 1998.

It is sufficiently well-known that it was in the time of the Helvetic Republic that Pestalozzi «became a pedagogue». He was drawn into the school reform discussion and soon rose to become an influential exponent of teacher education and learning methods. Pestalozzi continued to hold this seat of honor long after the Helvetic Republic; in fact, his fame increased to the point that in the historiographies of education he soon came to be called the «founder of the primary school».

We know now that this interpretation is incorrect. Less known is what was happening in (school) education during the Helvetic Republic (also prior to and after) and what role Pestalozzi in fact played. Noticeably, political revolutions, or – more generally put – crises, always have decisive consequences for education and school education. In this century, for instance, we can think of the «communist person» that the Eastern European countries were supposed to produce through their school systems and youth organizations. We are also reminded of the educational consequences of National Socialism, or of Switzerland's "spiritual defense» against Nazism.

It is evident that specific historical conditions generate specific educational needs for action. The solution to the problem is not only structural and conceptual in nature, but also personal political. Who is assigned what task and why? And how does the person fulfill the task assigned to him? How does the person change under changing conditions? This first number of 1998 seeks to examine these questions and is in that sense dedicated to this one topic. The «Special Topic» section shows that in the run-up to the Helvetic Revolution, Pestalozzi addresses social-philosophical problems of his time in his works «Nachforschungen» [Inquiries] and the «Fabeln» [Fables], and it examines in particular the relations between these two publications of the year 1797. Next, taking the example of the Helvetic Republic and the founding of the Swiss Confederation, principle structural problems of political «revolutions» are discussed, and the educational consequences (and the main problems they created) and Pestalozzi's role during the Helvetic Republic are shown. The Helvetic years are also the time when the not unproblematic cooperation between Pestalozzi and the young theologian Johannes Niederer began. It was Niederer who brought Pestalozzi into the reform education discussion within the sphere of German idealism. Controversy continues to this day as to whether Niederer was an egotistical seducer or a congenial interpreter of Pestalozzi who knew how to place Pestalozzi's unexamined pedagogy within a philosophical system. In the «Document» section, the attempt is made to reconstruct, from two letters Niederer wrote to his family in 1801, the motives that led Niederer to Pestalozzi and thus to produce an initial understanding that allows us to better comprehend the later conflicts between the two.

No matter what one thinks of Niederer, he was the decisive factor in the success of Pestalozzi's works after 1805 and thus plays an important role in the history of Pestalozzi's influence. As we know, this aspect of Pestalozzi research has been one of the favorite research topics of recent years. This led in the last number of this journal to the question of how "impact history" or "reception history" should actually be studied and what the theoretical and methodological approaches are. This question is furthered examined in the «Discussion» section in the hope that the topic is not yet exhausted but instead is finally coming into its own.