Pallat, Friedrich August Ludwig (own name Pallalat)

Reform pedagogue, archaeologist

born: 03.12.1867 in Wiesbaden

Died: 22.11.1946 in Göttingen

The son of the pianist and music teacher Karl Pallalat, known as Pallat, studied classical philology and classical studies in Munich, obtained his doctorate and passed the state examination for the higher teaching profession in 1892. In 1892-95 he traveled through Italy, Greece and Turkey on a scholarship from the German Archaeological Institute. From 1895-98 he was director of the Nassau Museum of Antiquities and curator for the administrative district of Wiesbaden. At the same time, he led the excavation of the Holzhausen fort as honorary commissioner of the Reichs-Limes Commission.

As early as 1898, he was appointed to the Prussian Ministry of Culture as a scientific assistant in order to reform the teaching of drawing, then also of handicrafts and art education, and in 1899 he became a professor. For a time he was co-director of the Francke Foundations in Halle. In 1908, he became a privy councillor and in 1911, as a privy senior government councillor, he became an art consultant.

Together with the Hamburg art educators Alfred Lichtwark and Carl Goetze, he initiated the widely acclaimed art education days in Dresden in 1901, Weimar in 1903 and Hamburg in 1905. In addition to his work on art teaching and work instruction, which led to the examination regulations for the art teaching profession at secondary schools in 1922, he was co-founder of the Berlin Central Institute for Education and Instruction, which he developed as its director into a pedagogical information, work and collection point with the greatest national and international impact.

He remained nominally in charge of the institute until 1938 - but only until 1933 - without being able to prevent its ideological decline. Pallat was a trustee of the University of Halle-Wittenberg from 1928-32. He was an honorary member of the German Gymnastics Association and the German and British Drawing Teachers' Associations, as well as briefly serving as chairman of the German Society for Folk Research and Adult Education.

In 1938, he was appointed a full member of the Archaeological Institute in Göttingen and a corresponding member of the Göttingen Society of Sciences and Humanities. His list of publications on archaeology, reform pedagogy, art education and school organization is correspondingly impressive.