When Froebel's restless spirit drew him to Switzerland to undertake new
educational enterprises, and some one was needed who could direct the
business management, Barop, the steadfast man of whom I have already
spoken, was secured. Deeply esteemed and sincerely beloved, he managed
the institute during the time that we three brothers were pupils there.
He had found many things within to arrange on a more practical
foundation, many without to correct: for the long locks of most of the
pupils; the circumstance that three Lutzen Jagers, one of whom had
delivered the oration at a students' political meeting, had established
the school; that Barop had been persecuted as a demagogue on account of
his connection with a students' political society; and, finally,
Froebel's relations with Switzerland and the liberal educational methods
of the school, had roused the suspicions of the Berlin demagogue-hunters,
and therefore demagogic tendencies, from which in reality it had always
held aloof, were attributed to the institute.

Yes, we were free, in so far that everything which could restrict or
retard our physical and mental development was kept away from us, and our
teachers might call themselves so because, with virile energy, they had
understood how to protect the institute from every injurious and
narrowing outside influence. The smallest and the largest pupil was
free, for he was permitted to be wholly and entirely his natural self,
so long as he kept within the limits imposed by the existing laws. But
license was nowhere more sternly prohibited than at Keilhau; and the deep
religious feeling of its head-masters--Barop, Langethal, and Middendorf--
ought to have taught the suspicious spies in Berlin that the command,
"Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's," would never be
violated here.

The time I spent in Keilhau was during the period of the worst reaction,