Around 1900 many endeavours at lifestyle reform were undertaken in Germany and other European countries. In the most diverse areas of life, from working life to housing, from a health service to child rearing and school, the demand for a fundamental reorientation spread.

Around this time the Italian doctor Maria Montessori begin in a practical way to develop educational reform initially of the raising of infants and elementary-school education. Her important concern was not to subject children to external rules for longer periods, but rather to support them in discovering and exercising their own strengths and abilities. Teaching content therefore no longer involved reproducing prespecified behaviour. The child was no longer meant to be an obedient object of education but rather a self-determined subject who is able to choose itself its tasks in an environment suited to it. Montessori had in fact observed that even infants work with remarkable concentration if they are allowed to do so.

In the course of many years of practical work with children, Montessori therefore designed new types of teaching and learning objects, clearly and simply designed objects, both precise and appealing to the senses. Nurseries and schools were to be laid out and furnished in such a way that the child’s demand of the educators – “Help me to do it myself” – would be fulfilled. A change of perspective was decisive here: learning and educational action were no longer defined from the perspective of the adults but rather from that of the children. With her method Maria Montessori soon met with international recognition and success, in Germany primarily in the 1920s.

The focal point of the documentation “Montessori – Teaching Materials 1913-1935 • Furniture and Architecture” is taken up by the teaching and learning objects, the equipment and working environment as was suggested by Maria Montessori for children in kindergarten and at school.

Here, original teaching materials of VS or its Berlin-based founding company P. Johannes Müller, which produced Montessori teaching aids for the German market between 1913 and 1935, are documented in their historical context for the first time. The book is vividly supplemented by previously unknown photographic material.

Today the Montessori movement is enjoying increasing recognition both in Germany and internationally. In view of the ever-increasing dominance of virtual media, the need for self-determined learning with haptic-sensory working materials is possibly greater than ever.