As Elias Fuentes Guillén and Davide Crippa showcased in a recent publication (here), Bernard Bolzano embarked on his mathematical career in 1804 with a disappointment. Indeed, he failed to secure the position of professor of Elementary mathematics at Charles University. Yet, young Bolzano did not leave empty-handed. One year later, he got the newly-established chair of religious doctrine. This episode marked the trajectory of his future career, for good and for bad. Bolzano's thoughts on education, society and religion caused troubles with the authority of Vienna and led to his demise.
But that is another story. Scholars have speculated about what would have happened had Bolzano gotten the position. Some conjecture that he might have had a larger audience for his mathematical research and a greater number of students. Other suppose that he might have gave impulse to the reform of mathematical studies that were still lagging behind at the university. Alas, we will never know.
On the left, a portrait of S. Vydra, professor of elementary mathematics (Wydra, Stanislaus - Austrian National Library, Austria - Public Domain. https://www.europeana.eu/item/92062/BibliographicResource_1000126022304). On the right, a portrait of the young Jandera in 1806 (https://scopeq.cc.univie.ac.at/Query/detail.aspx?ID=62430).
We do know, instead, that Ladislav Joseph Jandera (1776-1857), winner of the 1804 mathematics exam, followed the steps of his late teacher Stanislas Vydra (1741-1804). He even saw through the press Vydra's textbook Počátkowé arytmetyky (1806). This was the first book of higher-level mathematics in Czech.
While Vydra had began his career as a Jesuit (the order was disbanded in 1773), Jandera was a Praemonstratesian monk. This monastic order, founded by St Norbert, had its headquarter in Prague monastery of Strahov.
In teaching practice, Vydra and Jandera never departed from the "didactical paradigm" of German textbook authors, such as Wolff and Kästner, which fourished during the Enlightement, but had become obsolete by the 19th century. During his career, Jandera wrote and lectured in Latin and German. Despite having published a book in Czech, he held a conservative atittude during a time of rampant linguistic and political nationalism.
Even though Jandera's intellectual production was not outstanding, he managed to be a successful and upright teacher. In sharp contrast to his colleague and friend Bolzano, Jandera also enjoyed a long and brilliant academic career, steadily ascending the ranks of Prague University until he ultimately earned the esteemed title of rector in 1828. Within the extensive collection of manuscripts held in the Strahov Monastery's library, lies a treasure trove of Jandera's works that remains largely unexplored. These documents serve as a unique testament to his multifaceted roles as a teacher, scholar, and prominent figure within the public sphere.
Figure 1. Frontispice of Vydra's Počátkowé arytmetyky
(https://katalog.cbvk.cz/arl-cbvk/cs/detail-cbvk_us_cat-1214047-Pocatkowe-arytmetyky/).
However, beyond the lofty image of a diligent and devoted professor, a glimpse into everyday life of Jandera as a teacher as seen through the eyes of his students and his peers has come down to us. The writer Alfred Meissner (1821-1885) was one of the many pupils who came under Jandera's tutelage but held no particular fondness for mathematics. Meissner's book Story of my life offers juicy sketches of his school days as one of Jandera's students in 1837. Jandera is emphatically nicknamed "Der furchtbare" -"the terrible", and for clear reasons:
No one could know in advance whether he would satisfy this terrible zealot, and if he did not satisfy him, he was lost; for with a bad grade in mathematics one could not advance.
https://www.google.it/books/edition/Geschichte_meines_Lebens/5_UlH7cRRBAChl=en&gbpv=1&dq=alfred+meissner+geschichte+meines+lebens&printsec=frontcover, p. 59 (Translated with and adapted from DeepL).
Unfortunately, neither the author of this description nor his friends excelled in mathematics, hence they soon fell off Jandera's good graces. Meissner depicts Jandera in even more vivid and caustic terms elsewhere in his biography:
The terrible Jandera was a wholly small, old little man, a figure sprung from a story by E. T. Hoffman. He was a Praemonstratesian monk, although he did not wear any monacal robe, but cannon boots and a civil gown. In fact, because he handled the chalk so much, he ended up wearing a blue and white skirt like a miller. As if petrified on his face, the hard genuine face of an angry gnome, there was a terrible ardor for the sacred science.
Portrait of the terrible Jandera during his maturity
(Jandera, Josef Ladislaus - Austrian National Library, Austria - Public Domain.
https://www.europeana.eu/item/92062/BibliographicResource_1000126145356)
This ardor for mathematics appears also through an anecdote recounted by E. Herold in his Malerische Wanderungen durch Prag (1866). This anecdote is set a few years after Messiner's days, during the insurrection of June 1848 which caused schools to close as Prague was under imperial siege. Resuming the lectures after the siege was over, Jandera confessed to his students:
During the shilling of Prague, I have invented and then worked out a binomial equation, and by the time I had the result ready by me, the revolution was also over.
https://books.google.cz/books?id=uNg6AQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q=jandera&f=false, p. 252 (tr. and adapted with DeepL).
But if to Herold the mathematician Jandera was a "piece of the old university" moving unshaken in the turbulent times of mid 19th century, in Meissner's imagination, Jandera conjures up the most fearsome characters of the recent political history. For instance, we can
we can picture aided bz Meissner' s words the triumphant and awe-inspiring entrance of Jandera in the auditorium (perhaps the large lecture room at the Carolinum) like a Napoleon of mathematics:
When he had climbed the lectern, which happened under a rush of the auditorium, he had the habit of crossing his arms a la Napoleon over his chest and dominating the audience with wild looks until everything became quiet. In front of him on the table the so-called "Me-mo-ri-a-le", in his hand the chalk, under his arm a short white stick with which he used to demonstrate and often hammer away at the board as if possessed, he began his lecture with a shrill voice that went through every storm, breaking down every word into its individual syllables. "Cla-ri-ty!" was his slogan, and "Now every cook must understand that!" was his last word after every long argument, with which he was to praise himself the most, in his opinion.
(https://www.google.it/books/edition/Geschichte_meines_Lebens/5_UlH7cRRBAC hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=alfred+meissner+geschichte+meines+lebens&printsec=frontcover, p. 60. Translated with and adapted from DeepL).
Regrettably, Meissner admitted that often failed to grasp even "what every cook must understand". Elsewhere Meissner recalls how this zealous lover of mathematics, chalk-spotted like a miller had the most singular resemblance with another infamous figure from the recent past:
one time, when we laid hands onto a collection of old copper engravings from the time of the French Revolution, we both made the discovery at the same time that Professor Laidslaus Jandera bore the greatest resemblance to Robespierre. It was exactly the same head, only much older, the same forehead, the same mouth...
Ibid. Translated and adapted from DeepL.
This "Robespierre with the chalk" (Meissner, p. 76) must have appeared far from comical to poor Moritz Hartmann, one of Meissner's classmates, caught daydreaming while reading Grabbe's play Faust und Dom Juan instead of listening to his teacher's pedantic explanations on the properties of the cone and the ellipse. Summoned to the blackboard, Hartmann had to avow his ignorance and flee back among his peers. The image of Hartmann's face, burning with awe with shame as Meissner describes it, probably resonates with the experience of many present and former students until today.
A portrait of Robespierre. The readers will make
their minds up about the resemblance with our terrible
Jandera. (Robespierre von P. Degobert - Katholische Universität von Leuven, Belgien - Public Domain.
https://www.europeana.eu/item/2024903/photography_ProvidedCHO_KU_Leuven_9983683070101488)
Apart from the colourful details, the students' perspective offers something that Jandera's official representation failed to convey. Jandera's gestures are filled with the rhetoric of power and command. His climbing the lectern, the stick, the chalk, the emphasis on clarity as the supreme virtue of mathematics. While Jandera's mathematical demonstrations are supposed to be so lucid that even a cook could grasp them, failing to comprehend his teachings brands students as something more than mere underachievers. To him, they become outcasts, akin to poor workers rejected from society's fold. In the eyes of Jandera, mathematics was not just a subject to be taught; it becomes a tool to cement a social hierarchy where authority and veiled threats govern the order of things.
As the blackboard, the chalk and the stick become a symbol of judgment and terror, like the terror of Robespierre, those who dare question or challenge the established order are labeled rebellious and seditious. The classroom turns into a crucible where one's acceptance of this social order is tested, and those who defy it face the harsh sting of chastisement.
Comments