1889.12.11 English

Malling-Hansen (to Edgar Collin)

 

 

THE ROYAL INSTITUTE 

 FOR THE DEAF-MUTE    

    COPENHAGEN

11/12  89

 

 

                        Dear friend Collin !

 

   I implore you most earnestly to kindly back up an appeal that I have  made to the honourable editors of “Nationaltidende”. I have been summoned to appear at the editorial office at 12:30 tomorrow, possibly concerning the evidence referred to by you.

 

  I would really hate to see the matter brought up by Principal Jørgensen[1] being pursued further; if it so happened, a cause célèbre could well be imminent. My evidence is absolutely conclusive.

 

           Yours faithfully

 

       R. Malling-Hansen

 

 

[1] SA: Georg Jørgensen was principal of the Royal Institute for the Deaf-Mute in Fredericia.  He had achieved this position after recommendation from RMH, who for many years was his superior in Copenhagen. In 1874 Jørgensen  went to Germany for studies and returned home as a firmly convinced proselyte of the oral method. In the circles of people working with the deaf-mutes he received little support for this view, except from RMH. Towards the end of the 1870s, when there was an urgent lack of space at the institute in Copenhagen, RMH eyed a solution, suggesting a new institute whereby the two institutes could accommodate the growing number of deaf-mute children and, at the same time, introduce the most modern teaching method for those children that were gifted enough to profit from it. This was a field where RMH proved his talent for thinking long-term and along lines of principle in the area of special education; he actually re-launched an early proposal from his predecessor, Søren Johan Heiberg, when he in 1879 presented a very thoroughly prepared and elaborated suggestion to establish a new institute in Fredericia that was to teach in accordance with the oral method (lip-reading).

In 1889 both RMh and Georg Jørgensen were members of an official publicly appointed commission charged with the task of elaborating a proposal about how to organize the future teaching of deaf-mutes. RMH was the prime mover of the committee and also the secretary. Along the way the issue was under vivid discussion in the Danish papers, and on one occasion it was asserted that the institute in Fredericia had been established due to Georg Jørgensen. This incensed RMH since he was the man behind the proposal to establish the Fredericia institute. He protested vehemently, and the issue was very hot-blooded for a while. However, with hindsight there is no doubt that RMH was entirely in the right. This is probably the case that RMH refers to in this letter to his friend Edgar Collin, requesting his support to rectify the assertions.