The Institute for Training Teachers in Valmiera: the Start of Training Teachers in Latvia

The article describes the beginning of the training of young Latvians to become teacher for local schools. In the second half of the 17th century the clergyman Ernst Glück, who was under the influence of pietism, had prepared Latvian teachers in the parish school in Aluksne.The first institute for training teachers in the territory that later became the Republic of Latvia has been founded in Valmiera (Wolmar, Livonia) by Magdalene Elisabeth von Hallart, (1683–1750) in connection with the movement of the Moravian Church (German: Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine). The Valmiermuiža teacher training institute existed only for some years (1738–1843), but its activities gave an important impulse for the development of the education of Latvians and helped to develop the first class of Latvian intellectuals who started to go to universities and who started the awakening