Dénes Dienes: History of the Reformed Church Collég in Sárospatak (Sárospatak, 2013)
SPIRIT AND MOOD - The teaching staff
watched over the smaller ones. The “collaborators”, or assistant teachers, had the task of being group supervisors and fulfilling substitute teacher functions. In the selecting of student teachers, it was not only moral standards and achievements that were taken into account but also the financial situation of the students in question, the idea being of trying to possibly improve any given student’s social predicament. From 1792 on, adult pedagogiarchs monitored the praeceptors in the lower classes and the professors did the monitoring in the upper classes. Another step forward was ensured by the curriculum of 1818, which offered a new option for student teachers, that being that they were hereafter able to follow their students throughout the years at each successive level. The fourth part of the teaching staff - a very varied group - consisted of alumni and adults who were commissioned to teach single subjects which did not belong to any given department. These efforts gave an indication of the direction the leadership (the chief lay officer, the superintendent, professors, teachers) sought to promote for the development of the College and also the acquisition of which skills or knowledge was considered important. This group included teachers who taught German in Patak. Johann Aufsprung came to Patak as such a teacher in the fall of 1771. His responsibilities included not only teaching German and French but he was supposed to also oversee the natural history inventory. After a few months of teaching, he complained about his salary and soon left the school because of financial difficulties. All those who came after him stayed for a year or two only. So, when Károly Nitsch occupied this position for seven years, he became a symbol of permanence. The curriculum in 1810 reinstated compulsory German language lessons in the lower grades, from the third through to the eighth grade, but no permanent solution was found for the staffing problem. A technician was commissioned to oversee the natural history inventory. It is known that Dávid Barczafalvi Szabó wanted to achieve nothing less than to invite to the banks of the Bodrog River Johann Sayde, the world-famous inspector of the Museum of Physics at the University of Göttingen. Sayde was willing to accept the invitation and he asked for nothing more than an annual salary of one hundred fifty royal forints and a house which he could use “until his death”, but, due to financial problems, he was not able to move to Hungary. Near the very end of the 18th century, a Hungarian technician who had neither the extensive connections nor the broad vision of Sayde was hired to fill the position. The introduction of drawing at the college level seemed to have suffered similar difficulties. István Nyiry’s vacated position was filled by student teachers for a while, an adult master in the discipline being hired only in the late 1830s. Mihály Tóthpápay was also one who was assigned various tasks. He had studied medicine and came to the school in 1791 as a school doctor. In addition to this, he was charged with the duties of educational supervisor (paedagogiarcha), and, from 1796 on, he also worked as a teacher of natural history and pedagogy. The mixed results achieved in the various positions which he occupied coupled with his irregularities in personal comportment led him to leave the school in disgrace: he was forced to resign because he was accused of having a drinking problem and of having spent the money he owed on drink. There was no school doctor nor education supervisor hired to work in Patak for decades after his departure. 109 Linguist, composer and ethnographer, János Fogarasi (1801-1878) was educated by the College in Sárospatak and formed into a versatile scholar
