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Last updated 4/11/2025

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'Die Kindergärten' by Wilhelm Middendorf was published by Verlagsbuchhandlung der Kindheit und Jugendbeschäftigungsanstadt in Blankenberg and Rudolfstadt in 1848. It contains a description of children enjoying various paperfolding occupations in a kindergarten.

I am grateful to Edwin Corrie for translating the German for me.

A full copy of the work can be accessed online here.

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The relevant parts of the passages reproduced below say:

'Come here to this table, around which little ones who already feel this urge are gathered. They have paper, a light and pliable material. They seek order and rules, to give it a specific form. From the square comes a triangle, a rectangle, and from this a square again, and then another triangle. This happens repeatedly, and they have to note and give a name to each change. From this general form, particular shapes are produced in a continuous sequence, here a table, there a mill, now a boat, a fishing boat, now a box, a mirror – and what fills them with amazing joy is how from each thing they have just made they can produce the next one by folding, and make each of them again for themselves as often as they want.'

And:

'Still others are sitting around, cutting out shapes and marvelling at the beautiful forms that are created in the most charming variety by following a very simple rule, and they can quickly see how beauty is nothing but the application of rules. Others make woven designs into wallets, writing tablets etc from coloured paper strips, or after folding also start forming and glueing boxes and containers for storing seeds from their flowerbeds and other small things.'

(Note that in this second section the German reads 'nothing short of a preclusion of the application of rules' but this seems to be the opposite of the sense that the author is aiming for and so I have translated it as 'nothing but the application of rules', which is consistent with the previous words 'by following a very simple rule'.)

The first passage seems to me to be a clear description of the folding of a sequence of Lebensformen from what we would now call the Windmill Base ie starting with The Table and The Windmill, progressing through two boats, possibly The Boat with Sail and/or The Double Boat, to probably The Large Box and hence to The Mirror.

The second seems to refer to the occupation of Ausschneiden, then to Frame Weaving and finally to the construction of boxes and containers, possibly by the Cardboard Modelling technique.

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