Sturm, JOHANNES, well known as an educational reformer, was born at Schleiden, near Aix-la-Chapelle, 1st October 1507. In his fifteenth year he was sent to Liège, where he attended a school of the Brothers of the Common Life—a school so admirably organised that in his own subsequent reform of the schools at Strasburg Sturm largely followed its model. Three years later Sturm continued his studies at Louvain, then the most enlightened centre of the higher studies north of the Alps, where shortly before there had been founded a college for the teaching of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. Besides his zeal as an educational reformer Sturm all through life had the ambition to write a Latin style framed on the best models of antiquity. It was at this time, therefore, that he began the assiduous study of Cicero, whom to the end he never ceased to read with unabated zeal. He remained some five years in Louvain.
In 1529 he went to Paris, and at first gave himself to medicine, with a view to securing a settled competence. But his natural instinct again declared itself, and he returned to the study of Cicero, on whom he gave courses of lectures in the Collège Royal. Besides lecturing on Cicero he also taught dialectics, and had for one of his students Petrus Ramus (q.v.). As a sympathiser with the new teaching in religion, identified as yet only with the name of Luther, it was at some risk that Sturm made his home in Paris. Accordingly, when a request was made to him (1536) by the authorities of Strasburg to come to their assistance in re-organising the education of their town, Sturm willingly accepted their offer. By its position on the frontiers of France and Germany Strasburg played a part of the highest importance in the political and religious history of the 16th century. Both in the religion and politics of his time Sturm took a prominent part, and on different occasions was sent on missions to France, England, and Denmark. In religion he took sides with Zwingli against Luther, with whose followers in Strasburg he was in constant controversy, which embittered all the later years of his life.
Before Sturm's settlement in Strasburg its magistrates had shown an enlightened interest in public instruction; but guided and inspired by Sturm the town became one of the most important educational centres in Europe. Two years after his arrival (1538) a new gymnasium was established, with Sturm as its rector, and at the same time boarding-houses were erected for poor students with the object of suppressing the mediæval practice of mendicancy. Elementary and secondary education were thus provided for; but it was the ambition of Sturm that the higher studies should also be within reach of every youth of Strasburg. The divided councils of the town, however, and the outlay the organisation of such studies would imply delayed Sturm's scheme till as late as 1564. In that year was founded the Strasburg Academy, which, together with the Gymnasium, supplied a complete course of instruction in all the learning of the time. Sturm's ideal in education was 'to direct the aspiration of the scholars towards God, to develop their intelligence, and to render them useful citizens by teaching them the skill to communicate their thoughts and sentiments with persuasive effect.' In carrying out this ideal, described in his favourite phrase pietas literata, Sturm showed his superiority by his judicious gradation of the course of study, and by his novel and attractive methods of instruction. It is his chief praise that beyond all his contemporaries he succeeded in correlating public instruction to the moral and intellectual development of his time. It was little to the credit of Strasburg, therefore, that in his last years he was forced to leave the town through the intolerance of Lutheran zeal. Eventually permitted to return, he died on 3d March 1589. He was a voluminous writer, but, except for the light they throw on the great questions of the 16th century, his works possess no independent value.
See Charles Schmidt, La Vie et les Travaux de Jean Sturm (Strasburg, 1855), and German works by Laas (1872) and Kückelhahn (1872).