Samuel Heinicke is the father of oral communication. Heinicke was born in a part of Europe that is now a part of Germany today. He was born in Nautschutz, Germany on April 14, 1727. Heinicke was hearing and not deaf. As a young man he only received a village education (Berke, 2007). At the age of twenty-one his father had decided to pick a woman for him to be married to because he was to inherit the family business, as well as, inheriting the family estate. Heinicke refused to wed the chosen young lady and joined the Saxon army. This was an enormous disappointment to his father and so he joined the Saxon army. While he was in the army he gained a higher education. Heinicke’s army officers helped to educate him by providing him with the necessary books he yearned to read (Miller,2005).
While Heinicke was in the Saxon army, he fought in the Seven Years War. He was imprisoned by Prussians but he eventually escaped and once he escaped he became the secretary of the Danish Ambassador in Hamburg (Britannica, 2009). In 1768, Heinicke found his true calling and taught his first deaf student in Eddendorf, Germany. At first, he only used writing, sign and gestures to teach. Later, his form of teaching included speech and lipreading (Berke, 2007). Although, Heinicke taught his students reading, writing, and the manual alphabet, he preferred oralism. His form of teaching was strongly influenced by the book written by Amman, titled Surdus Loquens or better understood as The Speaking Deaf. Heinicke used the Amman method but eventually created his own method which came to be the German method (Miller, 2005).
Heinicke felt that individuals could use their taste buds to identify the various pronunciations of vowels. He paired vowel sounds with various liquids and had his students pronounce certain vowel sounds after drinking certain liquids. Heinicke paired liquids and vowel sounds accordingly: pure water= ie vowel sound, sugar water= o vowel sound, olive oil= ou vowel sound, absinthe= e vowel sound and vinegar= a vowel sound (Miller, 2005). Heinicke also used other techniques to teach his deaf students. Heinicke used a speech machine that contained an artificial throat and tongue. This machine helped the students visually observe how sounds are formed and spoken.
In 1778 Heinicke was asked to open the first oral public school for the deaf in Leipzig, Germany. The school was first named, Electoral Saxon Institute for Mutes and Other Persons Afflicted with Speech Defects but was later changed to be named Samuel Heinicke School for the Deaf (Berke, 2007). Teaching deaf students became his fulltime career and he no longer taught hearing students. Before he taught fulltime, Heinicke was writing newspaper articles about deaf education. He eventually wrote a textbook for teaching the deaf. While he was teaching deaf students, he had consistent contact with the “father of sign language” Abbe de l’ Epee (Berke, 2007). After the spring of 2003 the school was 225 years old and was the home of the most extensive library on hearing loss, which was more than one hundred years old. Twelve years after opening the school Heinicke died and his wife took over, running the school. He was honored by East Germany in 1978 by a postage stamp. Heinicke died at the age of 63 on April 30, 1790.
References
Berke, J. (2007, December 8). People-Samuel Heinicke-Father of Oral Education. Retrieved
from http://deafness.about.com/cs/featurearticles/a/samuelheinicke.htm
Miller, B. (2005, May 31). Samuel Heinicke. Retrieved from
http://www.lifeprint.com/asl101/pages-layout/heinicke-samuel02.htm
Samuel Heinicke. (2009 January). Retrieved from
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/259696Samuel-Heinicke
