Oberweißbach was a wealthy village in the Thuringian Forest and had been known centuries long for its natural herb remedies, tinctures, bitters, soaps and salves.

Each family prepared, bottled, and produced their individual products which were taken throughout Europe on trade routes passed from father to son, who were affectionately called Buckelapotheker or "Rucksack Pharmacists".

The pulpit from which Fröbel heard his father preach is the largest in all Europe and can accommodate a pastor and 12 people, a direct reference to Christ's apostles.

After Waterloo and the Congress of Vienna Fröbel found himself a civilian once again, and became an assistant at the Museum of Mineralogy under Christian Samuel Weiss during 1814–1816, studying and cataloging mineral crystals.

[2] He became fascinated with their structure, and later would write: "I continually proved to be true what had long been a presentiment with me, namely, that even in these so-called lifeless stones and fragments of rock, torn from their original bed, there lay germs of transforming, developing energy and activity.

Amidst the diversity of forms around me, I recognised under all kinds of various modifications one law of development...And thereafter, my rocks and crystals served me as a mirror wherein I might descry mankind, and man’s development and history...Geology and crystallography not only opened up for me a higher circle of knowledge and insight, but also showed me a higher goal for my inquiry, my speculation, and my endeavour.

"[2] In 1816, he was offered a professorship in Stockholm, but he turned it down and instead founded the Allgemeine Deutsche Erziehungsanstalt (German General Education Institute) in Griesheim near Arnstadt in Thuringia.

In 1828 and 1829, he pursued plans for a people's education institute (Volkserziehungsanstalt) in Helba (nowadays a constituent community of Meiningen), but they were never realized.

In 1833, he moved this to Willisau, and from 1835 to 1836, he headed the orphanage in Burgdorf, where he also published the magazine Grundzüge der Menschenerziehung (Features of Human Education).

In 1836 appeared his work Erneuerung des Lebens erfordert das neue Jahr 1836 (The New Year 1836 Calls For the Renewal of Life).

He returned to Germany, dedicated himself almost exclusively to preschool child education and began manufacturing playing materials in Bad Blankenburg.

In 1840, he coined the word kindergarten for the Play and Activity Institute he had founded in 1837 at Bad Blankenburg for young children, together with Wilhelm Middendorf and Heinrich Langethal.

In 1840, the educator Emily Ronalds was the first British person to study Fröbel's approach and he urged her to transplant his kindergarten concepts in England.

A book entitled Inventing Kindergarten, by Norman Brosterman, examines the influence of Friedrich Fröbel on Frank Lloyd Wright and modern art.

Fröbel intended, with his Mutter- und Koselieder – a songbook that he published – to introduce the young child into the adult world.

These ideas about childhood development and education were introduced to academic and royal circles through the tireless efforts of his greatest proponent, the Baroness (Freiherrin) Bertha Marie von Marenholtz-Bülow.

The Duke of Meiningen granted the use of his hunting lodge, called Marienthal (Vale of Mary) in the resort town of Bad Liebenstein for Fröbel to train the first women as Kindergarten teachers (Kindergärtnerinnen).

Fröbel’s idea of the kindergarten had found appeal, but its spread in Germany was thwarted by the Prussian government, whose education ministry banned it in a Kindergartenverbot edict on 7 August 1851 as "atheistic and demagogic" for its alleged "destructive tendencies in the areas of religion and politics".

[8] From the mid to late 19th century, many missionary women from Western countries disseminated Froebel’s theory of kindergarten education across Japan.

The prominent American missionary and Froebelian Annie L. Howe (1852–1943) was particularly influential through the establishment of her Glory Kindergarten teacher training school.

Many modernist architects were exposed as children to Fröbel's ideas about geometry, including Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, and Buckminster Fuller.