The education program proposed by German philanthropism marks the beginning of modern educational reform. Hitherto unknown is the fact that the sources of this educational theory are to be found in the discourse on the topic in early Hamburg enlightenment as of 1715 and that philanthropist pedagogy was tried out at schools in the state of Denmark in the 1750s. The study describes the early history of philanthropism in detail, concluding that the pedagogic design proposed by Johann Bernhard Basedow and Johann Andreas Cramer was essentially a theologically motivated education in religious tolerance.