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Institutions and Ideas: Mandarins and Non-Mandarins in the German Academic Intelligentsia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Sven-Eric Liedman
Sven-Eric Liedman
Affiliation:
Göteborgs Universitet
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Extract

In this article I shall argue that a fundamental and often overlooked trait of ideas and opinions is their controversial or, if you prefer, dialectical character. This means that an idea or an opinion—the words here being used in a general sense—must be seen in connection with its opposite, especially if we are concerned to find its social roots and meaning. To express an idea, to state one's view about something, is a certain kind of action. The purpose of this action is not only to establish a fact but also to exclude other opinions about this fact and, directly or indirectly, to argue against competing opinions, ideologies, theories, and groups. The local or temporal dominance of any particular opinion prompts the question, Why was this position so emphatically maintained? Which were the competing opinions to be excluded?

Type
CSSH Discussion
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , January 1986 , pp. 119 - 144
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1986

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References

1 The theory of verbal action and, especially, verbal acts is far-reaching and its importance manifold. See Searle, John, Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language (New York, 1969).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Especially in sociological theory, the distinction between consensus and conflict perspectives is central, Weberfan theory of rationalization being of the first kind, Marxist theory of class struggle of the second.

3 Ringer, Fritz K., The Decline of the German Mandarins: The German Academic Community, 1890–1933 (Cambridge, Mass., 1969).Google Scholar

4 The word functional is here used in a very wide and general manner, meaning the supposition that a set of attitudes or ideas is the function of a determined social position and role in such a way that substantial differences in attitudes and ideas can be explained by differences in sociai position. The characteristic opinions of a certain group form a kind of legitimation and defence of the position of a group.

5 The Decline of the German Mandarins has won the favoured position of a work to which reference is made as soon as intellectual history of the period 1890–1933, or the shifting positions of academic elites, or relations between scientific ideas and social role is treated. More far-reaching analyses of its results are till now rather few. Jürgen Habermas has in a review, “Decline of German Mandarins,” Minerva, 9:73 (1972); 422–28,Google Scholar dealt with many interesting and fundamental issues, objecting, for example, to Professor Ringer's view that the role of the mandarins ended with Hitler's, AdolfMachtübernahme in 1933.Google Scholar According to Habermas, the mandarin survived Nazism and expired with the university reforms of the 1960s. To Ringer's view of the unique mandarin character of certain central distinctions (e.g., Gemeinschaft-Gesellschaft) Habermas objects that similar distinctions are to be found in France and the United States. A fundamental scrutiny of Ringer's method is to be found in Gerald lzenberg's article, “Psychohistory and Intellectual History,” History and Theory, 14:2 (1975),Google Scholar 140 et passim. The problems treated by Izenberg are, however, not the same as those treated here.

6 The immediate forerunner of Ringer is Hughes, H. Stuart, whose Consciousness and Society: The Reorientation of European Social Thought, 2d ed. (1958; Brighton, England, 1979)Google Scholar has a position similar to that of Ringer's The Decline of the German Mandarins. Hughes's perspective is not limited to Germany but includes Austria, France, and Italy, too. He lacks the sociological perspective of Ringer and writes intellectual history in a more traditional way. To him, the year 1890 symbolizes the beginning of an antipositivist revolt. Among earlier historians of ideas surveying the same period in an original and fruitful way, the Austrian Egon Friedell ought to be mentioned. Cf. especially his voluminous Kulturgeschichte der Neuzeit. Die Krisis der europäischen Seele von der schwarzen Pest bis zum ersten WeHkrieg, new ed. (1927–31; München, 1960), 1349–69. A good and critical survey of actual literature on the subject offers Viikari, M. in his Die Krise der “historistischen” Geschichtesschreibung und die Geschichtsmethodologie Karl Lamprechts (Helsinki, 1977),Google Scholar 10ff. Among more recent investigations dealing with this period, we may especially mention Brnch, R. vom, Wissenschaft Politik und öffentliche Meinung: Gelehrtenpolitik im Wilhelminischen Deutschland (1890–1914), Historische Studien Heft 435 (Husum, 1980;Google ScholarJahrausch, K. H., Students, Society, and Politics in Imperial Germany: The Rise of Academic Illiberalism (Princeton, 1982);CrossRefGoogle Scholar and O'Boyle, L., “Learning for Its Own Sake: The German University as Nineteenth-Century Model,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 25:1Google Scholar

7 Ringer, , Decline, 3.Google Scholar

8 Ibid., 6–13; on Bildung, , especially 86–89.Google Scholar

9 Ibid., 6.

10 Ibid., 119.

11 Ibid., 5–6.

12 Ibid., 128.

13 Ibid., 128ff.

14 See Hartmann, E. von, “Mein Entwicklungsgang,” in his Gesammelte Studien und Aufsätze gemeinverständlichen Inhalts (Berlin, 1876), 35–36;Google Scholar further, idem, “Die Schicksale meiner Philosophie in seiner ersten Jahrzehnt (1869–1879),” in his Philosophische Fragen der Gegenwart (Leipzig, 1885), 10;Google Scholaridem, Wahrheit und Irrtum in Darwinismus (Berlin, 1875), 1.Google Scholar

15 On modernists or accommodationists in contrast to mandarin orthodoxy, see especially Ringer, Decline, 128–43.Google Scholar

16 Ibid., 158.

17 Ibid., 434.

18 idem, 2–3; cf. 15, 254.

19 Ringer, Fritz K., Education and Society in Modern Europe (Bloomington, Ind., and London, 1979).Google Scholar

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21 Ibid., 14–18.

22 Ibid., 32. In a recent mimeographed paper, “The German Mandarins Reconsidered” (Occasional Paper, Center for Studies in Higher Education, University of California, Berkeley, June 1981), Professor Ringer has treated the problem of how German development was related especially to the English one. It is not surprising that he has found some “mandarin” traits in the English milieu, too. In summarizing the differences, Ringer makes use of the main results from his Education and Society in Modern Europe, 30–42, esp. 38–40. The need for comparison was stressed by Palmer, R. R. in his review article on Ringer's mandarin book, “Some Recent Work on Higher Education,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 13:1 (1971), 113–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23 Wiener, Martin J., English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit, 1850–1980 Cambridge, 1981).Google Scholar

24 Ibid., 9.

25 A very valuable investigation on the institutionalization of the French academic élite is Schirm, Terry, Savoir scientifique et pouvoir social; L'Ecole polytechnique 1794–1914 (Paris, 1980).Google ScholarLes polytechniciens were, of course, representatives of the process of industrialization in a substantial sense, but at the same time they were imbued with the same anti-industrialist attitudes that Ringer sees as typically German mandarin and Wiener as typically English. Classical Bildung was commonly seen as central and served, according to Shinn, as a demarcation line between the grande bourgeoisie, of which les polytechniciens were normally members, especially after 1850, and the petite bourgeoisie with its despised practical mind. Shinn, , Savoir scientiftque, 45–51.Google Scholar

26 The famous “idea of progress” is often treated as a kind of hardware whose distinct traits are to be found at certain epochs (especially in the pre-1914 period) and not at others. In fact, the idea of progress, whenever it can be found, is counteracted by an idea of decline; or, to put it more accurately, the hopes of one person are always formulated against the spoken fears of others, and the idea of progress is never total. If the idea of progress had ever reached a totally dominant position, it would have ceased to be a declared idea and developed into a tacitly assumed matter of course.

27 Wiener, , English Culture, preface.Google Scholar

28 Sybel, H. von, “Die Lehren des heutigen Sozialismus und Communismus,” in his Vorträge und Aufsätze, 3d ed. (Berlin, 1885).Google Scholar

29 Cf. Treitschke, Heinrich von, Der Sozialismus und seine Gönner (Berlin, 1875);Google ScholarBois-Reymond, Emil Du, Reden, (Folge I-II (Leipzig, 1886–1887);Google Scholar and Helmholtz, Hermann von, Populäre wissenschaftliche Vorträge, 2d ed., Vol. I–II (Braunschweig, 1876).Google Scholar A man whose attitudes to industry, practical life, academic community, and government would offer Ringer substantial difficulties is the famous pathologist, anthropologist, and liberal politician, Rudolf Virchow. Of course, Virchow's appreciation of industrialization was high, of socialism extremely negative; Ringer (Decline, 274) mentions him only as a “consistently radical modernist.” Evidently, many Kathedersozialisten, like Adolph Wagner, directed heavy criticism to industrialists, and those who advocated the idea of a “Sozialismus der Gebildeten” (socialism of the learned) saw in state and science (Wissenschaft) powers that could and ought to overcome the controversies caused by industrialization. On Wagner and other Kathedersozialisten, and on Sozialismus der Gebildeten, see Bruch, vom, Wissenschaft, 141–64.Google Scholar

30 Wiener, , English Culture, 90–91.Google Scholar

31 See, e.g., Marshall, A., The Present Position of Economics (London, 1885),Google Scholar which was his inaugural lecture as professor in Cambridge. See further, Sanderson, M., The Universities and British Industry, 1850–1970 (London, 1972), 199–202.Google Scholar

32 See Meyer, Rudolf, Emancipationskampf des vierten Standes, Vol. 1, 1974; Berlin, rp. 1966).Google Scholar

33 Engels, F., Preface, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, by Marx, K., Vol. II (Harmondsworh, England, 1978), 88–102.Google Scholar

34 See Meyer, Rudolf, Der Capitalismus fin de siècle (Wien and Leipzig, 1894),Google Scholar postscript; Ernst, Paul, Jünglingsjahre (München, 1931), 248–49.Google Scholar

35 Ringer, , Decline, 165.Google Scholar In his review of Ringer's book (see Habermas, “Decline of German Mandarins”), Jurgen Habermas does not openly protest against this way of seeing as mandarin any critique whatsoever of an instrumentalist use of knowledge; it is, however, in his discussion of Ringer's view of Tönnies, relevant in this context, that Habermas stresses that Tönnies, concept of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft had their counterparts outside mandarin Germany. To Ringer (Decline, 167), the concept of Gemeinschaft is implicitly reactionary.

36 Ringer, , Decline, 182.Google Scholar

37 See, e.g., Kant, Immanuel, Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft (1786),Google Scholar in Gesammelte Schriften, Bd. 7 (Berlin, 1903), 190–92.Google Scholar

38 See Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, On the Constitution of the Church and State, According to the Idea of Both (1830),Google Scholar in The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Vol. X, Colmer, John, ed. (London, 1976).Google Scholar

39 Morell, J. and Thackray, A., Gentlemen of Science: Early Years of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (Oxford, 1981).Google Scholar

40 See his extremely self-confident and brilliant On the Principles of English University Education, 2d ed. (London, 1838).Google ScholarPubMed

41 Whewell's contributions to the philosophy of science are collected in William Whewell's Theory of Scientific Method, Butts, R. E., ed. (Pittsburgh, 1968), with a valuable introduction by Butts.Google Scholar

42 Morrell, and Thackray, , Gentlemen of Science, 91.Google Scholar

43 Ibid., 28 et passim, where the authors state that the “ideology” of science, developed by Whewell and other “gentlemen of science,” played an important part in consolidating “the role of science as a dominant mode of cognition of industrial science.” Of course, it is possible that Whewell and the other “gentlemen” had this influence, but the material put forth in Gentlemen of Science does not immediately support such a conclusion. This influence must be in spite of Whewell's outspoken contempt of industrial practice (see note 44).

44 In his On the Principles of English University Education. 5–16 et passim, Whewell develops the argument that English college education has a predominantly practical character, the practical activity of the students being its prevailing task. Now, the “practice” of the student has nothing to do with practical tasks of handicraft or industry but consists in the concentration upon the skills to perform mathematical operations, to master the classical languages, etcetera. Morell, and Thackray, , Gentlemen of Science, 270–73, 453–54, refers to many utterances by Whewell in which he fiercely refuses the confusion of his Newtonian science with practical activities scattered together in technology, statistics, and so forth.Google Scholar

45 Sanderson, M., Universities and British Industry.Google Scholar

46 Morrell and Thackray's concept of “gentlemen of science” refers to a group centered around Whewell who got a dominant influence over the British Association of Science and its ideology and policy during its first decade. According to Morrell and Thackray, these gentlemen played a dominant part in coining the modern English use of science. The gentlemen were university people, liberal Anglicans in religious respect and moderate conservatives politically. Their backgrounds were the old universities (Gentlemen of Science, 101–27). Their aristocratic character is duly stressed by Morrell and Thackray. However, to my mind, it is misleading when these authors see a near connection between the concept of gentlemen of science and Coleridge's romantic-organistic conception of a clerisy of science. To Coleridge, theology was the supreme science, and the cold rationality in the conception of the gentlemen of (Newtonian) science was alien to him (Ibid., 19–24). The ideals of Coleridge have much more in common with those of the romantics that were fashionable at German universities, where the concentration upon speculative philosophy and celestial abstractions was the main target of Whewell's polemics in his pamphlet on universities (see On the Principles, 17–21, 45–51, 123–24).

47 See Butts, , William Whewell's Theory, intro.Google Scholar

48 Mill, J. S., A System of Logic, in Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Vol. VIII (Toronto, 1974), 833–60.Google Scholar

49 Ringer, , Decline, 96.Google Scholar

50 Dilthey, W, “Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften,” (1883) in Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. I (Leipzig and Berlin, 1883), 5–6. Dilthey points out that Geisteswissenschaften was not the only possible translation of “moral science.” Other alternatives, which he had considered, were Kulturwissenschaften, Soziologie, Gesellschaftswissenschaft, etcetera.Google Scholar

51 Whewell, , On the Principles, 47–49.Google Scholar

52 This efficiency was especially emphasized by the opponents to the Oxbridge type of university; they propagated the new type of English university that had more Contact with industrial and commercial life. See Sanderson, , Universities and British Industry, 61–120;Google ScholarRoscoe, H. E., The Life and Experience of Sir Henry Enfield Roscoe, Written by Himself (Manchester, 1906);CrossRefGoogle ScholarFlexner, A, Universities: American, English, German, new ed. (London, Oxford, and New York, 1968), xiii et passim.Google Scholar

53 John Stuart Mill's inaugural address as rector at St. Andrew's in 1867 is an eloquent example of this attitude. See Sanderson, , Universities and British Industry, 5.Google Scholar

54 Virchow, R., Die Freiheit der Wissenschaft im modernen Staat. Rede gehalten an die dritte allgemeine Sitzung der fünfzigsten Versammlung deutscher Naturforscher und Aerzte zu München (Berlin, 1877), 8–11, 16–20.Google Scholar

55 Haeckel, E., Freie Wissenschaft und freie Lehre. Eine Entgegnung auf Rudolf Virchows Münchener Rede über “Die Freiheit der Wissenschaft im modernen Staat” (Stuttgart, 1878).Google Scholar

56 Tyndall, J., Fragments of Science, 6th ed. (London, 1879), II, 397–400.Google Scholar

57 Ringer, , Decline, 104–6.Google Scholar

58 C. H. Becker (1876–1933), still renowned as a specialist on Islam, was from 1916 professor at the University of Berlin. At the same time, he was a politician and, as Kulturminister during two periods 1921 and 1925–30, propagated far-reaching and radical reforms of the entire school system. Ringer has a good deal to say about Becker's educational ideas but nothing about his position as a highly esteemed Berlin professor.

59 Ringer, , Decline, 228–30.Google Scholar

60 Ibid., 336; and see also 406: “Even a kind of specialization was apparently no longer regarded as an evil in itself, as long as a ‘deepened total cultural consciousness’ was achieved within the existing disciplines.” Now, sociology, in Becker's sense, and Lebensphilosophie are not different in this respect; the point is that sociology and Lebensphilosophie both are all-embracing conceptions, the one being predominantly radical or left wing, the other predominantly conservative or right wing (in the intellectual milieu of the twenties).

61 In fact, it seems reasonable to see the influence of philosophy and philosophical systems as culminating in the period (roughly) 1810–30, followed by a couple of decades where non-philosophical, empirical research dominated. From around 1860, under the influence of sharpening ideological controversies and the “synthesizing” theories of thermodynamics, natural selection, etcetera, the part played by philosophical systems was of increased importance once more (and not only in Germany, but in France, Great Britain, and the United States, too). At the end of the century, the rich variety of all-embracing “systems” provoked many sceptical reactions, and their influence diminished.

62 The influence especially of Friedrich Althoff, who was in charge of Prussian higher education during more than two decades (1882–1908), has been witnessed by innumerable professors; see Ringer, , Decline, 51–54.Google Scholar For a vivid account of Althoff's power, of his spies who followed the lectures by young professors in spe, and of the capricious character of his appointments, see, e.g., memoirs, Friedrich Meinecke's, Erlebtes 1862–1901 (Leipzig, 1941), 214–24.Google Scholar An unsurpassed account of German academic life from the point of view of the bureaucrat is given by Althoff's assistant and successor Friedrich Schmidt-Ott in his Erlebtes und Erstrebtes, 1860–1950 (Wiesbaden, 1952). Schmidt-Ott survived not only the Bismarck era and the heydays of the young kaiser and the Weimar Republic, but also the Nazi era—always being the same bureaucrat, always convinced that he himself acted impartially and loyally.Google Scholar

63 See note 61.

64 Meinecke, F., Die Idee der Staatsräson in der neueren Geschichte, 2d ed. (München, 1960), 321–510.Google Scholar

65 See Schmidt-Ott, , Erlebtes und Erstrebtes, 163–66, concerning his violent reactions when social democrats took over his own Ministerium and thus destroyed its impartiality.Google Scholar

66 Ringer, , Decline, 253. Just as indecisive is the statement: “After 1890, this concern was sometimes expressed in the proposition that wissenschaft could or should lead to a weltanchauung” (p. 104).Google Scholar

67 Hughes, H. S., Consciousness and Society, 17–19Google Scholaret passim. A recent, extensive discussion of the limit of 1890 is to be found in Bruch, vom, Wissenschaft, 16–24.Google Scholar

68 To Comte, positivism means a Weltanschauung, whose information about the world forms the ideal point of departure for all our actions and deeds.

69 This does not include the already mentioned writings of Sybel and Treitschke. The review by the economist and statistician Wilhelm Lexis on the second volume of Marx's Capital may be seen as extremely typical: “Die Marx'sche Kapitaltheorie,” in Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik, Neue Folge, Bd 11.5 (Jena, 1885), 452–65.Google Scholar Lexis was professor in Göttingen and author of the supreme survey of the whole mandarin world in his voluminous Die deutschen Universitäten, Vol. 1–II (Berlin, 1893).Google Scholar

70 A few academics expressed sympathy and admiration for Marx, especially the famous philosopher Friedrich Albert Lange. See his Die Arbeiterfrage in ihrer Bedeutung für Gegenwart und Zukunft, 3d ed. (Winterthur, 1875), 5–6.Google Scholar

71 On the reception of Marxism in Germany and especially inside the Social-Democratic party there is an extensive literature. The classic work in still Hans-Josef Steinberg's Sozialismus und deutsche Sozialdemokratie. Zur Ideologie der Partei vor dem 1. Weltkrieg (Hannover, 1967).Google Scholar The fate of Die Jungen has been newly treated by two authors: Müller, Dirk H., Idealismus und Revolution. Zur Opposition der Jungen gegen den Sozialdemokratischen Parteivorstand 1890 bis 1894, Beihefte zur Internationalen wissenschaftlichen Korrespondenz zur Geschichte der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung 3 (Berlin, 1975);Google Scholar and Wienand, P., “Revoluzzer und Revisionisten. ‘Die Jungen’ in der Sozialdemokratie vor der Jahrhundertwende,” Politische Vierteljahrschrift, 17:2 (1976), 208–41.Google Scholar

72 Among more important contributions are Stammler, R., Wirtschaft und Recht nach der materialistischen Geschichtsauffassung (Leipzig, 1896):Google ScholarSombart, W., Sozialismus und soziale Bewegung im 19. Jahrhundert (Jena, 1896);Google ScholarStaudinger, F., Ethik und Politik (Berlin, 1899);Google ScholarMasaryk, T., Die philosophischen und sociologischen Grundlagen des Marxismus (Wien, 1899);Google ScholarWoltmann, L., Der historischen Materialismus. Darstellung und Kritik der marxistischen Weltanschauung (Düsseldorf, 1900);Google Scholar and Vorländer, K., Marx and Kant (Wien, 1904).Google Scholar See further, Olausson, L., Marxism och nykantianism. Vol. 1: Staudinger, Vorländer och Woltmann [Marxism and neo-Kantianism, with an English summary] (Göteborg, 1982).Google Scholar

73 The useful concept of “experiential matrix“ has been coined by John Edward Toews in his Hegelianism: The Path toward Dialectical Humanism, 1805–1841 (Cambridge, 1980), 5–6. Toews seeks “the ‘experiential matrix’ of the genesis and evolution of Hegelianism” from four different angles: the social and institutional determinants, the impact of social and demographic changes and specific political events, the individual psychobiographical development, and, finally, the sociohistorical roots and implications of, in this case, Hegelian philosophy. Although this matrix must be somewhat different when applied to different problems, epochs, and milieus, its character of being a complete whole remains, however, the same.Google Scholar