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Learning for Its Own Sake: The German University as Nineteenth-Century Model

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Lenore O'Boyle
Lenore O'Boyle
Affiliation:
Cleveland State University
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Extract

In the nineteenth century the Germany university was the most admired institution of higher education in the western world.1 Much of this admiration arose from the widespread assumption that Germany's universities exemplified the ideal of pure learning, the disinterested pursuit of truth, knowledge for its own sake. German contemporaries saw the university in these terms, contemporary observers elsewhere agreed, and modern historians have accepted this statement of purpose.

Type
Effects of Education
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , January 1983 , pp. 3 - 25
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1983

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References

1 The idea for this study was suggested by the useful bibliographical essay by Gougher, Ronald L., “Comparison of English and American Views of the German University, 1840–1865: A Bibliography,” History of Education Quarterly, 9 (Winter 1969), 477–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 For some contemporaries, see Hoffmann, Max, August Böckh: Lebensbeschreibung und Auswahl aus seinem wissenschaftlichen Briefwechsel (Leipzig, 1901), 85–92;Google ScholarWiese, Ludwig, German Letters on English Education, Written during an Educational Tour in 1876, Schmitz, Leonhard, ed. and trans. (New York, 1879), 43;Google Scholar“The Irish University Bill,” Quarterly Review, 134 (04 1873), 298;Google ScholarSmith, Goldwin, “University Education,” Journal of Social Science, 1 (06 1869), 49–50;Google ScholarRoyce, Josiah, “Present Ideals of American University Life,” Scribner's Magazine, 10 (09 1891), 383;Google ScholarSybel, Heinrich von, “Die deutschen und die auswärtigen Universitäten,” in Vorträge undAufsätze (Berlin, 1874), 37–55;Google ScholarBenjamin, I. J., “Benjamin II,” in This Was America: True Accounts of People and Places, Manners and Customs, as Recorded by European Travellers to the Western Shore in the Eighteenth, Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Handlin, Oscar, ed. (Cambridge, Mass., 1949), 279;Google ScholarBurgess, John W., The American University. When Shall It Be? Where Shall It Be? What Shall It Be? An Essay (Boston, 1884).Google Scholar The often heated controversy in nineteenth-century Germany about the comparative merits of the Gymnasium and the Realgymnasium and Realschulen is illuminating on this subject. See O'Boyle, Lenore, “Klassische Bildung und soziale Strukture in Deutschland zwischen 1800 and 1848,” Historische Zeitschrift, 207 (12 1968), 584–608;Google Scholaridem“The Humanist Tradition Reexamined,” Internationales Archivfür Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur, 1 (1976), 246–57.Google Scholar

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7 Turner, , “Prussian Universities,” 86–91,Google Scholar dates the process of professionalization in philology 1800–20, in history 1820–35, and in the natural sciences 1830–45. McClelland, State, Society, and University, traces the process over a long period, emphasizing the importance of Gottingen as an innovator in the nineteenth century.

8 The concept of community of inquiry is used by Haskell, Thomas L., The Emergence of Professional Social Science: The American Social Science Association and the Nineteenth-Century Crisis of Authority (Urbana, 111., 1977), 18.Google Scholar

9 The American philologist James Morgan Hart, who studied in Germany in the sixties and seventies, wrote that the object of the German university was “to train not merely skillful practitioners, but also future professors. … If thorough scientific culture is an essential element in national life, it must be maintained at every cost. The slightest flaw in the continuity of spiritual descent would be as dangerous as a break in the apostolic succession of the church” (italics in the original). Hart, J. M., German Universities: A Narrative of Personal Experience (New York, 1878), 257–58.Google Scholar

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11 The upper ranks of university teachers remained reasonably well rewarded, but as the century progressed academic remuneration did not seem so inviting in comparison with the growing wealth of other social groups. Lower ranks, particularly the unsalaried Dozenten, increasingly had to rely on private income; professorial openings were few and most aspirants never reached full rank. That many did have independent means was due to the increased prestige that came with the professionalization of university teaching and made faculty positions attractive to men from wealthier families.

12 McClelland, , State, Society, and University, 350,Google Scholar gives details on equivalency of rank. See discussion of the early poverty of aspiring scholars and their rise in status in Long, Literary Pioneers, 122;Google ScholarThiersch, Friedrich, Ueber gelehrte Schulen, mit besonderer Rücksicht auf Bayem, 3 vols. (Stuttgart and Tübingen, 1826–1837), I, 43–58, III, 573;Google ScholaridemÜber den gegenwärtigen Zustand des öffentlichen Unterrichts in den westlichen Staaten von Deutschland, in Holland, Frankreich und Belgien, 3 vols. (Tübingen⁄Stuttgart, 1838), I, 460;Google ScholarArnoldt, J. F. J., Fr. Aug. Wolf in seinem Verhältnisse zum Schulwesen und zur Paedagogik, 2 vols. in one (Braunschweig, 1861–1862), I, 97–98, 246, II, 68–69;Google ScholarNiemeyer, August Hermann, Beobachtungen und Reisen in und ausser Deutschland, 4 vols. (Halle and Berlin, 1822–1826), II, 309;Google ScholarRethwisch, Conrad, Der Staatsminister Freiherr v. Zedlitz und Preussens höheres Schulwesen im Zeitalter Friedrichs des Grossen (Berlin, 1881), 141–43;Google ScholaridemDeutschlands hoheres Schulwesen im neunzehnten Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1893), 57, 75–77;Google ScholarBusch, Alexander, Die Geschichte des Privatdozenten: Eine soziologische Studie zur grossbetrieblichen Entwicklung der deutschen Universitäten (Stuttgart, 1959).Google Scholar

13 In his Rechtsphilosophie, Hegel had defined bureaucracy as the “allgemeinen Stands,” a group who represented the general interest of the state as opposed to the particular interests of social groups.

14 Reill, P. H., The German Enlightenment and the Rise of Historicism (Berkeley, 1975), 141–46,Google Scholar points out that most enlightened thinkers in eighteenth-century Germany not directly employed by the state were in the universities, and that they were hopeful of slowly transforming existing institutions: “ … this attitude resulted in part from the Aufklärers' sense of participation (limited though it might have been) in influencing administrative policy in many of the German Standestaaten.” McClelland, State, Society, and University, calls attention to the way in which a new stratum, representing a fusion of nobility and the more enterprising bourgeoisie, emerged to dominate administration. Roessler, Wilhelm, Die Entstehung des modernen Erziehungswesens in Deutschland (Stuttgart, 1961), 128, 147, 205,Google Scholar gives a number of references to the Gebildete as a kind of aristocracy. An equation of this kind appears also in Sybel, , “Die deutschen und die auswärtigen Universitäten,” 49.Google Scholar

15 Auerbach, Erich, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, Trask, Willard R., trans. (Princeton, 1953), 449–50.Google Scholar

16 This aspect is stressed by Bruford, W. H., The German Tradition of Self-Cultivation: “Bildung” from Humboldt to Thomas Mann (Cambridge, Eng., 1975), 128, 147–54,268–69.Google Scholar And see Reed, T. J., The Classical Centre: Goethe and Weimar 1775–1832 (London and New York, 1980), 31–34;Google ScholarReill, , German Enlightenment;Google ScholarO'Boyle, , “Klassische Bildung,” 600–601.Google Scholar

17 Haines, George, Essays on German Influence upon English Education and Science, 1850–1919 (Hamden, Conn.: Connecticut College in association with Archon Books, 1969), 114.Google Scholar

18 Hatfield, Henry, Aesthetic Paganism in German Literature: From Winckelmann to the Death of Goethe (Cambridge, Mass., 1964);CrossRefGoogle ScholarBruford, , German Tradition:Google ScholarReill, , German Enlightenment.Google Scholar

19 Though it is difficult to believe that Madame de Staël, speaking of the German drive toward abstraction and generality, was altogether serious, she wrote, “In Germany a man who is not occupied with the universe has really nothing to do. ” “Des universités Allemandes,” Del' Allemagne (Paris, 1878), part I, ch. XVIII.Google Scholar

20 This is in part the argument made by Ringer, Fritz, The Decline of the German Mandarins: The German Academic Community, 1890–1933 (Cambridge, Mass., 1969).Google Scholar

21 Turner, , “Prussian Universities,” 86–90.Google Scholar I am not persuaded by the analysis of Diehl, Carl, Americans and German Scholarship 1770–1870 (New Haven and London, 1978), but his study is relevant here.Google Scholar

22 E.g., Gould, Benjamin Athorpe, “An American University,” American Journal of Education, 2 (09 1856), 272:Google Scholar “Nowhere since civilization dawned upon the world has such a constellation of brilliant minds illuminated the intellectual firmament, as that which has concentered in the University of Berlin.” Burgess, John W., Reminiscenses of an American Scholar (New York, 1934), 122,Google Scholar a student in Germany in 1871–73, described Berlin as “the first great school of the world for science, philosophy, and letters.”

23 Quoted in Sweet, Paul R., Wilhelm von Humboldt: A Biography, 2 vols. (Columbus, Ohio, 1978–1980), II, 60.Google Scholar Stein's writings are sprinkled with disapproving remarks about lawyers, journalists, and intellectuals in general.

24 The intrusions of Wilhelm II into cultural life are well known. He pushed the cause of the Realschule against the defenders of the classical gymnasium, determined who could and could not have their works of art shown in exhibitions, and consciously made political sympathies an important factor in academic appointment, as in the Martin Leo Arons case.

25 McClelland, , State, Society, and University, 277,Google Scholar makes the point, however, that university professors increasingly gained representation in state examining bodies.

26 McClelland, , State, Society, and University, 239 ff.Google Scholar

27 Turner, , “Prussian Universities,” 85–86.Google Scholar

28 The objection will be made that university educated men played a large role in 1848. The question cannot very well be fully argued here, but I do not think 1848 fundamentally altered the long-term trend to political passivity, and if anything strengthened it by disillusioning idealistic reformers and alarming governments. Academic ranks in 1848 were disunited at best. Academic reformers of higher rank were politically far from radical, and seem in most cases to have been more interested in national unity than political reforms.

29 It should not be overlooked that the attractions of this ancient world included a freely accepted male homosexuality, justifying inclinations and practices that certainly existed in nineteenth-century society, more or less well concealed. There can have been few more exclusively male societies than the German universities of the time. See in this connection Peter Green's interesting review of Jenkyns, Richard, The Victorians and Ancient Greece, in Times Literary Supplement, 20 February 1981, 207–8.Google Scholar

30 Benjamin Jowett was probably the best known exponent of the emphasis on training for public service. See Abbott, Evelyn and Campbell, Lewis, The Life and Letters of Benjamin Jowett, 2 vols. (London, 1897).Google Scholar Americans naturally noted this aristocratic character: Everett, William, On the Cam (Cambridge, 1865), 357,Google Scholar described the universities as “the great training schools for the governing classes.” Hart, , German Universities, 333,Google Scholar wrote that “Oxford and Cambridge are at this day not seats of learning pure and simple, they are the trysting places of the nobility and the bourgeoisie parvenue.” The clerical element was always obvious. See Green, V. H. H., Oxford Common Room: A Study of Lincoln College and Mark Pattison (London, 1957) 37:Google Scholar “The common room was a clerical club, with a general responsibility for supervising the education of the young men who sought membership of the College.” Also Rothblatt, Sheldon, The Revolution of the Dons: Cambridge and Society in Victorian England (New York, 1968);Google ScholaridemTradition and Change in English Liberal Education: An Essay in History and Culture (London, 1976).Google Scholar

31 E.g., “College Life,” Quarterly Review, 73 (12 1843), 109,Google Scholar conceded that no other country could produce the equals of German professors and scholars, but added that English public schools gave “a CHARACTER … elsewhere unattainable, everywhere valued, never effaced. … It is upon this formation of character—a higher aim surely than any mere scientific acquirements—that our Universities and public schools must take their stand.”

32 Ody, Hermann J., Begegnung zwischen Deutschland, England und Frankreich im höheren Schulwesen seit Beginn des 19. Jahrhunderts (Saarbrücken, 1959);Google ScholarWiese, Ludwig, Deutsche Briefe über Englische Erziehung (Berlin, 1852);Google Scholaridem, German Letters on English Education.

33 Liddon, Henry Parry, Life of Edward Bouverie Pusey, 4 vols. (London, 1894–1897), III, 380–84;Google Scholar“Russia,” Quarterly Review, 39 (01 1829), 9:Google Scholar “…a set of young men who certainly pursue their studies with zeal, but who nevertheless are more brutal in conduct, more insolent in manner, more slovenly and ruffian-like in appearance, and more offensive from the fumes of tobacco and beer, onions and sourcrout, in which they are enveloped, than are to be met with in any other part of Europe.” The Quarterly, of course, could always be counted upon to be the most extreme of the great reviews. A later writer in the liberal Edinburgh Review suggested that Pusey did not know what he was talking about. “Liberal Education in England,” Edinburgh Review, 127 (01–04 1868), 81.Google Scholar There were also Germans who thought their universities might benefit from imitation of English residential colleges. See Sybel, , “Die deutschen und die auswärtigen Universitäten, ” 49–54;Google ScholarDrDöllinger, John, “The German Universities, Past and Present,” American Journal of Education, 20:54–57 (1870) [National Series, 49:9–12, 737–65].Google Scholar

34 Liddon, , Life of Edward Bouverie Pusey, III, 383;Google Scholar“Memorials of Oxford,” Quarterly Review, 61 (01 1838), 217:Google Scholar “ … the natural tendency of professorial teaching is to create in the majority of students a blind, bigoted adherence to half-concocted and half-understood theories. … ”

35 “Touching Oxford: A Letter to Professor Nebel,” Blackwooa's Edinburgh Magazine, 79 (02 1856), 179–83.Google Scholar

36 “A Teaching University of London,” Edinburgh Review, 164 (05–10 1886), 255:Google Scholar “Germany is, of course, very unlike England. It will be some time before professors are as honoured here as there. There is something to us inadequate in a life spent in passing the dust of some obscure corner of science or history through sieve after sieve. Our young men of promise prefer the keen rivalry of the learned professions or the chances of literature or journalism, or else they go to the colonies to try their luck, or to India as civil servants.” And see Blake, Robert, Disraeli (London, 1966), 358.Google Scholar

37 No one seriously attempted to portray the English fellows as productive scholars, though some of the critics at the same time expressed admiration for the cultivated tone of English academic society: Ticknor, George, Life, Letters and Journals of George Ticknor, 2 vols. (Boston, 1876), I, 271;Google ScholarAdams, , Education, 201–2;Google ScholarBurgess, , Reminiscenses, 223.Google Scholar But Henry Appleton of St. John's College at Oxford, in his contribution to Essays on Endowment of Research, Pattison, Mark et al. , eds. (London, 1876), 94,Google Scholar characterized the English teaching class as “singularly sterile,” and this can safely be said to have been the consensus.

38 Engle, Arthur“The Emerging Concept of the Academic Profession at Oxford 1800–1854,” The University in Society, Stone, Lawrence, ed., 2 vols. (Princeton, 1974), I, 305–52;Google ScholarStanley, A. P., The Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold, 2 vols., 12th ed. (London, 1881), II, 131;Google ScholarMüller, Max, Appendix in Essays on Endowment, Pattison, et al. , eds. 271;Google ScholarOdy, , Begegnung; Abbott and Campbell, Life and Letters, I, 180, II, 130.Google Scholar The lack of a professionalized teaching class may have had educational drawbacks, but it had the great advantage of making for a more cohesive elite. It seems certain that the social separation between the professoriate and the educated stratum of professional men and political leaders was less sharp than in Germany. Donaldson, J. W., a fellow of Trinity, “Classical Scholarship and Classical Learning,” American Journal of Education, 23:72 (1872) [National Series, 7:27, 439],Google Scholar judged that in England a reputation for scholarship might exist independently of literary production. “This results from the diffusion of scholarlike acquirements in general society, and from the voice of general opinion, which connects the separate links of private circles. In Germany, the social influence of scholarship is non-existent.” Annan, Noel, “The Intellectual Aristocracy,” Studies in Social History: A Tribute to G. M. Trevelyan, Plumb, J. H., ed. (London, 1955), 243–87;Google Scholaridem, Leslie Stephen: His Thought and Character in Relation to His Time (Cambridge, Mass., 1952),Google Scholar has traced the emergence of what he terms an aristocracy of intellect based on a particular type of successful middle-class family. Members of such families were habituated to higher education, they often intermarried, and their children tended to become teachers and scholars. But a narrow professoriate could not develop when fellowships had to be vacated upon marriage, and the new intelligentsia left the universities to enter the professions. As public service was opened to talent, any man of brains could become a gentleman. Only toward the end of the century did this group become poorer and more academic.

39 Sparrow, John, Mark Pattison and the Idea of the University (Cambridge, 1967);Google ScholarPattison, Mark, Suggestions on Academical Organization, with Special Reference to Oxford (Edinburgh, 1868);Google Scholaridem,Memoirs (London, 1885).Google Scholar Pattison, of course, is supposed to have been George Eliot's model for Casaubon in Middlemarch.

40 Abbott, and Campbell, , Life and Letters, II, 125, 129.Google Scholar

41 The Universities in the Nineteenth Century, Sanderson, Michael, ed. (London and Boston, 1975).Google Scholar

42 The mid-century shift has doubtless been overemphasized; in his analysis of the Harvard faculty, “Transformation of American Academic Life,” Robert McCaughey traces a slow process of professionalization with no sharp break around the Civil War. Allmendinger, David F., Paupers and Scholars: The Transformation of Student Life in Nineteenth-Century New England (New York, 1975),Google Scholar argues that the small New England college was significantly different from the usual picture of it as traditional, residential, and outmoded in curriculum.

43 Dwight, Henry Edwin, Travels in the North of Germany (New York, 1829), 184–89.Google Scholar Readers of Andrew White's Autobiography will remember the intensity of his feelings on the subject, and his insistence that Cornell avoid religious affiliation.

44 Even Dickens praised Harvard professors as “men who would shed a grace upon, and do honour to, any society in the civilized world” (Dickens, Charles, American Notes, New Oxford Illustrated Dickens (London, 1966), 27).Google Scholar But there were doubts even about Harvard. George Ticknor abandoned his attempts to reform Harvard in 1825 with the comment, “It is seen that we are neither an University—which we call ourselve—nor a respectable high school—which we ought to be. … ” (Ticknor, , Life, Letters, I, 358–59).Google Scholar For a full account of his effort, see Tyack, David B., George Ticknor and the Boston Brahmins (Cambridge, Mass., 1967).CrossRefGoogle Scholar Adams, Education, was little more enthusiastic about Harvard in the seventies. It is more surprising to find Eliot, Charles W., as late as 1885, Educational Reform: Essays and Addresses (New York, 1898), 145,Google Scholar saying, “As yet we have no university in America—only aspirants to that eminence.”

45 Bryce, James, The American Commonwealth, 3 vols. (London, New York, 1888), III, 426–64;Google ScholarD'Arusmont, Frances Wright, Views of Society and Manners in America (London, 1818–1820), 417;Google ScholarFreeman, Edward A., Some Impressions of the United States (New York, 1883), 180–85;Google ScholarSchaff, Philip, America: A Sketch of Its Political, Social, and Religious Character, Miller, Perry, ed. (Cambridge, Mass., 1961), 59–63;CrossRefGoogle ScholarCapt. Marryat, Frederick, A Diary in America, with Remarks on Its Institutions, 3 vols. (London, 1839), III, 282–301.Google Scholar Useful surveys are Rapson, Richard L., Britons View America: Travel Commentary, 1860–1935 (Seattle, 1971);Google ScholarMesick, Jane L., The English Traveller in America, 1785–1835 (New York, 1922).Google Scholar Also This Was America, Handlin, ed.; Nevins, Allan, American Social History as Recorded by British Travellers (New York, 1923).Google ScholarNevins cautions (pp. 111–12)Google Scholar that reviews in the conservative quarterlies of books by British travellers in America tended to emphasize all that was unfavorable to this country.

46 Porter, Noah, The American Colleges and the American Public (New Haven, 1870);Google Scholar on Kirkland, see Tyack, , George Ticknor, 85;Google ScholarWayland, Francis J. and Wayland, H. L., A Memoir of the Life and Labors of Francis Wayland, 2 vols. (New York, 1868);Google ScholarPerry, Charles M., Henry Philip Tappan, Philosopher and University President (Ann Arbor, 1933).Google Scholar

47 Ringer, Fritz K., Education and Society in Modern Europe (Bloomington, Ind., 1979), 247.Google Scholar

48 E.g., Main, Jackson Turner, The Social Structure of Revolutionary America (Princeton, 1965).CrossRefGoogle ScholarTyack, , George Ticknor, 101,Google Scholar reports Joseph Cogswell's comment that German students had a motive for study since only successful graduates would gain access to the professions, while in America students wasted time to such a degree that a diploma became more a certificate of residence than a seal of competence.

49 Haber, Samuel, “The Professions and Higher Education in America: A Historical View,” in Higher Education and the Labor Market, Gordon, May S., ed. (New York, 1974), 246–52;Google ScholarJohnson, , “Education and Professional Life Styles”;Google ScholarCalhoun, , Professional Lives.Google ScholarPersons, Stow, The Decline of American Gentility (New York, 1973), 188,Google Scholar writes that as late as 1884 a majority of American professional men in law, medicine, engineering, public service, and journalism did not hold the B.A. degree.

50 E.g., [Harris, W. A. and Rivington, Alexander], Reminiscenses of America in 1869 (London, 1870), 158–67;Google ScholarHamilton, Thomas, Men and Manners in America (Philadelphia, 1833), 191–98;Google ScholarTrollope, Frances M., Domestic Manners of the Americans (New York, 1904), 296;Google ScholarMarryat, , Diary, 111, 286–87;Google Scholar“Travels in North America,” Quarterly Review, 41 (11 1829), 424–25.Google Scholar

51 Rudolph, Frederick, The American College and University: A History (New York, 1965), 137–50.Google Scholar Rudolph notes that often the debating club or literary society had a larger library than the college. An interesting article in this connection is Scott, Donald M., “The Popular Lecture and the Creation of a Public in Mid-Nineteenth Century America,” The Journal of American History, 66 (03 1980), 791–809.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

52 Ringer, , Education and Society, 247ff.,Google Scholar sees American colleges as institutions for the middle class, and Main, , Social Structure, 240–69,Google Scholar writes that access to higher education depended on location, family occupation, and wealth. Allmendinger, Paupers and Scholars, gives evidence that there was an influx of poor boys at the New England colleges in the period before 1860.

53 Bryce, , American Commonwealth, 452,Google Scholar commented on the power of the American college president. Weber, Max, “The Power of the State and the Dignity of the Academic Calling in Imperial Germany: The Writings of Max Weber on University Problems,” Shils, Edward, ed. and trans., Minerva, 11 (10 1973), 599,Google Scholar wrote: “The United States have an Althoff at every university. The American university president is such a man.” Althoff was the overbearing Prussian official in the Ministry of Religion and Instruction late in the century. Also see Peterson, George F., The New England College in the Age of the University (Amherst, 1964);Google ScholarSchmidt, George P., The Old-Time College President (New York, 1930);Google ScholarMetzger, Walter P. and Hofstadter, Richard, The Development of Academic Freedom in the United States (New York, 1955).Google Scholar

54 As late as 1871, when James Burrell Angell was inaugurated as president of the University of Michigan, he told his audience that “it seems to have dawned but recently on men's minds that teaching in the College or University is a special profession” rather than a haven for men who had failed elsewhere. Exercises at Inauguration of President Angell and the Laying of the Cornerstone of University Hall (Ann Arbor, 1871), 14.Google Scholar

55 Dwight, , Travels, 68–77, 182–84;Google ScholarHamilton, , Men and Manners, 196,Google Scholar judged that “at present an American might study every book within the limits of the Union, and still be regarded in many parts of Europe—especially in Germany—as a man comparatively ignorant.” Tyack, , George Ticknor, 54,Google Scholar quotes Ticknor's lament at Göttingen that “we are mortified because we have no learned men, and yet make it physically impossible for our scholars to become such.”

56 Long, Literary Pioneers; Diehl, Americans and German Scholarship.

57 Bristed, Charles Astor, Five Years in an English University (New York, 1852), 46–47;Google ScholarSylvester, James Joseph, American Journal of Education, 28 (1878) [International Series, 3, p. 623];Google ScholarLife and Works of Horace Mann, Mann, Mary, ed. (Boston, 1865–1868), 223–24;Google ScholarWayland and Wayland, Memoir, II, 41;Google ScholarEverett, , On the Cam.Google Scholar

58 Hawkins, Hugh, Between Harvard and America: The Educational Leadership of Charles W. Eliot (New York, 1972);Google Scholaridem, Pioneer: A History of the Johns Hopkins University, 1874–1889 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1960).Google Scholar Daniel Coit Gilman is usually seen as the creator of the first American university on the German model, but Hawkins concludes (p. 37) that direct German influence on Gilman was slight. Andrew White seems also to have developed his own ideas largely independently of German examples.

59 Herbst, Jurgen, The German Historical School in American Scholarship (Ithaca, N.Y., 1969);Google ScholarBonner, Thomas N., American Doctors and German Universities: A Chapter in International Intellectual Relations 1870–1914 (Lincoln, Neb., 1963);Google Scholar Diehl, Americans and German Scholarship; Brubacher, John S. and Willis, Rudy, Higher Education in Transition: An American History: 1636–1956 (New York, 1958), 174–75;Google ScholarVeysey, Laurence R., The Emergence of the American University (Chicago, 1965), 126–28;Google ScholarHigham, John, History: Professional Scholarship in America (New York, 1973).Google Scholar

60 Research in America seems to have taken on some of the almost mystical overtones that went along with the broader notions of “pure knowledge” and “knowledge for its own sake” in Germany. See Veysey, , Emergence, 149;Google ScholarStorr, Richard J., The Beginning of the Future: A Historical Approach to Graduate Education in the Arts and Sciences (New York, 1973), 48–49.Google ScholarHall, G. Stanley, Life and Confessions of a Psychologist (New York, 1923), 338,Google Scholar opines: “the very highest vocation of man—research. … research is nothing less than a religion. … ”

61 Ross, Dorothy, “The Development of the Social Sciences,” in Organization of Knowledge, Oleson, and Voss, , eds., 107–38;Google Scholar Haskell. Emergence of Professional Social Science.

62 Hawkins, , Between Harvard and America, 53.Google Scholar The relationship between research and teaching has been a longstanding problem in American higher education. To anyone exposed over time to even modest amounts of academic rhetoric it will come as no surprise to learn that the question has usually been evaded by the bland and so far undemonstrated assumption that research and teaching not only do not conflict but are mutually reinforcing. See Hawkins, , Pioneer, 64–65, 217;Google ScholarRoyce, , “Present Ideals,” 376–88;Google ScholarJordan, David Starr, “Inaugural Address,” in Builders of American Universities: Inaugural Addresses, Weaver, David Andrew, ed., 2 vols. (Alton, 111., 1952), I, 356;Google ScholarYoemans, Henry Aaron, Abbott Lawrence Lowell, 1856–1943 (Cambridge, Mass., 1948), 274.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

63 Hawkins, , Pioneer, 126:Google Scholar “Whether consciously or not, these men were building a new profession in America, that of university professor.”

64 One sign of professionalization is usually taken to be the increased distance between specialist and amateur. This can be seen very clearly in natural science. See Turner, , “Victorian Conflict”;Google ScholarMiller, , Dollars for Research;Google ScholarJohnson, , “Education and Professional Life Styles”;Google ScholarMendelsohn, , “Emergence of Science.”Google Scholar In the nature of the case the separation is not so radical in the arts, as is pointed out by Veysey, “Plural Organized Worlds.” Another mark of professionalization has been seen in the incorporation of an occupation's training within the university. Here, see Bullogh, Vern L., “Education and Professionalization: An Historical Example,” History of Education Quarterly, 10 (Summer 1970), 160–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The way in which the Ph.D. degree was increasingly identified with a specialized teaching certificate might repay study. See Yoemans, , Abbott Lawrence Lowell, 524.Google Scholar

65 Haskell, , Emergence of Professional Social Science;Google ScholarPersons, , Decline of American Gentility;Google ScholarSproat, John G., The “Best Men”: Liberal Reformers in the Gilded Age (New York, 1968);Google ScholarHoogenbawm, Ari, Outlawing the Spoils: A History of the Civil Service Reform Movement, 1865–1883 (Urbana, 111., 1961);Google ScholarWelter, Rush, Popular Education and Democratic Thought in America (New York, 1962).Google Scholar These studies bring out the antidemocratic implications of Brahmin thought. Hoogenbawm argues that reformers of the civil service, at least initially, were not so much repelled by corruption as frustrated by their own inability to win government posts.

66 Welter, , Popular Education, 194–99,Google Scholar sees Eliot's emphasis on the expert as untypical, but Hawkins, , Between Harvard and America, 167,Google Scholar believes the idea of the scholar expert was part of the times, as in the Wisconsin idea, which stressed the university's obligation to serve thecommunity in every way possible, and was a link to the social efficiency movement of the early twentieth century.

67 Cordasco, Francesco, The Shaping of American Graduate Education: Daniel Coit Gilman and the Protean Ph.D. (Totowa, N.J., 1973), 92.Google Scholar

68 Eliot, , Educational Reform, 412.Google Scholar

69 Shils, Edward, The Intellectuals and the Powers and Other Essays (Chicago, 1972),Google Scholar contrasts nineteenth-century British intellectuals with American intellectuals, who Shils believes always felt alienated and cut off from the centers of power.

70 There was a large element of such humanism in Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi's thinking, but not so much as is sometimes assumed. Wilhelm von Humboldt wanted self-fulfillment to be integral to the primary school, but his hopes never began to be realized and probably could not have been in the economic and social conditions of his time.

71 Eliot, , Educational Reform, 201, 279–80.Google Scholar

72 Madsen, David, The National University: Enduring Dream of the USA (Detroit, 1966), 115–16.Google Scholar