The German Genius

by Peter Watson

  49. For a discussion of his symbolism, see Joseph Leo Koerner, Caspar David Friedrich and the Subject of Landscape (London: Reaktion Books, 1990), pp. 122f. See also Hubertus Gassner, ed., Caspar David Friedrich: Die Erfindung der Romantik (Munich: Hirmer, 2006); and Werner Hofmann, Caspar David Friedrich: Naturwirklichkeit und Kunstwahrheit (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2000).

  50. Hans-Georg Gadamer thought that Friedrich’s emphasis on community confirmed that its disintegration was taking place. Koerner, Caspar David Friedrich, p. 130, and Chapter 41, p. 757 of this book.

  CHAPTER 10: HUMBOLDT’s GIFT: THE INVENTION OF RESEARCH AND THE PRUSSIAN (PROTESTANT) CONCEPT OF LEARNING

  1. R. Steven Turner, “The Prussian Universities and the Research Imperative, 1806–1848” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 1972), p. 1.

  2. Ibid., p. 3.

  3. Ibid., p. 4.

  4. Ibid., p. 8.

  5. Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Koch, ed., Die preussischen Universitäten: Eine Sammlung der Verordnungen, welche die Verfassung und Verwaltung dieser Anstalten betreffen. 2 vols. (Berlin, 1839–1840), vol. 2, pp. 531–532.

  6. Ibid., p. 181.

  7. William Clark, Academic Charisma and the Origins of the Research University (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), p. 211.

  8. Turner, “Prussian Universities,” p. 223.

  9. Ibid., p. 229.

  10. R. Köpke, “Zum Andenken an Dr John Schulze,” Zeitschrift für das Gymnasialwesen 23 (1869): 245–256.

  11. Turner, “Prussian Universities,” pp. 247–248.

  12. Clark, Academic Charisma, p. 218, for the distinction between erudition and research.

  13. Turner, “Prussian Universities,” p. 252.

  14. Conrad Varrentrapp, Johannes Schulze und das höhere preussische Unterrichtwesen in seiner zeit (Leipzig, 1889), pp. 447–448.

  15. Maximilian Lenz, Die Geschichte der königlichen Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin. 4 vols. (Halle, 1910–1919), vol. 2, pp. 470–472.

  16. Clark, Academic Charisma, p. 237.

  17. Turner, “Prussian Universities,” p. 270.

  18. Ibid., p. 279.

  19. Wilhelm von Humboldt, “Ueber die innere und äussere Organisation der höheren wissenschaftlichen Anstalten in Berlin (Unvollendete Denkschrift, geschreiben 1810. Erstmals veröffentlicht 1896),” in Ernst Anrich, ed., Die Idee der deutschen Universität (Darmstadt, 1964), pp. 377–378. Quoted in Turner, “Prussian Universities,” note 3.

  20. Clark, Academic Charisma, pp. 178–181. Turner, “Prussian Universities,” p. 285.

  21. Eduard Fueter, Die Geschichte der neueren Historiographie (Munich, 1936), pp. 415ff.

  22. Clark, Academic Charisma, p. 158.

  23. Turner, “Prussian Universities,” pp. 293–294.

  24. Conrad Bursian, Geschichte der klassischen Philologie in Deutschland. 2 vols. (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1883), vol. 1, pp. 526–527. Johnson reprint (New York, 1965).

  25. Turner, “Prussian Universities,” p. 303.

  26. Clark, Academic Charisma, p. 287.

  27. Turner, “Prussian Universities,” p. 325.

  28. Anrich, Idee der deutschen Universität, p. 377.

  29. F. W. J. Schelling, On University Studies, trans. E. S. Morgan (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1966), pp. 26–27.

  30. Turner, “Prussian Universities,” p. 373.

  31. L. Wiese, Das höhere Schulwesen in Preussen: Historische-statistische Darstellung. 4 vols. (Berlin, 1864–1902), vol. 1, pp. 420f.

  32. According to the historian Max Lenz, the percentage of students at Berlin in the lower faculty studying mathematics and physics grew from 6 percent in 1810 to 16 percent in 1860, and in chemistry from 1 percent to 15 percent during the same period. At the same time, classical philology students grew from 22 percent to 37 percent. Wiese, Das höhere Schulwesen, vol. 1, p. 24.

  33. Turner, “Prussian Universities,” p. 391.

  34. Dietrich Gerhard and William Norvin, eds., Die Briefe Barthold George Niebuhrs. 2 vols. (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1926), vol. 2, p. 222.

  35. Luise Neumann, Franz Neumann: Erinnerungsblätter von seiner Tochter (Leipzig: J. C. B. Mohr [P. Siebeck], 1904), p. 360.

  36. Turner, “Prussian Universities,” p. 403.

  37. Ibid., p. 404.

  38. See, for example, Justus Liebig, “Der Zustand der Chemie in Preussen,” Annalen der Chemie und Pharmacie 34 (1884): 123ff. Quoted in Turner, “Prussian Universities,” pp. 408 and 419.

  39. Helmut Schelsky, Einsamkeit und Freiheit: Idee und Gestalt der deutschen Universität und ihrer Reformen (Reinbeck bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1963), pp. 131ff.

  40. Varrentrapp, Johannes Schulze, pp. 350ff.

  41. Lenz, Geschichte, vol. 3, p. 530.

  42. Clark, Academic Charisma, pp. 246ff. Turner, “Prussian Universities,” p. 453.

  43. F. A. W. Diesterweg, Ueber das Verderben auf den deutschen Universitäten (Essen, 1836), pp. 1f.

  CHAPTER 11: THE EVOLUTION OF ALIENATION

  1. Malcolm Pasley, ed., Germany: A Companion to German Studies (London: Methuen, 1972), p. 393.

  2. See p. 200 of the English translation of Schelling’s The Grounding of Positive Philosophy, trans. and ed. Bruce Matthews (Albany: State University of New York Press), 2007.

  3. Ibid., p. 36. See also Friedrich Schelling, Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature, trans. Errol E. Harris and Peter Heath, with an introduction by Robert Stern (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).

  4. For a good translation, more detailed than there is space for here, see Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: Lectures on the Philosophy of Spirit; 1827–1828, trans. with an introduction by Robert R. Williams (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 18ff and 165ff.

  5. Pasley, ed. Germany, pp. 397–398. See also Thomas Sören Hoffmann, George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: Eine Propädeutik (Wiesbaden: Morix, 2004), pp. 51ff. for his system building, and 278.

  6. Pasley, ed. Germany, p. 398. For a discussion of Hegel’s language, see John McCumber, The Company of Words: Hegel, Language and Systematic Philosophy (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1993), especially part 3, pp. 215ff.; and Klaus Grotsch, ed., Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: Gesammelte Werke; in Verbindung mit der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft herausgegeben von der Nordrhein-Westfälischen Akademie der Wissenschaften: Volume 10: Nürnberger Gymnasialkurse und Gymnasialreden (1808–1816) (Hamburg: Meiner, 2006).

  7. Pasley, ed. Germany, p. 399.

  8. Ibid., p. 401.

  9. McCumber, Company of Words, p. 328, feels this is a circular, self-referential argument.

  10. Hoffmann, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, pp. 197ff.

  11. These different forms, of course, have ethical and economic implications. See Albena Neschen, Ethik und Ökonomiein in Hegels Philosophie und in modernen wirtschaftsethischen Entwürfen (Hamburg: Meiner, 2008).

  12. Pasley, ed. Germany, p. 406.

  13. David T. McLellan, The Young Hegelians and Marx (London: Macmillan, 1969), p. 2.

  14. Wilhelm Lang, “Ferdinand Bauer und David Friedrich Strauss,” Preussische Jahrbücher 160 (1915): pp. 474–504.

  15. Heston Harris, David Friedrich Strauss and His Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), pp. 41ff. For his dismissal from the seminary, see pp. 58ff.

  16. C. A. Eschenmayer, Der Ischariothismus unserer Tage (Tübingen: Ludwig Friedrich Fues, 1835). See also Jörg F. Sandberger, David Friedrich Strauss als theologischer Hegelianer: Mit unveröffentlichten Briefen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1972); and David F. Strauss, The Old Faith and the New: A Confession, authorized translation from the sixth edition by Mathilde Blind (London: Asher, 1873).

  17. McLellan, Young Hegelians, p. 88. Ludwig Feuerbach, Das Wesen des Christentums. 2 vols. (Berlin: Akademi-Verlage, 1956). Originally published by Otto Wigand in Leipzig, 1841. See chapter 10 for his analysis of mysticism.

  18. Pasley, ed. Germany, p. 407.

  19. Josef Winiger, Ludwig Feuerbach: Denker der Menschlic
hkeit; Biographie (Berlin: Aufbau Taschenbuch, 2004). Winiger describes Feuerbach as the “Luther of Philosophy.” See also Marx W. Wartofsky, Feuerbach (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1977).

  20. McLellan, Young Hegelians, pp. 107 and 110.

  21. For other influences on Marx, see William Lea McBride, The Philosophy of Marx (London: Hutchinson: 1977), pp. 21–48.

  22. McBride, Philosophy of Marx, p. 38. McLellan, Young Hegelians, p. 145.

  23. McLellan, Young Hegelians, p. 157.

  24. Bruce Mazlish, The Meaning of Karl Marx (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 13.

  25. Ibid., p. 23.

  26. Ibid., pp. 37–38.

  27. Ibid., p. 45.

  28. Ibid., p. 48.

  29. Ibid., p. 54.

  30. Heinz Frederick Peters, Red Jenny: A Life with Karl Marx (London: Allen & Unwin, 1986).

  31. Mazlish, Meaning of Karl Marx, pp. 59–60. There had been a plan at one stage for the paper to be edited by an equally colorful economist, Friedrich List. List, from Württemberg, had spent time in jail for advocating political reform a little too ardently and had been forced to emigrate to the United States, returning eventually to Leipzig as U.S. Consul. His theories had Keynesian overtones (he advocated some government intervention in the economy), but he was chiefly known for his theory of “national economics,” that national economies should always be viewed as a whole and that, therefore, the interests of the majority should always come first.

  32. Ibid., p. 61.

  33. Ibid., p. 63.

  34. Bertell Ollmann, Alienation: Marx’s Conception of Man in Capitalist Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971). See Part 2 for Marx’s conception of human nature.

  35. Mazlish, Meaning of Karl Marx, p. 80.

  36. Ibid., p. 84.

  37. Ollmann, Alienation. See Part 3, pp. 168ff., for the theory of alienation and the labor theory of value.

  38. Mazlish, Meaning of Karl Marx, p. 90.

  39. Ibid., p. 94.

  40. Ollmann, Alienation, p. 215.

  41. Mazlish, Meaning of Karl Marx, p. 99.

  42. Mark Cowling, ed., The Communist Manifesto: New Interpretations (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998).

  43. Mazlish, Meaning of Karl Marx, p. 104.

  44. Ibid., p. 105.

  45. For a history of the book, see Francis Wheen, Marx’s “Das Kapital”: A Biography (London: Atlantic Books, 2006).

  46. Ollmann, Alienation, p. 168.

  47. Mazlish, Meaning of Karl Marx, p. 111.

  48. Ibid., p. 113.

  49. Ibid., p. 115.

  50. Ibid., p. 150.

  51. J. D. Hunley, The Life and Thought of Friedrich Engels (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1991), p. 1.

  52. The attraction of the two men to each other has been explored by Terrell Carver in his Marx and Engels: The Intellectual Relationship (London: Wheatsheaf Books, 1983).

  53. Hans Peter Bleuel, Friedrich Engels: Bürger und Revolutionär; Die zeitgerechte Biographie eines grossen Deutschen (Bern: Scherz, 1981).

  54. Hunley, Life and Thought, pp. 10 and 14.

  55. Engels wasn’t alone in his concern. See Michael Levin, The Condition of England Question: Carlyle, Mill, Engels (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1981).

  56. Tristram Hunt, The Frock-Coated Communist: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels (London: Allen Lane, 2009), p. 243. Hunley, Life and Thought, p. 17.

  57. Hunley, Life and Thought, p. 24.

  58. Carver, Marx and Engels, p. 144.

  59. Hunley, Life and Thought, p. 40.

  60. Gérard Bekerman, Marx and Engels: A Conceptual Concordance, trans. Terrell Carver (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983).

  61. Hunley, Life and Thought, p. 108.

  62. Ibid., p. 123.

  63. Hunt, The Frock-Coated Communist, pp. 280–281. Franz Neubauer, Marx-Engels Bibliographie (Boppard am Rhein: Boldt, 1979). Carver says their relations were “unruffled” to the end but after Marx’s death Engels “established a series of ambiguities that would otherwise have been fairly (though not completely) straightforward issues.” For these see the first chapter of his Marx and Engels, titled “Second Fiddle?”

  CHAPTER 12: GERMAN HISTORICISM:

  “A UNIQUE EVENT IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS”

  1. George G. Iggers, Leopold von Ranke and the Shaping of the Historical Discipline (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1990), pp. 38–39.

  2. Ibid., p. 40.

  3. Ibid., p. 42.

  4. Ibid., p. 57.

  5. Hermann Klencke, Lives of the Brothers Humboldt, Alexander and William, translated and arranged from the German of Klencke by Gustav Schlesier (London: Ingra, Cook & Co., 1852).

  6. Iggers, Leopold von Ranke, p. 61.

  7. Meinecke’s views are set out in Staat und Persönlichkeit (Berlin: E. S. Mittler & Sohn, 1933), which has chapters on Troeltsch, Stein, Humboldt, and Droysen (see Chapter 21 of this book). See also Machiavellism: The Doctrine of Raison d’État and Its Place in Modern History, trans. Douglas Scott (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1957). This book looks at the links between Machiavellism, Idealism, and Historicism in German history, pp. 343ff. In Cosmopolitanism and the National State, trans. Robert B. Kimber (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1970), Meinecke looks at Humboldt, Schlegel, and Fichte. In Historicism: The Rise of a New Historical Outlook (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972), he explores how the German movement grew out of the European (English, French, Italian) Enlightenment.

  8. See Walther Hofer, Geschichtschreibung und Weltanchauung: Betrachtungen zum Werk Friedrich Meineckes (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1950), pp. 232ff., for ideas about causality.

  9. G. P. Gooch, History and Historians in the Nineteenth Century (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1913), p. 12.

  10. Thorkild Hansen, Arabia Felix: The Danish Expedition of 1761–1767, trans. James and Kathleen McFarlane (London: Collins, 1964), p. 34.

  11. Gooch, History and Historians, p. 23.

  12. James M. McGlathery, ed., The Brothers Grimm and Folklore (Illinois University Press, 1988), especially pp. 66ff., 91ff., 164ff., and 205ff. For their links to Savigny, see Gabriele Seitz, Die Brüder Grimm: Leben-Werk-Zeit (Munich: Winkler, 1984), 37ff. With many amusing drawings.

  13. Gooch, History and Historians, pp. 55–57.

  14. There are many editions of the Grimm folk tales and myths. I have used the “complete edition” with illustrations by Josef Scharl (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1948). The drawings/paintings interspersed in the text maintain the mood of the stories.

  15. Gooch, History and Historians, pp. 67–68.

  16. Ibid., p. 102. See also Wolfgang J. Mommsen, ed., Leopold von Ranke und die moderne Geschichtswissenshaft (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1988), which explores the links between Ranke and Hegel and Ranke and Darwin. With essays by Peter Burke, Rudolf Vierhaus, and Thomas Nipperdey. See also Theodore H. von Laue, Leopold Ranke: The Formative Years, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1950.

  17. Gooch, History and Historians, p. 79.

  18. Hanno Helbling, Leopold von Ranke und der historisches Stil (Zurich: J. Weiss, 1953).

  19. Gooch, History and Historians, p. 88.

  20. Helbling, Leopold von Ranke, pp. 70ff.

  21. Gooch, History and Historians, p. 102.

  22. For a discussion of Ranke’s view of politics, see Laue, Leopold Ranke, pp. 139ff. and pp. 181ff. for his essay on the Great Powers.

  23. Iggers, Leopold von Ranke, p. 10.

  24. For Ranke’s legacy, see Hans Heinz Krill, Die Rankerenaissance: Max Lenz und Erich Marcks: Ein Beitrag zum historisch-politischen Denken in Deutschland, 1880–1935 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1962). See also Friedrich Meinecke, Ausgewählter Briefwechsel, ed. Ludwig Dehio and Peter Classen (Stuttgart: K. F. Koehler, 1962). The many references to Ranke in Meinecke’s copious correspondence, more than to any other figure, except Burckhardt and Bismarck, show the influence of the man.

 
; 25. Iggers, Leopold von Ranke, pp. 18–21.

  CHAPTER 13: THE HEROIC AGE OF BIOLOGY

  1. John Buckingham, Chasing the Molecule (Stroud: Sutton, 2004), p. 1.

  2. His priority was suspect even at the time of the celebration. See also Susanna Rudofsky and John H. Wotiz, “Psychiatrists and the Dream Accounts of August Kekulé,” Ambix 25 (1988): 31–38.

  3. Buckingham, Chasing the Molecule, p. 2.

  4. Ibid., p. 29.

  5. Jacob Volhard, Justus von Liebig. 2 vols. (Leipzig: J. A. Barth, 1909).

  6. For Berzelius, see Eran M. Melhado and Tore Frängsmyr, eds., Enlightenment Science in the Romantic Era: The Chemistry of Berzelius and the Cultural Setting (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). Chapter 5, by Alan J. Rocke, is on Berzelius’s role in the development of organic chemistry. Chapter 8, by John Hadley Brooke, looks at dualism and the rise of organic chemistry.

  7. Melhado and Frängsmyr, Enlightenment Science, pp. 171ff, for Isomorphism.

  8. August Wilhelm Hofmann, The Life-Work of Liebig: Faraday Lecture for 1875 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1876). Quoted in Buckingham, Chasing the Molecule, p. 107.

  9. Buckingham, Chasing the Molecule, p. 109.

  10. Ibid., p. 112.

  11. Ibid., p. 115.

  12. Ibid., p. 118. Many derivatives of benzene—vanilla and cinnamon among others—had in fact been known since ancient times as pleasant-smelling oils and spices. Von Liebig was to derive the name “benzene” from benzoic acid, obtained from the gum benzoin, a product of the East Indies.

  13. E. Mitscherlich, “Über das Benzol und die Sauren der Oel-und Talgarten,” Liebig’s Annalen 9 (1834): 39–56.

  14. Buckingham, Chasing the Molecule, p. 122.

  15. Édouard Grimaux and Charles Gerhardt Jr., Charles Gerhardt: Sa vie, son oeuvre, sa correspondence (Paris: Masson, 1900), p. ii.

  16. C. A. Russell, A History of Valency (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1971), p. 83.

  17. Richard Anschütz, August Kekulé. 2 vols. (Berlin: Verlag Chemie, 1929), vol.1, p. 38.

  18. Buckingham, Chasing the Molecule, p. 185.

  19. Ibid., p. 187.

  20. Robert Schwarz, Aus Justus Liebigs und Friedrich Wöhlers Briefwechsel in den Jahren 1829– 1873 (Weinheim: Verlag Chemie, 1958), p. 272.