Howard, Thomas Albert - Protestant Theology and The Making of The Modern German University (2006) PDF

P ROTE S TA N T T H E O LO G Y A N D T H E M A K I N G
OF THE MODERN GERMAN UNIVERSITY

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Protestant Theology
and the Making of
the Modern German
University
T H O M A S A L B E RT H OWA R D
1
3
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Howard, Thomas A. (Thomas Albert), 1967-
Protestant theology and the making of the modern German
university / Thomas Albert Howard.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and Index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-19-926685-2 (alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-19-926685-9 (alk. paper)
1. Universities and colleges–Germany–History. 2. Protestant
churches–Germany–Doctrines–History. 3. Theology, Doctrinal–
Germany–History. 4. Church and college–Germany–History. I. Title.
LA727.H69 2006
378.43’09–dc22 2005030158
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ISBN 0-19-926685-9 978- 0-19-926685-2
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To my parents, Tommy and Pat Howard
Acknowledgements
‘If I were not a king,’ James I of England once said, ‘I would be a university
man.’ While there are certainly unsavory aspects of academic life, my experi-
ence in writing this book makes me appreciate King James’ sentiment. And
even if it falls short of the splendors of regal life, work on this project has
brought me into contact with people and places, institutions and ideas, to
whom and for which I am deeply thankful.
This book began to take shape while I was in residence (1997–9) at
Valparaiso University as a postdoctoral fellow in the Lilly Fellows Program
in Humanities and the Arts. I am especially grateful for the leaders of this
program, Mark R. Schwehn and Arlin G. Meyer. Their example of a sapiens et
eloquens pietas and their support of my academic vocation has had a
deeper impact on me than they probably suspect. I am also thankful to the
Pew Scholars Program, which generously supported this project during the
academic year 2000–1. A travel/study grant from the Deutsche Akademische
Austauschdienst (DAAD) allowed me to pursue my research in Berlin during a
particularly cold German winter. I am grateful to the University of Virginia’s
Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, which supported this project in the
spring of 2003. The director of this Wne institute, James Davison Hunter, has
been especially encouraging of my intellectual pursuits over the years. I am
equally grateful to the Erasmus Institute at the University of Notre Dame,
where as a visiting Carey Fellow (2003–4), I was able, at long last, to bring this
project to completion. I thank the Erasmus Institute’s leadership and staV,
particularly Terri O’Bryan, Dianne Phillips, Kathleen Sobieralski, Robert E.
Sullivan, and James C. Turner, for their support and assistance. For their
commentary on my work, I would also like to thank my co-fellows or
‘‘Erasmians’’, including John Howe, Darcia Narvaez, Haien Park, Morgan Powell,
Neslihan Senocak, Bradford Whitener, and Falk Wunderlich. At Notre Dame,
I also beneWted from the feedback of George Marsden and Robert Norton.
I owe a debt to the German Historical Institute in Washington DC,
especially to two of its fellows, Philipp Löser and Christoph Strupp, who
kindly invited me to a workshop in the spring of 2001. Here I was able to
present portions of my work, subsequently published as ‘German Academic
Theology in America: The Case of Edward Robinson and Philip SchaV ’ in
History of Universities, volume 18 (January 2003): 102–23. A German trans-
lation of this article has since appeared in Philipp Löser and Christoph Strupp
(eds.), Universität der Gelehrten—Universität der Experten: Adaptionen
Acknowledgements vii
deutscher Wissenschaft in den USA des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart:
Franz Steiner Verlag, 2005), 31–52. I thank the editors of History of Univer-
sities and the Franz Steiner Verlag for allowing me to reprint some of this
material here.
My home institution, Gordon College in Wenham, Massachusetts, deserves
special recognition. It has oVered me an environment of thoughtful colleagues
and students, where faith seeks understanding and often Wnds it. My
colleagues in the history department have been patient and understanding
as we together have laboured to balance the demands of teaching, research,
and myriad other institutional responsibilities. I am particularly grateful
to count the Provost of the College, Mark Sargent, and the Chair of the
History Department, Jennifer Hevelone-Harper, among my most unstinting
supporters.
Then there is Martha Crain, who, among other obligations, handles the
interlibrary loan requests for the College. Her eVorts and skills (which include
Xuent German and keen historical interests) have contributed immeasurably
to the success of the project. I hope she too takes pride, and relief, in its
completion.
Across the Atlantic, I am grateful for the conversations and encouragement
of several scholars. Professor Kurt-Victor Selge, Emeritus Professor of the
Humboldt University of Berlin and member of the Berlin-Brandenburg
Akademie der Wissenschaften, took an early interest in this project and
steered my wandering curiosity in productive directions. Professor Hartmut
Lehmann of the Max Planck Institut für Geschichte in Göttingen listened
patiently to a number of naive questions and made suggestive pointers; I hope
this work exhibits, at least to a degree, his call for more serious work in
transatlantic comparative religious history.
I am thankful too for the correspondence of Walter Rüegg, formerly rector
of the University of Frankfurt am Main and a masterful historian of European
universities. He graciously sent me material now published in Walter Rüegg
(ed.), A History of the University in Europe, iii. Universities in the Nineteenth
and Early Twentieth Century, 1800–1945 (Cambridge University Press, 2004).
Finally, I owe gratitude to the Bologna-based fondazione per le scienze religiose
Giovanni XXIII, particularly to its directors Massimo Faggioli and Alberto
Melloni. They invited me to a conference in Assisi, Italy, where I was able to
present aspects of my research on the theologian and church historian Adolf
von Harnack. A revised version of my presentation was subsequently pub-
lished in Massimo Faggioli and Alberto Melloni (eds.), Religious Studies in the
Twentieth Century: A Survey on Disciplines, Cultures and Questions (Münster:
LIT Verlag, 2006). I am thankful to be granted permission to reprint some of
this material here.
viii Acknowledgements
Spending time in excellent libraries and archives has been a particularly
rewarding aspect of this project. These include the Niedersächische Staats-
und Universitäts-Bibliothek in Göttingen, Göttingen’s Universitätsarchiv, the
Humboldt-Universität Bibliothek, the Humboldt Universitätsarchiv, the
Humboldt-Universität Zweigbibliothek in theology, Berlin’s Frei Universität
Bibliothek, the library of the Friedrich Meinecke Institut, the Stadtsbibliothek
zu Berlin Preussischer Kulturbesitz, the Geheim Staatsarchiv Preussischer
Kulturbesitz in Dahlem, Oxford’s Bodleian Library, Harvard’s Widener Li-
brary, the Andover-Harvard Theological Library, and Boston University’s
Mugar Memorial Library. For the helpful and patient staV at all of these
Wne institutions, I am deeply grateful.
Oxford University Press is a model of professionalism and excellence. The
various editors that I have worked with, as well as the anonymous readers
procured by the Press, deserve many words of gratitude. They have made this
a better book. I claim responsibility for any lingering oversights or general
wrongheadedness.
Daniel Smith served as an invaluable research assistant, one who—quite
literally—went the extra mile. I therefore thank him and also Sarah Carlson-
Lier, who provided help in the Wnal stages of preparing the manuscript.
Other individuals who have oVered helpful criticism or an encouraging
word along the way include Stephen G. Alter, Nicholas Brooks, Eric Carlsson,
Richard Crouter, David J. Diephouse, D. G. Hart, Kirsten L. Heacock, Harold
Heie, David H. Kelsey, Allan Megill, Gilbert Meilaender, H. C. Erik Midelfort,
Richard Weikart, and George S. Williamson. A hearty thanks to all.
Insofar as this book is now part of the fabric of my life, my smart and
cherished wife, Agnes, and our children, Elizabeth, Hannah and Benjamin
should be mentioned too. It is good that they are. It is good to have a family.
This book is dedicated to my parents, Tommy and Pat Howard.
T.A.H.
Wenham, Massachusetts
22 December 2005
Contents
Abbreviations xi
1. Introduction 1
1. Theology, Modernity, and the German University 1
2. On the State and Modern Science ‘in the German Sense’ 13
3. Plan of Study 35
4. Broader Considerations, or ‘the Pathos of Modern Theology’ 38
2. Sacra Facultas and the Coming of German Modernity 45
1. Introduction 45
2. The Medieval Legacy 48
3. Humanism, the Reformation, and the Universities 60
4. The Eighteenth Century: Decline and Critique 80
5. The Way Forward: Halle and Göttingen 87
6. ‘Torchbearer or Trainbearer’?: The Faculties and
Immanuel Kant 121
3. Theology, Wissenschaft, and the Founding of the
University of Berlin 130
1. Introduction 130
2. Revolutionary Times and the Ascendancy of Wissenschaft 134
3. ‘A New Creation’ 142
4. Theology and the Idea of the New University 155
5. Early Operations: Berlin’s Theological Faculty, 1810–1819 178
6. ‘Renewing Protestantism’: Schleiermacher and the
Challenge of Modern Theological Education 197
4. An Erastian Modernity? Church, State, and Education
in Early Nineteenth-Century Prussia 212
1. Introduction 212
2. Church and State before 1806 215
3. The Great Transition: Church and State after 1806 222
4. ‘A Realm of the Intelligence’: Minister Altenstein
and his Legacy 239
5. Theologia between Science and the State 267
1. Introduction 267
2. General Trends and Developments, 1810–1918 273
x Contents
3. The Rise and Fall of ‘Theological Encyclopedia’ 303
4. History, Commemoration, and the University 324
5. ‘The Age of German Footnotes’: Visitors from Abroad,
Admirers from Afar 348
6. ‘The Crisis of the Theological Faculty’: Lagarde, Overbeck,
and Harnack 378
6. Conclusion: Janus Gazing 403
Select Bibliography 419

Index 457
Abbreviations Used in Notes and Bibliography
Reference Works, Books, and Collected Editions
ADB Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie

EKL Evangelisches Kirchenlexikon: Kirchlich-theologisches Handwörter-
buch
ELC Encyclopedia of the Lutheran Church
EP Encyclopedia of Philosophy
ESL Evangelisches Staatslexicon
HPG Handbuch der preussischen Geschichte, 3 vols., ed. Otto Büsch et al.
HUE A History of the University in Europe, 4 vols., ed. Hilde de Ridder-
Symoens et al.
KGA Friedrich Schleiermacher, Kritische Gesamtausgabe, ed. Hermann
Fischer et al.
LTK Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, 3rd edn.
MCT The Blackwell Dictionary of Modern Christian Thought
NDB Neue Deutsche Biographie
OCCT The Oxford Companion to Christian Thought
ODCC Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd edn.
RGG Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 3rd edn.
TRE Theologische Realenzyklopädie
Journals
AHR American Historical Review
AJT American Journal of Theology
ARG Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte
CEH Central European History
CH Church History
CW Christliche Welt
EKZ Evangelische Kirchenzeitung
ER Educational Review
ESR European Studies Review
FBPG Forschungen zur brandenburgischen und preussischen Geschichte
GH German History
HEQ History of Education Quarterly
xii Abbreviations Used in Notes and Bibliography
HJ Heythrop Journal
HJB Historische Jahrbuch
HTR Harvard Theological Review
HU History of Universities
HZ Historische Zeitschrift
JAAR Journal of the American Academy of Religion
JBK Jahrbuch für brandenburgische Kirchengeschichte
JCH Journal of Contemporary History
JCS Journal of Church and State
JHI Journal of the History of Ideas
JMH Journal of Modern History
JR Journal of Religion
JRH Journal of Religious History
JSH Journal of Social History
JUG Jahrbuch für Universitätsgeschichte
PJ Preussische Jahrbücher
SJT Scottish Journal of Theology
TZ Theologische Zeitschrift
ZEK Zeitschrift für evangelisches Kirchenrecht
ZGNK Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für niedersächsische Kirchengeschichte
ZKG Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte
ZNTG Zeitschrift für neuere Theologiegeschichte
ZP Zeitschrift für Pädagogik
ZRG Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte
ZTK Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche
ZWT Zeitschrift für wissenschaftliche Theologie
Libraries and Archives

BTFG Bibliothek der theologischen Fakultät Göttingen
GStA PK Geheim Staatsarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz
HUA Humboldt Universitätsarchiv
HUB Humboldt Universitätsbibliothek
NStUBG Niedersächsiche Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen
UAG Universitätsarchiv Göttingen
. . . philosophy, jurisprudence, medicine—and, alas, theology too.
Goethe, Faust, part one
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1
Introduction
Our universities . . . are our churches.

Hegel
1 . TH E O LO G Y, M O D E R N I T Y, AN D T H E
GERMAN UNIVERSITY
In September of 1793, the year Louis XVI met the guillotine, universities
throughout France were suppressed by government decree, their endow-
ments, treated as ecclesiastical properties, having already been nationalized
the previous March.1 As the armies of the French Revolution spread social
upheaval and uncertainty abroad in the following years, universities across
Europe, alongside the aristocracy and the church, fell on hard times. Wher-
ever the French went, university endowments were taken over by the state,
curricula drastically altered, and faltering universities shut down or turned
into professional and technical schools. The process resulted in the closing of
several of Europe’s most prestigious universities: Louvain in 1797, Luther’s
Wittenberg some years later, and Halle, Prussia’s educational Xagship, in 1807.
Between 1789 and 1815, sixteen universities went under in the lands of the
Holy Roman Empire alone.2
To champions of the Enlightenment, the shake-up of universities was
generally a good thing. In the eyes of many late eighteenth-century intellec-
tuals, universities had come to be regarded as antiquated hold-overs from the
Middle Ages, confessionally rigid, pedagogically retrograde, socially useless,
1 R. R. Palmer, The Improvement of Humanity: Education and the French Revolution (Prince-
ton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 105 V., and Paul Gerbod, La Condition universitaire en
France au XIXe siècle (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1965), 27 V.
2 In 1789 Europe had 143 universities; in 1815 there were only 83. See HUE iii. 3 V., and L. W.
B. Brockliss, ‘The European University in the Age of Revolution, 1789–1850’, in M. G. Brock and
M. C. Curthoys (eds.), The History of the University of Oxford, vi p. I (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997),
89–104. Halle and Wittenberg were later combined and a university was reconstituted in 1817 as
the Vereinten Friedrichs-Universität Halle-Wittenberg. It was located in Halle. See RGG vi. 1783.
2 Introduction
and Wercely protective of their ancient corporate privileges.3 Not surprisingly,
prior to 1789, a number of progressive thinkers and statesmen across Europe
had begun to call for the wholesale reform of higher education, and many,
anticipating the example of France in 1793, thought that the way forward
started with the abolition of the extant institution.4 During the 1790s, pro-
ponents of educational reform in France, such as Charles Maurice de Talleyr-
and and the Marquis de Condorcet, hardly bothered using the term
university, assuming that the exigencies of the day called for an altogether
diVerent type of institution, one reXective of the ideals of the Revolution and
more receptive to the ‘New Science’ that had taken root largely outside
universities in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.5
If universities were regarded as backward institutions, their theological
faculties were seen as especially benighted. Seedbeds of obscurantism, con-
tinuing the Wars of Religion in their uncompromising polemics, these age-old
Wxtures of the university—in the eyes of a Voltaire, d’Holbach, or Lessing—
were obstinate repositories of darker times, yawning sinkholes in the path of
progress. In an educational reform programme penned for Empress Cathe-
rine the Great of Russia, the philosophe Denis Diderot wrote that since
theological faculties promote ‘controversy’ and ‘fanaticism’, their graduates
were ‘the most useless, intractable and dangerous subjects of the state’.6 The
‘science’ of theology, wrote d’Holbach scoYngly, ‘is a continual insult to
human reason’.7 Goethe, Lessing, and other non-university German literati
denounced the ‘guild theology’ (Zunfttheologie) of the universities for retard-
ing nobler religious and humanitarian sentiments.8
When Napoleon eVected educational reforms in his satellite states, theo-
logical faculties were often lopped like useless limbs from the universities.9 In
the German-speaking lands of central Europe, where a handful of Protestant
3 The Scottish universities, seats of the Scottish Enlightenment, represent an important

exception to this general rule. See Roger L. Emerson, ‘Scottish Universities in the Eighteenth
Century, 1690–1800’, in James A. Leith (ed.), Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 167
(Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1977), 453–74.
4 R. Steven Turner, ‘University Reformers and Professorial Scholarship in Germany, 1760–
1806’, in Laurence Stone (ed.), The University in Society, ii (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1974), 501–3.
5 Condorcet’s Memoires sur l’instruction publique (1790) and Talleyrand’s Rapport sur l’in-
struction publique (1791) were the two most important, if unimplemented, educational reform
proposals of the early Revolution. See Robert M. Stamp, ‘Educational Thought and Practice
during the Years of the French Revolution’, HEQ 6 (1966): 35–49.
6 Denis Diderot, ‘Plan d’une université pour le gouvernement de Russie’, in Œvres complètes,
ed. J. Assèzat (Paris, 1875), iii. 438.
7 Baron d’Holbach, Le Bon Sens, ou Idées naturelles opposées aux idées surnaturelles (1772)
(Paris: Éditions rationalistes, 1971), 9.
8 Carl Schwarz, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing als Theologe (Halle, 1854), 63.
9 Brockliss, ‘The European University in the Age of Revolution’, 125.
Introduction 3
universities had begun to open up to the Enlightenment, numerous calls were
heard for the abolition and/or reform of theological faculties.10 In his Streit
der Fakultäten (1798), Immanuel Kant heaped scorn on the so-called ‘queen
of the sciences’ (regina scientiarum), suggesting that theology could neither
serve society nor true religion unless it Wrst conformed to the universal
dictates of reason, which, in Kant’s view, were best embodied in the trad-
itionally ‘lower’ philosophical faculty—or what in the English-speaking world
we understand today as ‘the arts and sciences’.11 The Berlin physician Johann
Benjamin Erhard (1766–1827) argued that the theological faculty’s primacy in
the university was increasingly ‘ceremonial’, and that since it did not conform
to modern reason, it should simply be excised.12 The idealist philosopher J. G.
Fichte, made a similar argument prior to the founding of the University of
Berlin (1810), contending that unless theology ‘cast oV its former nature
entirely’, it should have no place in the new institution.13 Even Friedrich
Schleiermacher, the celebrated father of modern liberal Protestantism, admit-
ted that in modern times the traditional notion that philosophy served as the
mere handmaid of theology (ancilla theologiae) gave the universities an
unacceptable ‘grotesque appearance’.14
In short, as the nineteenth century dawned, universities and theological
faculties were subjected to a stream of hostility and criticism unparalleled in
their history. The Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and the tumult of
the Napoleonic wars had brought a spirit of ‘creative destruction’ to the
educational status quo. From the standpoint of contemporaries, no one
quite knew what the future would hold, although it was taken for granted
that many once cherished ideals and institutions had reached the end of the
10 Anton Schindling, ‘Die protestantischen Universitäten im Heiligen Römischen Reich

deutscher Nation im Zeitalter der Aufklärung’, in Notker Hammerstein (ed.), Universitäten
und Aufklärung (Göttingen: Wallstein, 1995), 9–19.
11 Immanuel Kant, Der Streit der Fakultäten (1798), ed. and Eng. trans. by Mary J. Gregor
(New York: Abaris Books, 1979). The division of the faculties into the ‘lower’ or preparatory
faculty of philosophy and the three ‘higher’ faculties of theology, law, and medicine is of
medieval derivation. On the history of this fourfold division of the faculties, see Friedrich
Paulsen, The German Universities and University Study, trans. Frank Thilly and William W.
Elwang (New York, 1906), 37 V.
12 Johann Benjamin Erhard, Über die Einrichtung und den Zweck der höhern Lehranstalten
(Berlin, 1802).
13 J. G. Fichte, ‘Deduzierter Plan einer zu Berlin zu errichtenden höhern Lehranstalt’, in Ernst
Anrich (ed.), Die Idee der deutschen Universität: Die fünf Grundschriften aus der Zeit ihrer
Neubegründung durch klassischen Idealismus und romantischen Realismus (Darmstadt: Wis-
senschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1964), 161–2.
14 Following Kant, Schleiermacher too promoted the primacy of the philosophical faculty.
See Friedrich Schleiermacher, ‘Gelegentliche Gedanken über Universitäten in deutschem Sinn.
Nebst einem Anhang über eine neu zu Errichtende’, in Anrich, Die Idee der deutschen Uni-
versität, 257–8.
4 Introduction
line. Hegel spoke for a generation when in 1807 he wrote that ‘our time is a
time of birth and transition to a new period. The spirit has broken with what
was hitherto . . . and is about to submerge all this in the past; it is at work
giving itself a new form.’15
With the beneWt of hindsight we know that across Europe both universities
and, if to a much lesser degree, theological faculties weathered the revolu-
tionary/Napoleonic onslaught. In France, Napoleon himself oversaw the
creation of a new national system of higher education—the so-called uni-
versité imperiale (1808).16 To varying degrees, other nations followed suit. The
Restoration of 1815 ushered in a period of stability conducive to the rehabili-
tation of the university as an enduring institution. Even so, tremendous forces
of change accompanied its transition through the turbulent 1789–1815
period. Indeed, it was during this period that the ailing, premodern institu-
tion most conspicuously began its metamorphosis into the secularized re-
search university that we recognize today. It did so however not by discarding
premodern conventions and forms but by adapting them to accommodate
novel historical conditions and a distinctly modern scholarly ethos that had
deep roots in the previous century.
The story of the birth of the ‘modern university’ is intimately connected to
the development of German—particularly Prussian, Protestant—institutions.
Granting the complex antecedents behind all historical beginnings, few would
nonetheless gainsay that it was most notably in post-revolutionary Prussia,
beginning with the dramatic founding of the University of Berlin in 1810, that
the modern university Wrst appeared on the historical stage.17 In the course of
15 G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Mind; quoted in Maurice Mandelbaum, History, Man,

and Reason: A Study in Nineteenth-Century Thought (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1971), 4.
16 Palmer, The Improvement of Humanity, 306–15. Admittedly, the ‘university’ system estab-
lished by Napoleon in 1808 hardly resembled that of the Old Regime. It was rather a centralized,
state-dominated series of professional schools and their feeder institutions at lower levels.
17 Walter Rüegg, ‘The Upturn of the University in the Nineteenth Century’, unpublished
paper, 8. Cf. Thomas Ellwein, Die deutsche Universität vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart
(Wiesbaden: Fourier, 1997), 109 V. As is well established, the universities of Halle and Göttingen
were especially important harbingers of the University of Berlin; accordingly, it is not without
justiWcation that these institutions are often characterized as ‘modern’. I shall treat these
institutions in ch. 2. In recent years, revisionist scholars have sought to downplay the centrality
of the University of Berlin in shaping the modern university, suggesting that the ‘myth’ of Berlin
was largely a creation of the late imperial period. While such arguments have brought about
fruitful debate, I am sceptical for two reasons. First, there is enormous evidence prior to the
Kaiserreich, both among German and non-German institutions of higher education, which
suggests high regard for and the tremendous inXuence of Berlin. Second, such revisionist
arguments often make a questionable distinction between the ‘idea’ and the ‘reality’ of the
University of Berlin, contending that only the former triumphed in university rhetoric but not
the latter in actual administration. The point is well taken, but still begs the question of why the
‘idea’ proved so powerful and why it was repeatedly invoked. Additionally, it is perhaps more
Introduction 5
the nineteenth century, what came to be called the ‘Prussian model’ or
‘German model’ university would be admired and imitated throughout the
Continent,18 and eventually would cross the English Channel and the Atlantic
to have a tremendous impact on higher education and scholarship in the
Anglo-American world.19 ‘There is no people’, wrote the British scholar and
statesman James Bryce in 1885, summing up a widely shared sentiment
among foreign educators, ‘which has given so much thought and pains to
the development of its university system as the Germans have done . . . none
where they play so large a part in national life.’20 A genuine university did not
exist in America, Abraham Flexner opined in 1930, until the founding of
Johns Hopkins (1876) according to the model of the University of Berlin.21 In
short, German universities rose to become ‘the global standard in the nine-
teenth century’, as Nicholas Boyle has put it, winning the envy and emulation
of scholars and educational leaders throughout the world.22 How a medieval
creation, deemed by many an antiquated relic in the Age of Reason, managed
to pull oV this feat and become by the late nineteenth century one of the
leading organs of intellectual modernity, and today a truly worldwide insti-
tution, is among the most fascinating and consequential developments in
modern European history.
Unlike the course of development in many countries, where historical
forces often pushed theology outside the university to seminaries and other
than a coincidence that many of these revisionist works have been produced by scholars of the
imperial period. See Rüdiger vom Bruch, ‘A Slow Farewell to Humboldt? Stages in the History of
German Universities, 1810–1945’, in Mitchell G. Ash (ed.), German Universities: Past and Future
(Providence, RI: Berghahn Books, 1997), 3–27, and Sylvia Paletschek, ‘The Invention of
Humboldt and the Impact of National Socialism: The German University Idea in the First
Half of the Twentieth Century’, in Margit Szöllösi-Janze (ed.), Science in the Third Reich
(Oxford: Berg, 2001), 37–58.
18 See Gert Schubring (ed.), ‘Einsamkeit und Freiheit’ neu besichtigt: Universitätsreformen und
Disziplinenbildung in Preussen als Modell für Wissenschaftspolitik im Europas des 19.Jahrhundert
(Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1991) and Rainer Christoph Schwinges (ed.), Humboldt International:
Der Export des deutschen Universitätsmodells im 19. und 20.Jahrhundert (Basle: Schwabe, 2001).
Among the Wrst early popularizers of Prussian higher education on the Continent was the
French philosopher, Victor Cousin, who published De l’instruction publique dans quelques pays
de l’Allemagne, et particulièrement en Prusse, 2 vols. (Paris, 1832).
19 Hermann Röhrs, The Classical German Concept of the University and its InXuence on Higher
Education in the United States (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1995) and George M. Marsden,
The Soul of the American University: From Protestant Establishment to Established Nonbelief (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 101–12.
20 Quoted in John Theodore Merz, A History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century,
i (New York: Dover Publications, 1965; repr. of 1904 edn.), 159.
21 Abraham Flexner, Universities: American, English, German (New York, 1930), 42.
22 Nicholas Boyle, ‘ ‘‘Art,’’ Literature, Theology: Learning from Germany’, in Robert E.
Sullivan (ed.), Higher Learning and Catholic Traditions (Notre Dame: University of Notre
Dame Press, 2001), 89.
6 Introduction
private institutions, nineteenth-century Prussian and other central European
universities retained theological faculties as an integral, if reduced, part of the
state’s educational system.23 Like other university faculties, theological facul-
ties were therefore ‘institutions of the state’ (Veranstaltungen des Staates) as
the Prussian Civil Code (Allgemeines Landrecht) of 1794 put it.24 What is
more, the nineteenth-century German university largely kept intact the trad-
itional four-faculty structure that had its origins in the Middle Ages. In this
system, theology, jurisprudence, and medicine were considered the profes-
sional or higher faculties, whereas philosophy, the erstwhile arts faculty
(facultas artium or Artistenfacultät), with its many subsidiary branches (his-
tory, philology, mathematics, et cetera) was seen as the preparatory ‘lower
faculty’. The retention of this model owed much to the eVorts of Friedrich
Schleiermacher, who, during the founding of the University of Berlin,
defended the traditional divisions, while raising the status of philosophy to
one of autonomy and regarding theology as a ‘scientiWc’ (wissenschaftlich)
enterprise, which best served the church by fostering close relations with
other branches of knowledge. Admittedly, as the nineteenth-century research
university gained momentum in Prussia and elsewhere, theology became
greatly overshadowed by more secular, dynamic Welds of knowledge. It wholly
ceased to be regarded as the ‘queen of the sciences’, a development well
underway in the eighteenth century. Nonetheless, the theological faculty,
the seat of a new putatively ‘scientiWc theology’ (wissenschaftliche Theologie),
maintained a respectable—or at least tolerated—niche in the state’s higher
educational system, a niche that, interestingly and despite persistent voices of
opposition, has endured until the present.25 The tale of this adaptive, con-
troversial, often beleaguered niche is of a piece with that of the meteoric rise
of the German university in the nineteenth century.
This study pursues the overlapping goals of understanding the evolution of
the modern German university from the vantage point of theology and the
evolution of modern theology from the vantage point of the university. Its
23 There is no detailed, general study of the European-wide demise of university-seated

theological faculties in the nineteenth century. See F. Scaduto, L’abolizione delle facoltà di teologia
in Italia (Turin, 1886), which contains some information on non-Italian developments as well.
24 Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Koch (ed.), Die preussischen Universitäten. Eine Sammlung der
Verordnungen, welche die Verfassung und Verwaltung dieser Anstalten betreVen, i (Berlin, 1840), 6.
25 For debates about theology’s justiWcation in the university in more recent times, see
Martin Heckel, Die theologischen Fakultäten im weltlichen Verfassungsstaat (Tübingen: J. C. B.
Mohr, 1986); Ernst-Lüder Solte, Theologie an der Universität: Staats- und kirchenrechtlichen
Probleme der theologischen Fakultät (Munich: Claudius, 1971); Rudolf Weth (ed.), Theologie an
staatlichen Universitäten (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1972); and Hans-Georg Babke, Theologie in
der Universität: aus rechtlicher, theologischer und wissenschafts-theoretischer Perspektive (Frank-
furt am Main: Peter Lang, 2000).
Introduction 7
temporal frame falls largely within what German scholars sometimes call the
Sattelzeit, the ‘bridge period’ between the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries, which witnessed a fundamental transformation in the European
political, social, and intellectual order. In the ensuing chapters I thus chart the
growth of the university from a residually medieval institution in the eight-
eenth century, through the all-important 1789–1815 period of crisis and
rejuvenation, to its status as an exemplary and widely emulated engine of
modern research by the eve of the First World War. While not altogether
bypassing Catholic theology, I concentrate largely on Protestant theology, in
part because the study substantially involves Prussia, a Protestant state, but
also because of the diVerent historical dynamics aVecting Catholic and Prot-
estant theology during this era.26 One should keep in mind, moreover, that an
ingrained anti-Catholic prejudice was part and parcel of Protestant theo-
logical self-understanding throughout the nineteenth century, which one
scholar has provocatively described as ‘a second confessional era’.27
More speciWcally, I focus on the development of Protestant university
theology from an apologetic, praxis-oriented, confessional enterprise in the
post-Reformation period to one increasingly ‘liberal’, expressive of the ethos
of modern critical knowledge, or Wissenschaft. Relatedly, I examine theology’s
structural transformation within the university, from its status as the sym-
bolic centrepiece of the medieval and early modern university to its modern
status as a minor and often disparaged area of academic commitment, albeit
one, paradoxically, deeply inXuential in the realms of religious and theological
scholarship throughout the Western world. This Janus-faced reality, the
simultaneous institutional diminution and inXuential acclaim of German
academic theology, is in fact a recurring subtheme of the book.
But, again, why theology? Was not theology, after all, the supreme loser in
the rise of the modern university? In treating Protestant theology and uni-
versity development together, I aim to remedy a scholarly oversight and
suggest ways in which debates about both phenomena might be fruitfully
reconsidered. Historians interested in the rise of the modern German
26 To be sure, if one had world enough and time, the inclusion of Catholic academic theology
and Catholic universities would make for a fuller comparative study. However, I believe that the
progressive, dynamic, science-embracing character of Protestant theology and its profound
inXuence on modern religious thought generally, including modern Catholicism, justiWes the
more limited scope of this study. Furthermore, the legal position of Catholic theological
faculties, as shall be made clear, in the German states of central Europe diVered signiWcantly
from that of Protestant ones. On nineteenth-century Catholic theology generally in Germany,
see Heinrich Fries and Georg Schwaiger (eds.), Katholische Theologen Deutschlands im 19.Jahr-
hundert, 3 vols. (Munich: Käsel, 1975) and Gerald A. McCool, Catholic Theology in the
Nineteenth Century (New York: Seabury, 1977).
27 Olaf Blaschke, ‘Das 19.Jahrhundert: Ein zweites konfessionelles Zeitalter?’ Geschichte und
Gesellschaft 26 (2000): 38–75.
8 Introduction
university have not been terribly concerned with the fate of theological enquiry,
except perhaps, in an often oVhand manner, to suggest its swift obsolescence in
contrast to more institutionally vigorous, forward-looking humanistic and
natural scientiWc Welds of enquiry.28 Often such scholars—implicitly perhaps
more than explicitly—subscribe to a theory of secularization, a theory that
posits rising institutional and intellectual irreligiosity as a necessary conse-
quence of modernizing forces.29 While I do not dispute the eclipse of theology
by the rapid diVerentiation and institutionalization of other areas of enquiry in
the nineteenth century, in what follows I do not assume this eclipse from the
outset; rather, I treat it as a problem and probe it carefully, calling attention to
the manifold complexities, contingencies, and ironies involved in the momen-
tous displacement of the erstwhile queen of the sciences.
Furthermore, I am persuaded that viewing university development through
the lenses of theology helps one see certain otherwise occluded continuities in
the making of the nineteenth-century university. Exclusive focus on dynamic
and expanding Welds such as philology, history, chemistry, physics, and
medicine tends, by virtue of the choice of subject matter, to give histories of
the modern German university a storyline of distorted discontinuity. Focus
on theology, by contrast, restores an element of ‘the persistence of the Old
Regime’ to university history. For while theology lost its former preminence,
it insistently justiWed a continuing existence and occupied a vital role in
academic life throughout the nineteenth century. Its inXuence abroad was
considerable as well, not least in my own country, the United States.30 What is
more, we should not lose sight of the remarkable fact that a theologian,
28 For examples of and bibliographic guides to more studies on the modern German
university, see William Erman and Ewald Horn (eds), Bibliographie der deutschen Universitäten:
Systematisch geordnetes Verzeichnis der bis Ende 1899 gedruckten Bücher und Aufsätze über das
deutsche Universitätswesen (Leipzig, 1904–5); Charles E. McCelland, State, Society, and Univer-
sity in Germany, 1700–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980); Thomas Ellwein,
Die deutsche Universität: vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart (Wiesbaden: Fourier, 1997); Konrad
H. Jarausch, Students, Society, and Politics in Imperial Germany: The Rise of Academic Illiberalism
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982); and Daniel Fallon, The German University: A
Heroic Ideal in ConXict with the Modern World (Boulder, Colo.: Colorado Associated University
Press, 1980).
29 Admittedly, the terms ‘secularization’ and ‘modernization’ merit greater elaboration than I
oVer here. See my previous discussion in Thomas Albert Howard, Religion and the Rise of
Historicism: W. M. L. de Wette, Jacob Burckhardt, and the Theological Origins of Nineteenth-
Century Historical Consciousness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 17–22. Cf.
Steve Bruce (ed.), Religion and Modernization: Sociologists and Historians Debate the Secular-
ization Thesis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), and Owen Chadwick’s classic, The
Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1975). In short, I am persuaded that a priori notions of secularization have created
great historigraphical lacunae, although the term itself is useful in a limited, heuristic sense,
particularly when applied to cultural realities in Western Europe since the Enlightenment.
30 Charles Franklin Thwing, The American and German University (New York, 1928), 184 V.
Introduction 9
Friedrich Schleiermacher, served as the principal intellectual architect of the
modern German university, whose arguably most renowned and accom-
plished representative at century’s end was yet another theologian, Adolf
von Harnack.31 Professors at Berlin both, these individuals Wgure promin-
ently in my study. Throughout the nineteenth century, moreover, still other,
less well-known theologians occupied positions of prestige and inXuence
within the university system. Their writings, actions, and decisions, paradox-
ically enough, carved out a secure place for theology while contributing—
often unwittingly—to an academic environment famously described by Max
Weber as one ‘characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and,
above all, by the ‘‘disenchantment of the world’’ ’.32
On a broader note, I hope that this study encourages historians of modern
Europe and modern Germany to take theology more seriously as a subject for
historical analysis. While recent years have witnessed a laudable new concern
for religion as a social and cultural force in post-1789 Europe,33 theology in
large part remains terra incognita for historians. However, as two historians
have recently argued, ‘theology is eminently worthy of historical treatment,
since from the perspective of the historian the conscious or unconscious task
of the theologian is to accommodate sacred doctrine to historical conditions
and circumstances’.34 Put diVerently, because of its venerable pedigree in
European culture, theological reXection and its locus in the social Weld
provide an excellent barometer for mapping cultural change and continuity
in the modern era, in so far as theological reXection seeks to come to grips
with, understand, and/or resist modern realities. Leaving theology unscruti-
nized as a putative anachronism betrays a Whiggish secularism that serious
historical scholarship should expose and question.
In contrast to historians, theologians and scholars of modern religious
thought have long been attentive to the far-reaching signiWcance of nine-
teenth-century German Protestant theology and thought. To make this point
clear, one need only mention a few classic titles—Ferdinand Kattenbusch’s
Die deutsche evangelische Theologie seit Schleiermacher (1924), Karl Barth’s Die
31 On the signiWcance of Schleiermacher and Harnack for the German university system as a
whole, see the essays by Rudolf Vierhaus (on Schleiermacher) and Lothar Burchardt (on
Harnack) in Wolfgang Treue and Karlfried Gründer (eds.), Wissenschaftspolitik in Berlin:
Minister, Beamte, Ratgeber (Berlin: Colloquium, 1987), 77–88, 215–34.
32 Max Weber, ‘Science as a Vocation’, in H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (eds.), From Max
Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), 155.
33 See e.g. the Wne collection of essays in Helmut Walser Smith (ed.), Protestants, Catholics,
and Jews in Germany, 1800–1914 (Oxford: Berg, 2001). Cf. Thomas Albert Howard, ‘A ‘‘Reli-
gious Turn’’ in Modern European Historiography’, Historically Speaking 4 (June 2003): 24–6.
34 Susan Rosa and Dale Van Kley, ‘Religion and the Historical Discipline: A Reply to Mack
Holt and Henry Heller’, French Historical Studies 21 (Autumn 1998): 611–29.
10 Introduction
protestantische Theologie im 19.Jahrhundert (1946), Hans Frei’s The Eclipse of
Biblical Narrative (1974), and Claude Welch’s two-volume Protestant Thought
in the Nineteenth Century (1972, 1985). In his bibliographic survey, Welch in
fact was struck by ‘the apparent identiWcation of nineteenth-century Protest-
ant theology with German theology’—something he in turn considerably
attests to in his own treatment of the century.35 However, if theology is
often shortchanged by historians of the modern university, it is also true
that theologians—by virtue of a penchant to treat ideas and texts rather
ahistorically—have often failed to provide richly contextualized accounts of
the social, intellectual, and institutional conditions in which modern aca-
demic theology in Germany took root. We are left therefore not only with
modern university histories short on theology, but also with stories of mod-
ern theology short on the history of the university. The view that the two
profoundly hang together is the foundational thesis of the present study.
The story of modern German university theology presented here, however,
is admittedly a curious one. It is an interpretative survey in some respects, but
one that does not strive to be exhaustive. I confess that I make no mention of
some of the century’s seminal theological works, and I omit a host of crucial
Wgures and debates altogether. Nowhere, moreover, will one Wnd lengthy
discussions of theologians’ views on the Trinity, the Atonement, the Incarna-
tion, or other important doctrines and ideas; and this is to say nothing of the
truly voluminous literature of biblical exegesis and church history. Rather, my
focus is largely external—on theology’s institutional legitimation and pos-
ition. I concentrate on theology in so far as it occupied, defended, and
successfully maintained a limited position within a rapidly modernizing
university. In other words, I focus largely on the fortunes of the theological
faculty (theologische Fakultät) as a component of the university, not on theology
per se. How does the locus of the theological faculty change as the university
changes, I persistently ask, and what does this shifting locus tell us about both
theology and the university? More broadly, how do changes in the university
and theology reXect broader patterns and trends in German, particularly
Prussian, history in an age marked by nationalism and state-building? (The
blurry boundary between ‘Prussia’ and ‘Germany’ in the nineteenth century is
an important topic in its own right, but one I shall happily leave to other
scholars, noting only that the two should not be conXated nor can they be
entirely separated.)
There is also a more limited internal dimension to the study. In the context
of the modernizing university, how did the four traditional subdivisions of
35 Claude Welch, Protestant Thought in the Nineteenth Century, i (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1972), 8 V.
Introduction 11
theology—exegetical theology, historical theology, systematic theology, and
practical theology—develop and relate to one another and to the university as
a whole?36 How did the increasing scientization (Verwissenschaftlichung),
deconfessionalization (Entkonfessionalisierung), and professionalization (Pro-
fessionalisierung) of academic life, moreover, aVect both the pedagogical and
scholarly modus operandi of the various divisions of theology and their
interrelationships?37 Finally, how was this traditional fourfold pattern chal-
lenged and sometimes modiWed in the course of the nineteenth century in the
light of the emergence of new theological Welds, including the science of
missions (Missionswissenschaft) and the science of religion (Religionswis-
senschaft). Proponents of the latter sometimes questioned the legitimacy of
an exclusively Christian theology altogether.38
By privileging here the institutional position and internal organization of
theology over the actual content of theology, I do not desire to minimize the
intrinsic importance of the latter; I simply aim to accentuate insights derived
from isolating the former for historical analysis. Yet in this regard, it is
instructive to heed Hayden White’s admonition to the historical profession
that academic forms, conventions, and modes of organization quite often
aVect both the nature and reception of content.39 We should perhaps then not
be too eager to distinguish categorically between form and content.
Both the internal and external foci of the study have drawn me towards
speciWc types of historical sources and documents, which one might classify as
discipline-reXexive and institution-speciWc. By ‘discipline-reXexive’ I mean
sources by theologians, university personnel, clergymen, and others con-
cerned with evaluating the very rhyme and reason of academic theology as
it confronted the various and multifaceted quandaries of modernity: what is
the purpose of theology within the modern university? What sort of know-
ledge does it purport to foster? Can theology justify itself as a science? How
does it Wt in with other branches of human knowledge? And how, in the
context of the German university, does it relate to the other two ‘higher’
faculties—law and medicine—and to the ‘lower’ philosophical faculty?
36 The fourfold division of theology is generally held to have originated with Andreas
Hyperius’s De Theologo seu de ratione studii theologici (Basle, 1572). For an informative
discussion on the internal organization of theology and its history, see Wolfhart Pannenberg,
Theology and the Philosophy of Science, trans. Francis McDonagh (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976),
346–440.
37 See Charles E. McClelland, The German Experience of Professionalization: Modern Learned
Professions and their Organization from the Early Nineteenth Century to the Hitler Era (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
38 See the entries ‘Missionswissenschaft’, RGG iv. 1013–15 and ‘Religionswissenschaft’, RGG
v. 1038–42.
39 Hayden White, The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987).
12 Introduction
A typical title in this regard was the rectorial address (Rektoratsrede) of Georg
Heinrici at the University of Marburg in 1884: ‘On the Character and Purpose
of Protestant Theological Faculties’.40 Addresses of this type proliferated in the
mid- and late nineteenth century, often grappling with what some perceived
as a crisis of the theological faculty.41
By ‘institution-speciWc’ sources I refer to the copious literature on particu-
lar German universities and their faculties. While I draw from a number of
these works, it will be clear that only a few institutions truly command my
attention. In Ch. 2, I concentrate on developments at the universities of Halle
(1694), and Göttingen (1737), and to a lesser extent Wittenberg (1502),
Helmstedt (1558), and Jena (1576)—all key educational and theological
centres in the early modern period. In Ch. 3 I narrow my focus to the Prussian
University of Berlin (1810). This new Xagship of a rising Prussia and German
nation-state, described once as the ‘spiritual center of a national world power’,
then occupies the lion’s share of the rest of the book.42 While I readily admit
that Berlin does not constitute the Wnal word on German academic theology,
I am also persuaded that rarely in European history has a single university so
served as a symbol of the age and set the pace for its sister institutions. One
would have to go back to the University of Paris in the thirteenth century
perhaps to Wnd an institution that compared in inXuence and prestige to what
Hegel called the ‘Universität des Mittelpunktes’.43 ‘The University of Berlin’,
Philip SchaV wrote in 1857, ‘occupies the Wrst rank of all similar institutions
in Germany not only, but in the world.’44 ‘The Berlin university’, an American
visitor reported, ‘[is] the Wrst great school of the world for science, philoso-
phy, and letters.’45 One might certainly correct for some hyperbole in these
statements, but not before considering what occasioned it in the Wrst place.
To be more speciWc with respect to sources, I have drawn from treatises on
university organization and reform; general university statutes as well as
40 Georg Heinrici, Von Wesen und Aufgabe der evangelisch-theologischen Facultäten (Marburg,
1885). Cf. August Dillmann, Über die Theologie als Universitätswissenschaft (Berlin, 1875).
41 As Ernst Troeltsch put it in 1907: ‘Wer die in den letzten Jahren von Theologen gehaltenen
Rektoratsreden überblickt, wird hier sehr häuWg die Fragen wiederkehren sehen: ‘‘Ist die
Theologie eine Wissenschaft, und ist sie berechtigt innerhalb des Rahmens der Universität?’’
Ernst Troeltsch, Die Trennung von Staat und Kirche, der staatliche Religionsunterricht und die
theologischen Fakultäten (Tübingen, 1907), 3. Cf. E. H. Haenssler, Die Krisis der theologischen
Fakultäten (Leipzig, 1929).
42 Berlin in Bildern, 1810–1910 (Berlin, 1910), HUB Ay46214.
43 Hegel, ‘Berliner Antrittsrede’, in Gesammelte Werke, xviii, ed. Walter Jaeschke (Hamburg:
Felix Meiner, 1968), 13. The comparison between Berlin and Paris was sometimes made in the
nineteenth century. See Gerhard von Zezschwitz, Der Entwicklungsgang der Theologie als Wis-
senschaft inbesondere der Praktischen (Leipzig, 1867), 4–5.
44 Philip SchaV, Germany; its Universities, Theology, and Religion (Edinburgh, 1857), 63.
45 John W. Burgess, Reminiscences of an American Scholar (New York, 1934), 122.
Introduction 13
statutes of particular theological faculties; university histories; guidebooks for
students beginning theology; relevant government memoranda; theological
journals and reference books; rectorial, inaugural, and other ceremonial
university orations; introductory theological textbooks or ‘theological
encyclopedia’ (theologische Encyklopädie) as they were called in the nineteenth
century; not to mention relevant letters from professors, students, clergymen,
and government oYcials.
Although I do not neglect statistical evidence in this study, my primary
concern, as should be clear from the foregoing, is with words, written and
(once) spoken, and in their complex relationship to historical development.
Understanding the dialectic between language as a cultural mirror and lan-
guage as an agent of cultural change forms the principal theoretical impulse
behind my analysis. More fully, I aim to show why and how a variety of
individuals, institutions, and relevant ‘communities of discourse’ brought to
expression particular descriptions of the purpose and place of academic
theology in a period that witnessed prodigious changes in the general uni-
versity landscape—changes that contributed not only to the scientiWc or
liberal reconstitution of theology, but also to theology’s steady institutional
decline.
2. ON THE STAT E AND MODERN SCIENCE

‘IN THE GERMAN SENSE’
Besides the obvious categories of ‘university’ and ‘theology’, the categories of

‘the state’ (Staat) and ‘science’ (Wissenschaft)—science, that is, ‘in the German
sense’46—are also signiWcant for this study. With respect to the former, I refer
in particular to the modernizing, bureaucratizing Prussian state in the early
nineteenth century, after the defeat by Napoleon in 1806, but also—and to a
degree by extension—to the imperial German state established in 1871 under
Prussian hegemony. Throughout I contend that the workings of universities
in general and theological faculties in particular were not autonomous and
independent, as their representatives championed or at least strove for, but
more often than not reXected developments in the broader social, political,
and intellectual Welds. During the period treated in this study—which, again,
concentrates heavily on the early nineteenth century but reaches back into the
46 In addition to appearing in the title of Schleiermacher’s 1808 book on the university
(discussed in Part III), the phrase ‘in the German sense’ was a qualiWer sometimes added to the
word Wissenschaft by those trying to impress on non-Germans the particular associations and
meanings of this word. See Howard, Religion and the Rise of Historicism, 123.
14 Introduction
early modern (and even medieval) period and pushes forward into the Wrst
decades of the twentieth century—far-reaching changes took place in the
realm of European and German statecraft and in the aims and practices of
modern science and scholarship. What is more, both the political authority of
the state and the social authority of science underwent processes of extensive
social magniWcation during this period—processes regularly captured in the
useful, if cumbersome, German terms Verstaatlichung and Verwissenschaftli-
chung.47 Not surprisingly, nineteenth-century German academic theology,
with other domains of culture, often reXected the magniWed authority of
the state and science. By the late nineteenth century, in fact, Protestant
theologians, like much of the rest of the university professoriate, understood
themselves as dutiful servants of the new national state and avant-garde
practitioners of modern science who should be taken seriously by their
peers in more secular Welds.48
To be sure, such an understanding of the social role of the theologian was
not entirely without precedent in German history. Protestant scholastic
theologians, one might point out, in the post-Reformation period often
regarded their work as an exercise in scientia even as they saw themselves as
servants of their particular sovereign within the Holy Roman Empire. How-
ever, the nature of the nineteenth-century state (an increasingly centralizing,
industrializing, imperial leviathan) and the nature of science (a progressive,
dynamic, and functionally secular enterprise) made late nineteenth-century
conditions qualitatively diVerent from those of previous epochs, when the
political landscape was extremely fragmented and when science was regarded
more often in traditional Aristotelian terms.49 I Wnd it, therefore, unsatisfying
to understand the position of nineteenth-century theologians vis-à-vis the
state and science simply in terms of longterm continuity with the post-
Reformation, confessional era, as some studies have suggested.50
What is particularly noteworthy about the nineteenth century, especially its
latter half, is the degree to which theologians sought to legitimize their roles in
society, not by appeal to church authorities or the sapiential, credal traditions
of Christianity, but from the political community of the nation-state and the
academic community of science.51 Of course, churchly connections and
47 These terms are diYcult to bring into English, but might be rendered as ‘becoming an
aspect of the state’ and ‘becoming an aspect of science’.
48 See Fritz Ringer, The Decline of the German Mandarins: The German Academic Community,
1890–1933 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969), 127.
49 Peter Peterson, Geschichte der aristotelischen Philosophie im protestantischen Deutschland
(Leipzig, 1921).
50 Paulsen, German Universities, 34 V., 137 V.
51 Hermann Mulert, Evangelische Kirchen und theologischen Fakultäten (Tübingen, 1930), 37.
Introduction 15
concerns were thick and numerous among theologians throughout the cen-
tury, but, increasingly, signiWcant and inXuential numbers identiWed their
loyalties more with Staat and Wissenschaft than with the faith communities
they putatively served. The theologian Richard Rothe (1799–1867), for
instance, went so far as to contend that in the modern world churches were
becoming superXuous entities because the state and its institutions were
better suited to transmit the ethical teachings of Christianity to society.
‘The moral community, the modern state,’ Rothe reasoned, ‘has done more
to bring man to a condition beWtting the will of Christ than all the churches of
Jerusalem or Rome or Wittenberg or Geneva.’52 While Rothe is an exceptional
case, his words nonetheless bear witness to altogether new theological possi-
bilities, which in turn attest to fundamentally altered historical conditions.
In a rectorial address of 1875, ‘On Theology as a University Science’, the
Old Testament scholar August Dillmann (1823–94) of the University of Berlin
called attention to a ‘contradiction between traditional doctrine and modern
knowledge’. ‘Only in an atmosphere of science,’ he concluded, could this
contradiction be resolved: ‘[I]t is not a matter left to [church] synods or
majorities, but rather to theological science.’53 Adolf von Harnack (1851–
1930) even argued that theology conducted under ecclesiastical auspices was
positively injurious to true Wissenschaft; such a theology, he believed, could
never match university theology in its ability ‘[to] contribute to the ediWce of
modern German science and culture’. Thus the state had an abiding interest in
protecting theology against excessive ecclesiastical meddling.54 Similarly, Ber-
lin’s Friedrich Paulsen aYrmed that despite their obligation to train future
ministers ‘professors of theology are state oYcials just as much as those of
other faculties’. For Paulsen this was a salutary arrangement: ‘a Protestant
theology based . . . upon the authority of the church would have no value
at all’.55
As one might well imagine, more than a few pastors, particularly those of
pietist or confessional leanings, evinced displeasure at this climate of opinion.
Many, such as Friedrich Bodelschwingh (1831–1910), complained that aca-
demic theology, held captive by ‘state institutions’ and the ‘scientiWc method’,
had become a thorn in the side of the church. ‘My son’s faith was shipwrecked
at the university,’ he reported hearing from many parents, and proposed as
the solution the establishment of theological faculties more congenial to the
52 Quoted in Karl Barth, Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century, trans. John Bowden
(London: SCM, 1972), 604.
53 Dillmann, Über die Theologie als Universitätswissenschaft, 15.
54 Adolf von Harnack, ‘Über die Bedeutung der theologischen Fakultäten,’ PJ 175 (March
1919): 362–74.
55 Paulsen, German Universities, 137, 139.
16 Introduction
needs of the church.56 In 1895, a Prussian church conference convened to
discuss what for many had become the ‘most serious question’ of the day: ‘the
unholy alienation between theology and church’ resulting from the scientiWc,
statist character of the theological faculties. If the church did not regain
inXuence over theological education, one Philipp Zorn complained to his
fellow churchmen, then she risked presiding over her own ‘self-destruction as
a church’.57
What worried many in 1895 was recognized by a few much earlier. ‘The-
ology students do not have it easy,’ a pastor opined in 1829, ‘because learning
(Wissenshaft) and faith (Glaube) are so far apart from one another. In the
interior of the student, this must eventually lead to an internal contradiction,
which can endanger their spiritual lives.’58 Sizing up the shape of academic
theology in the mid-nineteenth century, Søren Kierkegaard, who had studied
at the University of Berlin, lamented that ‘Christianity has completely merged
with [modern] science—that is, Christianity no longer exists.’59
Examining the emergence of such an academic milieu—extolled by the
likes of Rothe, Dillmann, Harnack, and Paulsen, and deplored by many pious
pastors and the iconoclastic Kierkegaard—constitutes a signiWcant element of
this study.60 Furthermore, I suggest that such a milieu appears actually quite
remarkable when taken outside the purview of modern German intellectual
history and viewed from the broader perspective of the history of Christian
thought.
To dramatize this point, it might be instructive to consider the fathers of
the Western Church. It was, after all, no less an authority than Augustine,
who, during the infancy of Christian theology, sought to relativize the powers
of the civitas terrena in the light of the civitas dei, comparing the former to
‘the fragile splendor of a glass which one fears may shatter at any moment’.61
With Clement of Alexandria, Augustine argued that theological reXection,
56 Friedrich Bodelschwingh, ‘Eine kirchliche theologische Fakultät’ (1895), GStA PK VI NL
AlthoV AI Nr. 35. Cf. Martin von Nathius, Wissenschaft und Kirche im Streit um die theologischen
Fakultäten (Heilbronn, 1886).
57 Philipp Zorn, ‘Der Staat und die theologischen Fakultäten, Vortrag für die landeskirchliche
Versammlung zu Berlin am 8.Mai 1895’ (Berlin, 1895) and ‘Die theologische Fakultäten und die
preußische Landeskirche,’ National Zeitung (16 May 1985), GStA PK VI NL AlthoV AI Nr. 34.
58 Peter Dietz (ed.), ‘Briefe des Antistes Jakob Burckhardt an seinen Freund Johann Jakob
Frei’, Baseler Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Altertumskunde 53 (1954): 124.
59 Søren Kierkegaard, Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong
and Edna H. Hong (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1975), iv. 463.
60 With justiWcation F. W. Graf speaks of an intra-Protestant Kulturkampf that pitted ‘liberal’
Protestants against ‘positive’ ones. In this conXict, the theological faculties became a major bone
of contention. See the introduction to F. W. Graf and Hans Martin Müller (eds.), Der deutsche
Protestantismus um 1900 (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1996), 10.
61 Augustine, City of God; quoted in Oliver O’Donnovan, The Desire of the Nations: Redis-
covering the Roots of Political Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 7.
Introduction 17
while it might freely borrow from pagan storehouses of knowledge, was
ultimately a matter of sapientia, divine wisdom, not scientia, knowledge
derived from human sources alone. SigniWcantly, it was Clement who Wrst
gave full expression to the notion that human knowledge served well when it
served as the handmaid of theology. In accord with practically all Church
Fathers and numerous subsequent theologians, moreover, both Augustine
and Clement aYrmed the ecclesial framework of theology and argued that
theological knowledge and scriptural interpretation, on which theology was
necessarily based, were matters dependent on the spiritual well-being of the
individual scholar’s soul. ‘The spiritual eye must be very clear from sin,’
echoed the 1389 statutes of Vienna’s theological faculty, ‘in order to discern
the lofty themes of theology. . . . The schools of theology must be not merely
schools of science, but still more, schools of virtue and good morals.’62
In other words, from the vantage point of premodern Christianity, or at
least inXuential strands thereof, normative theology was regarded as essen-
tially suprascientiWc, wary of worldly political powers, and integrally tied to
the doctrinal, spiritual, and practical concerns of the church, the ecclesia.63 By
contrast, numerous nineteenth-century German theologians, mirroring Har-
nack, Dillmann, and others, wound up holding an almost fundamentally
opposite view: to avoid succumbing to ecclesiastical obscurantism, theology,
in step with secular academic disciplines, should be rigorously scientiWc,
intentionally aloof from church direction, and capable of thriving in a state-
supported university environment.64 The liberal theologian Martin Rade, for
example, deWned theology as a strictly ‘historical-cultural science’ whose
subject matter happened to be Christianity.65 Keeping theological faculties
under a ‘state educational ministry’, Hermann Mulert averred, was an expres-
sion of Protestantism itself, allowing for the development of free science and
preventing conservative ecclesiastical inXuences from eVecting ‘a devolution
of the Protestant spirit [back] into a Catholic one’.66
62 Quoted in Karl von Raumer, German Universities (New York, 1859), 25.
63 Pannenberg, Theology and the Philosophy of Science, 8–10. In addition to Pannenberg, my
reading of Augustine and the Early Church on political and scientiWc matters is indebted to Jean
Bethke Elshtain, Augustine and the Limits of Politics (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame
Press, 1995); Robert Louis Wilken, The Spirit of Early Christian Thought (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2003); Rudolf Lorenz, ‘Die Wissenschaftslehre Augustins,’ 67 ZKG (1955–6):
29 V.; John Neville Figgis, The Political Aspects of S. Augustine’s ‘City of God’ (London, 1921);
and David C. Lindberg, ‘Science and the Early Church’, in David C. Lindberg and Ronald L.
Numbers (eds.), God and Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter between Christianity and
Science (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 19–48.
64 e.g. see Carl Albrecht Bernoulli, Die wissenschaftliche und die kirchliche Methode in der
Theologie: Ein encyklopädischer Versuch (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1897).
65 Noted in Graf and Müller (eds.), Der deutsche Protestantismus um 1900, 10.
66 Hermann Mulert, Evangelische Kirchen und theologische Fakultäten (Tübingen, 1930), 36–7.
18 Introduction
Summing up the situation of Protestant academic theology in 1908, Ernst
Troeltsch could thus observe that theological faculties in Germany had grown
‘indiVerent to the problems of the church’ even as they had adopted for
themselves ‘the normal scientiWc methods of [their] sister faculties’. What is
more, Troeltsch noted that theological faculties operated in ‘an educational
system that was fully under the state and centralized’.67 For such reasons,
Troeltsch concluded that a ‘frightful gulf ’ had developed between the life of
the church and university theological faculties.68 A representative at a Prus-
sian church synod conference in 1903 similarly worried that a ‘tension’ in
society threatened to become a ‘rift’, in which ‘on one side stood science,
represented by theology, [and] on the other side the unscientiWc belief of the
congregation[s]’.69
How had such a situation come about? And what does it tell us about the
conXuence of German academic realities and the development of Protestant
thought in the nineteenth century?
Admittedly, the foregoing considerations cry out for more precise deWni-
tions of how I understand ‘the state’ and ‘science’ in the nineteenth-century
Prussian/German context. To keep the reader from having to guess, I shall
brieXy lay out conceptions on these subjects that inform this work. Thereafter
I outline the principal parts of the book and highlight a few key arguments
before oVering some closing introductory considerations.
The broad political background for this book is what R. R. Palmer famously
called ‘the Age of Democratic Revolution’, that epochal period in the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries which witnessed a fundamental
reorienation of political authority across the Western world. In this reorien-
tation, societies based on hierarchical order and religious tradition
gradually—and in some cases explosively—gave way to ones expressing
liberal, nationalistic, and individualistic principles. Institutions once sanc-
tioned by age-old custom and divine mandate increasingly fell under the
direction of human agency, deliberate amendment, and the expanded admin-
istrative ambitions and capacities of the state.70
Although it has often been posited that German-speaking lands did not
experience political modernity fully, or else only ‘peculiarly’, notably failing to
produce a liberal polity that measured up to that of France, Great Britain, or
67 Troeltsch, Die Trennung von Staat und Kirche, 41.

68 Ernst Troeltsch, ‘Rückblick auf ein halbes Jahrhundert der theologischen Wissenschaft’,
ZWT 51 (1908): 97 V.
69 Verhandlungen der fünften ordentlichen Generalsynode der evangelischen Landeskirchen
Preuâens, 15.Oktober 1903–4.November 1903 (Berlin, 1904), i. 645–6.
70 R. R. Palmer, The Age of Democratic Revolution: A Political History of Europe and America,
1760–1800 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959), i. 5–13.
Introduction 19
the United States, it is also recognized that the sweep of events by no means
bypassed Germany, but left an indelible mark on German institutions, edu-
cational and ecclesiastical no less than political. The spirit of the French
Revolution transmitted by the Napoleonic wars coloured nearly every aspect
of German life in the early nineteenth century, especially after 1806 when the
French army routed Prussian forces at the battle of Jena. Of particular sign-
iWcance for the future of Germany were the ensuing reforms in Prussia,
eVected by progressive statesmen such as Karl Friedrich Freiherr von Stein
(1757–1831), Karl August von Hardenberg (1759–1822), and Karl Sigmund
Franz von Altenstein (1770–1840). It was under such men and at this time,
Thomas Nipperdey has remarked, ‘that the foundations of the modern
state . . . in Germany were laid’.71
But what kind of state was established at this time and how did its make-up
and evolution aVect the university and the church, the two institutions most
relevant for understanding the social position of academic theology? To be
sure, there has been no dearth of commentary on the rise of the modern
German state in general and the so-called Prussian Reform Era (1807–15) in
particular. Here I do not intend to review this impressive body of scholarship,
but three points from it merit mention.
First, it is important to underscore the signiWcance of the ability (as a
consequence of the Napoleonic upheaval) of the state bureaucracy to establish
itself in a position of power apart from the wishes of the monarch as under
eighteenth-century ‘enlightened despotism’. Indeed, Prussia’s bureaucratic
elite demonstrated extraordinary skills after 1806 to wrest powers from the
monarch and achieve major social and political reforms. Otto Hintze has
famously characterized the post-1806 reforms as the replacement of ‘absolute
monarchy’ by ‘bureaucratic monarchy’.72 Similar scenarios played out in
other German states. The reforming civil servants of this era served as the
vanguard of the emerging educated middle class (Bildungsbürgertum), a
historically important social group, which, though numerically small, dom-
inated key positions in government, university, and church throughout the
nineteenth century.73 The progressive, rationalizing, meritocratic, and statist
social vision they brought to these institutions informs the entire sweep of
nineteenth-century history.
71 Thomas Nipperdey, Germany from Napoleon to Bismarck, 1800–1866, trans. Daniel Nolan
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 19.
72 Otto Hintze, ‘Das preussische Staatsministerium im 19.Jahrhundert,’ in Gesammelte
Abhandlungen, 2nd edn. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1967), iii. 530 V.
73 R. Steven Turner, ‘The Bildungsbürgertum and the Learned Professions in Prussia, 1770–
1830: The Origins of a Class’, Historie Social-Social History 13 (May 1980): 105–35.
20 Introduction
Second, in the early nineteenth century, Prussia’s new bureaucratic brain
trust worked towards the establishment of a particular kind of state, one often
described as a culture state (Kulturstaat) or tutelary state (Erziehungsstaat), a
state that numbered among its paternalistic duties the goal of inspiring and
educating its people to become ‘appropriate citizens’, ones who understood
that their aspirations should coincide with the high and morally serious
purposes of the emergent nation-state. Rooted in the ethos of German idealist
philosophy, this new political ideology, Matthew Levinger has witten in a
provocative study, sought ‘to foster the moral and intellectual development
of its people. . . . This tutelary ideal became central to Prussian political
discourse largely because many intellectual and political leaders believed that
it was vitally necessary to harmonize the desires of the people with the will of
the state.’74 Such an understanding of the state received consummate expres-
sion in J. G. Fichte’s well-known Reden an die deutsche Nation (1808), which
called for a new ‘national education’ (Nationalerziehung) superintended by the
state and removed from all corporative and ecclesiastical inXuence.75
Third, although the post-1806 reforms liberalized many quarters of Prussian
society, the same reforms were accompanied by an unprecedented degree of
state centralization. On the one hand, this can be seen as a continuation of
eighteenth-century absolutist tendencies. Yet the reforms also represent a dis-
tinctly modern, post-revolutionary phenomenon in several respects. OYcials
had the ability to draw concrete examples from the Napoleonic reforms; France
served simultaneously as a model, a driving force, and a catalyst, as well as an
opposing pole for a variety of state-centralizing measures. What is more, the
political situation in central Europe created by the French imperium provided
oYcials with altogether new powers and opportunities against forces of feudal-
ism and particularism—powers that far superseded those available to eight-
eenth-century statesmen. Finally, the new ethos of German idealism conferred
on the state a ‘philosophically revolutionary’ character as the appropriate
vehicle to realize modernity’s universal aims against the particularist forces of
the Old Regime.76 To quote Nipperdey again, the Prussian reforms, ‘deeply
inXuenced by philosophy’, would ‘concentrate and intensify the power and
eVectiveness of the state; it would make it more rational and eVective against
all forms of feudal and particularist rule, and it would establish for the Wrst time
its sovereign power within its own borders, right down to the last inhabitant’.77
74 Matthew Levinger, Enlightened Nationalism: The Transformation of Prussian Political

Culture, 1806–1848 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 37.
75 J. G. Fichte, Reden an die deutsche Nation (Berlin, 1808).
76 Hajo Holborn, ‘German Idealism in the Light of Social History’, in Germany and Europe:
Historical Essays by Hajo Holborn (Garden City, NY: Anchor, 1971), 2.
77 Nipperdey, Germany from Napoleon to Bismarck, 20–1.
Introduction 21
Both universities and churches were regarded by bureaucratic reformers as
bastions of guild-like particularism par excellence, and thus as potential
impediments to state-fostered modernity. Not surprisingly, these institutions
were often selected for extensive reform and heightened government involve-
ment, the result of which was a veritable sea change in the relationship of
government to the educational and religious spheres of society.78 Although I
shall discuss the impact of these reforms in greater detail subsequently,
something now should be said about the church–state relationship because
of its crucial bearing on academic theology. For comparative purposes, it is
illuminating to contrast the Prussian evolution of church–state relations in
the early nineteenth century with that of the United States, my own country.
Doing so presents a stark contrast.
In the United States, the period from the ratiWcation of the Constitution
(1787) to the middle decades of the nineteenth century witnessed what Nathan
O. Hatch has called ‘the democratization of American Christianity’, an extra-
ordinary upsurge of religious activity fuelled by populist preachers, increased
denominationalism, and a diVuse egalitarian sentiment stemming from the
American Revolution itself. The absence of a European-style national church,
moreover, compounded by the radical separation of church and state in the
Constitution’s First Amendment, provided the legal and political framework
for the spirit of religious voluntarism and the renewal of piety generally
referred to by historians as ‘the Second Great Awakening’.79 Alexis de Tocque-
ville encountered this reality in the 1830s, and, though troubled by aspects of it,
oVered a generally positive evaluation. ‘Religion in America takes no direct
part in the government of society,’ Tocqueville wrote, ‘but nevertheless it must
be regarded as the foremost of the political institutions of that country; for if it
does not impart a taste for freedom, it facilitates the use of free institutions.’80
As numerous commentators have noted, the religious voluntarism identiWed
by Tocqueville and others, whatever its liabilities, laid a powerful groundwork
for the development of private social activism, philanthropy, and independent
moral judgement. The French neo-Thomist thinker Jacques Maritain has
regarded such religious voluntarism as vital to shape ‘a tradition of initiative
and critical judgment’ apart from ‘the things that are Caesar’s’.81
78 Winfried Speitkampf, ‘Educational Reforms in Germany between Revolution and Restor-

ation’, GH 10 (1992): 1–23.
79 Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven: Yale Uni-
versity Press, 1989). Cf. Mark Noll, America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 161 V.
80 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. George Lawrence (Garden City, NY:
Doubleday, 1969), 287 V.
81 Jacques Maritain, Christianisme et démocratie (New York, 1943), 59. Cf. Norman A.
Graebner, ‘Christianity and Democracy: Tocqueville’s Views of Religion in America’, JR 56
22 Introduction
By contrast, Prussia in the early nineteenth century (owing both to bur-
eaucratic reforms after 1806 and the political and legal legacy of eighteenth-
century absolutism) entered upon what I term an Erastian modernity,82 a
process whereby the churches were virtually annexed to the modernizing state
and subjected to major government oversight and regulation, which extended
down to theological education and parish life—and at times even to liturgy
and doctrine.83 To be sure, such development would not have been possible
without historical antecedents in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.84
Further, the Prussian Civil Code of 1794 had already made it clear that all
‘ ‘‘church societies’’ [were] subject to state authority’.85 However, the extent of
state centralization arrived at after 1806 brought with it a virtual cessation of
any vestige of ecclesiastical autonomy in Prussia. Church aVairs were handed
over to the the newly established Department of Ecclesiastical AVairs and
Public Education (die Sektion des Kultus und des öVentlichen Unterrichts), a
division of the Ministry of the Interior, elevated in 1817 to a self-standing
ministry (the so-called Kultusministerium or, imprecisely translated, Ministry
of Culture).86 Among its Wrst tasks were the abolition of traditional church
governing bodies or consistories (Konsistorien), the secularization of church
(1976): 263–73. Despite his contempt for many aspects of American culture, even Max Weber
believed that the American religious system ‘encouraged individual initiative and eYciency and
was a source of self-respect’. See Wolfgang J. Mommsen, ‘Max Weber in America’, American
Scholar 69 (2000): 106. Cf. Philip SchaV, Church and State in the United States or the American
Idea of Religious Liberty and its Practical EVects (New York, 1888) and Milton B. Powell (ed.), The
Voluntary Church: American Religious Life, 1740–1860, Seen Through the Eyes of European
Visitors (New York: Macmillan 1967).
82 ‘Erastianism’ refers to the ascendency of the state over the church in ecclesiastical aVairs.
The term derives from the sixteenth-century Swiss doctor and theologian Thomas Erastus
(1524–83). His works, especially in their English translations, spread the notion that spiritual
and religious aVairs must be subordinated to the civil laws of the state. See RGG ii. 538. In this
study I use the term rather loosely to refer to state intrusion in ecclesiastical and theological
matters and/or to the belief that the church’s submission to the directives of the state and the
state’s authority is a salutary social arrangement.
83 See Hartmut Lehmann, ‘The Role of Religion in Germany and America in the Nineteenth
and Twentieth Centuries’, in Elizabeth Glaser and Hermann Wellenreuther (eds.), Bridging the
Atlantic: The Question of American Exceptionalism in Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 2002), 69–81.
84 See Heinz Schilling, ‘The Reformation and the Rise of the Early Modern State’, in James D.
Tracy, (ed.), Luther and the Modern State in Germany (Kirksville, Mo.: Sixteenth Century Journal
Publishers, 1986).
85 Rudolf von Thadden, Prussia: The History of a Lost State, trans. Angi Rutter (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1987), 98.
86 Ernst Müsebeck, Das preussische Kultusministerium vor hundert Jahren (Stuttgart, 1918),
44 V. For the sake of convenience, I shall often refer to this ministry as the Ministry of Culture,
although admittedly ‘culture’ is an imprecise translation of ‘Kultus’, which has more speciWcally
religious connotations.
Introduction 23
properties, and the development of a more centralized educational system at
all levels.
The Erastian measures of the early nineteenth century were tied to a novel
supraconfessional conception of Christianity prevalent among key sectors of
Prussian oYcialdom. This conception had two sources. On the one hand, it
grew out of longstanding, practical political needs. Ever since the conversion
of Johann Sigismund (1572–1619), Elector of Brandenburg, to Calvinism in
1613, the House of Brandenburg had faced the problem of how best to govern
a confessionally mixed population, whose majority religion (Lutheranism)
diVered from that of the ruling house (Calvinism).87 This problem had often
led ministers to pursue policies of harmony between the major Protestant
confessions, while promoting a policy of guarded toleration towards Cath-
olics, Jews, and Nonconformists. Elements of this sensibility were driven to
their logical conclusion under Friedrich Wilhelm III (r. 1797–1840) in his
1817 state-orchestrated merger of the Lutheran and Calvinist churches into
one Protestant Union Church (Unionskirche). With the acquisition of more
Catholic territories along the Rhine after the Congress of Vienna (1815), the
confessional dilemma thickened. This led to additional measures by oYcials
to achieve ‘parity’ between Catholics and Protestants with respect to their
relationship to the state—even if the former were still widely regarded as
culturally inferior.88
The politics of confessional harmony (among Protestants) and parity (with
Catholics) was augmented in the early nineteenth century by a new intellec-
tual tendency, growing out of idealist philosophy, that sought simultaneously
to validate the state as a positive moral force and to deWne religion not in
particular credal terms but in terms that emphasized religion’s thought- and
morality-inducing qualities and its social value for Nationalerziehung. The
particular creeds and inWghting among actual churches, by contrast, were
viewed as wanting when judged by this more philosophically reWned, socially
instrumental conception of religion. Many of the major Prussian ministers,
and especially Karl von Altenstein, a devotee of Fichte and Hegel and the
powerful Kultusminister from 1817 to 1840, had been inXuenced by this aspect
of German idealism and did not hesitate to use the authority of the state to
promote it.89 Accordingly, in marked contrast to the anticlericalism of the
87 Robert M. Bigler, The Politics of German Protestantism: The Rise of the Prussian Church Elite
in Prussia, 1815–1848 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), 6.
88 Troeltsch, Die Trennung von Staat und Kirche, 41 V., and Solte, Theologie an der Universi-
tät, 92–6. See ‘Parität’ in ESL 1471.
89 See Eduard Spranger, ‘Altensteins Denkschrift von 1807 und ihre Beziehung zur Philoso-
phie’, FBPG 18 (1906): 107–58 and Frank Schuurmans, ‘Economic Liberalization, Honour, and
Perfectibility: Karl Sigmund Altenstein and the Spritualization of Liberalism’, GH 16 (1998):
165–84.
24 Introduction
French Revolution and the religious free-for-all of the young United States,
Prussia embarked on a modernizing course that not only blurred the bound-
aries between state and church, but actually assigned to the state the task of
harnessing religion to serve its own progressive, tutelary ends.
A consequence of this view, however, was that the church’s relevance as a
concrete, historical force and as an intermediary institution between the
individual and the state was greatly attenuated. Religion was spiritualized,
made immanent in the general experience of humanity, divorced from the
necessity of particularist, ecclesiastical manifestations. Since in idealist
thought ‘the state was the realization not only of law but also of morality’,
notes Hajo Holborn, then ‘the church loses any vital role it had in history’.90
Admittedly, few idealist thinkers, minister-reformers, or the Prussian king
would have put it quite like this, and none went as far as Richard Rothe who,
as we have seen, came to view churches as superXuous to the realization of
religious values on earth. Nonetheless, the steady (occasionally aggressive)
Verstaatlichung of the church through the agency of the Ministry of Culture
bears witness to the greatly diminished importance of ecclesiastical and
doctrinal realities in the eyes of the new reform-minded bureaucratic class.
In a word, churches represented both the dogmatic excesses and particularist
intransigence of the Old Regime. As such, they became the objects of a state-
orchestrated ‘revolution’ in their polity, through which the government
sought to remake them and press them into the service of its own progressive,
bureaucratic, and, indeed, very religious ideals.91
The implications of such a religious policy for this study are threefold.
First, since clergymen, society’s future religious leaders, were required to pass
through theological faculties before seeking ordination, the state in the early
nineteenth century began to take a much more active interest in the oper-
ations of these venerable university bodies. In order to blunt confessional
distinctions, the state deliberately encouraged a theology—and an academic
ethos generally—more latitudinarian and scientiWc than apologetic or con-
fessional in orientation. The University of Berlin was founded, for example, to
‘completely repudiate’ the confessional character of the older territorial uni-
versities.92 One sees this policy, furthermore, in the eVorts by Johannes
Schulze, the key aide of Altenstein in the Ministry of Culture, to establish
theological seminars intended to foster historical and philological criticism
(Kritik) as the foundation of theological excellence. One observes the same
tendency in the ubiquitous state examinations (Staatsexamen) required for
90 Holborn, ‘German Idealism in the Light of Social History’, in Germany and Europe, 1–32.
91 John Groh, Nineteenth-Century German Protestantism: The Church as Social Model
(Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1982), 1–25.
92 Paulsen, German Universities, 54.
Introduction 25
parish candidates, recent graduates of theological faculties. Increasingly,
standardized exams, which served simultaneously as accrediting mechanisms,
agents of professionalization, and means of state oversight, came to emphasize
scholarly exertion over practical, doctrinal, or apologetic considerations.93
Second, the sanctioning of a less confessional, more scholarly theology
allowed the state to adopt a more sanguine view of academic freedom than
had hitherto been the case. To be sure, theologians, like other faculty who
promoted potentially subversive political views, were rarely left alone. Still,
those whose academic pursuits led them beyond the boundaries of strict
orthodoxy often continued to receive state support and patronage, even
after the repressive Karlsbad Decrees (1819), which ushered in a period of
political and religious reaction. A case in point is the oYcial support oVered
by the Ministry of Culture in 1830 to the rationalist theologians Friedrich
Gesenius and J. A. Wegscheider at Halle against the pleas of their orthodox
and pietist critics.94 Thus, despite the well-documented conservatism of the
Vormärz period (1815–48), the ideal of freedom of enquiry continued to gain
saliency (if furtively at times) and eventually it received a legal guarantee in
Prussia’s 1850 Constitution—‘Die Wissenschaft und ihre Lehre ist frei’
(§20)—and this became the foundation of subsequent constitutional meas-
ures in Germany.95 However, throughout the nineteenth century Prussia’s
much-vaunted academic freedom coexisted uneasily with the state’s extensive
control of higher education.96
Finally, the government became more involved in the actual composition of
theological faculties through the process of hiring. Throughout the nine-
teenth century, churches and church bodies had little genuine power over
the candidates who received university appointments in theology. Professors
too had little say in picking their future colleagues, except the right to make
suggestions (Vorschlagsrecht) to the Ministry of Culture; but these were often
only perfunctorily considered or outright denied.97 Instead of basing
93 While such state examinations go back to the eighteenth century, they were greatly over-
hauled at the beginning of the nineteenth century. On the Staatsexamen in Prussia, see the
article on ‘Pfarrervorbildung’ in RGG v. 293–300. Cf. Edward Robinson, ‘Theological Education
in Germany. Part III: Examinations, Ministerial Standing, etc.’, Biblical Repository 3 (July 1831):
414 V. and Paulsen, German Universities, 384 V.
94 Müsebeck, Das preussische Kultusministerium, 211–20. This episode will be treated in Ch. 4.
95 Solte, Theologie an der Universität, 10.
96 E. R. Huber, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte seit 1789 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1957), i. 265.
97 On this score, a major diVerence between Protestant and Catholic faculties existed. The
Catholic Church secured the right for bishops to reject a theology professor ‘because of serious
doubts concerning his orthodoxy or his conduct’. This separate legal arrangement often inspired
liberals all the more to charge that Catholic theological faculties were unworthy of university
status. See Mulert, Evangelischen Kirchen und theologischen Fakultäten, 1–9.
26 Introduction
appointments on doctrinal or collegiate considerations, the Ministry of Cul-
ture increasingly turned to disciplinary and scholarly criteria in making their
decisions. Not surprisingly, this tended to raise the rigors of scholarship at the
expense of doctrine as the more important determinant for both receiving a
position and gaining preferment. While doctrinal criteria by no means van-
ished (state oYcials in fact often extolled a policy of parity in hiring and
promoting rival theological outlooks), an overall heightened emphasis on
scholarly aptitude represented a major shift away from the confessional
rigidities of the premodern university; and if this is not the only factor, it is
at least a highly signiWcant one for explaining the ‘singular burst’ of theo-
logical scholarship in nineteenth-century Germany.98
In sum, throughout this work I contend that the Prussian state in general
and its policies towards the church and university in particular were of great
consequence for the operations of theological faculties and the shaping of
Protestant academic theology. By promoting confessional harmony, empha-
sizing critical scholarship over apologetics, standardizing and mandating
state-run accrediting procedures, and maintaining a Wrm grip on
hiring procedures, the state managed to exercise tremendous inXuence over
the religious sphere in society in general. While certain social groups—
ultramontane Catholics and Jews obviously, so-called Old Lutherans (who
resisted the Church Union of 1817), a minority of free church advocates, and
some disgruntled pietists—fell outside the scope of this policy or ran foul of
it, mainstream Protestant academic theology as a whole was integrated
remarkably well into the Kulturstaat ideal. This outcome contributed sign-
iWcantly, by the post-1871 imperial period, to an ascendant ‘Kulturprotestan-
tismus’ or ‘Bildungsprotestantismus’, which in turn, in the words of F. W.
Graf, functioned as the ‘civil-religious foundation’ of the German Empire.99
While I contrasted these ‘Erastian’ tendencies in Prussia with the situation
in the United States, where near religious anarchy prevailed in the young
republic, I should make clear that I do not intend to suggest that the Prussian-
Erastian model was necessarily a peculiarly German development—a church–
state ‘special path’ or Sonderweg, so to speak. While the magnitude and
consequence of the Prussian measures stand out and should be noted as
such, one observes family resemblances in other European state-church
systems; and one could Wnd variant ‘civil religions’ in many modern political
cultures—not least in the United States.
98 Claude Welch, ‘The Problem of a History of Nineteenth-Century Theology’, JR 52 (1972): 9.

99 See Friedrich Wilhelm Graf, ‘Protestantische Theologie in der Gesellschaft des Kaiser-
reichs’, in Graf (ed.), ProWle des neuzeitlichen Protestantismus: Kaiserreich (Gütersloh: Güterslo-
her Verlagshaus, 1992), ii. 16.
Introduction 27
What is more, the reach of the Prussian state over churches and universities
resembles the actions of many modernizing, reforming states in another,
more general respect. In his wide-ranging work on modern statecraft, James
C. Scott has argued that a recurring pattern in bureaucracy-driven, modern
states, whether in Europe or elsewhere, has been a tendency to place a
premium on ‘an imperial or hegemonic planning mentality’ that disparages
the historic role of local, practical, and traditional knowledge—knowledge
presumably often anchored in religious communities. Such a tendency is
amply borne out by the actions of the Prussian Ministry of Culture toward
the religious sphere throughout much of the nineteenth century. From the
aforementioned policies of Altenstein and Schulze in the early nineteenth
century to the heavy-handed actions of Adalbert Falk (1827–1900) and
Friedrich AlthoV (1839–1908), among the more important cultural bureau-
crats of the late nineteenth century, this Ministry actively, if not invariably,
sought to encourage theology’s scientization and modernization. Using the
parlance of Scott, the Ministry undertook eVorts to ‘simplify’ academic
theology, transforming it from a residually apologetic and sometimes obscur-
antist enterprise, potentially disruptive to the Kulturstaat ideal, ‘into a legible
and administratively more convenient format’, one more in step with the
high-minded Protestant and scientiWc directions of the state.100 Again, it
carried out such measures through minimizing confessionalism (at least
among Protestants), pursuing parity among church factions, standardizing
and implementing examination procedures, limiting the inXuence of
church bodies in theological hiring and education, and sanctioning a
critical-scholarly understanding of the theological vocation, one that drew
its criteria of excellence and evaluation largely from wissenschaftlich standards
shared by non-theological disciplines. The result was a theology truly remark-
able in the history of Christian thought for its detachment from credal and
ecclesial interests, for its many-layered connections to a modern state, and for
its critical rigour and scientiWc aspirations.
Science was central to the Kulturstaat. One even Wnds the terms Kulturstaat
and Wissenschaftsstaat used interchangeably. How then are we to
understand science, or Wissenschaft, during the period covered by this
study? As is regularly noted, the German word Wissenschaft does not lend
itself to easy translation into English: while ‘science’ might be appropriate in
some cases, ‘enquiry’ or ‘knowledge’ or other cognate terms might be more
suitable in others. Unlike the English ‘science’, moreover, Wissenschaft never
carried the strong connotation of natural or physical science, but always
100 James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition
have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 6 V.
28 Introduction
included the cultural or human sciences (Geisteswissenschaften) as well. In
short, rigorous, systematic enquiry into whatever subject might be considered
wissenschaftlich.101
As I shall elaborate more fully in Ch. 3, the term Wrst gained its distinctly
modern currency among idealist thinkers in the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries. At this time, Wissenschaft came to convey a monistic,
totalizing, even Promethean attitude to human knowledge, something that
both provided a comprehensive worldview and allowed enquiry into the
transcendental principles justifying all systematic method and explanation.
In this sense, Fichte wrote with unXagging exuberance on ‘the science of
knowing’, Wissenschaftslehre.102 A wissenschaftlich cast of mind, Friedrich
Schleiermacher wrote in 1808, allowed one ‘to lay open the whole body of
learning and expound both the principles and the foundations of all know-
ledge’.103 The theme of organic wholeness, suggested here by Schleiermacher,
was widely expressed by idealist thinkers—hence the recurring phrase ‘totality
of science’ (Ganzheit der Wissenschaft) in the literature on the subject. The
preoccupation with unity is also seen in the numerous ‘encyclopedias’ pro-
duced in the nineteenth century. An eighteenth-century genre invigorated by
idealism, these encyclopedias were regarded as comprehensive accounts of
individual disciplines and knowledge in general—a genre that arguably
received consummate expression in Hegel’s famous Encyklopädie (1817, 1827).
With justiWcation, R. Steven Turner has characterized early nineteenth-
century idealist conceptions of Wissenschaft not so much as science per se but
as a set of beliefs or an ideology about science (Wissenschaftsideologie), a
devout faith in the mind’s duty and capacity to enquire into and represent the
basic essence of things, and through such activities to improve human
character (Bildung).104 This conception of Wissenschaft was prevalent at the
time of the establishment of the University of Berlin, extolled in many of the
101 For the sake of convenience, I shall often translate Wissenschaft simply as ‘science’ or leave
it untranslated.
102 Among his most important works, the Wissenschaftslehre of Fichte was Wrst published in
1794. See Rolf-Peter Horstmann, ‘The Early Philosophy of Fichte and Schelling’, in Karl Ameriks
(ed.), The Cambridge Companion to German Idealism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2000), 118–27.
103 Schleiermacher, ‘Gelegentliche Gedanken über Universitäten in deutschem Sinn, nebst
einem Anhang über eine neu zu errichtende (1808)’, in Eduard Spranger (ed.), Fichte, Schleier-
macher, SteVens über das Wesen der Universität (Leipzig, 1910), 126 V. Schleiermacher elabor-
ated on his conception of science and human knowing in various lectures on ‘dialectics’ oVered
in Berlin’s philosophical faculty. See Schleiermacher, Dialektik (1811), ed. Andreas Arndt
(Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1986).
104 See R. Steven Turner, ‘The Growth of Professorial Research in Prussia, 1818–1848—
Causes and Context’, in Russell McCormmach (ed.), Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences
(Philadelphia, 1971), iii. 137–82.
Introduction 29
treatises occasioned by this institution’s founding. Its importance for shaping
the modern academic enterprise, while subject to exaggeration, has been
considerable. As Jean-François Lyotard has written, this conception of science
served as ‘the philosophy that legitimated the foundation of the University of
Berlin and was meant to be the motor both of its development and the
development of contemporary knowledge’.105
Ascendent during the heyday of German idealism, the new Wissenschaftsi-
deologie was shaped and altered by yet newer intellectual currents as idealism
declined in the university shortly before mid-century. Scholars therefore often
distinguish between early (roughly 1790s–1830s) and later (post-1830s)
understandings of Wissenschaft.106 At the beginning of the century, the idealist
conceptions held true: usages of Wissenschaft reXected typically idealist mo-
nistic, synthetic, and encyclopedic tendencies. However, as the nineteenth-
century wore on and under the inXuence of positivism, the growth of the
natural sciences, disciplinary specialization, and the exigencies of industrial-
ization and technology, Wissenschaft gradually lost its grand, idealist associ-
ations and took on a more limited deWnition with reference to particular
academic Welds, empirical rigour, and the putative ideological neutrality of
the scholar.107 This idea of neutrality—or Voraussetzungslosigkeit (literally
‘presuppositionlessness’)—as a characteristic of Wissenschaft became espe-
cially pronounced towards the end of the nineteenth century; it was often
trumpeted by secular and progressive Protestant scholars to criticize those,
notably Roman Catholics, believed to be incapable of producing true science
because of their adherence to confessional oaths.108 Quite often, this criterion
of science was invoked to suggest that all theology, Protestant as well as
Catholic, represented an ‘alien substance’ (Fremdkörper) within the modern
scientiWc university.109
In a widely discussed address, ‘Changes in the University over the Last 100
Years’ (1913), Eduard Spranger summed up the transformations of science in
105 Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. GeoV
Bennington and Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1979), 34.
106 Joseph Ben-David, The Scientist’s Role in Society: A Comparative Study (Chicago: Univer-
sity of Chicago Press, 1984), 108–9.
107 On this inXuence of positivism in Germany in the nineteenth century, see W. M.
Simon, European Positivism in the Nineteenth Century (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
1963), 238–63.
108 Theodor Mommsen claimed that the ‘Lebensnerv’ of the modern university was ‘die
voraussetzungslose Forschung’. See Theodor Mommsen, ‘Universitätsunterricht und Konfes-
sion’, in Reden und Aufsätze, 2nd edn. (Berlin, 1905), 432 V. See also Otto Baumgarten,
Die Voraussetzungslosigkeit der protestantischen Theologie (Kiel, 1903) and Jürgen von Kemps-
ki,‘ ‘‘Voraussetzungslosigkeit,’’ eine Studie zur Geschichte eines Wortes’, Archiv für Philosophie 4
(1952): 157–74.
109 Solte, Theologie an der Universität, 14 V.
30 Introduction
the nineteenth century, to which I have alluded. Striking a culturally pessim-
istic tone, Spranger argued that the idealist notion of ‘the unity of science’,
dominant since the founding of the University of Berlin, had gradually given
way to a situation of intellectual fragmentation precipitated by specialized
research and the spread of positivist thought. In Spranger’s formulation:
We have reached the point at which the current conception of science (Wissenschaft)
fundamentally diVers from that of German idealistic philosophy. Present-day science
does not worry about the whole; it thus no longer strives after a worldview and the
capacity for a worldview. Rather, it works on its individual problems and regards the
highest acclaim in solving special problems through the most reWned methods and the
most careful individual research. In other words, present-day science stands under the
decisive inXuence of positivism . . . an almost anarchic form of positivism, which
knows only limitless scientiWc activity.110
A similar, if more sanguine, assessment of the transformed meaning of
Wissenschaft appeared in a rectorial address by the acclaimed pathologist and
Prussian statesman Rudolf Virchow. Writing near century’s end, Virchow
summed up the nineteenth century as a ‘transition from the philosophic to
the scientiWc age’. The former he associated with the reign of Friedrich
Wilhelm III (1797–1840) and the speculative philosophies of Hegel and
Schelling. The passing of these Wgures ended a ‘magic spell’, paving the way
for a ‘more . . . empirical observation of nature’, one conducive to the devel-
opment of veriWable science and science-promoting institutions within the
university such as laboratories, seminars, clinics, and institutes.111
The locus classicus of post-idealist German scholarly self-understanding,
however, remains Max Weber’s famous address, ‘Science as a Vocation’.
Delivered Wrst to an academic audience at the University of Munich in
1917, the address made the point that university science, undergoing ‘a
phase of specialization previously unknown’, had developed in such a manner
as to preclude from its purview not only the quest for an encompassing
intellectual unity, but also all normative moral and religious concerns.
Eschewing value judgements about the Wnal purposes of knowledge as well
as pronouncements about the meaning of human life, modern researchers, in
Weber’s interpretation, simply proliferate facts ad inWnitum and attempt to
relate them to one another. In Weber’s own words:
Science today is . . . organized in special disciplines in the service of self-clariWcation
and knowledge of interrelated facts. It is not the gift of grace of seers and prophets
dispensing sacred values and revelations, nor does it partake of the contemplation of
110 Eduard Spranger, Wandlungen im Wesen der Universität seit 100 Jahren (Leipzig, 1913), 23.
111 Rudolf Virchow, Die Gründung der Berliner Universität und der Uebergang aus dem
philosophischen in das naturwissenschaftliche Zeitalter (Berlin, 1893).
Introduction 31
sages and philosophers about the meaning of the universe. This, to be sure, is the
inescapable condition of our historical situation.112
With minor variations, Spranger, Virchow, and Weber’s accounts of and/or
assumptions about the trajectory of nineteenth-century Wissenschaft have
since been echoed and elaborated upon by numerous scholars.113 Even if
one were to doubt certain aspects of their formulations—such as the validity
of Virchow’s epic categories, the ‘philosophic’ and ‘scientiWc’ ages—one could
hardly contend that the concept and practice of Wissenschaft remained static
throughout the nineteenth century. Accordingly, I shall try to be sensitive to
Wissenschaft’s evolving meanings, purposes, and institutional manifestations.
Yet I shall concurrently argue that two important continuities in the early
(‘idealist’) and later (‘positivist’) nineteenth-century understandings of Wis-
senschaft should be noted.
First, while idealist thought is known mainly for its preoccupation with
formulating the organic unity of knowledge, it was also, in a lesser key,
attuned to the progressive and dynamic character of professorial scholarship,
the taproot of later innovative research and disciplinary specialization.114
Already in the 1790s, for example, Fichte had deWned the task of the scholar
as follows: ‘One should never rest, and never believe that one has done one’s
duty until one has succeeded in advancing one’s discipline. As long as one
lives one can always work toward the advancement of one’s discipline.’115
Similarly, Wilhelm von Humboldt famously argued the new university in
Berlin was based on the principle that Wissenschaft implied ‘a never com-
pletely solved problem’ and therefore one was ‘never done with investigation
and research’.116 While expressed at the height of German idealism’s inXuence,
Fichte and Humboldt’s words reveal an impulse that would continue to be
crucial for the endeavour of modern research. Once transposed from its
idealist context, this impulse would transform the nature of professorial
scholarship, changing its emphasis from an insistence on unity and encyclo-
pedic comprehensiveness to a self-justifying, open-ended quest for intellec-
tual discovery, radical innovation, and the perpetual expansion of
112 Weber, ‘Science as a Vocation’, Gerth and Mills (eds.), From Max Weber: Essays in
Sociology, 134, 152.
113 See e.g. the very rich collection of essays in Kathryn M. Oslesko (eds.), Science in
Germany: The Intersection of Institutional and Intellectual Issues. Osiris 5 (1989).
114 Theodore Ziolkowski has helpfully characterized this view of knowledge among idealist
thinkers as ‘a diachronic organic process’. See Ziolkowski, German Romanticism and its Institu-
tions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 251.
115 J. G. Fichte, The Purpose of Higher Education, trans. Jorn K. Bramann (Mt. Savage, Md.:
Nightsun, 1988), 56.
116 Humboldt, ‘Über die innere und äuâere Organisation der höheren wissenschaftlichen
Anstalten in Berlin,’ in Anrich (ed.), Die Idee der deutschen Universität, 377.
32 Introduction
knowledge—still the hallmarks of the contemporary research university. But
again, this latter emphasis represents not so much a fundamental break from
the idealist heritage, as it is sometimes portrayed, but rather the development
of tendencies latent within idealist thought itself.117
A second element of continuity suggests itself by the fact that while the
quest for organic unity was superseded by increasingly specialized scholarly
endeavours, unity itself was by no means extinguished as a normative aca-
demic ideal. It just became harder to aYrm in the light of proliferating Welds
and subWelds. It receded into the background, but it did not vanish. One sees
its continuing vitality, for example, in the numerous ‘encyclopedias’ produced
in the mid- and late nineteenth century, which, still in the spirit of Hegel,
purported oVering a comprehensive orientation to the various domains of
human knowledge. The genre of theological encyclopedia, which we shall
examine, Wts this category; it too illustrates, in an age of specialization, the
powerful inertia of idealism’s totalizing impulse.
In some instances, increasing specialization prompted sophisticated rear-
ticulations of the unitary ideal. In 1874 the renowned historian Heinrich von
Sybel (1817–95) likened the contemporary expansion of knowledge to trees
joined at the root, whose rapidly multiplying branches by no means com-
promised an essential, organic unity.
In the depths of ancient forests you frequently Wnd groups of trees, four or Wve
powerful stems close together, whose tops spread their branches far and wide in all
directions, but when you come to examine them more closely you Wnd that they all
grow from one single root. Thus it is with the diVerent branches of science; they
stretch out in many diVerent directions, but he who digs deep below the surface Wnds
the common root.118
To be sure, such an overture to unity has a deWnite ring of nostalgia,
articulated, as it was, in an academic milieu characterized by unprecedented
117 In making this argument, I should be clear that I do not intend to overvalue the causal
importance of German idealism. Past scholarship, notably the work of Paulsen, has often come
close to this view. Under the inXuence of idealism, Paulsen wrote, ‘the German universities . . .
have developed into what they are today: the workshops and the forges of the intellectual life of
our people’. But such a view overestimates purely intellectual causes, while neglecting develop-
ments in politics, academic organization, and the changing socioeconomic order. I make eVorts
to give non-intellectual factors their due, while still noting the importance of intellectual factors,
which I too believe are crucial. The causal nexus of the ‘modern university’ is multifaceted. See
Paulsen, Die deutschen Universitäten und das Universitätsstudium (Berlin, 1902), 205. For an
interpretation of the growth of research in the university that privileges socioeconomic factors,
see Helmuth Plessner, ‘Zur Soziologie der modernen Forschung und ihrer Organisation in der
deutschen Universität—Tradition und Ideologie’, in Plessner, Diesseits der Utopie: Ausgewählte
Beiträge zur Kultursoziologie (Hamburg: Diederichs, 1966), 121–43.
118 Heinrich von Sybel, Die deutschen Universitäten, ihre Leistungen und Bedürfnisse (Bonn,
1874), 19–20.
Introduction 33
expansion and diversiWcation. Thus, while unity was never fully eclipsed as a
worthwhile ideal, as I maintain, it undeniably came to be overshadowed by
the imperative for greater individual scholarly expertise and specialization. ‘It
is an essential point in German university education,’ Sybel wrote, giving
expression to this imperative in the same address as his nostalgic paean to
unity,
that the student gain a clear consciousness of the aim of science and the operations by
which science reaches this aim. It is necessary for the student to go himself through
these operations with regard to one subject . . . to follow up some problems to their last
consequences—up to the point where he can say that there is nobody in this world
who, on this point and on this subject, can teach him any more; a point where he can
say here he stands safe and Wrm on his own feet, and decides entirely by his own
judgment.119
It was, Wnally, this imperative—an institutionalized mandate to produce
novel insights and develop individual expertise—that became the signature
feature of the ‘German university’ by the late nineteenth century.
Its bearing on theological faculties was considerable.
Quite obviously, the relationship of Wissenschaft to theology in the nine-
teenth century is a fundamental concern of this study. It would be remiss,
however, to assume this relationship to be one of absolute conXict, a struggle
between the ‘progressive’ forces of science and the ‘reactionary’ forces of
religion. Regrettably, this overwrought dualism, classically expressed in such
Anglo-American, Victorian-era works as J. W. Draper’s History of the ConXict
between Science and Religion (1875) and Andrew Dickson White’s The Warfare
of Science with Theology in Christendom (1876), has had a long and lamentable
inXuence on general conceptions of modern European intellectual history. Yet
it is among the least insightful approaches to the dynamics of Wissenschaft
and theology in the context of the nineteenth-century German university. In
the Wrst place, the dualism suggests an oversimpliWed, ahistorical understand-
ing of the line dividing the protagonists of modern science and their detract-
ors: booster on one side, naysayers on the other. In reality, this line was jagged,
changing, and unclear; and it often cut through the minds of particular
indivduals. Equally important, the dualism cannot account for the eagerness
with which many theologians embraced Wissenschaft, seeing in its explanatory
and systematizing power a means to rejuvenate Christianity under the cul-
tural conditions of modernity. This is not to say that the ‘scientization’ of
academic life in the nineteenth century was devoid of secularizing conse-
quences. It is to say that many leading theological voices did not construe
Wissenschaft—whether in its idealist or positivist guise—as a necessary threat
119 Ibid. 18.
34 Introduction
to theological verities. In fact, liberal Protestant theologians often interpreted
the critical rigours of modern enquiry as the logical, historical fruit of the
Reformation, which had challenged the dogmatic rigidities of Catholicism.120
To reject Wissenschaft therefore was tantamount to vitiating the purest and
most progressive form of human religious consciousness: modern Protest-
antism.121 Turning away from the spirit of Wissenschaft, as one theologian put
it, amounted to ‘a defection from the essence of Protestantism’.122
Wissenschaft itself, moreover, came to be invested with certain religious
qualities. Anyone reading the paeans to Wissenschaft penned by Fichte and
Schelling, and numerous other nineteenth-century scholars, cannot help but
be struck by the quasi-religious character of their words. In his rectorial
address at the University of Berlin, for example, Fichte proclaimed that the
new university qua citadel of Wissenschaft was ‘the most holy thing which the
human race possesses’ and that the transmission of knowledge from gener-
ation to generation amounted to ‘the visible representation of the immortal-
ity of our race’.123 It is perhaps no wonder then that conservative clergymen
and theologians sometime complained about the idolatrous character of
modern critical science, believing that it had become for many people ‘a
surrogate for religion’.124
Ersatz-religion or no, the importance of Wissenschaft for understanding the
theological enterprise in the nineteenth century is hardly a matter of dispute.
Whether one rejected, applauded, questioned, or compromised with it, the
exigencies of modern scholarly enquiry and their relationship to the age-old
tasks of theology commanded the attention of practically all theologians,
irrespective of confession, background, or intellectual skill.125 ‘The right of
theology to exist alongside other Wissenschaften’, as Claude Welch has noted,
became one of the ‘major preoccupations’ of the century.126 It was a preoccu-
pation played out in lecture halls, journals, books, correspondences, and
120 See e.g. Adolf von Harnack’s 1917 address, Martin Luther und die Grundlegung der
Reformation (Berlin, 1917).
121 The association of Wissenschaft and Protestantism could produce bitter anti-Catholic
sentiments, evidenced by the number of leading liberal theologians who became members of the
anti-Catholic ‘Evangelischen Bund zur Wahrung der deutsch-protestantischen Interessen’. See
Graf, ‘Protestantische Theologie in der Gesellschaft des Kaiserreichs’, in Graf (ed.), ProWle des
neutzeitlichen Protestantismus, ii. 17, 44 V.
122 Adolf Hilgenfeld, ‘Die wissenschaftliche Theologie und ihre gegenwärtige Aufgabe’, ZWT
1 (Jena 1858): 2.
123 Fichte, Ueber die einzig mögliche Störung der akademischen Freiheit (Berlin, 1812), 5–6,
NStUB 8 H lit. part. II 1350.
124 These are the words of E. W. Hengstenberg in the EKZ 62 (27 August 1828): 545.
125 This is true for even those theological faculties, such as Rostock, Erlangen, and Greifs-
wald, that maintained stronger confessional identities. See Franz Schnabel, Deutsche Geschichte
im neunzehnten Jahrhundert: Die religiöse Kräfte (Freiburg: Verlag Herder, 1951), iv. 527–9.
126 Welch, Protestant Thought in the Nineteenth Century, i. 4–5.
Introduction 35
faculty meetings. The ‘burning . . . question of the day,’ as one theologian
typically expressed the matter, ‘[is] whether an unscientiWc or scientiWc spirit
(Unwissenschaftlichkeit oder Wissenschaftlichkeit) reigns in theology, whether
the German people should have a clergy . . . hostile to intellectual life or a
clergy friendly to science and thoroughly educated.’127
3 . P L A N O F S T U DY
My principal aim in this study is to interpret the evolution of the modern

German university and Protestant academic theology as interrelated phenom-
ena. As I have indicated, this also requires underscoring the inXuences of the
political order and science, Staat and Wissenschaft, over both academic
organization and theological enquiry. A number of subsidiary and supple-
mentary lines of enquiry contribute to my general purpose.
In Chapter 2, I oVer several background considerations to help the reader
place the subsequent sections in a broader and deeper historical context. Since
the nineteenth-century university broke from and/or developed out of prac-
tices and assumptions of the medieval and early modern university, I believe it
necessary to consider, if brieXy, exactly what these practices and assumptions
were, especially as they pertain to theological education and the place of
theology among other academic disciplines. All too often treatments of the
modern university begin with the watershed of the Enlightenment and the
early nineteenth century and move headlong towards the present. In begin-
ning earlier, I implicitly question this approach, suggesting instead that
premodern antecedents are vitally important for contextualizing and under-
standing the topics of this study.
Chapter 2 Wnds its centre of gravity, however, in a discussion of the eight-
eenth-century university and the forces of inertia and novelty, stagnation and
innovation, that characterized it. For a variety of reasons, German universities
were in major decline in the eighteenth century, intellectually ossifying and
beset by myriad administrative and Wnancial diYculties. At the same time, the
century witnessed several important, new university foundings—particularly
the University of Halle (1694) in Prussia and the University of Göttingen
(1737) in Hanover—that introduced vigorous new impulses to higher
education. These ‘reform universities’ are examined for their incipiently
modernizing characteristics. I also underscore the statutory, curricular, and
scholarly contributions made to them by theologians, foremost August
127 Hilgenfeld, ‘Die wissenschaftliche Theologie’, ZWT 21.

36 Introduction
Hermann Francke (1663–1727) at Halle and Johann Lorenz von Mosheim
(1694–1755) at Göttingen.
Finally, in Ch. 2 I examine what Immanuel Kant famously called ‘the
conXict of the faculties’. While I focus considerable attention on Kant’s own
work, Der Streit der Fakultäten (1798), I indicate that its criticisms of the
status quo in the universities were not isolated phenomena, but reXected a
developed body of criticism among eighteenth-century progressive thinkers.
Like Kant, others too wanted to eVect a spirit of change in the ordering of the
faculties. Principally, this meant diminishing the authority of the theological
faculty in favour of the philosophical faculty, which Kant, in a letter to his
friend Carl Friedrich Stäudlin of Göttingen, revealingly called ‘the opposition
bench against the theological faculty’.128 Examining Kant’s work and the late
eighteenth-century ideas informing it, in turn, helps set the scene for the
founding of the University of Berlin—an event profoundly shadowed by the
legacy of the Königsberg philosopher himself.
Chapter 3 then focuses attention on the establishment of the University of
Berlin (1810), its early years of operation, and this institution’s implications
for the future of theological instruction and scholarship. One feature that
distinguishes Berlin’s founding from those of older universities was the
energetic outpouring of theoretical treatises on higher education that pre-
ceded the actual event. Together, these writings provide a remarkable window
onto a variety of intellectual trends and cultural realities of the time; they also
bear witness to an acute sense of modernity, an idealist and post-revolution-
ary sense that ‘the human spirit’ possessed an entirely new range of individual
and institutional possibilities. My analysis of these documents concentrates
on the question of what role the theological faculty was to play in the new
university. Should it be drastically reduced or even eliminated, as some
suggested, or should it be given a new academic lease so long as it could
demonstrate an ability to adapt to the post-1789 world order and the new
scholarly demands of Wissenschaft?
Ultimately, the strategy of adaptation proved to be the case—a position
successfully advocated by Friedrich Schleiermacher. Not surprisingly, this
historically pivotal theologian and polymath, the founder and Wrst dean of
Berlin’s theological faculty and later the rector of the University, occupies a
prominent role in chapter 3. Focusing particular attention on his Gelegen-
tliche Gedanken über Universitäten in deutschem Sinn (1808), his Kurze Dar-
stellung des theologischen Studiums (1811), and several noteworthy
memoranda from his pen, I argue that Schleiermacher deserves much more
128 Letter of 4 December 1794; Immanuel Kant, Briefwechsel, ed. Otto SchöndörVer (Leipzig,
1924), ii. 688.
Introduction 37
credit than is normally given as the founder of the University of Berlin—a tag
regularly applied to his contemporary, Wilhelm von Humboldt.129
But Schleiermacher was by no means the only bright light on Berlin’s initial
theological faculty. The colleagues he helped assemble assisted in rapidly
transforming Berlin into arguably Europe’s foremost centre of Protestant
theology. A pioneer of historical-critical biblical exegesis, Wilhelm Martin
Leberecht de Wette (1780–1848) came to the Prussian capital in 1810 from
Heidelberg to teach the Old Testament among other Welds. His colleague
at Heidelberg, Philipp Konrad Marheineke (1780–1846) also heeded a call
to Berlin, where he became a leading theological interpreter of Hegelian
thought. In 1814 August Neander (1789–1850) joined the faculty, soon
winning international acclaim as Germany’s foremost church historian.
When Hegel joined the philosophical faculty in 1818, Wlling a chair vacated
by Fichte, Berlin’s theological faculty took on yet new signiWcance as a seat to
reckon (not always favourably) with the far-reaching theological implications
of Hegel’s thought.130 In the Vormärz period between 1815 and 1848, more-
over, the faculty became host to numerous, diversely talented minds, such as
E. W. Hengstenberg, August Twesten, Friedrich Lücke, Karl Immanuel
Nitzsch, F. A. G. Tholuck, Wilhelm Vatke, David Friedrich Strauss, and
Bruno Bauer, among others.131 Not without reason, Hans Frei has called
‘the case of the University of Berlin [to be] . . . the most interesting in the
history of modern academic theology’.132
But theology, like intellectual life in general, does not take place in an
academic ether removed from historical forces. For this reason, in ch. 4, I shift
my focus from theology and its immediate institutional setting, the university,
and place it instead on reconWgurations in Prussian politics, bureaucracy,
educational policy, and church–state relations underway in the early nine-
teenth century. Besides further exploring the rhetoric and realities of Prussia
qua Kulturstaat, I examine in more detail the establishment of the Ministry of
Culture (Kultusministerium) during the Prussian Reform Era and the far-
reaching, Erastian authority this ministry exercised over church aVairs, aca-
demic life, and theology throughout the nineteenth century. It was largely
through the agency of this Ministry, the nationalist historian Heinrich von
129 Adolf von Harnack, ‘Über die Bedeutung der theologischen Fakultäten’, PJ 175 (March
1919): 362–74.
130 On Hegel and Berlin’s theological faculty, see Richard Crouter, ‘Hegel and Schleiermacher
at Berlin: A Many-Sided Debate’, JAAR 48 (1980): 19–43.
131 Short biographies of the theological faculty’s members may be found in Walter Elliger, 150
Jahre Theologische Fakultät Berlin (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1960), 11 V.
132 Hans Frei, Types of Christian Theology, ed. George Hunsinger and William C. Placher
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 102.
38 Introduction
Treitschke once wrote, that the church in Prussia was kept ‘under the benevo-
lent tutelage of the state’.133
In the last part of the book, I widen my purview to encompass aspects of
the entire nineteenth century, ranging from the Napoleonic era to the turmoil
of the early Weimar Republic. While keeping a focus largely on Prussia and
the University of Berlin—albeit with lingering side glances at other key
universities such as Bonn, Halle, Tübingen, Göttingen, Breslau, and Königs-
berg—I puzzle speciWcally over the conXicted renown of German academic
theology in the nineteenth century. Why did some champion the dominant
liberalizing, scientizing directions of theology as a bold example of intellectual
and religious progress, while others questioned them, either as misguided
thinking or as the unwitting vitiation of timeless Christian verities?
In broaching such a question, one is necessarily led to many others. How
did various distinctive nineteenth-century forces—whether political, intellec-
tual, or economic in nature—impinge on university development and the role
of theology therein? What was actually taught in theological faculties, par-
ticularly as revealed by the ubiquitous theological encyclopedias, the intro-
ductory textbooks of their day? How did university histories and various
commemorative occasions portray the position (and plight) of theology in
the modernizing university system? How did foreign visitors and educators,
often awestruck by the ‘German university’, size up the direction and meaning
of German academic theology in the mid- and late nineteenth century? Why
did many German professors feel toward century’s end that a ‘crisis of the
theological faculty’ was taking place, and how did theologians respond to
and/or perhaps contribute to this crisis? Finally, how did the theological
faculty actually persist in the university system in the early twentieth-century
despite strong pleas to abolish it on account of its alleged scientiWc illegitim-
acy and its violation of the modern doctrine of church–state separation?
Additional questions present themselves, but this should give one some
sense of the road ahead.
4. BROADER CONSIDERATIONS, OR ‘ THE

PAT H OS OF M ODER N THE OLOGY’
‘[W]e can never rid ourselves entirely of the views of our own time and
personality,’ wrote the great Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt, ‘and here
133 Heinrich von Treitschke, History of Germany in the Nineteenth Century, trans. Eden and
Cedar Paul (New York: AMS, 1968), ii. 509–10.
Introduction 39
perhaps is the worst enemy of knowledge. The clearest proof of it is this: as
soon as history approaches our century and our worthy selves we Wnd
everything more ‘‘interesting’’; in actual fact it is we who are more ‘‘inter-
ested’’. ’134
In conceiving and carrying out a study like the present one, Burckhardt’s
words generally ring true: my own interests and commitments as well as the
social and cultural worlds in which I Wnd myself have necessarily shaped the
present work. However, at the risk of quibbling with a Wrst-order historical
mind, I am less inclined to see these things as the worst enemy of knowledge
than as the thorny ground from which knowledge, historical or otherwise,
must necessarily arise. I would even suggest that posing questions and fol-
lowing intuitions that correlate strongly with one’s intellectual commitments
and interests is a vital precondition for the production of meaningful, pro-
vocative, and, alas, accurate knowledge.135 It is only fair then to lay out to the
reader here a few Wnal, more general considerations of my own that
have informed this study since its inception. Readers may then decide, by
their own lights, whether these have borne fruit in historical insight suY-
ciently compelling to warrant assent by those who might not share my
commitments. (Readers uninterested in such considerations may proWtably
skip ahead to ch. 2.)
As someone who takes seriously the ongoing relevance of Christian intel-
lectual traditions, I have quite simply an abiding interest in Christian theo-
logical reXection, its history, and its place in the academic landscape and in
the broader social and cultural Welds. Thus, while this work is at one level an
exercise in intellectual history, framed by a particular nation-state, it is, at
another, an interpretative foray into the history of Christian thought, an
attempt to shed light on and raise questions about a set of institutional and
intellectual developments of abiding signiWcance for understanding the place,
predicament, and promise of Christian theology today in the vast and churn-
ing ocean of contemporary culture. As an American scholar, I am not
immune to the charge of being an innocent abroad. This is fair enough, but
I have also tried to make a virtue of a natural liability: distance from the other
shore, which certainly occasions naivety and ignorance, but may also lend
perspective.
134 Jacob Burckhardt, ReXections on History, trans. M. D. Hottinger (Indianapolis: Liberty,

1979), 41.
135 In more theoretical language, I would call this approach ‘dialectical objectivity’, meaning
that the interests and insights of the investigating subject, not his or her avowed ‘neutrality’, are
necessary and even constitutive for an understanding of the object at hand. Here I borrow from
Allan Megill, ‘Four Senses of Objectivity’, in Megill (ed.), Rethinking Objectivity (Durham: Duke
University Press, 1994), 7–10. Cf. Thomas L. Haskell, Objectivity is not Neutrality: Explanatory
Schemes in History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 145–73.
40 Introduction
An interest in theology inclines my scholarship to what some sociologists
have called ‘plausibility structures’—the complex tapestry of ideas and insti-
tutions operative in a given society that shape worldviews and give credence
to particular deWnitions of reality.136 At the risk of overgeneralization, I think
it fair to say that the contribution of universities, especially German-
inXuenced research universities, to modern plausibility structures has been
incalculable, and deeply ambivalent with respect to traditional Christian
assumptions about the world, knowledge, and human nature. This has been
true in German universities and equally so in American higher education,
which, we must remember, has absorbed the impact of nineteenth-century
German university development to an extent that rivals or exceeds the
German universities themselves.137 At the same time, the modern university,
founded on the dynamic premise of Wissenschaft, has placed in theology’s
hands tools of criticism and methodological rigour unprecedented in the
history of Christian thought; theological faculties and individual theologians
who mastered these tools thereby gained a new academic lease. But again, the
university since the nineteenth century has cultivated, intentionally or not, an
institutional atmosphere of scepticism to forms of theology operating in ac-
cordance to more traditionalist, credal, or sapiential understandings of theol-
ogy’s task. Thus, theology, if it sought continuance as an academic enterprise,
was compelled to come up with strategies to validate the plausibility structures
of the modern university. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries,
as Hans Frei has written, ‘Christian theology was . . . [put] in the position of
having to demonstrate that it was truly wissenschaftlich and had a right to
citizenship in [the] university.’138 Many debates among theologians of the
later nineteenth and early twentieth century, as I have already hinted, were
accordingly animated by the question of whether or not such accommodation
to modernity was in fact desirable or even possible.
While this debate still simmers today, what is of particular interest to many
contemporary thinkers, whether avowedly religious or not, is no longer the
question of accommodation to modernity, but whether modernity itself—
and its supporting plausibility structures, the university foremost—has
swooned under the weight of its own ambitions and given rise to an anti-
or postmodern period, or at least one that evinces a deeply chastened attitude
136 See Peter Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (Garden
City, NY: Doubleday, 1969).
137 Rüdiger vom Bruch has argued that many of the ideals of the modern German university
‘may be today better preserved in the North American than the German system of higher
education’. See Rüdiger vom Bruch, ‘A Slow Farewell to Humboldt? Stages in the History of
German Universities, 1810–1945,’ in Ash (ed.), German Universities: Past and Future, 27.
138 Frei, Types of Christian Theology, 98–9.
Introduction 41
toward the universalist ideals of the Enlightenment, the cradle of modernity.
A sign of the unravelling of modernity, it is often claimed, is found in the
moral and epistemological incoherence of contemporary universities, espe-
cially in what we today call ‘the humanities’, or Geisteswissenschaften, the very
domain of education that the founders of the University of Berlin, following
Kant, sought to establish as the rejuvenating centre of the modern university.
Predicated on Kantian notions of autonomous reason and an idealist belief in
the unity of science, this centre today, critics argue, displays methodological
confusion, epistemological disarray, and a susceptibility to political whim that
vitiates its own modern raison d’être. Theology too, in so far as it has
exchanged its traditional attire for the mantle of Wissenschaftlichkeit, has
replicated the disarray present in the academy at large, or so its critics charge.
Thus the Anglican theologian John Milbank speaks of ‘the pathos of modern
theology’ resulting from theology having long been ‘ ‘‘positioned’’ by secular
reason.’139
In recent years, the moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre has emerged as
one of the most inXuential critics of the faltering modern university ideal. In
his interpretation, the promise of the modern university was never realized
due to a theoretical inadequacy of one of its central pillars: namely the belief
that ‘an autonomous rationality’, unmoored from the sustenance provided by
moral traditions, speciWcally religious ones, was a suYcient ground to legit-
imize the post-Enlightenment academic enterprise. As Kant put it, genuine
enquiry in the university (particularly in the philosophical faculty) was to
stand ‘only under the authority of reason’ (nur unter der Gesetzgebung der
Vernunft).140 If the university remained true to this vision, the implication
ran, its members, labouring in their respective Welds, would converge on a
universally accepted body of knowledge and a common moral and epistemo-
logical vocabulary. In MacIntyre’s formulation: ‘[F]reed from constraints and
most notably the constraints imposed by religious and moral tests, it [the
university] . . . [was to] produce not only progress in enquiry but also agree-
ment among all rational persons as to what the rationally justiWed conclusions
of such enquiry are.’141 Such was the inspiration behind the great number of
‘encyclopedias’ produced in nineteenth-century Germany, some of which I
139 John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason (Oxford: Blackwell,
1990), 1–6. Cf. Edward Farley, Theologia: The Fragmentation and Unity of Theological Education
(Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983) and David Kelsey, Between Athens and Berlin: The Theological
Education Debate (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1993), 19, 49 V.
140 Kant, Streit der Fakultäten, 42–3.
141 Alasdair MacIntyre, Three Rival Forms of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopedia, Genealogy, and
Tradition (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990), 225. Admittedly, in this work
MacIntyre is concerned more with British universities; still, his observations are quite relevant
to German and American university development as well.
42 Introduction
shall discuss. It was also the dominant impulse, according to MacIntyre’s
analysis, behind the famous ninth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica—of
and to which Berlin’s Adolf von Harnack, incidentally, was an avid supporter
and contributor.142
However, by many present-day accounts—by no means MacIntyre’s
alone—the cunning of history has produced something quite like the oppos-
ite of the modern university’s original, unitary aspirations. Instead of unity
and a rational, encyclopedic ‘metalanguage’, confusion and fragmentation
reign, along with a general sense of crisis, frustration, and a seemingly
Sisyphean search for new purpose and revised legitimation.143 Jean-François
Lyotard perhaps most inXuentially set the parameters for current conversa-
tions about the troubles of higher education in his widely discussed Postmod-
ern Condition (1979), the subtitle of which, ‘A Report on Knowledge,’ merits
keeping in mind. Attributing massive signiWcance to the nineteenth-century
German university system, and to the University of Berlin in particular, as a
blueprint for and an inspiration behind systems of higher education through-
out the developed world, Lyotard concluded that the centre had not held:
contemporary knowledge appeared in a state of ‘crisis’, showing signs of
‘internal erosion’ and ‘splintering’: ‘There is erosion at work . . . and by loos-
ening the encyclopedic net in which each science was to Wnd its place, it
eventually sets them free.’144 While Lyotard ultimately aYrmed the ‘postmod-
ern’ possibilities that the crisis in higher education allowed, his assessment of
the fate of the modern university’s original unitary goals suggests something
far short of a success story.
Among the more provocative historians of American higher education and
religion, George Marsden has recently presented an equally pessimistic
account of the university in the United States, asserting that the contempor-
ary university is awash in contradictions and displays a worrisome inability to
foster meaningful conversation across ideological and disciplinary lines.145
While I need not rehearse the details of Marsden’s argument, his general
142 MacIntyre, Three Rival Forms of Moral Enquiry, 44.

143 Among numerous thoughtful critiques and eVorts to re-envision universities and the
university ideal, see Andrea Sterk (ed.), Religion, Scholarship, and Higher Education: Perspectives,
Models, and Future Prospects (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002); Mark
Schwehn, Exiles from Eden: Religion and the Academic Vocation in America (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1993); Bill Readings, The University in Ruins (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1996); Jaroslav Pelikan, The Idea of the University: A Reexamination (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1992); Michael Daxner, Ist die Uni noch zu retten? Zehn Vorschläge und eine
Vision (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1996); and Peter Glotz, Im Kern verrottet? Fünf vor
Zwölf an Deutschlands Universitäten (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1996).
144 Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, 39.
145 See esp. George M. Marsden, The Soul of the American University: From Protestant
Establishment to Established Nonbelief (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 429 V.
Introduction 43
assessment bears considering, as it, like Lyotard’s, suggests the quandary of the
modern university ideal.
Contemporary university culture is hollow at its core. . . . Knowledge today is oriented
increasingly toward the practical; at the same time, in most Welds the vast increases in
information render our expertise more fragmentary and detached from the larger
issues of life. Although the university research ideal [read: Wissenschaft in the more
positivist mode] apparently works well enough in the sciences and technology, it is
not at all clear why the same principles should be normative for the study of human
society and behavior. Even the liberal arts are havens for fads that often obscure what
was originally attractive about their subjects. ‘Wisdom’ is hardly a term one thinks of
in connection with such studies, nor with our system of higher education as a
whole.146
Harvard’s former president, Derek Bok, shares similar ground with Marsden
in challenging the American elite professoriate, long socialized to transmit
expertise, facts, and method, to reconsider what it means ‘to provide a sound
moral education’.147
Questions of wisdom and moral education return us to MacIntyre, who
insists that a strong relationship exists, or should exist, between one’s as-
sumptions about knowledge and one’s ability to carry forward sound moral
reasoning. Unfortunately, in his view, the contemporary university provides
neither a compelling basis for epistemology nor a coherent way for its
members to discuss and resolve moral dilemmas. The university has become
a place, writes MacIntyre, where ‘all debate is inconclusive’, for there exists no
commonly shared body of Wrst principles that would allow discussants to
resolve disagreements. Oddly then, like the confessional theologians of the
seventeenth century, scholars in the humanities and social sciences today,
when enquiry transcends questions of technical expertise, retrench into often
predictable ideological and epistemological orthodoxies and shrilly question
the legitimacy of their opponents’ views. ‘It is ironic’, concludes MacIntyre,
‘that the wholly secular humanistic disciplines of the late twentieth century
should thus reproduce that very same condition [interminable polemics]
which led their nineteenth-century secularizing predecessors to dismiss the
claim of theology to be worthy of the status of an academic discipline.’148
However, if that which once sought to dismiss theology (critical science,
autonomous reason, and the belief in ‘presuppositionless’ enquiry) are
now found wanting, what is the status of theological reXection after the
146 George M. Marsden, The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1997), 3.
147 Derek Bok, Universities and the Future of America (Durham: Duke University Press,
1990), 62.
148 MacIntyre, Three Rival Forms of Moral Enquiry, 7.
44 Introduction
much-discussed ‘failure of the Enlightenment project’? Further, what is the
status of those modern theologies that wholeheartedly embraced the Kantian-
idealist hopes of universality and rationality and/or the positivist hopes for
neutrality? What is the relationship of any contemporary academic theology
to the credal, ecclesial theologies of the era prior to the advent of the modern
university? What should one make of recent post-critical and post-liberal
theologies, which, as the common preWx suggests, bear stronger witness to an
exhausted project rather than herald a new one?149 In short, what might the
ancient enterprise of Wdes quaerens intellectum mean today for a university
that often appears, in the lines of Matthew Arnold, ‘wandering between two
worlds j one dead, the other powerless to be born’?
Recognizably, these are broad questions, ones that a historian probably has
no business trying to pose, much less answer. Most are best left to theologians
themselves. In what follows, I’ll try to practise more modesty then, attempting
the ‘handmaid’s’ work of providing needful historical background, to help
frame these questions and perhaps provoke other ones as well.
149 See John Webster and George P. Schner (eds.), Theology after Liberalism: A Reader
(Oxford: Blackwell, 2000).
2
Sacra Facultas and the Coming of
German Modernity
But the purpose of this science [theology] . . . is eternal beatitude, to

which as to an ultimate end the ends of all the practical sciences are
directed. Hence it is clear that from every standpoint it is nobler than
other sciences.
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae
The theological faculty is no longer necessary.
J. B. Erhard, Über die Einrichtung und den Zweck der
höhern Lehranstalten (1802)
1. INTRODUCTION
On the morning of 17 September 1737, to the sound of ringing church bells,

an academic procession wound its way through the narrow streets of Göttin-
gen headed for St Paul’s Church, formerly a Dominican monastery. The
occasion marked the inauguration of the University of Göttingen, oYcially
founded this year in the Hanoverian state of George II. Students led the
procession, followed by several nobles, town dignitaries, and deputies from
the crown. Near the end of the procession came the professors, bedecked in
academic gowns and marching in rank of importance. The philosophical
faculty led the way, signifying its traditional subordinate position as the
‘lower’ faculty. It was followed by the ‘higher’ faculties of medicine and law.
Lastly came the theologians, the august ‘Wrst faculty’, bearers of divine know-
ledge inaccessible to human reason alone.1
1 Ulrich Hunger, ‘Die Georgia Augusta als hannoversche Landesuniversität. Von ihrer Grün-
dung bis zum Ende des Königreichs’, in Ernst Böhme and Rudolf Vierhaus (eds.), Göttingen:
Geschichte einer Universitätsstadt (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2002), ii. 150, and
Reinhard Wittram, Die Universität und ihre Fakultäten (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
1962), 1.
46 Sacra Facultas and German Modernity
Although across Europe the Enlightenment was ascendant, Göttingen’s
procession and the priority it gave to theology bore witness to the powerful
inertia of the medieval world.2 Göttingen was not exceptional. Other German
universities too acknowledged the theological faculty’s queenly dignity in a
variety of symbolic and substantive ways. Not only did theologians receive
places of honour in academic processions and ceremonies, but they often
made up the largest of the higher faculties, received the highest remuneration,
and were looked to for ensuring the religious conformity of the university as a
whole.3 Their very existence attested to an academic enterprise that continued
to see itself in profoundly religious terms. Oaths of confessional Wdelity were
the rule of the day; ecclesiastical connections among the professoriate were
thick and numerous.4 While not as narrowly confessional as other univer-
sities, Göttingen was still established as a ‘Protestant university’ in a ‘Protest-
ant state’, as George II put it in 1733.5 Its statutes made clear that any
member who espoused ‘godless’ views—such as denying the immortality of
the soul or the doctrine of the Trinity—would not remain long in the
academic community.6
But the theological faculty’s pre-eminent position faced formidable chal-
lenges in the eighteenth century, at Göttingen and elsewhere. Politically, the
demands of absolutist state-building placed a premium on competent states-
men and lawyers, boosting the prestige and importance of the faculty of law,
often at the expense of theology.7 Intellectually, currents of the French En-
lightenment and English Deism had made their presence felt in German
academic life. Between 1741 and 1782, over twenty works of Deism were
translated into German.8 The writings of Samuel Pufendorf, Christian
2 See Frank Rexroth, ‘Ritual and the Creation of Social Knowledge: The Opening Celebra-
tions of Medieval German Universities’, in William Courtney and Jürgen Miethke (eds.),
Universities and Schooling in Medieval Society (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 71–2.
3 Friedrich Paulsen, German Universities and University Study, trans. William W. Elwang
(New York, 1906), 38, and R. Steven Turner, ‘The Prussian Universities and the Research
Imperative, 1806–1848’, Ph.D. diss. (Princeton University, 1972), 31.
4 Friedrich Paulsen, Geschichte des gelehrten Unterrichts auf den deutschen Schulen und
Universitäten vom Ausgang des Mittelalters bis zur Gegenwart (Leipzig, 1919), i. 258. A typical
oath from Jena (a Lutheran university) of 1679 required that professors have nothing to do with
‘Papists or Calvinists or any other false doctrine’. Noted in F. A. Tholuck, Das akademische Leben
des siebzehnten Jahrhunderts mit besonderer Beziehung auf die protestantisch-theologischen Fakul-
täten Deutschlands (Halle, 1853), i. 67.
5 Wittram, Die Universität und ihre Fakultäten, 5–7.
6 Wilhelm Ebel, Die Privilegien und ältesten Statuten der Georg-August-Universität zu Göttin-
gen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1961), 40–3.
7 Notker Hammerstein, Universität und Aufklärung (Göttingen: Wallstein, 1995).
8 A. O. Doyson, ‘Theological Legacies of the Enlightenment: England and Germany’, in S. W.
Sykes (ed.), England and Germany: Studies in Theological Diplomacy (Frankfurt am Main: Peter
Lang, 1982), 55 V.
Sacra Facultas and German Modernity 47
Thomasius, and Christian WolV, furthermore, emphasized the autonomous
role of reason in human understanding, attenuating the authority of Chris-
tian theology.9 Combined, these intellectual currents gave new prestige to the
philosophical faculty, long considered the mere handmaid of the higher
professional faculties. As the century progressed, the philosophical faculty’s
expanding scope and distinction increasingly posed a threat to the status of
theology. The nature of this threat was brought into clear relief near the
century’s end by Immanuel Kant’s Streit der Fakultäten (1798).
Yet the theological faculty’s problems were deeper still. For not only did it
face an internal threat from neighbouring faculties, but the shape of the
university itself was coming under sharp attack from progressive critics. In
part, the universities themselves were to blame for this state of aVairs. Their
problems in the eighteenth century were legion and included Wnancial mis-
management, curricular stagnation, professorial pedantry, a decline in ma-
triculation numbers, and a notoriously coarse and unruly student subculture
that venerated drinking and duelling. Not surprisingly, the eighteenth century
is regularly depicted in general histories as a nadir for universities—not only
in central Europe but in much of the rest of Europe as well. After mid-century,
some critics even called for the complete abolition of universities and the
establishment of diVerent forms of higher education, modelled on the scien-
tiWc academies that had arisen in London (1662), Paris (1666), and Berlin
(1700) in the wake of the ScientiWc Revolution.
But the extent of criticism should not obscure another important reality of
eighteenth-century academic life: eVorts of reform within the existing uni-
versity structures. Thus, it is perhaps most accurate to characterize university
aVairs during this period in a twofold manner. On the one hand, universities
were in major, some would say terminal, decline. But just as this situation
elicited criticism, it also prompted pleas for improvement. Numerous trea-
tises voiced hopeful, progressive calls for change—not for the abolition of
universities but for their refortiWcation and amendment. The universities of
Halle (1694) and Göttingen (1737), though traditional in many respects, were
founded with explicit reform agendas in mind, and their examples were not
lost on other universities. In many respects, the University of Berlin (1810)
brought to full expression ideas and practices that had Wrst taken root,
often quite extensively, in the eighteenth century.
In this section, I address several questions alluded to above. What were the
causes of general university decline in the late seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries and how, speciWcally, did the decline manifest itself? Who were the
critics of the universities and what motivated them? How did the theological
9 Paulsen, Geschichte des gelehrten Unterrichts, 540–1.

faculty Wgure into their criticisms? Finally, how was the philosophical faculty
expanding and growing during the eighteenth century and in what ways did
this challenge and aVect theological study?10
The above questions will be pursued in due course. A crucial prior task is to
consider the nature of university development and the locus and function of
theological study prior to the German Enlightenment. Without suYcient
historical background, it is impossible to evaluate eighteenth-century univer-
sity decline and subsequent modernization. While still ‘medieval’ in some
respects, even during the Aufklärung, universities had witnessed signiWcant
transformations in the preceding centuries. The religious crises and tumults
of the sixteenth century, in particular, had given birth to powerful forces of
change: scholarly humanist currents, new theological convictions, and freshly
acquired powers by local German princes had brought sweeping reforms to
universities and theological faculties. Extending themselves into the seven-
teenth and eighteenth centuries, these changes petriWed into self-satisWed
orthodoxies and, along with other factors, provided new grounds for diVer-
ent, distinctly modern criticisms and reforms.
2. THE MEDIEVAL L EGACY
Although younger than their counterparts in France, Italy, Spain, and Eng-
land, German universities can claim a venerable ancestry. Modelled exten-
sively on the University of Paris, the jewel of the medieval university system
and the most important in matters theological, German universities trace
their beginnings to the fourteenth century. Prague and Vienna were founded
Wrst, respectively in 1348 and 1365 by the royal houses of Luxemburg and
Hapsburg. These were followed by universities in Heidelberg (1385), Erfurt
(1379), Cologne (1388), and Würzburg (1402).11 The last of the ‘medieval’
10 The condition of the ‘philosophical faculty’ in the eighteenth century has been the subject
of considerable debate. Friedrich Paulsen has argued that ‘the rise of the German universities in
the eighteenth century was primarily due to the rise of the philosophical faculty from servitude
to leadership’. Other scholarship, notably that of R. Steven Turner, has depicted the condition of
the philosophical faculty in decidedly bleaker terms. I am of the opinion that while this faculty
was in a state of stagnation—or ‘decay’ as Turner suggests—for much of the century, especially
the Wrst half, it undeniably witnessed new birth, especially after the founding of the University of
Göttingen. This new birth in turn paved the way for the Xourishing of the faculty in the
nineteenth century. See Paulsen German Universities, 42, 408 V., and R. Steven Turner, ‘Uni-
versity Reformers and Professorial Scholarship in Germany, 1760–1806’, in Lawrence Stone
(ed.), The University in Society (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), 499.
11 HUE i. 63–4. On the founding of the medieval German universities, see Hastings Rashdall,
The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages [A new edition in three volumes, ed. F. M. Powicke
German universities were founded at Leipzig (1409) and Rostock (1419).
These trace their origins to the Hussite disturbances in Bohemia, which
resulted in the exile of many German-speaking scholars from Prague.12
A second foundation period coincided with the rise of Renaissance
humanism in central Europe. It witnessed the establishment of no less than
nine universities: Greifswald (1456), Trier (1454), Freiburg im Breisgau
(1457), Ingolstadt (1459), Basle (1460), Tübingen (1477), Mainz (1476),
Wittenberg (1502), and Frankfurt an der Oder (1506).13 The period after
the Reformation, the so-called Confessional Age, witnessed another spate of
university foundings. These were sponsored in large measure by German
princes, Protestant and Catholic, who through the Reformation and its con-
Xicts had gained considerable autonomy within the weakened structures of
the Holy Roman Empire. Since few wanted to do without a university to
bolster the prestige of their land, central Europe became a virtual hatchery of
universities. These included Marburg (1527), Königsberg (1544), Dillingen
(1553), Jena (1558), Helmstedt (1576), Altdorf (1578), Olmütz (1581), Graz
(1586), Giessen (1607), Paderborn (1614), Rinteln (1620), Salzburg (1620),
Osnabrück (1629), Linz (1636), Bamberg (1648), Duisburg (1654), Kiel
(1665), and Innsbruck (1668).14
The organization and administration of the oldest German universities, or
studia generalia as they were designated, reXected the inXuence of the Uni-
versity of Paris, the academic home of the men who Wrst wrote their statutes
and taught in them. These institutions in turn served as models for later
university foundations, leading to a general uniformity in academic structure
and practice throughout German-speaking Europe.15 Like Paris, German
universities were largely autonomous legal corporations: their broad powers
of self-government included the right to establish their own statutes and
punish transgressors thereof, to run daily aVairs without excessive outside
interference, to obtain exemptions from certain local taxes, and to operate
with juridical immunity from civil courts. The rights of the founding prince
or municipal government often did not extend much beyond the right to
approve or disapprove of changes in the statutes. Thus, for the most part,
and A. B. Emden] (Oxford: Clarendon, 1936), ii. 211–63. See also Heinrich DeniXe, Die
Entstehung der Universitäten des Mittelalter bis 1400 (Berlin, 1885), Friedrich Paulsen, Geschichte
des gelehrten Unterrichts i. 7–172, and A. B. Cobban, The Medieval Universities: Their Develop-
ment and Organization (London: Methuen, 1975).
12 C. HöXer, Johannes Hus und der Abzug der deutschen Professoren und Studenten aus Prag,
1409 (Prague, 1864).
13 HUE i. 64–5.
14 Ibid. ii. 87–8.
15 James H. OverWeld, Humanism and Scholasticism in Late Medieval Germany (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1984), 13.
once founded with the necessary papal and/or imperial charters, German
universities became quite literally a law unto themselves.16 To be sure, con-
fessional religious passions and the imperatives of absolutist state-building
from the sixteenth century on eventually worked to limit the autonomy of
universities. Still, well into the eighteenth century, universities could lay claim
to a measure of their original freedoms.17
The social location of the earliest universities—the fact that they were
neither entirely of the ecclesial realm (sacerdotium) nor of the political
realm (imperium) but represented a new realm (studium)—has been the
subject of considerable scholarly discussion.18 Both Georg Kaufmann and
Friedrich Paulsen have stressed the secular or proto-modern character of the
medieval German universities. Paulsen notes, for instance, that because
princes and municipal governments, instead of the church, often played
leading roles in establishing universities, which were then granted consider-
able freedom through legally recognized incorporation, the medieval studia
generalia introduced ‘the subjective secularization of knowledge’ which ‘pre-
pared the way for that great emancipation of subjective reason which
occurred during the Renaissance and Reformation’. Yet it is equally true,
and Paulsen admits as much, that a more nuanced view suggests that while
the universities were secularly endowed they had religious missions. On this
score, one should remember that practically all faculty members were also
members of religious orders or had received some form of clerical training in
monasteries or cathedral schools. University routines and rituals were, in
large measure, modelled after life in the cloister. Papal bulls recognizing
universities assumed that knowledge was the business of the church. It is
thus most accurate to regard the earliest German universities, although no
longer ecclesial in the strictest sense, as religious institutions in the broadest
sense and therefore as key agents of cultural unity in the world of medieval
Christendom.19
16 At Wrst only a papal charter was required. The Bull Parens scientiarum (‘the mother of
sciences’) of 1231 is considered the magna carta of the University of Paris. It set the precedent for
later university foundings. The University of Freiburg im Breisgau was the Wrst university that
also included a charter from the emperor and thereafter this became customary for universities
within the Holy Roman Empire. See Paulsen, German Universities, 16. Cf. Pearl Kibre, Scholarly
Privileges in the Middle Ages: the Rights, Privileges, and Immunities of Scholars and Universities at
Bologna, Padua, Paris, and Oxford (Cambridge, Mass.: Medieval Academy of America, 1962).
17 See HUE i. 35–7 and Alexander Kluge, Die Universitäts-Selbstverwaltung: Ihre Geschichte
und gegenwärtige Rechtsform (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1958), 53 V.
18 HUE i. 77 V.
19 Paulsen, German Universities, 26–8 and Georg Kaufmann, Geschichte der deutschen Uni-
versitäten (Stuttgart, 1896), ii. 91 V.
One of the important ‘Parisian’ features of the earliest German universities
was their wholeness. That is, they each possessed all four of the traditional
university faculties—the lower arts faculty (facultas artium), which later came
to be called the philosophical faculty, and the three higher faculties of
theology, law, and medicine. This was in contrast to most universities estab-
lished in Italy, provincial France, and Spain, where legal studies traditionally
took precedence over theology. In fact, before the Great Schism, popes had
regularly denied theological faculties to many newly created universities in
order to preserve the dominance of established theological centres such as
Paris and Oxford. Emperor Charles IV, however, gained papal approval for a
theological faculty at Prague (in no small measure perhaps because, prior to
assuming the Holy OYce, Pope Clement VI had been his tutor while the
young prince had resided in Paris).20 Although Vienna did not possess a
theological faculty at Wrst, it too was granted one by Urban VI in 1384.
Thereafter, it became a precedent for German universities to receive provision
for all four faculties, including theology.21 As the Elector Ruprecht of the
Palatinate emphatically put it upon the founding the University of Heidelberg
in 1386: ‘[The university] shall be ruled, disposed, and regulated according to
the modes and matters accustomed to be observed in the University of
Paris. . . . [I]t shall imitate Paris in every way possible, so that there shall be
four faculties.’22
The etymological history of the word faculty (facultas) is sketchy, but its
meaning in an academic context harks back to the inXuential Latin usage of
Cicero, who employed the word frequently to mean the ability to do some-
thing, often of an intellectual nature, such as the ability to speak well,
oratoriae facultas. This usage continued in the Middle Ages, notably in the
works of Boethius. The employment of facultas to refer to speciWc divisions of
knowledge, including theologia, appears to begin with Bishop Gilbert of
Porreé (d. 1154) and his disciples. Shortly after the death of Porreé, Giraldus
Cambrensis, in a celebrated description of Oxford in 1184, wrote of ‘doctores
diversarum facultatum,’ suggesting the dual meaning of a discipline and those
who profess it.23 However, the status of facultas as a standard item of
academic terminology and the traditional fourfold division is connected,
above all, with the development and inXuence of the University of Paris in
the thirteenth century. The Wrst actual usage of the term in this context
20 Kaufmann, Geschichte der deutschen Universitäten, ii. 17, 68 V.

21 Rostock too was at Wrst denied a theological faculty by Martin V, but later it received one.
See ibid. ii. 17, and Rashdall, Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, iii. 261.
22 Eduard Winkelmann (ed.), Urkundenbuch der Universität Heidelberg (Heidelberg, 1887), 5.
23 See Bernhard Geyer ‘Facultas theologica: Eine bedeutungsgeschichtliche Untersuchung’,
ZKG 75 (1964): 133–45.
appeared in a bull by Pope Honorius III addressed to scholars in Paris in 1219.
Interestingly, in the bull the pope forbade the study of civil law, a ‘subaltern
science’ and one of ‘vain beauty’, and extolled the virtues of theology, which
‘exalts the soul’ and provides ‘the Catholic faith with an unconquerable wall
of warriors’.24 From around this time, masters and scholars became conscious
of their high calling and intellectual authority; one Wnds the expression ‘the
four rivers of paradise’ in reference to the faculties. Bonaventure likened the
arts faculty to the foundation of a building, law and medicine to its walls, and
theology to its crowning roof and summit.25
Only with the rise of universities during the thirteenth century did theolo-
gia itself became a widely accepted term. Previously, scholars rarely used the
word to describe Christian learning, preferring instead terms such as sacra
eruditio, sacrum studium, sacra pagina, and sacra doctrina.26 Even for Thomas
Aquinas in the thirteenth century, the phrase sacra doctrina still came more
naturally to mind, although theologia by this time would have been more
accepted.27 When employed prior to the twelfth century, theology, more often
than not, referred to pagan authors and pagan cosmologies—a usage going
back to antiquity. Boethius had employed the term frequently, but in his
scheme of knowledge, theology was a subcategory, alongside physics and
mathematics, under the general rubric of speculative philosophy. The
transition from this Boethian usage to one that emphasized theology’s
speciWc treatment of Christian doctrine and revealed truths—truths superior
to and inaccessible to unaided reason—took place only gradually and with
much terminological imprecision. Scholars generally credit Peter Abelard
(1079–1143) for paving the way for its modern usage by employing
the term in successive versions of his major works. But, again, only with the
growth of universities in the thirteenth century did theologia gain common
currency as a discrete academic enterprise. A convenient date to mark this
transformation is perhaps 1252, when the theological faculty at Paris became
the Wrst faculty to establish its own statutes. Therewith, the notion of a
theological faculty—a community of enquiry devoted to sacred knowledge
separate from and indeed higher than the other secular faculties—became an
24 Portions of this bull are found in Helene Wieruszowski, The Medieval University: Masters,
Students, Learning (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966), 144–5. While the pope denied
the study of civil law at Paris, the university did possess a faculty of canon law.
25 HUE i. 111–12.
26 G. R. Evans, Old Arts and New Theology: The Beginnings of Theology as an Academic
Discipline (Oxford: Clarendon, 1980), 29, and Jean LeClercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire
for God: A Study of Monastic Culture, trans. Catharine Misrahi (New York: Fordham University
Press, 1961), 2.
27 J. Revière, ‘Theologia’, Revue des sciences réligeuses 16 (1936): 47.
enduring feature of northern European universities.28 As Bernhard Geyer has
noted, ‘The word theologia Wrst became established in general use in associ-
ation with the university term facultas theologica.’29
In Paris and across northern Europe, faculties rapidly evolved into the
fundamental organizing structure of the universities.30 Generally, each faculty
was administered by an elected oYcer, the dean (decanus), and a council made
up of all or some of the faculty’s teaching masters (magistri). Each faculty
maintained its own seal and matriculation book, controlled property, discip-
lined students and faculty members, and settled internal disputes. A faculty
could also make changes in its statutes, although a university senate (with
representatives from other faculties) usually had to approve. However, the
most signiWcant role of each faculty lay in the academic sphere: selecting
lectures (lectiones), planning disputations (disputationes), administering
examinations, and, most importantly, awarding degrees.31 In short, faculties
functioned as semi-autonomous academic guilds, serving as gatekeepers to the
prestige and authority of the world of education and the learned professions.
Before the intellectual convulsions caused by humanism and the Reforma-
tion, the nature of instruction and the process of obtaining degrees in the
earliest German universities, once again, reXected the inXuence of Paris.32 In
the lower or arts faculty, a degree was relatively easy to obtain, for matricu-
lation in this faculty was generally seen as a stepping stone to the higher
faculties. Among the higher faculties, however, only theology habitually
required that its candidates Wrst obtain an arts degree—a trend destined to
create a close connection and persistent conXict between the two faculties.33
Hardly in their teens, young men took roughly a year and half to two years to
28 Anders Piltz, The World of Medieval Learning (Totowa, NJ: Barnes & Noble 1981), 137.
29 Bernhard Geyer ‘Facultas theologica: Eine bedeutungsgeschichtliche Untersuchung’, ZKG
75 (1964): 143. See also Ferdinand Kattenbusch, ‘Die Entstehung einer christlichen Theologie
(zu Geschichte der Ausdrücke theologia, theologein, theologos)’, ZTK 11 (1930): 161–205; M. D.
Chenu, ‘La Théologie comme science au XIIIe siècle’, Archive d’Histoire doctrinale et littéraire du
Moyen Age 2 (1927): 31–71; and Wolfhart Pannenberg, Theology and the Philosophy of Science,
trans. Francis McDonagh (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976), 7–9.
30 Besides faculties, ‘nations’ (nationes), organizations of students based on geographical
identity, were also an important organizational feature of some early universities, notably
Bologna and Padua. However, faculties were more common in northern Europe and have
proved more historically inXuential generally. On the meaning and early history of ‘nations’,
see Wieruszowski, The Medieval University, 36–7, 69 V., and HUE i. 114–16.
31 Kaufmann, Geschichte der deutschen Universitäten, ii. 76–7. For other organizational
features of the Wrst universities, see Wieruszowski, The Medieval University, 27–118.
32 In what follows, I oVer an ‘ideal-typical’ overview of the curriculum and process of
obtaining degrees in two faculties: arts and theology. For a short but insightful treatment of
the study of law and medicine in medieval universities, see Piltz, The World of Medieval
Learning, 65–77, 138–42, 150–8.
33 HUE i. 308.
earn the Wrst degree, the bachelor of arts or the baccalarius. Several additional
years of study (with successful examinations) and the student could gain a
master of arts (magister artium).
The content of the arts curriculum reXected the course of study prescribed
by the ancient artes liberales, divided into its familiar two parts: the trivium
(grammar, rhetoric, and logic) and the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry,
astronomy, and music). But not all the liberal arts were accorded equal value:
scholasticism had raised the importance of dialectic or logic over other areas
of enquiry. Consequently, by the late Middle Ages, instruction in the art of
logic, particularly Aristotle’s treatises on the subject, had come to dominate a
student’s early university studies. As James H. OverWeld has written, ‘Enor-
mous energy came to be devoted to the subject [logic]; syllogism, disputation,
careful deWnition of terms, and the orderly collection of arguments became
intoxicating pursuits that pervaded every discipline and aVected every intel-
lectual endeavor.’34 Beginning students would study and hear lectures on the
texts of the ‘old logic’. These included Aristotle’s Categories and On Interpret-
ation; Porphyry’s Isagoge, a third-century commentary on the Categories; and
various short works on logic by Boethius, mostly derived from Aristotle.
Students in pursuit of bachelor degrees were also instructed in the ‘new
logic’, which comprised four ‘new’ texts by Aristotle that had become available
in western Europe in the twelfth century. These included the Prior Analytics
(which discussed the all-important syllogism), the Sophistical Refutations, the
Topics, and the Posterior Analytics.
Besides Aristotle, young German students studied a variety of manuals and
compendia by medieval authors—what we might call secondary works. Of
particular importance was the Summulae logicales by Peter of Spain, a thir-
teenth-century scholar and churchman, who became Pope John XXI in 1276
only to die a year later when the roof of his study collapsed. For two hundred
and Wfty years this text was among the most studied and taught of all
scholastic writings. (Later it became among the most reviled by Renaissance
humanists.) Universities throughout German-speaking Europe required it
and it went through numerous editions before the Reformation. Thousands
of young men were introduced to scholasticism’s faith in logic upon reading
its famous Wrst lines: ‘logic is the art of arts and the science of sciences
(scientia scientiarum), possessing the way to the principles of all curriculum
subjects . . . and thus logic must be the Wrst science to be acquired’.35
34 OverWeld, Humanism and Scholasticism, 27.

35 Quoted ibid. 30. Cf. Joseph Mullally (ed. and trans.), The Summulae Logicales of Peter of
Spain (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1945). Grammar and, to a lesser degree,
rhetoric were of course also present in the medieval German university, but due to the
dominance of scholasticism, they were deemed less important than logic.
After initial immersion in logic, more Aristotle awaited the bachelor or
master’s student. Texts which appear, though with greatly varying frequency,
in the curricula of German universities of the late Middle Ages include
Aristotle’s De anima, De generatione et corruptione, De caelo et mundo, De
metorica, along with his better known Politics, Ethics, and Metaphysics. Besides
advanced studies in Aristotle, students received some instruction in the
quadrivium. Euclid’s Geometry was almost universally assigned. Also popular
were two textbooks by Englishmen, John of Peacham’s Perspectiva communis
and John of Holywood’s De sphaera. Yet on the whole, the quadrivium
received the least attention in the arts curriculum and paled in importance
to logic.36
The emphasis on logic oVers signiWcant insight into the nature of the
premodern German universities and suggests a strong contrast between
them and their modern counterparts. In particular, one should draw a
distinction between late medieval notions of knowledge, or scientia, and the
post-Enlightenment practice of Wissenschaft. Scholastic-Aristotelian logic
presupposed the existence of a single correct method of thinking, a method
which properly utilized—through syllogistic reasoning, disputation, deWni-
tion of terms, reWned distinctions, careful attention to language, and the
methodical ordering of arguments—could be applied to any academic sub-
ject. Put diVerently, diverse subjects did not require diVerent methods, for all
were apprehended through right reason (recta ratio) developed through the
study of logic. Consequently, the exploration of various Welds of enquiry took
a back seat to instruction that helped students acquire general reason; scholars
in good conscience could thus dispense with much of the artes liberales, such
as rhetoric and parts of the quadrivium. Properly understood and applied,
logic could be utilized to resolve apparent contradictions and ambiguities in
all areas of knowledge.
Furthermore, since the domain of possible knowledge itself was assumed to
be Wnite, no goad existed to expand knowledge, the hallmark of the post-
Enlightenment university. Aristotle himself had noted that true science (scien-
tia) can only begin with knowledge that already exists. Admittedly, the subject
of study in diVerent disciplines varied, but they all shared a number of
common axioms.37 Anders Piltz has thus summed up that ‘[medieval learn-
ing] set itself goals which are diVerent from those of modern scientiWc
research. There was no question of exploring new areas by adding
36 OverWeld, Humanism and Scholasticism, 29–44. See also Kaufmann, Geschichte der
deutschen Universitäten, ii. 300 V. For a speciWc list of books required for the arts degree at
the University of Leipzig, see Ellwood Cubberley (ed.), Readings in the History of Education
(Boston, 1920), 169–70.
37 Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, trans. Jonathan Barnes (Oxford: Clarendon, 1975), 1 V.
information previously unknown to the existing storehouse of knowledge.
The aim was to Wnd the eternal cause, the reason why everything was as it was
and must necessarily remain so.’38 Knowledge was considered static, in short,
apprehensible through logic, not dynamic and subject to multiple method-
ologies of knowing.
If logic equipped one to think properly, the most noble area in which do to
this was theology; hence philosophy, the scientia scientiarum in one sense,
was, in another, portrayed as the humble ‘handmaid of theology’ (ancilla
theologiae).39 University theological faculties regularly recognized this in their
statutes by requiring all candidates in theology Wrst to obtain a master of arts.
Only then could they begin the arduous process of becoming a doctor of
theology, the ‘pinnacle of medieval academic achievement’.40 A common
artistic motif from the period depicts theology—represented by the theolo-
gian Peter Lombard (more about him later)—sitting alone atop a multi-tiered
tower. In the lower, more crowded tiers sit the authors of the common arts
texts: Aristotle, Euclid, Boethius, and others. The clear implication is that the
summit of learning, theology, is accessible only to one who had diligently
mastered the requisite skills at lower levels.41 In other words, theology was not
considered the ‘queen’ of the sciences because its methods substantially
diVered from those of other sciences, but rather because it could be
approached only by one who had Wrst obtained the universally accepted
logical and reasoning skills.42 Muddled thinking for the schoolmen was a
wrong in itself, but a grave wrong in the sacred faculty. At the same time, it
was incumbent upon one to keep advancing towards the summit, employing
the skills of the handmaid without becoming seduced by her.43
The process of obtaining a doctorate in theology was not for the impatient.
Paris set the benchmark by establishing a curriculum that lasted sixteen years
38 Piltz, The World of Medieval Learning, 104.

39 As already mentioned, Clement of Alexandria originated the notion of philosophy as the
handmaid of theology. This idea was given classic expression in De Divina omnipotentia by Peter
Damian (1007–72), which provided an allegorical interpretation of Deuteronomy 21:10–14, a
text that relates the conditions whereby an Israelite might marry a captive female from an enemy
nation. The implication, of course, is that philosophy represented a captive from pagan, classical
culture, but one that had the potential to learn to serve Israel. See Pannenberg, Theology and the
Philosophy of Science, 10, and ODCC 1265.
40 OverWeld, Humanism and Scholasticism, 46.
41 Little work has been done on the history of the visual representation and personiWcation of
theology. See ‘theologia’ in Engelbert Kirschbaum et al. (eds.), Lexikon der christlichen Ikono-
graphie (Rome: Herder, 1972), ii. 300.
42 Steven Ozment, The Age of Reform, 1250–1550: An Intellectual and Religious History of
Late Medieval and Reformation Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), 43. Cf. James
A. Weisheipl, ‘ClassiWcation of the Sciences in Medieval Thought’, Medieval Studies 27 (1965):
54–90.
43 G. R. Evans, Philosophy and Theology in the Midle Ages (London: Routledge, 1993), 10–16.
and required that a new master be at least 35 years old.44 This tended to hold
true for German universities as well, although minor diVerences existed.45
After a student completed an arts degree, he spent the next Wve or six years as
an auditor, attending lectures and disputations on the two cardinal texts of the
theological faculty, the Bible and Peter Lombard’s all-important Liber senten-
tiarum or Sentences. Lombard had served as the bishop of Paris (d. 1164);
under the inXuence Peter Abelard’s critical reasoning, he wrote what became
the standard textbook of scholastic theology. A compilation of opinions from
a wide variety of medieval and ancient authorities, his Sentences is divided
into four parts: God as Unity and Trinity, Creation and Sin, the Incarnation
and the Virtues, and the Sacraments and Last Things. It is hard to overstate
the signiWcance of this book for late-medieval theological education.46 Josef
Pieper has dubbed it the most successful textbook in European history.47
After completing his time as auditor, the student became eligible for the
bachelor of theology degree. Generally, no formal test or disputation was
required at this stage. Instead a master recommended the student to the rest
of the faculty, which then made the formal decision to award the degree or
not. If successful, the new bachelor entered the second phase of his studies,
during which he was known as a cursor or biblicus. Customarily, this period
lasted two years; he continued attending lectures by doctors but he was also
allowed to give ‘cursory’ lectures on parts of the Bible selected by senior
faculty. Upon completion of his biblical lectures, the student then devoted a
year to intensive study of Lombard’s Sentences. Thereafter, with faculty
approval, he became a so-called sententiarius and was allowed to lecture on
the Sentences for two years, during which time he was expected to deal with all
four sections of Lombard’s work.48 In order to cover so much ground,
sententiarii were regularly reminded, as documents from the University of
Cologne, for instance, make clear, ‘to read the text faithfully and not . . . pro-
pound suspect doctrines’. At Erfurt, sententiarii were instructed to cover the
text ‘word for word’ and expound ‘only when the passage was diYcult’.49
Once this phase of training was complete, two more years were required to
44 Rashdall, The Universities of Europe, i. 472.
45 Generally, the minimum age for the doctorate became 30 years in the German universities.
Kaufmann, Geschichte der deutschen Universitäten, ii. 280.
46 On Lombard, see M. L. Colish, Peter Lombard, 2 vols. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994).
47 Josef Pieper, Scholasticism: Personalities and Problems of Medieval Philosophy, trans.
Richard and Clara Winston (New York: Pantheon Books, 1960), 97.
48 Kaufmann, Geschichte der deutschen Universitäten, ii. 277 V. If the candidate stopped after
completing only part of the Sentences, he was considered baccalarius in theologia pro magisterio
formatus or simply formatus. This was an honourable title but, according to Kaufmann, ‘keine
Gradabstufung’.
49 Franz Josef von Bianco, Die alte Universität Köln (Cologne, 1956), appendix 39, and
OverWeld, Humanism and Scholasticism, 46.
prepare for the licentiate degree. The student continued to attend lectures and
took part in disputations, and perhaps delivered several sermons. At the end
of this stage, an examination was often required.50
After the granting of the licentiate, more study followed, concluding with a
number of ceremonial disputations, attended with great pomp and solemnity.
The Wrst was the vesperiae, which took place on the afternoon before the
formal granting of the doctoral degree. Besides several oaths and prayers, the
principal event was a disputation among faculty members, students, and the
presiding master. The master and his peers posed several theses to bachelor
students, who then entered into debate. Afterwards, the doctoral candidate
was called upon to analyse fallacies among the younger students’ assumptions
and conclusions. Here the candidate’s mastery of dialectic was expected as
well as his ability to cite patristic and scholastic authorities. Thereafter, faculty
members were given the opportunity to challenge him on his own positions.
The session concluded with Wnal remarks from the candidate and an invita-
tion for all participants to attend the actual conferral of the degree on the
following day.51
The degree ceremony itself was an impressive aVair known at the aulatio,
which took place in a church and was modelled upon the ritual for consecrating
a bishop.52 Under the watchful eyes of the entire faculty, the candidate, kneel-
ing, made several oaths of Wdelity to the Holy See, the university, and the
theological faculty. Thereafter, the presiding master presented the candidate
with the insignia doctorale—usually a ring and the coveted doctor’s cap (bire-
ttum doctorale).53 The newly minted doctor then mounted the highest cathedra
(from which he formerly would have been excluded) and, as his Wrst act in his
new estate, gave a brief homily in praise of Holy Scripture and theology, the
queen of the sciences. As in the vespariae, a disputation might follow involving
bachelor students and other masters. The ceremony ended with a speech of
thanks by the new doctor and celebration with lavish food and drink. Often
classmates would carry the new doctor on their shoulders through the streets
like a modern sports hero.54 Having completed all these rigours, the by-now
middle-aged man possessed the highest intellectual credential in Christen-
50 Kaufmann, Geschichte der deutschen Universitäten, ii. 278–9. For example, examinations
were required at Ingolstadt, Vienna, and Erfurt, but not at Cologne, Leipzig, Tübingen, and
Heidelberg.
51 Ibid. ii. 280 V., and Ernst-Georg Schwiebert, ‘The Reformation and Theological Education
at Wittenberg’, SpringWelder 28 (1964): 12–13.
52 Piltz, The World of Medieval Learning, 127.
53 On university insignia, see HUE i. 139–42.
54 Ernst-Georg Schwiebert, ‘The Reformation and Theological Education at Wittenberg’,
SpringWelder 28 (1964): 14.
dom.55 Because of the legal principle of ius ubique docendi (‘the right to teach
anywhere’) he was entitled, in principle if not always in practice, to have his
authority recognized at any university in Europe.56
Ceremonial grandeur notwithstanding, late medieval university scholasticism
received an avalanche of criticism from humanists and reformers in the late
Wfteenth and sixeenth centuries. While we should guard against accepting
such criticism completely at face value (for humanists and reformers had their
own agendas), evidence suggests that much of it was justiWed, at least from the
perspective of humanists’ criteria of evaluation, which tended to esteem
Scripture and apostolic Christianity over later authorities. As many studies
have shown, under scholasticism biblical studies by the Wfteenth century were
in major decline, despite seemingly rigorous requirements.57 Among masters,
for example, there was a clear preference to lecture on Lombard’s Sentences
instead of the Bible. When masters did treat Scripture, it often served as an
excuse to lecture on their pet interests, which could be quite irrelevant to the
text at hand. Egregious and humorous examples of this abound from late-
medieval Germany. One Heinrich of Langenstein, for instance, used biblical
lectures as an excuse for lecturing on astronomy. Consequently, in thirteen
years of teaching he managed to complete only the Wrst few chapters of
Genesis. Pope Pius II (d. 1464) claimed to have known one scholar at Vienna
who spent twenty-two years lecturing on Isaiah and had still not completed
the Wrst chapter.
Extraneous commentary was not the only reason for theological decline;
infrequency of lecturing by doctors was another. Doctors of theology
often had myriad committements—to the government, the city, their reli-
gious order—that required them to be away from the university. In 1497,
disgruntled reformers at Ingolstadt, to give one example, became so frustrated
that they requested that absentee doctors lose a portion of their pay. At the
University of Leipzig in the early 1500s students bitterly complained about the
dearth of theological lectures. Theology, complained one student, grew in
Leipzig ‘like grass in winter’. Another claimed that lectures were so rare that he
needed the years of Methuselah to complete his degree requirements.58
55 Rashdall, The Universities of Europe, i. 484–6.

56 Ius ubique docendi was granted to masters by the Holy See in an eVort to make the
universities a unifying factor in Christendom. However, this eVort was often undermined by
diVerent forms of local patriotism. See Piltz, The World of Medieval Learning, 136–7.
57 I here only scratch the surface of an important and rich literature on scholasticism and
university life on the eve of the Reformation. For more guidance, see Ozment, The Age of
Reform, 1250–1550, 22–222, and Gerhard Ritter’s classic work, Via antiqua und Via moderna auf
den deutschen Unversitäten des xv. Jahrhunderts (Heidelberg, 1922).
58 For these and other examples of decline in university scholasticism in late medieval
Germany, I am indebted to OverWeld, Humanism and Scholasticism, 46 V.
Such shortcomings in the universities were not lost on humanists and, later,
Protestant reformers. Their criticisms of the status quo and eVorts of amend-
ment contributed to religious and social changes in sixteenth-century Ger-
many that had far-reaching consequences for the development of university
education in general and theological study in particular. While not without
signiWcant continuities, as I emphasize below, sixteenth-century reforms, in
turn, formed the basis of the university system that prevailed until the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, at which time new generations, in the
name of new ideals, criticized and departed from the status quo.
3. HUMANISM, THE REFORMATION,

AND THE UNIVERSITIES
It is hardly too much to say that the existence of universities . . . made the
Reformation possible.
Hastings Rashdall59
Historians of a liberal temper have tended to view sixteenth-century educa-
tional reforms, like the Reformation itself, as a salutary but incomplete step in
the emancipation of modern understanding. The universities that embraced
Protestantism, as one scholar put it, promoted a ‘spirit of freedom and
independence of thought’ which allowed ‘the Protestant half of Germany
[to gain] . . . the ascendancy over Catholicism in the realm of education and
culture’.60 Such evaluations, however, place the Reformation and its historical
complexity on the Procrustean bed of modernity’s (or at least modern liberal
Protestantism’s) self-understanding. In questioning this view while still allow-
ing for the transformative nature of sixteenth-century reforms, I shall under-
score the conservative and statist aspects of university and theological change
in the sixteenth century, emphasizing two points in particular. First, while
Renaissance humanism and new religious convictions wrought great change
in university curricula, the medieval structure of the university was largely
retained. It is perhaps helpful, if not entirely satisfactory, to posit that the
Reformation signiWes an alteration in university content but not form. The
four-faculties system continued as it had before. Although some scholastics
saw humanism as a threat to the primacy of theology, the Wrst faculty held its
position and even gained strength in Protestant universities. Second, the
subservient role of the arts faculty (more often called the philosophical faculty
59 Rashdall, Universities of Europe, ii. 233. 60 Paulsen, German Universities, 33.

from this time) was reinforced, even as reformers refashioned it to accom-
modate the new studia humanitatis. In fact, under medieval scholasticism, all-
important logic, though nominally the servant, regularly dictated the terms of
theological study. Because of the Reformation, however, the imperatives of
doctrinal purity (deWned for Lutherans by the Augsburg Confession of 1530)
and the practical exigencies of making the Reformation a social success
(through the training of committed clergymen) reinforced the notion that
time spent in the philosophical faculty was a mere prelude to serious theo-
logical study.
In the decades prior to 1517, humanism had made some inroads into
German universities, transforming them from strongholds of scholasticism
to seats of an uneasy tension between scholastic traditionalists and humanist
reformers. As an abundance of satirical literature from the early 1500s makes
clear, humanists and later their Protestant sympathizers were troubled by the
state of university education, especially by the grip that scholasticism exer-
cised over the youth. Although he was oVered university professorships on
several occasions, Erasmus refused to accept one, preferring to a keep a
distance and ridicule scholasticism from afar. As he put it in The Praise of
Folly, ‘The methods that our scholastics follow only render more subtle the
subtlest of subtleties; for you will more easily escape from a labyrinth
than from the snares of Realists, Nominalists, Thomists, Albertists, Occa-
mists, and Scotists.’61 Erasmus’s contemporary, the humanist Conrad Celtis,
identiWed university study with ‘incorporeal concepts, monstrous abstrac-
tions, and inane Chimeras’.62 Philip Melanchthon once said of his studies at
Heidelberg that nothing was taught there but ‘garrulous logic’ and ‘parts of
physics’.63 In his Address to the German Nobility, Martin Luther, not one to
mince words, made clear that religious reform was of a piece with university
reform:
The universities need a sound and thorough reformation. I must say so no matter who
takes oVense. . . . For Christian youth and those of our upper classes, with whom
abides the future of Christianity, will be taught and trained in the universities. In
my view, no work more worthy of the pope and emperor could be carried out than a
true reformation of the universities. On the other hand, nothing could be more
61 John P. Dolan (trans. and ed.), The Essential Erasmus (New York: New American Library,
1964), 144.
62 Quoted in Terrence Heath, ‘Logical Grammar, Grammatical Logic, and Humanism in
Three German Universities’, Studies in the Renaissance 18 (1971): 41.
63 Quoted in Joon-Chul Park, ‘Philip Melanchthon’s Reform of German Universities and its
SigniWcance: A Study on the Relationship between Renaissance Humanism and the Reforma-
tion’, Ph.D. diss. (Ohio State University, 1995), 81. For the ensuing discussion of Melanchton’s
reforms, I recognize a special debt to Park’s excellent dissertation.
wicked, or serve the devil better, than unreformed universities. . . . I greatly fear that
the universities are but wide-open gates leading to hell.64
One should bear in mind that the signal event that actually launched the
Reformation, the posting of the 95 theses for debate in 1517, was, among
other things, an academic event in the context of a university. As Lewis Spitz
has summed up, ‘The magisterial Reformation was born in the universi-
ty . . . [and] triumphed with the help of universities.’65 Thus while humanism
was making its presence felt in the early sixteenth century, it took the
Reformation to catalyse signiWcant educational changes. When this hap-
pened, the new evangelical theology, espoused by Luther, and the new hu-
manist learning, typiWed by Erasmus, Johann Reuchlin, and others, entered
into a powerful, if sometimes uneasy, alliance to eVect lasting educational
change, especially in the philosophical and theological faculties.66
While these reforms would be unthinkable without Luther himself, the
pivotal educational reformer was actually Luther’s friend and ally, Philip
Melanchthon, whose eVorts on the behalf of university reform earned him
the title Praeceptor Germaniae, ‘the teacher of Germany’. Incidentally, nine-
teenth-century Protestant theologians had a particular fondness for Melanch-
thon. As Richard Rothe proclaimed in 1860 in a speech commemorating the
anniversary of Melanchthon’s death: ‘It is not too much to say that the
university in all its departments, throughout Protestant Germany, is his
creation.’67 This creation began at Wittenberg, whose small university,
founded only in 1502, appeared poised for insigniWcance.68
Unlike Luther, Melanchthon never possessed a doctorate in theology. He
had received arts degrees from Heidelberg and Tübingen, although much of
his humanist training was pursued independently. It was not until he met
Luther and embraced the Protestant cause that his mind turned seriously to
64 John Dillenberger (ed.), Martin Luther: Selections from his Writings (New York: Doubleday,
1961), 470–1.
65 Lewis Spitz, ‘The Importance of the Reformation for Universities: Culture and Confession
in the Critical Years’, in James Kittelson and Pamela J. Transue (eds.), Rebirth, Reform,
and Resilience: Universities in Transition, 1300–1700 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press,
1984), 42.
66 Of course, the faculty of law was also greatly aVected, as the reformers jettisoned canon law
in favour of civil law. See John Witte Jr., Law and Protestantism: The Legal Teachings of the
Lutheran Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
67 Richard Rothe, ‘Rothe’s Address on Philip Melanchthon’ (trans. by Erskine N. White)
American Theological Review 3 (1861): 277.
68 Gustav Adolf Benrath, ‘Die deutsche evangelische Universität der Reformationszeit’, in
Hellmuth Rössler and Günther Franz (eds.), Universität und Gelehrtenstand, 1400–1800 (Lim-
burgh an der Lahn: C. A. Starke, 1970). On the early history of Wittenberg, see Heinz Scheible,
‘Gründung und Ausbau der Universität Wittenberg’, in Peter Baumgarten and Notker Ham-
merstein (eds.), Beiträge zu Problemen deutscher Universitätsgründungen der frühen Neuzeit
(Nendeln, Liechtenstein: KTO, 1978), 131–48.
theology and theological education. He came to Wittenberg in 1518 (on the
recommendation of his great uncle, the Hebraist Johann Reuchlin) to
occupy the newly created professorship of Greek—the very existence of
which attests to the marginal penetration of humanism at Wittenberg prior
to the Reformation.
Even before casting his lot with Luther, Melanchthon had educational
reform on his mind. In his inaugural speech, ‘On Improving the Studies of
Youth’, he lamented the decline of the universities, deplored the ‘barbarous
methods’ of scholasticism, and called for curricular change to accommodate
the new studia humanitatis. In particular, he recommenced that rhetoric,
poetry, history, and the study of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew receive prominent
places in the philosophical faculty. He believed that the humanist principle of
ad fontes, ‘return to the sources’, could revitalize Christian piety: ‘And when
we direct our soul to the [scriptural] source, we begin to know Christ, His
commands become clear to us, and we are drenched with that fertile nectar of
divine wisdom.’ Melanchthon concluded the address by stating that ‘whoever
wants to undertake anything distinguished, either in sacred matters or public
aVairs, will accomplish little unless he has previously exercised his mind
prudently and suYciently in humane disciplines (humanis disciplinis).’69
Several days afterward the speech, Luther, initially unimpressed with Mel-
anchthon, praised the new professor in a letter to Georg Spalatin. Melanch-
thon, Luther wrote, ‘delivered a most learned and chaste oration to the
delight and admiration of all. . . . I desire no other Greek teacher so long as
we have him.’70
Backed by Luther and persuaded new theological convictions, Melanch-
thon began to labour intensively for educational reform.71 Visitations by
69 See De corrigendis adolescentiae studiis in Robert Stupperich (ed.), Melanchthons Werke in

Auswahl, iii. 29–42. An abridged English version translated by Lewis Spitz is found in Robert
Kingdon (ed.), Transition and Revolution: Problems and Issues of European Renaissance and
Reformation (Minneapolis: Burgess, 1974), 167–71.
70 Quoted in Park, ‘Philip Melanchthon’s Reform of German Universities’, 86.
71 I should make clear, however, that before Melanchthon’s arrival at Wittenberg a modicum
of humanist reforms had taken place. A reform plan advocated by Luther and implemented in
1518 began to undermine the dominance of scholasticism: the Summulae Logicales of Peter of
Spain was eliminated; lectures on Cicero and Quintilian entered the curriculum; the importance
of Aristotle’s logic was weakened; new emphasis was given to the Bible and to Augustine; and
new professorships, such as Melanchthon’s Greek chair, were called for. The presence of
Melanchthon on the faculty after 1518 and Luther’s own Wery anti-scholasticism proved a
further impetus for reform. On humanism and the early reforms at Wittenberg, see Max
Steinmetz, ‘Die Universität Wittenberg und die Humanismus (1502–1521)’, in Leo Stern
(ed.), 450 Jahre Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg (Halle: Martin-Luther-Universität,
1952), i. 125–7; Ernest Schwiebert, ‘New Groups and Ideas at the University of Wittenberg’, ARG
49 (1958): 67–72; and Jens-Martin Kruse, Universitätstheologie und Kirchenreform: Die Anfänge
der Reformation in Wittenberg, 1516–1522 (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 2002).
Wittenberg reformers in the 1520s throughout the countryside in Saxony and
Thuringia had conWrmed their suspicion of the poorly educated state of the
clergy. For Reformation ideas to succeed, education at all levels had to receive
top priority.72 This new practical imperative, coupled with the pre-existing
humanist concerns, led to a complete overhaul of the university curriculum at
Wittenberg. At Wrst this took place incrementally and in an ad hoc fashion;
changes were formalized, however, in a series of new university statutes issued
in 1533 and 1536.73 The statutes of 1533, drafted by Melanchthon under the
auspices of the Elector Johann Friedrich, reorganized the theological faculty.
The humanist emphasis of ad fontes blended with the Reformation principle
of sola scriptura to produce a reform plan for clerical training that focused on
learning the Bible thoroughly (in the original languages) for the sake of purity
of doctrine as deWned by the Augsburg Confession (1530)—a document,
incidentally, that was also the handiwork of Melanchthon. The Wrst sentence
of the new university statutes makes clear the new direction in learning: ‘[I]n
the university . . . we want pure doctrine of the Gospel in accordance with the
Confession which we presented to Emperor Charles in August 1530; we
certainly state that its doctrine is the true and eternal consensus of the
universal church of God and it should be piously and faithfully oVered,
maintained, and propagated.’74
The theological faculty was to consist of four professors. The Bible was the
central text of theological instruction. Paul’s Letter to the Romans, the Gospel
of John, the Psalms, Genesis, and Isaiah were designated as books of particular
theological importance. The only extrabiblical text mentioned was St August-
ine’s On the Spirit and the Letter, which was to be taught only ‘now and then’.
The statutes also enjoined professors to avoid unnecessary logical and seman-
tic wrangling and instead ‘explain the simple truth clearly and correctly’
focusing on ‘the principal topics of Christian doctrine’.75
72 On these visitations, see Gerald Strauss, Luther’s House of Learning: Indoctrination of the
Young in the German Reformation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978).
73 Before the statutes of 1533, Melanchthon had acted for change. In 1520 he submitted a
reform proposal that expanded the position of humanism in the curriculum. Limited Wnancial
means prevented the full implementation of his plan at this time, but its aims were realized in
later reforms. In 1523, Melanchthon did succeed in replacing the scholastic disputatio with
grammar declamations to improve students’ abilities in speaking. But for the remainder of the
1520s, due in large part to the upheavals of the Reformation, no major curricular changes took
place. Melanchthon’s 1520 reform proposal is found in Karl Hartfelder, Philip Melanchthon als
Praeceptor Germaniae (Berlin, 1889).
74 See ‘Statuta collegii facultatis theologicae in academia Wittebergensi scripta anno 1533’, in
Walter Friendensburg (ed.), Urkundenbuch der Universität Wittenberg (Magdeburg, 1926), i.
154.
75 Ibid. i. 155.
The statutes of 1533 reinstated the formal degrees necessary for obtaining a
doctorate in theology; these had lapsed in the 1520s due to the intensity and
confusion of the Reformation during this decade.76 The biblicus still had to
attend lectures and master the Bible, especially the books of Romans and
John. Curiously, the designation sententiarius remained even though Lom-
bard’s Sentences had been eliminated from the curriculum; the ‘Protestant
sententiarius’ instead had to master the Pauline epistles, portions of the
Psalms, and Prophets, and be able to explain their meaning in front of the
theological faculty. A public disputation allowed one to move from senten-
tiarius to formatus, the penultimate stage. The licentiate degree is not men-
tioned in the statutes, although it resurfaced later as a common designation
for advanced students. The precise requirements for obtaining the doctorate
are not spelled out, but it was made clear that no one could receive it unless he
had studied diligently for at least six years. Furthermore, the statutes stipu-
lated that the dean of the faculty was to examine the industry of each student
twice annually and take particular note of the best and brightest.77
In 1536 a more thoroughgoing curricular reform took place at Wittenberg,
aVecting all four faculties. Bearing the stamp of Melanchthon, the so-called
Fundationsurkunde was issued by the Elector on 5 May 1536. The arts faculty
received extensive reconstruction to conform to the studia humanitatis; chairs
were added in ancient languages, rhetoric, poetry, and moral philosophy.
ReXecting continuity with medieval structure, however, the reform made
clear that the arts faculty remained the ‘origin’, ‘stem’, and ‘beginning’ of the
higher faculties.
The parts of the 1536 statutes pertaining to the theological faculty con-
tinued the anti-scholastic directions of the 1533 reforms, particularly in their
emphasis on Scripture. Professorships for Wve faculty members were now
stipulated and their speciWc duties outlined. One professor was to cover the
New Testament, especially Romans, Galatians, and John. Another was to teach
the Old Testament and Augustine’s On the Spirit and the Letter, but the latter
only ‘sometimes’ and for the limited purpose of helping students grasp the
Pauline understanding of grace. The third professorship was devoted to the
New Testament, covering the minor letters of Paul and the letters of Peter and
John; its occupant was also to preach twice per week in the Castle Church.
76 In 1523, under the inXuence of Carlstadt (1483–1541) academic degrees were temporarily
abolished at Wittenberg. He based his reasoning on Matthew 23: 8: ‘But you are not to be called
rabbi [teacher] for you have one teacher and you are all students’ (New Oxford Bible). See
Benrath, ‘Die deutsche evangelische Universität der Reformationszeit’, in Rössler and Franz
(eds.), Universität und Gelehrtenstand, 1400–1800, 71.
77 Friendensburg (ed.), Urkundenbuch der Universität Wittenberg, i. 156–8. Cf. Park, ‘Philip
Melanchthon’s Reform of German Universities’, 126–7 and Schiebert, ‘The Reformation and
Theological Education at Wittenberg’, 30.
The fourth professor was to lecture twice weekly on the Gospel of Matthew,
Deuteronomy, and sometimes on the minor prophets.78 A Wfth post—
designed especially for Justas Jonas, the prior of the Castle Church and also
a trained lawyer—was to lecture on marriage and other moral matters; he was
also to issue decisions on legal questions when so requested by the Saxon
Court.79
A Wnal wave of reform came ten years later, codiWed in Melanchthon’s Leges
Academiae Witenbergensis de studiis et moribus auditorum (1546). What is
signiWcant about this document is the degree to which it ties the purpose of
the philosophical faculty to the Reformation agenda. This suggests that for
Melanchthon, as for many Christian humanists, humanism was not an end in
itself, but rather a good that, Wnally, should be subordinated to purity of
doctrine and theology. ‘Since this philosophical faculty is also part of God’s
church,’ he wrote, ‘we wish that all who are admitted . . . embrace the pure
teaching of the gospel, which our church declares in one spirit and with one
voice.’
The 1546 reform plan also contained further regulations for the theological
faculty, which continued the spirit of the 1533 and 1536 reforms. Theologians
were reminded to base all lectures strictly on the Bible and were forbidden to
part on any point from the Augsburg Confession. Interestingly, for the Wrst
time in the brief history of the University of Wittenberg, allowance was made
for language instruction by members of the theological faculty. This fact,
again, suggests the close connection between the humanist-philological prin-
ciple of ad fontes and the theological one of sola scriptura. As Melanchthon
put it, ‘God granted the gift of language to the Church for the sake of the
ministry of the Gospel.’80
From Wittenberg (condemned as a ‘nest of vipers’ by the theological faculty
at Paris) Melanchthon’s reforms spread quickly to other universities which
had embraced the Reformation. In 1539 Prince Henry of Albertine Saxony, a
convert to Protestantism, sought Melanchthon’s advice to reform the Univer-
sity of Leipzig. Melanchthon recommended the expulsion of many old-guard
78 See ‘Kürfurst Johann Friedrichs von Sachsen Fundationsurkunde für die Universität
Wittenberg’, in Friendensburg (ed.), Urkundenbuch der Universität Wittenberg, i. 172–84.
79 Prior to the Reformation, Justas Jonas (1493–1555) had been a professor of canon law.
Since the Reformation dealt a fatal blow to canon law, he was moved to the theological faculty,
from which he wrote a new Landeskirchenrecht of great inXuence.
80 See ‘Leges Academiae Witenbergensis de studiis et moribus auditorum’, in K. G. Bretschei-
der and E. Bindseil (eds.), Corpus Reformatorum. Philippi Melanchthonis Opera (Halle, 1834–
60), x. 992–1024. Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann has noted that because of the Protestant
emphasis on the texts of Scripture, theology was destined to ‘become institutionally penetrated
by philology’. This would have far-reaching consequences, especially with respect to the begin-
nings of historical criticism of the Bible in eighteenth-century Protestant universities. See HUE
ii. 503.
scholastics, the installation of new evangelical-humanist ones, and the insti-
tution of various curricular reforms based on those at Wittenberg. These
changes were realized in Leipzig’s new statutes of 1543, which bear striking
resemblance to the 1533 and 1536 statutes at Wittenberg. The universities of
Tübingen and Heidelberg followed suit. Duke Ulrich of Württemberg invited
Melanchthon to visit Tübingen, which he did in 1536. In conjunction with
like-minded professors there, Melanchthon encouraged humanist-evangelical
reforms, made eVective by Tübingen’s new statutes of 3 November 1536.
Towards the end of his life, Melanchthon visited the University of Heidelberg
at the invitation of the Elector Otto Heinrich. A new ordinance there, bearing
Melanchthon’s inXuence, went into eVect on 19 December 1558.81
Other Protestant universities, such as Basle, Greifswald, and Frankfurt an
der Oder, also emulated the reforms of Wittenberg. Still others, including
Marburg, Königsberg, and Jena, were founded to realize Melanchthonian-
Protestant ideals.82 Such inXuence has led one scholar to remark that ‘when
Melanchthon died there was probably not a city in Protestant Germany in
which some grateful student did not mourn the loss of the Praeceptor Germa-
niae’.83 But as inXuential and transformative as Melanchthon’s reforms were,
I should again stress the remarkable continuity of internal form that often
accompanied them. While the new principles of ad fontes and sola scriptura
greatly altered university curricula, the role of the faculties, the pre-eminence
of theology, the subservience of philosophy, and the process of obtaining
degrees—not to mention the positions of such key university actors as the
rector and dean—persisted in their medieval forms: new wine was eVectively
poured into old wineskins.84 What is more, the reforms, not unlike the
medieval scholastic enterprise, were motivated by explicitly doctrinal con-
cerns; the studia humanitatis and the Augsburg Confession became an insep-
arable package, in which the former displaced scholasticism, not to revel in its
independent existence, but to serve and conWrm the truth of the latter.
Indeed, one should guard against regarding sixteenth-century university
81 For fuller treatments of the reforms at Leipzig, Tübingen, and Heidelberg, see Park, ‘Philip
Melanchthon’s Reform of German Universities’, 137–90; Herbert Helbing, Die Reformation der
Universität Leipzig im 16.Jahrhundert (Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1953); Heiko Oberman,
Masters of the Reformation, trans. Dennis Martin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1981); Richard L. Harrison, ‘Melanchthon’s Role in the Reformation of the University of
Tübingen’, CH 47 (1978): 270–8; and Johannes Hautz, Geschichte der Universität Heidelberg, 2
vols. (Mannheim, 1862).
82 Marburg was the Wrst German university established after the Reformation. Envisioned as
a bastion of Protestantism, it was founded by Prince Philipp of Hesse and Wnanced by funds
from recently secularized monasteries. See H. Hermelink and S. A. Kaehler, Die Philipps-
Universität zu Marburg, 1527–1927 (Marburg, 1927).
84 Paulsen, Geschichte des gelehrten Unterrichts, 256 V.
reforms exclusively in terms of proto-modernization or proto-secularization.
As Melanchthon saw it, university reform should allow education to bear
witness to the truth of the ‘one holy catholic and apostolic church’. This
emphasis on purity of doctrine, an issue I shall return to shortly, helps explain
the origins of ‘Protestant scholasticism’, which dominated Protestant theo-
logical education until the eighteenth century. As Steven Ozment has percep-
tively observed, ‘As a theological movement, Protestantism continued the
scholastic enterprise of deWning true doctrine. It was peculiar in that it
streamlined this undertaking with the studia humanitatis.’85
Undeniably, however, sixteenth-century upheavals altered the external
situation of universities: their position in the broader social and political
matrix changed drastically as a consequence of the Reformation. This is not
because of the inXuence of any single individual, but because of the speciWc
political circumstances of the Reformation in the context of the Holy Roman
Empire. The transition can best be described as a shift from the religious,
universal idea of the university during the medieval period (symbolized by
the ius ubique docendi) to one increasingly dominated and deWned by
the particularistic interests of emerging territorial-confessional states. While
such particularism had been developing in the Empire prior to the
sixteenth century, the events of the Reformation and subsequent religious
warfare, culminating in the Peace of Westphalia (1648), greatly hastened
this development, eVectively yoking the religious Wssuring of Christendom
to the political Wssuring of the Empire. If one will allow some simpliWcation,
territorialism superseded political unity; ‘Confessionalism’ supplanted ‘Chris-
tendom’.
As previously indicated, Melanchthon and other educational reformers
acted by virtue of the authority of local political authorities within the Holy
Roman Empire—be they Elector Johann Friedrich, Prince Heinrich of Alber-
tine Saxony, Philipp of Hesse, Duke Ulrich of Württemberg, Elector Otto
Heinrich of the Palatinate, or others. Melanchthon and Luther went so far as
to call these princes ‘emergency bishops’ (Notbischöfe) invested with authority
from God ‘for removing and forbidding incorrect teaching and errant service
to God’.86 This ad hoc execution of spiritual and educational authority by the
princes became normative with the establishment of the principle of cuius
regio, eius religio. Thereafter, princes regularly came to be regarded as the
summus episcopus, the acting head bishop of their particular territorial church
85 Ozment, The Age of Reform, 1250–1550, 316.

86 Thus Melanchthon legitimized his advice to Prince Henry to remove scholastics from the
theological faculty at Leipzig. See Bretschneider and Bindseil (eds.), Corpus Reformatorum.
Philippi Melanchthonis Opera, iii. 712–13. Cf. Lewis Spitz, ‘Luther’s Ecclesiology and his
Concept of the Prince as Notbischof ’, CH 22 (1953): 113–41.
(Landeskirche). Though sometimes challenged, this arrangement persisted
until the measures of church–state separation in the Weimar Constitution
(1919).
The territorialism manifested by the state-dominated Landeskirchen had
implications for the universities as well. From this time, central
European universities increasingly became creatures of the territorial
states—Landesuniversitäten—designated to provide the state with teachers,
bureaucrats, doctors, lawyers, and pastors. Many secular rulers felt that it was
their religious duty to found universities, equipped with theological faculties,
to serve as intellectual garrisons of the Protestant cause. As Melanchthon
himself exhorted in 1537: ‘Pious princes must not only establish schools, but
they must choose the kind of teaching, as if it were a nursery garden that is
approved of a certain and strong authority, and pay attention that the nursery
be not corrupted.’87 In addition to pious motivations, princes quickly realized
that universities oVered Wnancial advantages and prestige for their state. Since
few princes wanted to sacriWce money and talent by having their young men
seeking education in neighbouring states, a competition of university found-
ings and refortiWcations emerged in central Europe in the late sixteenth and
early seventeenth centuries. All together, over twenty universities came into
existence during this period. In all cases, Wnances came under the aegis of the
state: as church lands were secularized, university salaries dependent on
ecclesiastical prebends vanished completely in Protestant areas. One scholar
has aptly described the post-Reformation university scene as one of ‘academic
mercantilism’, in which political authorities competed for resources, students,
professors, and prestige to strengthen their own positions in central Europe.88
What is more, princes often extended their power over the management of
internal academic aVairs by founding speciWc chairs and lectureships; by
retaining authority to approve of faculty appointments and changes in the
statutes; and by appointing special commissions or a standing deputy (Kura-
tor) to inspect and oversee universities.89 In short, while the corporative status
of universities persisted at this time, the freedoms that this status entailed
were increasingly eroded by new political dynamics set in motion by the
Reformation.
The social and symbolic importance of theological faculties only grew
during this period. To preserve doctrinal purity, both Protestant and Catholic
faculties had to be training centres for sending out educated clerics able
to refute the religious competition. Theological faculties thus became the
87 Philip Melanchthon, Orations on Philosophy and Education, trans. Christine F. Salazar

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 186.
88 Turner, ‘Prussian Universities’, 23.
89 Paulsen, Geschichte des gelehrten Unterrichts, i. 256 V.
guardians of the orthodoxy of the state which founded and supported them;
‘kleinstaatliche Theologie’ emerged, as one scholar has written.90 As one
might surmise, this quasi-political task attenuated the ecclesial associations
of theological faculties and began a process that would transform theologians
and clergymen alike, in the words of G. A. Benrath, into ‘weltliche Staats-
beamte’.91 As we shall see, this process continued in various forms and in
distinctly ‘modern’ guises well into the nineteenth century. Finally, since
Protestant theology emphasized expounding Scripture over liturgical tasks,
clerical education for Protestant leaders became an especially signiWcant
concern. Unlike in Catholic areas, where extra-university seminaries increased
in signiWcance after the Council of Trent, university training became a
requirement in Protestant lands for obtaining an ecclesiastical post. As Frie-
drich Paulsen has summarized,
At the head of the several faculties [in the post-Reformation period] stood the
theological faculty; since theological interests still controlled the entire trend of
knowledge, it also controlled instruction in the universities. And as a rule this faculty
was also the largest because, since the second half of the [sixteenth] century, under the
Reformation inXuence, the demand for theological education for all the clergy had
gradually won the day. This was the result of the Protestant principle, which accen-
tuated the idea of doctrine and its purity, and placed the emphasis upon preaching
instead of liturgy and worship.92
But exactly what was a Protestant clergyman supposed to know? The practical
necessity of confuting the errors of the ‘papists’, on the one hand, and those of
the ‘enthusiasts’ or Anabaptists, on the other, intensiWed the need for a well-
deWned programme of Protestant theological education. Especially in the
light of the growing presence of Anabaptists by the 1530s, it became increas-
ingly clear to reformers that the principle of sola scriptura in itself was a poor
defence against the caprice and vagaries of human judgement in theological
matters.93 More fully expressed: in the absence of older pedagogical certainties
90 Notker Hammerstein, ‘Die deutschen Universitäten im Zeitalter der Aufklärung’, in

Hammerstein, Res publica litteraria: Ausgewählte Aufsätze zu frühneuzeitlichen Bildungs-, Wis-
senschafts- und Universitätsgeschichte, ed. Ulrich Muhlack and Gerrit Walter (Berlin: Duncker &
Humblot, 2000), 13. For an exhaustive study of one theological faculty during this period, see
Thomas Kaufmann, Universität und lutherische Konfessionalisierung: Die Rostocker Theologie-
professoren und ihr Beitrag zur theologischen Bildung und kirchlichen Gestaltung im Herzogtum
Mecklenburg zwischen 1550 und 1675 (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1997).
91 Benrath, ‘Die deutsche evangelische Universität der Reformationszeit’, in Rössler and
Franz (eds.), Universität und Gelehrtenstand, 1400–1800, 75.
92 Paulsen, German Universities, 38 (translation modiWed).
93 The Anabaptists represented in the eyes of reformers the dangers of being ‘self-educated’
(autodidaktoi) in biblical and theological matters. On this important theme and its bearing on
the shaping of university instruction, see J. S. Oyer, Lutheran Reformers against Anabaptists (The
Hague: M. NijhoV, 1964).
and confronted with the excesses of freedom typiWed by the Anabaptists’
subjectivist approach to Scripture—not to mention the later Lutheran–
Calvinist split among mainstream reformers—the necessity of a sound, doc-
trinally orthodox programme of theological study in the universities became a
paramount concern. Consequently, over and beyond the aforementioned
statutory and curricular changes in theological faculties, the post-Reformation
period witnessed the production of a voluminous literature of ‘theological
prolegomena’, or basic theological textbooks (often based on university lec-
tures), which sought to deWne the nature, foundation, and rationale of
theological study. While the vast majority of these works have fallen into
obscurity, derided as so many examples of ‘Protestant scholasticism’, their
inXuence on theological education well into the modern era was extensive.94
What is more, these works are the forerunners of the genre of theological
encyclopedia produced in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Some
awareness of this literature is therefore helpful to make sense of the shape of
theological study on the eve of the German Enlightenment.
Although the literature of Lutheran theological prolegomena did not come
into its own until the mid-sixteenth century, Erasmus, Luther, and particu-
larly Melanchthon may be considered its early pioneers. Despite his personal
refusal to break with Rome, Erasmus arguably inaugurated it in his Ratio seu
methodus compendio perveniendi ad veram theologiam (1518), in which he
argued that philosophy (read scholasticism) was an insuYcient preparation
for biblical study, for it failed to prepare the student’s heart. His was a pious,
irenic approach to theology, which encouraged intellectual modesty, devo-
tion, and wisdom. Although a learned humanist, Erasmus believed that the
goal of theological study was the production not of a scholarly pedant, but of
a humble, faithful person willing to serve others and the church. As one might
expect, Erasmus commended the study of biblical languages, so that the
student would not be dependent on questionable translations, such as the
Vulgate. Although Erasmus is better known for his irenicism in dogmatic
matters, he nonetheless adumbrated an inXuential programme for what later
would be called dogmatic or systematic theology: ‘My feeling in this matter is
that our young beginner should be oVered teachings (dogmata) which have
been brought together into a summary or compendium, and that this com-
pendium be drawn primarily from the Gospel fountains and from the letters
94 A succinct overview of post-Reformation Lutheran theological education is found in

Rudolf Mau, ‘Programme und Praxis des Theologiestudiums im 17. und 18.Jahrhundert’,
Theologische Versuche 9 (1979): 71–91. Cf. Chi-Won Kang, Frömmigkeit und Gelehrsamkeit:
Die Reform des Theologiestudiums im lutheranischen Pietismus des 17. und 18.Jahrhunderts
(Basle: Brunnen, 2001), 71–140.
of the Apostles, so that the beginner might have deWnite objectives to which
he correlates those things that he reads.’95
Luther too contributed to the literature of theological prolegomena in a
short hortatory work, in which he advanced three inXuential rules for ‘the
correct way of studying theology’: prayer, meditation, and spiritual testing
(oratio, meditatio, and tentatio). One must Wrst pray, Luther argued in a jibe
against scholasticism, because only God, not human reason, illumines Scrip-
ture. In fact, one should ‘straightway despair of your own reason and under-
standing. With them you will not attain eternal life, but, on the contrary, your
presumptuousness will plunge you and others with you out of heaven (as
happened to Lucifer) into the abyss of hell.’ Second, one must meditate on
Scripture, ‘reading and rereading . . . with diligent attention and reXection’
without ever thinking ‘that you have done enough’. Finally, one must pass
through spiritual testing—tentatio or, in German, Anfechtung. Luther saw this
as central to theological study, because without adversity one had mere
knowledge and not the personal experience of God’s goodness and mercy.
Luther indicated that any student faithfully immersed in Scripture would
eventually experience Anfechtung:
For as soon as God’s Word takes root and grows in you, the devil will harry you, and
will make a real doctor of you, and by his assaults will teach you to seek and love God’s
Word. I myself am deeply indebted to the papists that through the devil’s raging they
have beaten, oppressed, and distressed me so much. That is to say, they have made a
fairly good theologian of me.96
Yet more so than Erasmus and Luther, and in contrast to both, Melanch-
thon proved most inXuential in shaping the genre of theological prolegomena
and in pointing university theology in the direction of Protestant scholasti-
cism. This might seem surprising, given Melanchthon’s humanist proclivities,
but several features of his thought nonetheless laid the basis for a new
scholasticism that came to mirror medieval scholasticism in many respects.
One feature has been alluded to already: Melanchthon’s insistence on the
priority of dogma as deWned by the Augsburg Confession. As important as
philological-humanistic insight was for Melanchthon, purity of doctrine, in
the Wnal analysis, provided not only the allowable scope of biblical exegesis
but it also helped deWne the purpose of the university. (This much was true
for Luther too, of course.)
95 Quoted in Robert D. Preus, The Theology of Post-Reformation Lutheranism: A Study of

Theological Prolegomena (St Louis: Concordia, 1970), 76.
96 Robert R. Heitner, ed. and trans., Luther’s Works, vol. 34 (St. Louis: Concordia, 1960),
285–8.
Second, and quite unlike Luther, Melanchthon moderated his views on
Aristotle, ‘the philosopher’ for medieval schoolmen. Although in the 1520s
Melanchthon sympathized with Luther’s view of Aristotle as a ‘damnable,
arrogant, pagan rascal’ pernicious to theology, he later came to reject this
position and make considerable allowances for the teaching of Aristotle,
particularly in the philosophical faculty. To be sure, Melanchthon’s concep-
tion of Aristotle was not that of the schoolmen, but one tempered by
humanist inXuences, especially by the Ciceronian natural law and rhetorical
tradition.97 In practice, this turn to Aristotle prevented Melanchthon from
regarding theology as an exclusively hortatory and biblical enterprise, but also
as endeavour that welcomed the eYcacy of human reason, at least to some
degree. Despairing of one’s own reason, in other words, should not be the
theologian’s Wrst step, as Luther had recommended.
Melanchthon’s Loci communes of 1521, widely considered the Wrst system-
atic Protestant theology, is an especially signiWcant work because it and its
many successor editions became models for later introductory theological
texts: its ‘loci method’ was widely imitated by Lutheran theologians prior to
the Enlightenment.98 Melanchthon derived this method from classical
sources, especially from Aristotle and Cicero, albeit through the mediation
of Rudolf Agricola’s De inventione dialectica (1515), a textbook in logic that
sought to convey to students the ‘essentials’ or ‘basics’ of argumentation in a
simple and understandable way, covering all principal themes or loci (which
might also be translated at ‘topics’ or ‘commonplaces’).99 The basic assump-
tion of the loci method, according to Melanchthon, was that every subject
of human knowledge, theology included, contained ‘certain fundamentals
in which the main substance is comprised and which are considered to
be the scope toward which we direct all studies’.100 As he put it in the 1555
edition, ‘whoever wishes proWtably to teach himself or intelligently to
instruct others must Wrst comprehend from beginning to end the principal
pieces in a thing, and carefully note how each piece follows the one preceding
97 Of special signiWcance is Melanchthon’s Declamatio de Aristotele (1536), in which he

wrote that Aristotle’s philosophy should be ‘most esteemed and aspired to’ and that Aristotle
himself was ‘the one and only master of method’. See Melanchthon, Orations on Philosophy and
Education, 205, 211. On Aristotle generally in post-Reformation Germany, see Peter Peterson,
Geschichte der aristotelischen Philosophie im protestantishen Deutschland (Leipzig, 1921).
98 On its inXuence, see Robert Kolb, ‘Teaching the Text: The Commonplace Method in
Sixteenth-Century Lutheran Biblical Commentary’, Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 49
(1987): 571–85.
99 Quirinus Breen, ‘The Terms ‘‘Loci’’ and ‘‘Loci Communes’’ in Melanchthon’, CH 16
(1947): 197–209, and Paul Joachimsen, ‘Loci Communes: Eine Untersuchung zu Geistes-
geschichte des Humanismus und der Reformation’, Luther-Jahrbuch 8 (1926): 27–97.
100 Quoted in Park, ‘Philip Melanchthon’s Reform of German Universities’, 102.
[it]’.101 In theology, Melanchthon considered these ‘pieces’, or loci, to be
historic Christian doctrines—God, the Trinity, Creation, the Fall, Grace,
Law—understood from an Augustinian-Lutheran frame of reference. Accord-
ingly, his Loci communes provide short, expository writings of each ‘com-
monplace,’ supported by relevant biblical texts and occasional quotations
from patristic sources, Augustine in particular.
While the 1521 Loci expressed Melanchthon’s early anti-scholasticism and
anti-Aristotelianism, later, more inXuential, editions did not. This ‘shaking
change’ took place in the 1530s, when Melanchthon moderated his views on
the noetic eVects of human fallenness under the inXuence of Cicero.102 That
the human mind possessed at least a modicum of ‘natural light’ (naturalis
lux) seemed to Melanchthon a more salutary basis for theological enquiry
than simply appealing to the Holy Spirit’s elucidation of Scripture. Again, the
example of the Anabaptists—and maverick prophets such as Thomas Münzer,
leader of the 1525 Peasant’s Revolt—suggested to Melanchthon that un-
tutored biblicism was a theological dead end. This shift towards a more
sanguine view of human reason allowed Melanchthon to esteem positively
many scholastic-Aristotelian principles of logic held contemptuously by other
reformers. While he recognized that one cannot demonstrate revelation, one
still cannot renounce organized, methodical thought; for this is what gave
theology its intellectual character, without which it would become inerudita
theologia, ‘in which’, Melanchthon wrote, ‘important things will not be devel-
oped in an orderly manner, in which things which should be separated will be
mixed, and things that should . . . be combined will be separated, in which
conXicting things will often be said, the immediate seen as truth. . . . Nothing
will hang together in it. One will perceive neither the point nor departure nor
the steps of progress nor the conclusion.’103
By maintaining simultaneous commitments to Lutheran dogma and a
form of learning that esteemed human rationality, one that admitted Aristotle
to a considerable degree, Melanchthon laid the groundwork and set the
intellectual agenda that preoccupied Lutheran university theology for
the next two centuries.104 Nowhere is his inXuence more evident than in the
101 Clyde L. Manschrek (trans. and ed.), Melanchthon on Christian Doctrine: Loci Communes
1555 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), p. xlvi.
102 See Paul Schwarzenau, Der Wandel im theologischen Ansatz bei Melanchthon von 1525–
1535 (Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1956).
103 Quoted in Manschrek (trans. and ed.), Melanchthon on Christian Doctrine, p. xxxii.
104 A. C. McGiVert, Protestant Thought before Kant (New York, 1929), 141. Cf. Peterson,
Geschichte der aristotelischen Philosophie im protestantishen Deutschland, 19 V.
post-Reformation literature of theological prolegomena produced by ortho-
dox Lutheran theologians.105
Although far from household names today, the representatives of ‘Protest-
ant scholasticism’ or ‘Lutheran orthodoxy’ were legion and important in their
day; their writings and activities dominated the theological scene in German
Lutheran universities from the mid-sixteenth until the eighteenth century.106
Some of the more accomplished Wgures include Andreas Gerhard Hyperius
(1511–64), Jacob Heerbrand (1521–1600), Martin Chemnitz (1522–86),
Nikolaus Selnecker (1530–92), Leonard Hutter (1563–1616), Johann Gerhard
(1582–1637), Georg Calixtus (1586–1656), Balthasar Meisner (1587–1626),
Abraham Calovius (1612–86), Johann Andreas Quenstedt (1617–88), and
David Hollaz (1648–1713), among others. Wittenberg, Tübingen, Strasbourg,
Leipzig, and Jena emerged as their principal seats of learning. To a man, they
sought to deWne and defend true Lutheran doctrine as set down in Luther’s
Catechisms, the Augsburg Confession, and the Book of Concord (1580).107
For present purposes, these scholars are signiWcant in two respects. First, they
continued the task of theological prolegomena—the Lutheran-Melanchtho-
nian project of deWning true doctrine, and the scope and purpose of theology,
including its relationship to other modes of knowing, especially philosophy.
This is often what motivated many late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century
publications bearing in their (often very long Latinate) titles the words
medulla, compendium, isagoge, methodus, apparatus, syntagma, and, of course,
loci.108 While these works exhibit continuity with the Reformation on many
105 In the brief treatment of introductory theological texts which follows, I am mainly
concerned with Lutheran developments. Necessary restrictions do not allow me to deal with
Calvinist university and theological developments, which mirrored Lutheran ones in many, if
not all, respects. For more on the Reformed side, see Karen Maag, Seminary or University? The
Genevan Academy and Reformed Higher Education, 1560–1620 (BrookWeld, Vt. Ashgate, 1995).
On Reformed theological prolegomena, see Richard A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed
Dogmatics (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1987).
106 For a still useful guide to the university context of seventeenth-century Lutheran theology,
see F. A. Tholuck, Das akademische Leben des siebzehnten Jahrhunderts mit besonderer Beziehung
auf die protestantisch-theologischen Fakultäten Deutschlands, 2 vols. (Halle, 1853–4). Cf. M.
Gottlieb Stolle, Anleitung zur Historie der theologischen Gelahrheit (Jena, 1739), NStUBG, H,
lit. uni III 728.
107 The Book of Concord (1580), which draws from the Formula of Concord (1577), was the
last major statement of classical Lutheran doctrine of the post-Reformation period. It was
written to clear up many controversies that had developed among Lutherans, especially those
pertaining to free will and human sinfulness, the relationship of law and Gospel, the person of
Christ, and adiaphora (or ‘things non-essential’). The Book also represents a deWnitive collec-
tion of the principal confessional documents of Lutheranism—a collection which assigned a
privileged place to the Augsburg Confession and Luther’s Shorter Catechism. See G. F. Bente,
Historical Introduction to the Book of Concord (St Louis: Concordia, 1965).
108 Edward Farley, Theologia: The Fragmentation and Unity of Theological Education (Phila-
delphia: Fortress, 1983), 51.
counts, they are not without certain innovations, and they by no means
represent a homogenous body of literature even if they shared many common
features.109 Second, it is instructive to keep in mind that the scholarly and
pedagogical modus operandi of post-Reformation orthodox theologians, in
the eyes of eighteenth-century critics, came to symbolize much that was
wrong with the premodern university. Their insistence that Christianity be
deWned in strict doctrinal and neoscholastic terms and that theology remain
supreme over the other faculties came into sharp conXict with latitudinarian
and secular currents of the Enlightenment and with the emerging, dynamic
conception of Wissenschaft.
Two Wgures warrant brief mention because of their impact on the devel-
opment of university theology: Andreas Hyperius and Johann Gerhard.
Claimed by both Lutherans and Calvinists, Hyperius wrote arguably the
most inXuential introduction to the study of theology of the mid-sixteenth
century. Published in Basle in 1556, De Theologo, seu ratione studii theologici
reXects Melanchthon’s inXuence in methodology: Hyperius argued that with-
out handling the loci method properly ‘[one] will never gain certainty con-
cerning the questions posed in theology’. At the same time, he struck a
hortatory tone similar to Luther’s (as did practically all Protestant scholas-
tics), reminding aspiring theologians that they would make no headway in
their studies ‘unless God Wrst of all sets [their] heart ablaze with the earnest
desire of knowing Christian teachings’.110 Importantly, Hyperius’s work was
the Wrst to anticipate the classic fourfold division of theology into biblical
exegesis, dogmatics, church history, and practical theology.111 The latter two
divisions—church history and practical theology—are especially relevant to
future developments. The establishment of a historical component within the
theological faculty, something largely foreign to medieval scholasticism,
helped establish an ‘institutional space’ for the further historicization of
Protestant theology in the late eighteenth and nineteenth century under the
inXuence of such Wgures as J. L. von Mosheim and J. S. Semler. Practical
theology was the branch that dealt with equipping ministers for the care of
souls, homiletics, catechesis, and other parish work. As I shall subsequently
show, Friedrich Schleiermacher called practical theology the ‘crown’ of the-
ology, for it provided the point of connection between university instruction
109 Johannes Wallmann, Der TheologiebegriV bei Johann Gerhard und Georg Calixt (Tübingen:
Mohr, 1961), 1. Wallmann helpfully reminds us that there was no ‘single old-Protestant
conception of theology’.
110 Quoted in Preus, Theology of Post-Reformation Lutheranism, 82.
111 For further commentary on Hyperius’s work, see Preus, Theology of Post-Reformation
Lutheranism, 82–8; Pannenberg, Theology and the Philosophy of Science, 17, 353, 391; and Farley,
Theologia, 24, 50–1, 67.
and service to church, state, and society and thereby, in his inXuential view,
helped legitimize theology as a valid and useful ‘science’ in a public university
setting.112
Johann Gerhard was among the most pre-eminent Protestant theologians
of the early seventeenth century, ‘the rock’ upon which later Lutheran the-
ology was based.113 Educated at Wittenberg, he taught at both Marburg and
Jena, where he Wnished his career, turning down no fewer than twenty-four
calls to teach elsewhere.114 Gerhard authored numerous books in almost every
theological Weld, but he is best known for two works: his Loci theologici
(1609–22), a nineteen-volume work and one of the most extensive Lutheran
dogmatics ever written, and his Methodus studii theologici (1620), a basic
theological textbook that became standard fare in German Protestant univer-
sities. Gerhard drew from many accomplished predecessors, but he also
advanced original views. He was the Wrst major Lutheran theologian, for
example, to address himself extensively to the subject of the nature of
theology. That is, he did not simply supply the appropriate content of
theology as had been done before or organize it according to biblical loci;
rather, his works are characterized by lengthy theoretical and historical
musings on the very deWnition of theology. In short, while he denied that
theology was a science (scientia), a position he associated with Thomism and
Tridentine Catholic theology, he nonetheless held that theology was a pro-
foundly intellectual matter (notitia). Yet his preferred term for theology—and
one regularly accepted by others after him—was aptitude or skill (habitus).115
‘Theology’, he wrote in a compressed deWnition,
is an aptitude (habitus) given by God, conferred upon man by the Holy Spirit
through the Word. By this theology a person is prepared by his knowledge of the
divine mysteries through the illumination of his mind to apply those things that he
understands to the disposition of his heart and to the carrying out of good works. By
theology a person is also given the skill and ability to inform others about these divine
mysteries and the way of salvation and to defend the heavenly doctrine from the
corruption of those who oppose it, to the end that men, shining with true faith and
good works, may be brought to the kingdom of heaven.116
To Gerhard also belongs the distinction of zealously bringing Aristotelian
categories to the defence of Lutheran dogmatics. This pursuit (much stronger
112 Hyperius has been called ‘the father of practical theology’. Farley, Theologia, 67.
113 HUE ii. 596.
114 On Gerhard’s life and scholarship, see ELC 905–6, and Wallmann, Der TheologiebegriV bei
Johann Gerhard und Georg Calixt, 5–84.
115 For an elaboration of Gerhard’s use of habitus, see Wallmann, Der TheologiebegriV bei
Johann Gerhard und Georg Calixt, 62–75.
116 Quoted in Preus, Theology of Post-Reformation Lutheranism, 117–18.
than Melanchthon’s limited defence of Aristotle) came to be emulated by
successors, aVecting Lutheran theology well into the eighteenth century.
Gerhard was, moreover, a dogged polemicist (no doubt a dubious distinction
in an era of religious warfare). In his Confessio catholica (1634–7), he oVered a
comprehensive defence of the catholicity of Lutheranism and at the same
time, according to one critic, ‘the most penetrating polemic . . . [against the]
Jesuit form of Roman Catholicism ever written’.117
SigniWcantly, Gerhard oVered an inXuential formulation of the relationship
between theology and philosophy, providing an apparent solution to a con-
Xicted legacy left by Luther and Melanchthon. Since the Reformation, many
Lutheran theologians had been divided over whether human reason was truly
trustworthy in theological enquiry as Melanchthon had intimated, or should
theologians’ Wrst act be to ‘despair of [their] own reason’ as Luther had
argued. Gerhard arduously and extensively dealt with this issue, ultimately
coming down on the side of Melanchthon while never disagreeing with Luther
outright. Reasoning not unlike medieval scholastics, Gerhard believed that
the tension between the two views was only an apparent one, which could be
overcome through the use of careful distinctions. He thus sought to deWne
two separate modes of knowing: philosophy, which stemmed from reason and
experience, and theology, which stemmed from Scripture and grace. Luther
was right in so far as philosophy alone could not correctly apprehend reve-
lation and divine things, but Melanchthon was justiWed in admitting phil-
osophy into the precincts of sacred knowledge so long as it recognized itself as
a subordinate and a helper. At root, this position did not diVer substantially
from, say, Thomas Aquinas, even if Gerhard was quick to heap scorn on
Catholic theology for allowing philosophy to suVocate theology. Nonetheless,
in summing up his position on the matter in his Methodus studii theologici, he
freely quoted a medieval scholastic work, De consolatione theologiae by Jean
Gerson:
As grace is superior to nature, as a mistress is over her handmaid, as a teacher is above
his disciple, as eternity is greater than time, as understanding is to be desired above
mere thinking, as those things that are not seen are more excellent than the things that
are visible, so theology reigns far above philosophy, although it does not reject
philosophy, but holds it in obedience.118
Philosophy, Gerhard wrote elsewhere, should be allowed ‘only a ministering,
not a ruling, function’. Such formulations (ones with direct relevance to
institutional organization) were echoed to the point of banality by theology
117 ELC, 906.

118 Quoted in Preus, Theology of Post-Reformation Lutheranism, 120. On Gerson, see ODCC
669–70.
professors and students alike throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, later provoking powerful reactions from thinkers such as Christian
WolV and Immanuel Kant.
The story of Lutheran orthodoxy in the universities after Gerhard is one
mostly of declension: theology became overly intellectualized, pedantic, and
closed oV from broader cultural and social currents. At the same time, the era
is not without a few notable luminaries who commanded signiWcant follow-
ings. Georg Calixtus of the University of Helmstedt, for instance, presents a
peculiar case.119 A committed Lutheran, he nonetheless developed a highly
unusual ecumenical and irenic theology—expressed in works such as Appar-
atus theologicus (1628) and Epitome theologiae (1634)—that made the unity of
the Christian Church a central theological concern.120 His humanist predi-
lections, furthermore, set him apart from much of the confessional-scholastic
currents of the time. According to Wallmann, Calixtus eVected a ‘humaniza-
tion of theology’ that tended to turn theology into a form of scholarship
owing much to ‘human industry’.121 His inXuence at the University of Helm-
stedt, an oasis of humanist sensibilities in a neoscholastic age, lived on
subsequently in J. L. von Mosheim, whose irenic and scholarly theology,
as we shall see, exerted considerable inXuence on the theological faculty at
the University of Göttingen (1737).122
Calixtus met a worthy opponent in the late seventeenth-century theologian
Abraham Calovius, who taught at both Königsberg and Wittenberg. Calovius
accused Calixtus of abandoning the basic tenets of Lutheranism in his ideal-
istic pursuit of ecumenism—or what Calovius and others regarded as a
muddle-headed ‘syncretism’.123 Besides feuding with Calixtus, Calovius was
a formidable theologian in his own right, the most proliWc and inXuential
since Gerhard. Calovius too was committed to Aristotelian categories,
employing them in the predictable cause of defending Lutheran orthodoxy.
Moreover, in works such as Isagoges theologicae (1652) Calovius went to great
lengths in deWning theology not as a human skill, but as a particular God-
given habitus or aptitude, a mode of reXection unlike any other, for it alone
119 On Calixtus and the University of Helmstedt, see E. L. T. Henke, Georg Calixtus und seine
Zeit, 2 vols. (Halle, 1853, 1860) and W. A. Kelly, The Theological Faculty at Helmstedt (East
Linton: Cat’s Whiskers, 1996), 8 V.
120 It was the sincere belief of Calixtus that a genuine church unity could be achieved by a
careful, objective comparison of the doctrines and practices of the various branches of the extant
church with those of the early church. See Kelly, The Theological Faculty at Helmstedt, 11.
121 Wallmann, Der TheologiebegriV bei Johann Gerhard und Georg Calixt, 113.
122 Kelly, The Theological Faculty at Helmstedt, 26 V.
123 On the conXicts about syncretism of the seventeenth century, see Heinrich Schmidt,
Geschichte der synkretischen Streitigkeiten (Erlangen, 1846).
illumined the path to eternal felicity. As Calovius expressed it, summing up
the sentiment of an entire academic era:
Theology proceeds from God. . . . Only theology is the light of our mind, the healing
remedy of our will, the antidote against sin, and the most eVective stimulant for true
piety. Only theology unites us with God and God with us. It is the stairway from earth
to heaven. By it we ascend to heaven, and God descends to us and overwhelms us with
heavenly gifts of every description. . . . In theology we who are on earth teach those
things the knowledge of which continues even in heaven.124
Calovius’s eloquence notwithstanding, the late seventeenth century wit-
nessed the continued decline of Lutheran orthodoxy into sterile routine and
self-satisfaction. Endlessly proliferating internal feuds kept theologians po-
lemicizing against one another and thus disengaged from the broader culture
and the particular challenges of the day—in particular from the dawning
forces of pietism and Enlightenment rationalism. Philipp Jacob Spener be-
came so dissatisWed with university theology and its internecine bickering
that he made the reform of theological study a principal concern of his Pia
desideria (1675), the founding document of modern pietism. ‘[G]reat care,’ he
wrote, ‘should be exercised to keep controversy within bounds. Unnecessary
argumentation should rather be reduced than extended, and the whole of
theology brought back to apostolic simplicity.’125 Commenting on the scho-
lastic theology of his youth, Herder once lamented that ‘every leaf of the tree
of life was so dissected that the dryads wept for mercy’.126
4 . T H E EI G H T E E N T H CE N T U RY: D E C L I N E A N D C R I T I Q U E
If Protestant scholasticism had become a sterile enterprise by the early

eighteenth century, as its critics charged, the universities as a whole seemed
not far behind. By almost every index, German universities were in poor
shape as the ‘century of light’ dawned, beset with myriad internal problems,
wedded to Aristotelian science, committed to outmoded pedagogy, and often
unreceptive or even oblivious to the momentous intellectual ferment associ-
ated with such names as René Descartes, Francis Bacon, Sir Isaac Newton,
Voltaire, and Diderot. ‘[M]ost German universities’, as Roy Porter has written,
124 Quoted in Preus, Theology of Post-Reformation Lutheranism, 217. On Calovius, see ODCC
266.
125 Philipp Jacob Spener, Pia Desideria, trans. Theodore G. Tappert (Philadelphia: Fortress,
1964), 110.
126 Quoted in Gerald Cragg, The Church and the Age of Reason, 1648–1789 (New York:
Penguin, 1970), 100.
‘remained too small, and still too embroiled in the theological aftermath of
the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, to take much interest in [the
new] science.’127
One clear sign of the universities’ stagnation was the fact that a culture of
intellectual elites independent of and often antagonistic to universities began
to take shape by the early decades of the eighteenth century. Epitomized by a
Wgure such as Leibniz, this new elite heaped scorn on univerisites for failing to
understand and adapt to the changing times. Indeed, vociferous criticisms
accusing universities of backwardness represent a hallmark of eighteenth-
century intellectual life; such criticisms regularly became more intense and
strident towards century’s end. At the same time, the eighteenth century
witnessed marked attempts at university reform. Above all, the founding of
universities at Halle (1694) and Göttingen (1737) represent signiWcant new
departures in university history. The relative success and modernity of these
institutions had a catalytic eVect on other universities and on educated
opinion at large.
The ascent of the philosophical faculty constitutes another consequential
development of the era. Whereas previously this faculty had been regarded
largely as preparatory, it increasingly—if slowly and only at a few universities—
became a semi-autonomous enterprise, the harbinger of a new type of enquiry
that sought not simply to prepare students for further studies and professional
skills, but to increase the domain of knowledge through research and publica-
tion and to instruct students how to do the same. This scholarly ideal—more
closely associated with the nineteenth century—took shape steadily within the
parameters of the philosophical faculty, and to a lesser degree the law faculty,
during the eighteenth century.128 Though not alone, the universities of Halle
and Göttingen played a pivotal role in this evolution.
For many contemporaries, however, the seeds of change were obscured by
the reality of stagnation. Indeed, the century preceding the founding of the
University of Berlin was no golden age for German universities. By the middle
decades of the eighteenth century universities were confronted by a profound
and persistent crisis. The literature from the period attests to this with
remarkable consistency. One fundamental problem was a steep decline in
student enrolment brought about in part by the growing number of the
wealthy who decided to educate their children in newly established academies
(Ritterakademien), schools for the nobility that emphasized a more practical
and fashionable curriculum (modern languages, politics, Wnancial sciences,
127 HUE ii. 556.

128 Notker Hammerstein, Jus und Historie: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des historischen Denkens
an deutschen Universitäten im späten 17. und im 18.Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 1972).
history, heraldry, horse-riding, and fencing) than the universities.129 From the
Reformation era until the Thirty Years War (1618–48), student matriculation
had climbed steadily from 2,000 yearly to about 4,700 on the eve of the war.
The war proved disastrous for the universities, as it did for society as a
whole.130 Afterwards, some improvement took place, but from around the
middle of the eighteenth century onwards, matriculation plummeted: 4,400
new students entered in 1720; 4,000 in 1745; only 3,400 in 1770; and only
2,925 in 1800.131 Smaller schools such as Erfurt, Herborn, and Rostock
suVered crippling losses; many professors found themselves in severe Wnancial
straits, forced to work outside the university to earn a living.132 The situation
might not have been so dire were it not for the chronic overabundance of
universities: there were thirty German universities in 1701, more than in any
other part of Europe.133 This was a direct consequence of the territorial-
confessional principle, whereby each German state, regardless of size, had
sought to have its own university. Thus, even before enrolments began to
drop, the number of students was already divided among an excessive number
of institutions. In his Raisonnement über die protestantischen Universitäten in
Deutschland (1768), J. D. Michaelis, one of Göttingen’s highly decorated
professors, devoted an entire chapter to the ‘great evil’ of overabundance.
‘The number of students is so divided’, he wrote, ‘that the number can be only
moderate at any university, and then the best and most erudite professor must
be satisWed if he can Wll . . . his few basic courses.’134 Michaelis contrasted the
situation in Germany with that of England, which boasted only two promin-
ent institutions: Oxford and Cambridge.135
For the German universities, overabundance and a declining number of
students meant constantly diminishing funds with which to attract accom-
plished professors, improve facilities, and modernize the curriculum. Com-
pounding the problems was the fact that territorial princes often hesitated to
sink more state funds into already feeble institutions. In Prussia, typical in
this regard, the state outlay for universities remained constant under Friedrich
Wilhelm I (1713–40) and Friedrich the Great (1740–87); only after the
129 Most Ritterakademien date from the late seventeenth century. Some of the more famous
ones were located at Kolberg (1653), Halle (1680), and Wolfenbüttel (1687). See Nobert Conrad,
Ritterakademien der frühen Neuzeit: Bildung als Standsprivileg im 16. und 17.Jahrhundert (Göt-
tingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1982).
130 R. J. W. Evans, ‘German Universities after the Thirty Years War’, HU 1 (1981): 169–90.
131 Turner, ‘Prussian Universities’, 27, and Franz Eulenberg, Die Frequenz der deutschen
Universitäten von ihrer Gründung bis zur Gegenwart (Leipzig, 1904), 132.
132 Eulenberg, Die Frequenz der deutschen Universitäten, 134.
133 Turner, ‘Prussian Universities’, 27–8.
134 Michaelis, Raisonnement über die protestantischen Universitäten in Deutschland (Frankfurt
am Main, 1768), i. 209, 247 V.
135 Ibid. iv. 248.
accession of Friedrich Wilhelm II to the throne in 1787 did the state allot an
extra 10,000 thaler yearly for its universities. In accordance with the policy
that Prussia had pursued since the late seventeenth century, Halle received the
lion’s share, some 7,000 thaler. Königsberg received 2,000 thaler; Frankfurt an
der Oder, 1,000; and feeble Duisburg, with less than one hundred students,
nothing at all. The extra funding thus tended to reinforce the inequalities
between the universities and it did not relieve the overall Wnancial burdens on
the Prussian schools. Furthermore, it brought the annual government
expenditure on universities to only 43,000 thaler, while it had been 26,000
almost a century before in 1697.136
Along with widespread impecunity, nepotism among the faculty and the
existence of a violent and bawdy student subculture were two other widely
recognized signs of university stagnation and decline. Academic inbreeding
was the norm during the eighteenth century, not the exception. In some cases,
single families comprised a virtual academic dynasty, transmitting professor-
ial chairs down the family tree for generations. German students, moreover,
conjured up for most Europeans an image of a dissolute young man, drink-
ing, whoring, and duelling during his university years. In his novel about
academic life, Carl von Carlsberg oder über die menschliche Elend, Christian
Gotthilf Salzmann called universities ‘dens of baseness and depravity’.137 ‘The
best young people,’ another critic mused, ‘are, if not completely destroyed,
made wild at universities and return from them weakened in body and soul
and are lost to themselves and the world.’138 One of the most popular satirical
works of the century, Die Jobsiade (1784) by Carl Arnold Kortum, chronicled
the dissipated and hypocritical life of one ‘Hieronimus Jobs, Candidate in
Theology’, who squandered his time at an unnamed university before Xunk-
ing his examination for ordination, unable to identify Christ’s apostles and
having never heard of St Augustine.139
The woeful state of universities became a pet topic of discussion among the
German literati inXuenced by the ScientiWc Revolution and the Western
Enlightenment. Deeming themselves a new intellectual vanguard, they
136 See Turner, ‘Prussian Universities’, 32–3, and Conrad Bornhak, Geschichte der preussischen
Universitätsverwaltung bis 1810 (Berlin, 1900), 164–70.
137 Christian Gotthilf Salzmann, Carl von Carlsberg oder über die menschliche Elend (Karls-
ruhe, 1784–8), i. 155–6.
138 The critic was J. H. Campe; quoted in Charles E. McClelland, State, Society, and University
in Germany, 1700–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 78–9.
139 Carl Arnold Kortum, Die Jobsiade (Stuttgart: Philipp Reklam, 1986), esp. chs. 13, 18.
Some sample lines from this work: ‘Hieronimus, dem’s Studiren zuwider j Mengte sich bald
unter die lustigen Brüder j Und betrug sich in kurzer Zeit schon so, j Als wäre er längstens
gewesen do j Denn so gut als der beste Akademikus j Lebte er täglich in Floribus j Und es wurde
manche liebe Nacht j In Sausen und Brausen zugebracht.’
recognized and discussed many of the aforementioned failings of universities,
and identiWed others. Few actually held a post at a university, preferring
instead court patronage, scholarly independence, or a position at one of the
newly estabished academies of science. Again, Leibniz holds a pre-eminent
place in this regard. Dismissing universities for promoting ‘monk-like’, ten-
dencies, he was the Wrst major intellectual to reject outright a university
position (oVered to him by Altdorf), thereby setting a precedent among
many eighteenth-century scholars of disdaining university life and pursuing
the life of the mind elsewhere.140 SigniWcantly, Leibniz played the leading role
in founding the Wrst major German academy of science in 1700: Berlin’s Royal
Academy of Science, Societas Regia Scientiarum.141 Although neglected during
the reign of Friedrich Wilhelm I (r. 1713–40), the academy was revived under
Friedrich the Great (r. 1740–86), rechristened (in the fashionable French of
the day) the Académie royale des sciences et belles-lettres de Prusse. Its mission
included promoting ‘freedom of thought’ and ‘destroying the barbarism of
gothic times and superstition in all its forms’.142 Customarily denying theo-
logians membership, this largely secular, cosmopolitan institution provided
inspiration for the establishment of similar academies in Göttingen (1751),
Munich (1759), Mannheim (1765), and Erfurt (1756), all of which, like the
Ritterakademien before them, served as more than able competitors in attract-
ing money and talent away from the universities. By the later eighteenth
century, scientiWc academies had not only become the undisputed leaders in
promulgating the ideas of the Enlightenment, they had also far surpassed
universities as the seats of practical and progressive Welds such as engineering,
history, natural science, and mathematics.143
140 In particular, see Leibniz’s discussion of the ‘Verbe ßerung des Schulwesens und der
Universitäten’, in Leibniz, ‘Ermahnung an die Teutsche, ihren Verstand und Sprache besser zu
üben’ (1679), in Hans Heinz Holz (ed.), Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: Politische Schriften (Frank-
furt am Main: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1966), 804 f.
141 Hans Posner, ‘Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’, in Wolfgang Treue and Karlfried Gründer
(eds.), Wissenschaftspolitik in Berlin (Berlin: Colloquium, 1987), 1–16.
142 Adolf Harnack, Geschichte der königlich preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu
Berlin (Berlin, 1901), i. 230.
143 Turner, ‘Prussian Universities’, 37–8. Friedrich the Great placed his hopes for scientiWc
progress on academies, not universities. While this reXects the well-known inXuence of the
Enlightenment on him, it perhaps also reXects a disdain for universities inherited from his
father, Friedrich Wilhelm I. The latter, a lover of crude jokes, once visited Frankfurt an der Oder,
one of the more decrepit Prussian universities, and forced all professors to attend a mock
pedantic disputation staged by his court fool Morgenstein. See Reinhold Koser, ‘Friedrich der
Grosse und die preussischen Universitäten,’ FBPG 17 (1904): 95–155. For a broader treatment of
scientiWc academies in the eighteenth century, see James E. McClellan, Science Reorganized:
ScientiWc Societies in the Eighteenth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985). While
most advances in the natural sciences occurred in academies and not universities, this was not
always the case. Karl Hubauer reminds us that eighteenth-century universities were not com-
Recurring criticisms of universities made by the elite intelligentsia often
focused on their ‘medieval’ nature, meaning the predominance of theology,
special corporative privileges, and a guildlike wariness of change. Universities
were ‘ossiWed in a guildlike mentality’ (die im Zunftwesen erstarrte Universi-
tät) according to one common expression.144 In his novel, Carl von Carlsberg,
C. G. Salzmann gave voice to the refrain that theological faculties amounted
to bastions of superstition and dogmatic squabbling.145 He noted, further-
more, that ‘the universities would also like to be useful today. But now they
make as sorry a Wgure as a fortress built during the crusades in a war which
men use bombs and cannons.’146 In a short plea for reform in theological
instruction, the rationalist thinker Carl Friedrich Bahrdt (1741–92) argued
that universities led students down ‘a completely false path’ and that much of
the curriculum was useless to the actual needs of the time.147 Finally, in
Allgemeine Revision des gesamten Schul- und Erziegungswesens, a multivolume
work devoted to pedagogical reform throughout German lands, Johann
Heinrich Campe, the tutor of Alexander and Wilhelm von Humboldt, arrived
at an extreme solution but one shared by a number of like-minded critics: ‘In
short, the evil is . . . beyond remedy (unheilbar). It lies in the essential form of
the universities and cannot be eliminated but with the elimination of the
universities. All former remedies . . . are so many palliatives which hide the evil
for a time but can never eradicate it at its root.’148
The criticisms of Salzmann, Barhdt, and Campe were echoed by many
renowned Wgures of the German literary establishment, like Goethe, Men-
delssohn, Klopstock, and Lessing, whose oVhand critical comments about
universities add up to a strong indictment of them. Alternatively, the fact that
these pioneers of a new national literature took such little notice of the
universities and their ‘medieval’ traditions, turning instead to classical
antiquity for inspiration, amounts to a critique by indiVerence. Wilhelm A.
Teller of Berlin noted in 1795 that a group of writers had emerged in the late
eighteenth century who had ‘applause and success as no university scholar of
the time could equal’. When these men found themselves attacked by univer-
sity professors, Teller noted, ‘they conclude in unison: ‘‘what do we need with
pletely devoid of instruction in natural science. See his The Formation of the German Chemical
Community (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 46 V.
144 Noted in Daniel Fallon, The German University (Boulder: Colorado Associated University
Press, 1980), 6.
145 Salzmann, Carl von Carlsberg, i. 339 V.
146 Ibid. 341.
147 Carl Friedrich Bahrdt, Ueber das theologische Studium auf Universitäten (Berlin, 1785), 5.
148 J. H. Campe, Allgemeine Revision des gesammten Schul- und Erziehungswesen (Vienna,
1792), xvi. 164 V.
universities any longer?’’ ’149 Of all the literary Wgures of the German Enlight-
enment, Lessing and Goethe are perhaps best known for their unremitting
contempt for university customs and practices. Lessing despised the preten-
sions of professorial scholarship and expressed his views forthrightly in a
number of heated exchanges with professors. His Wrst play, Der junge Gelehrte
(1748), lampooned the pedantic ‘Gelehrsamkeit’ of the universities.150 Goethe
began Faust, part one, with a jibe at the professorial career that would have
resonated with many of his contemporaries:
I have studied philosophy,
the law as well as medicine—
and, alas, theology too;
studied them well with ardent zeal,
yet here I am a wretched fool,
no wiser than I was before.
They call me Master, even Doctor,
and for some years now
I’ve led my students by the nose,
up and down, across, and in circles.151
The international renown and progressive outlooks of Lessing, Goethe, and
other literary luminaries starkly contrasted with the guarded, traditionalist
stance adopted by many universities. This fact continued to undermine the
authority and prestige of the universities in the eighteenth century. Toward
century’s end, Johann Heinrich Campe expressed a sentiment held widely by
the new culturati:
Perhaps many think that the universities have educated great men and that thus living
and teaching at a university is the condition of becoming great. But how many great
men lived outside universities! One thinks of Leibniz, Remairus, Voltaire, Lessing,
Moses Mendelssohn . . . [and others]—all men who had and still have decisive inXu-
ence on the culture of learning and art and on the ennoblement of mankind. It is
therefore not easy to see how the universities are to form such great teachers and
models for mankind. Aids to the development of the mind exist abundantly outside
the universities; and contact with [university] scholars might well contribute little to
this development.152
149 Quoted in Adolf Stözel, ‘Die Berliner Mittwochsgesellschaft über die Aufhebung oder
Reform der Universitäten (1795)’, FBPG 2 (1889): 209.
150 Turner, ‘Prussian Universities’, 50 V.
151 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, part I, trans. Peter Salm (New York: Bantam Books,
1985), 25 (trans. modiWed). I should also note, however, that Goethe was also very active in the
reform and modernization of the University of Jena in the 1790s. For his role in this endeavour,
see Theodore Ziolowski, German Romanticism and its Institutions (Princeton: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1990), 230–7.
152 Campe, Allgemeine Revision des gesammten Schul- und Erziehungswesen, xvi. 218.
As the nineteenth century loomed on the horizon, one might reasonably
think that universities would not survive the onslaught of social and political
upheavals that befell them after 1789. Often supporters of the French Revo-
lution in Germany regarded universities, like kings and guilds, as obsolete
entities, obstacles to change whose time had passed. In France, revolutionaries
actually shut down the universities in the 1790s.153 Across the Rhine, many
thought it was simply a matter of time before something similar happened in
Germany. Anticipating major educational change, in 1795 Berlin’s august
Mittwochsgesellschaft, a secret society of notable intellectuals and statesmen,
debated with great earnestness the question of whether the Prussian univer-
sities should be reformed or simply abolished. The proceedings of this debate
are noteworthy because the various members, irrespective of how they ultim-
ately answered the question, shared a rather uniform critique of the status
quo. The majority held that the corporative status of universities, which
guaranteed university members immunity from civil courts, impeded justice;
they regarded as archaic the Latin lecture and disputation method; they
deplored the hierarchical ordering of the faculties; they advocated that more
useful subjects be taught and that professors have more freedom of enquiry;
and they recommended a greater role for the state to achieve educational
reform. J. B. Gebhard, a liberal cleric, who initiated the debate, put the matter
bluntly: ‘In our day, universities are dispensable, in part because their goals
can be accomplished in diVerent and better ways and also because they
promote more evil than good.’154
5 . T H E WAY F ORWA RD : HA L L E A ND GÖT TI N GEN
Despite such sentiments as Gebhard’s, the opinion that the universities

required nothing short of abolition was, in the Wnal analysis, an extremist
one and held only by a vocal minority of eighteenth-century savants. Most
critics of the universities recognized that practical demands and the inertia of
the past recommended that the remedy lay with reform, not abolition. While
oVering similar critiques of the universities, most members of the Mittwochs-
gesellschaft, therefore, refused to take Gebhard’s position of abolition. This
outlook of reform had deep roots in the eighteenth century. Indeed, voices of
reform and speciWc examples of university renewal and improvement, many
153 R. R. Palmer, The Improvement of Humanity: Education and the French Revolution
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 105 V.
154 Quoted in Adolf Stözel, ‘Die Berliner Mittwochsgesellschaft über die Aufhebung oder
Reform der Universitäten (1795)’, FBPG 2 (1889): 204.
anticipating those of the early nineteenth century, constitute another dimen-
sion of eighteenth-century university history.
Although reformers’ diagnoses and suggested remedies varied considerably,
most drew inspiration from the success of two relatively new institutions:
Halle and Göttingen, respectively founded in 1694 and 1737.155 I do not
intend to oVer a detailed analysis of these institutions.156 But for shaping
the modern university enterprise and the role of theology therein, their
examples are of particular signiWcance and must be considered. Göttingen
in particular served as an important model for the University of Berlin; many
of the latter’s founders, including Wilhelm von Humboldt, had studied at the
former. One is even tempted to quip that Göttingen laid the egg that Berlin
hatched.157
Yet prior to chicken and egg stands Halle, Prussia’s Xagship university in
the eighteenth century and a major catalyst for educational reform from its
inception in 1694.158 While it is probably a stretch to call Halle ‘the Wrst
modern university’, as numerous commentators have, Halle does represent a
noteworthy departure from the past. Halle’s character is attributable to several
factors, among the most important of which was its status as the Wrst
university of signiWcance founded by the modernizing, absolutist Hohenzol-
lern dynasty, holders of the Prussian crown after 1700. This accounts for the
fact that by the mid-eighteenth century Halle had achieved a reputation,
reXecting its eVorts to accommodate the state’s needs, for oVering the most
practically oriented course of studies in statecraft, economics, and public
administration (Kameralismus) to be found in Germany, while allowing
professors greater autonomy in instruction and methods.159 The prestige
155 Founded in 1743, the University of Erlangen was another reform institution. However, it
was largely overshadowed by the examples of Halle and Göttingen. On the founding and early
history of Erlangen, see J. G. V. Engelhardt, Die Universität Erlangen von 1743 bis 1843 (Erlangen,
1843).
156 For more detailed treatment of these universities, see Wilhelm Schrader, Geschichte der
Friedrichs-Universität zu Halle, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1894), and Götz von Selle, Die Georg-August
Universität zu Göttingen, 1737–1937 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1937). Cf. Paulsen,
Geschichte des gelehrten Unterrichts, i. 534 V.; ii. 9 V.; McClelland’s State, Society, and University
in Germany, 34–57; and Otto Büsch et al. (eds.), Handbuch der preussischen Geschichte (Berlin:
Walter de Gruyter, 1992), i. 623 V.
157 On Humboldt’s studies at Göttingen, see Christiana M. Sauter, Wilhelm von Humboldt
und die deutsche Aufklärung (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1989), 124–73.
158 Göttingen, in fact, was sometimes referred to as ‘the daughter of Halle’. For the discussion
of Halle that follows, I am especially indebted to an excellent dissertation by John Robert
Holloran: ‘Professors of the Enlightenment at the University of Halle’, Ph.D. diss. (University of
Virginia, 2000).
159 Halle’s course oVerings and ‘spirit’ also bear witness to the fact that it was founded in
association with a Ritterakademie that had been established in Halle in the 1680s. The university
absorbed the academy’s spirit into its own in an attempt to attract children of the nobility. This,
too, reXected the interests of the state. At Halle, for example, besides studying in the traditional
and scope of legal studies increased at Halle too, reXecting the political
exigencies of the age.160
Halle also bore witness to its pedigree as the oVspring of an absolutist state
in its religious policy. The Hohenzollern dynasty, ever since Elector Johann
Sigismund converted to Calvinism in 1613, had faced the dilemma of
how best, as a monarchy of Reformed faith, to govern a mostly Lutheran
population. The solution often adopted was the pursuit of a policy of
reconciliation (Versöhnungspolitik) between the two great continental strands
of Protestantism—a policy that later helped pave the way for the Prussian
Protestant Church Union of 1817. This policy aVected universities because
the crown did not have the same interest as many central European leaders in
perpetuating the strictly confessional character of universities. In fact, the
confessional strictures of Prussia’s other universities, Frankfurt an der Oder,
Königsberg, and Duisburg (all founded before the emergence of Branden-
burg-Prussia as a powerful state and, in the case of the Wrst two, before the
conversion of the Elector) had caused the monarchy diYculties on a number
of occasions.161
The idea therefore to found a university that would soften religious po-
lemics became quite appealing by the time of Elector Friedrich III (r. 1688–
1713), who had already furthered the dynasty’s ‘spirit of toleration’ by the
Potsdam Edict of 1685, which had allowed Huguenots Xeeing the France of
Louis XIV to take up residence in Brandenburg-Prussia.162 In 1691, the
Elector personally visited Halle, surveying the city, which until 1680 (when
it passed into Hohenzollern hands) belonged to the Lutheran Duchy of
Magdeburg. By the time of the Elector’s visit, Halle had already become
home to a number of progressive intellectuals desirous of establishing a new
educational institution that would diVer from the neighbouring Saxon uni-
versities of Leipzig and Wittenberg. Both of these were combatively Lutheran
and, to the Elector’s consternation, drew many promising students away from
Brandenburg.163
The intellectual ‘progressives’ who had wound up in Halle included Chris-
tian Thomasius (1655–1728) and August Hermann Francke (1663–1727),
faculties, one could learn the gentlemanly arts of fencing, horse riding, dancing, and speaking
French. See Turner, ‘Prussian Universities’, 92; Schrader, Geschichte der Friedrichs-Universität zu
Halle, i. 47 V; and Bornhak, Geschichte der preussischen Universitätsverwaltung, 54 V.
160 On legal studies at Halle, see Hammerstein, Jus und Historie.
161 See Tholuck, Das akademische Leben des siebzehnten Jahrhunderts (Halle, 1854), i. 260 V.
162 See Adolf Harnack, ‘Das geistige und wissenschaftliche Leben in Brandenburg-Preußen
um das Jahr 1700’, Hohenzollern-Jahrbuch 4 (1900): 170 V. On the Edict of Potsdam, see
Christiane Eifert, Als die Hugenotten kamen: Das Potsdamer Edikt des Grossen Kurfürsten (Berlin:
Presse- und Informationsamt des Landes Berlin, 1985).
163 A. H. Niemeyer, Die Universität Halle nach ihrem EinXuß auf gelehrte und praktische
Theologie (Halle, 1817), p. xxvi.
both of whom earlier had fallen foul of authorities at Leipzig. As one of
Thomasius’s Wrst acts in his new city, he had given a public speech in praise of
the Elector’s tolerant religious policies, extolling interconfessional harmony
between Lutherans and Calvinists. This endeared him to the court in Berlin
and to the crown’s regional oYcials in Magdeburg, while it provoked oppos-
ition from the Lutheran church and the city authorities, who accused Tho-
masius of ‘syncretism’ and ‘indiVerentism’.
But ecclesiastical and local interests would be no match for an absolutist
state. The king and his advisers recognized that their own policies shared
common cause with Thomasius’s views on tolerance and also with the pietist
religiosity of Francke, which, however devout, soft-pedalled strict confes-
sional allegiances.164 For their part, Thomasius and Francke welcomed power-
ful allies in Berlin.165 Out of this recognition of mutual interests the idea of a
university took shape. In 1692, Paul von Fuchs, the Elector’s minister for
religious and academic aVairs and a convert to the Reformed faith, proposed
that a university be formally erected in Halle with all traditional legal privil-
eges and autonomy. Through these privileges, Fuchs reasoned, the university
could gain a measure of independence from the rigidly Lutheran local
authorities in Halle and also counteract the inXuence of nearby Leipzig and
Wittenberg.166 Oddly then, Fuchs recognized that in order to achieve ‘mod-
ern’ university reforms, the crown must invoke the age-old medieval privil-
eges of the university and set them against the entrenched local forces of
Lutheran orthodoxy.167 The state, in other words, had to creatively marshal
one form of tradition against another in order to achieve its own (moder-
ately) progressive aims.
164 Holloran, ‘Professors of Enlightenment’, 90 V.
165 Located in Berlin at the time were two strong advocates of the new university: the pietist
Philipp Jakob Spener (1635–1705) and the political and legal theorist Samuel Pufendorf (1632–
94). Both men had the ear of the Elector. Francke’s mentor Spener served at Berlin’s Church of St
Nikolaus. Thomasius’s ally Pufendorf served from 1688 as court historian, court secretary,
judicial council, and privy councilor. The behind-the-scenes actions of these men played no
small role in the establishment of the University of Halle. For more, see Holloran, ‘Professors of
Enlightenment’, 30–89, 100–5.
166 During the time of Halle’s founding, the Duchy of Magdeburg was perhaps the most
confessionally Lutheran area of Prussia. Confessional rivalries were heating up in the late
seventeenth century, moreover, as a consequence of the inXux of Reformed Huguenots after 1685.
167 An ‘ad hoc university’ had been functioning largely through Thomasius’s eVorts since
1690. Impressed by the students Thomasius was able to attract, the Elector voiced support for a
university as early as June of 1691. It was Fuchs’s desire to gain greater legal security for these
measures. To do so, he had the weight of local precedence on his side. In 1531, Kurfürst and
Cardinal Albrecht of Brandenburg, who served as the archbishop of Magdeburg, had intended to
found a university in Halle to check support of the Reformation at the neighboring universities of
Leipzig and Wittenberg. He had even sought papal and imperial charters. However, because of a
shortage of funds his eVorts came to naught at this time. See Holloran, ‘Professors of Enlight-
enment’, 90 V.
From the time of Fuchs’s proposal in 1692, the existence of a new university
depended only on working out the details and procuring funding. In June
of the same year, the crown issued three edicts: the Wrst granting the university
the use of two buildings in Halle, the second increasing its annual budget,
and the third laying out a number of rights and privileges accorded to
members of the incipient academic community. This latter edict created a
legal arrangement that freed professors and staV alike from a number of local
taxes, duties, and regulations, and placed the community directly under the
authority of the crown and its appointed curators of the university. In this
way, the crown had eVectively created a ‘space’ of enlightened religious policy
(and centralized political power) that would serve as a counterweight to the
region’s confessionalism. Future civil servants and pastors educated at Halle,
the crown reasoned, would now have an opportunity to spread enlightenment
and further diminish confessional passions. With such idealistic and self-
serving hopes, the university was formally inaugurated on 12 July 1694, the
Elector’s birthday.168 To drive home the message of confessional tolerance
(and the union of state and university, might and mind) a medallion of Mars
and Minerva shaking hands was minted for the occasion.169 State patronage
was not forgotten some seventeen years later when the Elector, now holding
the title of the Prussian king, returned to the city. For the occasion, the then
rector, Nicholas Gundling, gave a memorable address, ‘De libertate Frider-
icianae’, praising the king for esteeming and protecting ‘Lehrfreiheit’ and
‘Lernfreiheit’.170 SigniWcantly, the political circumstances of Halle’s founding
were not lost on supporters of the Kulturstaat ideal during Germany’s post-
1871 Empire; Halle’s establishment, one imperial-era scholar wrote, ‘symbol-
ized the alliance of the Prussian state with the powers of intellectual pro-
gress—an alliance which was contracted with a clear consciousness of its
general signiWcance.’171
Because divisive bickering often plagued universities, Halle’s initial statutes
were drawn up to promote tolerance and lessen polemics—those of the
confessional variety, but also those that characterized interactions across the
faculties.172 Indeed, the very Wrst statute of the university explicitly called for
168 Prior to this, in October of 1693, an imperial charter for the university had been obtained
from Kaiser Leopold I.
169 Holloran, ‘Professors of Enlightenment’, 123.
170 The title of the address, which helped establish Halle’s reputation as a source of modern
academic freedom, was ‘De libertate Fridericianae: die Friedrichsuniversität das atrium liberta-
tis. Was ist die Aufgabe der Universität?’ The address was given on 12 July 1711. Noted in Fallon,
The German University, 112.
171 Paulsen, German Education Past and Present, trans. T. Lorenz (London, 1908), 120.
172 The general statutes and those of the individual faculties at Halle are found in Schrader,
Geschichte der Friedrichs-Universität zu Halle, ii. Anlage 9.
the four faculties to live in harmony with one another and stipulated that no
faculty attempt to suppress another.173 Each faculty was supposed to concern
itself only with matters appropriate to it; therefore, a law professor should not
venture into theology or vice versa.174 Yet within the individual faculties, the
statutes granted more teaching freedom, allowing the professor to teach in
any area of his faculty, so long as he not neglect courses pertaining to his
particular competency.175
At Halle, the theological faculty was still regarded as the ‘Wrst’ faculty, but
this was largely a titular designation. The dean of the theological faculty could
still inhibit the publication of books with questionable religious content, but
otherwise his power and that of the faculty as a whole were diminished.176
Theologians were admonished not to polemicize openly against their col-
leagues. All complaints concerning doctrine were supposed to be directed, in
person, through the appropriate, oYcial channels: respectively to the pro-
rector of the university, to the university senate, to the curators of the
university, and, Wnally, to the Elector himself. Religious controversies were
to be handled similarly: theologians were not given the right to take matters
into their own hands.177 While an oath of confessional loyalty was still
required, as at all German universities, Halle’s was comparatively mild.
Members of the theological faculty had to be Lutheran and subscribe to the
Bible and the Augsburg Confession.178 Other faculties had to agree not to
teach against these documents, and they could therefore in principle have a
non-Lutheran background.179 Moreover, as Notker Hammerstein has
observed, the wording and tone of Halle’s statutes placed a premium on
ethical and exemplary behaviour above overtly doctrinal concerns.180 Overall,
then, it is fair to generalize that the statutes of Halle were written with the goal
of establishing a state-serving, less confessional, if still recognizably Lutheran
university.181
173 Halle’s General Statutes § 1.

174 Ibid. § 5.
175 Holloran, ‘Professors of Enlightenment’, 129–30.
176 Halle’s General Statutes § 5.
177 Holloran, ‘Professors of Enlightenment’, 131–2.
178 See ‘Statuta Facultatis Theologicae’, in Schrader, Geschichte der Universität Halle, ii. 399 V.
The theological statutes were drawn up under the supervision of J. J. Breithaupt (1638–1732).
On Breithaupt, who came from Erfurt on the recommendation of Spener, see Heinrich Doering,
Die gelehrten Theologen Deutschlands im achzehnten und neunzehnten Jahrhundert: nach ihrem
Leben und Wirken dargestellt (Neutstadt, 1833), i. 159–60.
179 It is important to keep in mind that a primary reason for Halle’s Lutheran character was
to create an incentive for Lutheran students in Brandenburg not to attend Leipzig or Wittenberg.
180 Hammerstein, Jus und Historie, 160–1.
181 Holloran nicely sums up: ‘At virtually every point, the framers of the university sought to
institutionalize cooperation and good behavior. The oYcial university policy was to keep
The appointment of Halle’s initial professors also reXects the reconciliation
politics of the crown: many of the leading professors deliberately distanced
themselves from the reigning confessionalism and scholasticism of the day (if
often for diVerent reasons) and, ipso facto, from the academic climate
prevalent throughout Germany.182 This point is important because it was
perhaps the intellectual proclivities of (and, alas, conXicts among) the ‘star’
faculty, more so than innovations in the statutes, that account for Halle’s
incipient modernity.183
The leading light in the theological faculty became the inXuential pietist
theologian A. H. Francke, who came to Halle after clashing with authorities at
the University of Leipzig and at the Saxon court in Dresden. Appointed at
Halle in the early 1690s, Francke laboured with his colleagues, Paul Anton and
Joachim Justus Breithaupt, to make the theological faculty a centre for the
supraconfessional, practically oriented spirit of pietism in contrast to what he
perceived as the sterile and polemical nature of Lutheran orthodoxy, epitom-
ized by the theological faculties at Leipzig and Wittenberg.184 In several works
of theological pedagogy—such as his Idea studiosi theologiae (1712) and
Methodus studii theologici (1723), which grew out of classroom lectures—
Francke sought to transform theological education from past confessional-
scholastic emphases to ones that accentuated the cultivation of personal piety
(Frömmigkeit) and righteousness (Gottseligkeit), bearing fruit in purposeful
Christian action. In Francke’s view, right theology began with the heart, not
the head: ‘In a student of theology, one seeks Wrst and above all else someone
who has an upright heart before God.’185
To achieve this upright heart among theological students, Francke empha-
sized Luther’s more existential, hortatory conception of theology as a matter
of oratio, meditatio, and tentatio.186 For Francke, genuine theological study
opposing sides in their separate corners as far as possible. The hope was that if they redesigned
the statutes they could eVectively eliminate familiar avenues of controversy and thereby educate
a new generation of students in an atmosphere less marred by polemics.’ See Holloran,
‘Professors of Enlightenment’, 133.
182 Schrader, Geschichte der Friedrichs-Universität zu Halle, i. 19.
183 Bornhak, Geschichte der preussischen Universitätsverwaltung, 60.
184 Francke’s initial appointment was to teach Greek and Hebrew in the philosophical
faculty; he switched in 1699 to theology. From Berlin, Spener played a decisive role in the
make-up of the theological faculty. See Niemeyer, Die Universität Halle nach ihrem EinXuß auf
gelehrte und praktische Theologie, p. xxvii.
185 Idea studiosi Theologiae (1712), in A. H. Francke, Werke in Auswahl, ed. Erhard Peschke
(Witten-Ruhr: Luther, 1970), 172. Francke’s views on theological education are extensively
treated in Kang, Frömmigkeit und Gelehrsamkeit, 330–424.
186 Erhard Peschke, Studien zur Theologie August Hermann Franckes (Berlin: Evangelische
Verlagsanstalt, 1966), ii. 135. I should qualify this statement, however, by noting that many
seventeenth-century representatives of Lutheran orthodoxy also invoked Luther’s formula for
was thus not ‘only the outward knowledge of theology . . . [but] the cultivation
of the heart’: prayer, Bible reading, heartfelt repentance, and daily introspec-
tion were the true foundations of theology, not intellectual sophistication and
doctrinal wrangling.187 Furthermore, piety was not something obtained in
isolation; rather, its pursuit should motivate one to love one’s neighbour and
thereby improve society through practical acts of charity. Therefore, like
P. J. Spener, a favourite of the Hohenzollern crown and the author of the
inXuential Pia desideria (1675), Francke emphasized practical theology—
pastoral care, catechesis, homiletics, missions—often at the expense of other
branches of theology.188 One would be hard pressed to accuse Francke of not
practising what he preached: he founded at Halle a range of practical institu-
tions: an orphanage, a poor-school, a ‘Paedagogium’ or secondary school, a
publishing house, and a dispensary. These institutions—or the ‘Franckesche
Stiftungen’ as they came collectively to be called—combined with Francke’s
own activity as professor of theology made Halle into the leading bastion of
German pietism in the early eighteenth century, drawing theology students
from across central Europe. From Halle, pietism’s ‘supraconfessional element’
and ‘ecumenical tendency’ precipitated a more general ‘weakening of confes-
sional consciousness’.189
Francke’s inXuence at Halle was, paradoxically, both abetted and mitigated
by two other brilliant and industrious professors of a decidedly less pious cast
of mind: the aforementioned Christian Thomasius and his younger, well-
known colleague, Christian WolV (1679–1754). Admonished in Leipzig for
insisting on lecturing in German instead of Latin, Thomasius wound up in
theological study. This has led some to downplay what others regard as the revolutionary
character of Francke’s approach to theological study. See Kang, Frömmigkeit und Gelehrsamkeit,
71 V.
187 Peschke, Studien zur Theologie August Hermann Franckes, ii. 130, 150. In his Methodus
studii theologici (1723), Francke deWned theology straightforwardly: ‘Studium Theologicum est
cultura animi’, theological study is the nurturing of the heart or spirit. It would be wrong,
however, to judge Francke as anti-intellectual. He thought ignorance a tool of the devil and he
insisted that students immerse themselves in learning Greek and Hebrew. Still, his emphasis on
inner piety and charitable practice tended to promote, in the words of Peschke, a ‘grundlegende
Unterscheidung zwischen der Frömmigkeit und der Wissenschaft’ and often an ‘Abwertung des
Wissens’. See Peschke, Studien zur Theologie August Hermann Franckes, ii. 135–7. To achieve
pious introspection, Francke had his students keep a daily journal to mark their spiritual
progress. See ibid. 179–80.
188 Ibid. 162 V., 206–18.
189 Ibid. 162 V., 222–3. On Francke and pietism more generally, see Carl Hinrichs, Preussen-
tum und Pietismus (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1971), and Richard Gawthrop,
Pietism and the Making of Eighteenth-Century Prussia (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1993). On the historical signiWcance of pietist religiosity as an agent of modernization,
see Hajo Holborn, A History of Modern Germany: 1648–1840 (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1982), i. 142–4.
Halle in the early 1690s and became, even more so than Francke, the intel-
lectual cornerstone of the new university. Pugnacious, urbane, and witty, a
lover of French courtly life, he set as his goal ‘to advance the worldly practical
purposes of men for the beneWt of society’.190 By challenging established
university customs and popular beliefs such as witchcraft, he gained a large
and enthusiastic student following. He lampooned many claims of Lutheran
orthodoxy and the practices of scholasticism, and in their place championed
an enlightened doctrine of natural law, mediated to him through the legal and
political works of Samuel Pufendorf and Hugo Grotius. He consequently
instigated a shift in the teaching of jurisprudence that would be felt for
years to come and inXuence countless members of Prussia’s future civil
service.191 For his clarity and wit, often exhibited in provocative vernacular
titles, he was dubbed by his students the ‘oppressor of pedantry’. Because his
viewpoints and student following came to diVer so sharply from those of
Francke, Halle quickly gained the reputation of having a divided character;
secular in some respects, deeply religious in others, oscillating between two of
the major currents of the eighteenth century—Aufklärung (Thomasius) and
Pietismus (Francke). This reality is nicely captured in a popular student saying
from the period: ‘Halam tendis? aut pietista aut atheista reversurus!’ (‘So
you’re going to Halle? You’ll return either a pietist or an atheist!’).192
In point of fact, however, it is just as likely that the ‘atheist’ in this epigram
might call to some students’ minds the teachings of Christian WolV, whose
career at Halle oVers a revealing window into eighteenth-century university
aVairs, especially on the shifting fortunes of the theological and philosophical
faculties. The dramatic story of WolV is fairly well known. He studied
mathematics and theology at Jena, before teaching at Leipzig as a lecturer.
He came to Halle in 1706 to teach mathematics largely because of a recom-
mendation from Leibniz, with whom he had established a correspondence. At
Halle he embarked on an ambitious teaching and publishing career; like
Melanchthon before him, he widened his purview to cover practically every
topic within the philosophical faculty. His copious publications, especially on
natural scientiWc and mathematical matters, greatly stimulated what later
190 Fritz Ringer, The Decline of the German Mandarins (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univer-
sity Press, 1969), 17.
191 Schrader, Geschichte der Friedrichs-Universität zu Halle, i. 146 V. For a later eighteenth-
century attestation of the acclaim of legal studies at Halle, see Michaelis, Raisonnement über die
protestantischen Universitäten in Deutschland, i. 87.
192 Paulsen, Geschichte des gelehrten Unterrichts, i. 537–9. See also the discussion of Thoma-
sius in Hammerstein, Jus und Historie, 43–147. Relations between Thomasius and Francke were
at Wrst quite cordial; they were drawn together by the fact that they both had been persecuted by
authorities at Leipzig. However, theological and personal diVerences eventually drove a wedge
between them in the years following the founding of Halle.
would be distinguished as the Naturwissenschaften. Simultaneously, he
worked out the so-called ‘WolYan system’, a comprehensive, critical philoso-
phy that systematized the views of Leibniz and demonstrated great conWdence
in human beings’ rational capacities to arrive at truth and ethical judgement
apart from revelation and deference to customary authorities. Eventually, this
system would have a considerable impact on the content of university in-
struction throughout Germany, inXuencing numerous eighteenth-century
students, not the least of whom was Immanuel Kant.193
But for WolV, infamy came before fame. Because he appealed to human
reason functioning independent of traditional authorities and rejected the
lingering medieval conception of philosophy as propaedeutic, he found
himself in heated conXict with pietists, such as Francke, and more traditional
Lutherans, who accused him of ‘fatalism’ and ‘determinism’. Convinced that
WolV’s philosophy posed a threat to Halle’s theology students, Francke and
his circle petitioned Friedrich Wilhelm I to expel WolV from Halle. The king
complied and in 1723 WolV was told that because his lectures ‘contradicted
revealed religion’ he had ‘forty-eight hours notice to leave the city of
Halle . . . or face the punishment of the halter’.194 What is more, his teachings
were banned throughout Prussia and his most devoted followers were regu-
larly monitored and interrogated; several even lost their teachings posts.
Fortunately for WolV, the University of Marburg in Hesse, which at this
time had achieved a measure of openness, took in this troublemaker from
Prussia. WolV’s expulsion caused Francke to rejoice, believing that his prayers
had been answered, the ‘great power of darkness’ overcome. Several theo-
logical faculties throughout Germany voiced their approval of the king’s
action. The faculty at Tübingen, for example, produced a memorandum,
making clear that the principles of WolYan philosophy were fundamentally
incompatible with theology. Jena’s faculty penned a similar document, which,
in twenty-nine points, sought to refute WolYanism and castigated young
lecturers for sympathizing with this ‘notorious’ and ‘injurious’ philosophy.195
But in the long run, the commotion over WolV’s expulsion probably only
contributed to his inXuence and renown. Not only was he able to continue
and extend his sphere of inXuence while teaching at Marburg, but in 1740 the
‘enlightened despot’ Friedrich the Great, having just acceded to the Prussian
193 On WolYan philosophy generally, see the helpful essays in Werner Schneiders (ed.),
Christian WolV, 1679–1754: Interpretationen zu seiner Philosophie und deren Wirkung mit einer
Bibliographie der WolV-Literatur (Hamburg: F. Meiner, 1983).
194 The letter of the king is appended in Schrader, Geschichte der Friedrichs-Universität zu
Halle, ii. 459.
195 Paulsen, Geschichte des gelehrten Unterrichts, i. 540 V., and Niemeyer, Die Universität
Halle nach ihrem EinXuß auf gelehrte und praktische Theologie, pp. lx V.
throne, asked WolV to return to Halle. WolV obliged and was greeted with
great fanfare upon his return by his admirers, who had grown in number and
who hailed his return as a victory for freedom of enquiry and tolerance over
religious dogma, and a step in the establishment of this enlightened principle
for all German universities.
Many commentators have tended to reXect the judgement of WolV’s
admirers, interpreting the WolV aVair and what it meant for the University
of Halle as a dramatic stand-oV between the forces of ‘tradition’ and those of
‘modernity’, in which the former triumphed brieXy only to lose out to the
inexorable forces of the latter. Paulsen has written, for example, that the
episode was ultimately about ‘the conXict between two principles: the prin-
ciple of authority, which up until this point dominated all university instruc-
tion, and the principle of free inquiry’.196 While many considerations might
suggest this interpretation, one should guard against reading too much into
the WolV aVair. One should keep in mind that neither WolV nor, more
generally, the trajectory of the University of Halle after his readmission,
fundamentally altered the constitution of universities; dire criticism of the
outmoded, ‘medieval’ shape of universities, including Halle, persisted
throughout the century.197 Furthermore, while theological authority was
arguably diluted because of WolV’s readmission, this was certainly not an
event that took place in the absence of any ‘principle of authority’, to use
Paulsen’s phrase. In a fact, a very powerful political authority in the person
of Friedrich the Great exercised extensive authority in allowing WolV to
return to Halle. A bipolar conXict between authority and free enquiry,
therefore, is rather overdrawn.
Even so, one must admit that the WolV aVair, like the more famous Galileo
aVair a century earlier, became, in the minds of supporters of the Enlighten-
ment, a cause célèbre and a metaphor of the changing times. It is also diYcult
to deny that the gradual inXuence of the WolYan system—which in Prussia
coincided with the enlightened religious policies of Friedrich the Great—did
confer more prestige on the philosophical faculty throughout German uni-
versities; for WolV insistently rejected the dependence of philosophy upon
theology, arguing instead that the intellectual currency of the philosophical
faculty, human reason (Vernunft), must be that of the higher faculties as well.
He also contributed to a developing discourse on academic freedom, writing a
short essay on the subject while at Marburg. SigniWcantly though, he made
clear in this essay that ‘the sovereign’ (Oberherr) had the right to curtail
academic freedom in the name of law and order. Professors themselves (and
196 Paulsen, Geschichte des gelehrten Unterrichts, i. 528.
197 Notker Hammerstein, ‘Christian WolV und die Universitäten: Zur Wirkungsgeschichte
des WolYanismus im 18.Jahrhundert’, in Schneiders (ed.), Christian WolV, 267–8.
one presumes he had theological faculties particularly in mind) should under
no condition devise arbitrary restrictions. ‘Professors do damage to academic
freedom’, he wrote, ‘when they presume in their own power to restrict
academic freedom without receiving the authority to do so from the court
(ohne daß sie vom Hofe dazu bevollmächtiget sind).’198 The parameters of
academic freedom, in other words, should be deWned by the state, not by
the traditional corporative privileges of the faculties.
Whatever the actual state of these privileges at mid-century, the winds of
change were also apparent. If philosophy previously stood under the dog-
matic surveillance of theology, from roughly 1740 onwards theology—or at
least inXuential and progressive quarters of it—began to reXect the shifting
moods of the philosophical environment—whether it be WolYan or, in the
future, Kantian and Hegelian.199 Improbably, Halle’s own theological faculty,
Wrmly pietist in the Wrst half of the eighteenth century, led the way and
became a leading centre of what was often labelled ‘rationalism’ (Rationalis-
mus) or ‘neology’ (Neologie) in the late eighteenth century.200 A number of
factors account for this unexpected turn of events: the ebbing of Francke’s
inXuence after his death in 1727; the royal legitimation of WolYan philoso-
phy after 1740; the general religious climate in Prussia under Friedrich the
Great and his liberal minister, K. A. Freiherr von Zedlitz;201 the ‘enlightened’
tendency within pietism itself to validate subjective religious experience over
traditional authorities; and, as consequence of the foregoing, the drift of
individual faculty members towards latitudinarian and even deistic religious
sensibilities, and a concomitant more critical approach to Scripture and
church doctrine. Interestingly, theologians at Halle (and this is true for
many late eighteenth-century, non-orthodox theologians) often based pro-
gressive inclinations on a rather conservative-sounding argument: they
claimed that they were only carrying forward the torch of the Reformation,
which had employed critical enquiry against an accretion of misguided
scriptural interpretations. Halle’s pedagogical seminar, which functioned in
conjunction with the theological faculty, became a seat of the new criticism.
198 WolV, ‘Von der rechten Erkänntniß der academischen Freyheit’, in Gesammelte Werke, ser.
I, vol. 22, ed. J. Ecole, H. W. Arndt, et al. (Hildesheim: Olms, 1983), 456–70.
199 Paulsen, Geschichte des gelehrten Unterrichts, i. 542.
200 Although these labels, rationalism and neology, were often used in a vague and polemical
manner, they generally designated a shift from a confessional orientation in theology to (a)
greater conWdence in human reason in theological understanding, (b) more attention to the
historical contexts and construction of canonical biblical texts, and/or (c) greater willingness to
apply discriminating critical thought to conventional religious practices and popular beliefs
such as demon possession and witchcraft.
201 On Zedlitz, who admired WolV greatly, see Peter Baumgart, ‘Karl Abraham Freiherr von
Zedlitz’, in Treue and Gründer (eds.), Wissenschaftspolitik in Berlin, 33–46.
Founded under the auspices of Francke to train pastors and teachers in
Hebrew and Greek, the seminar experienced a shift in its ethos from one of
devotional pietism to one of more free-ranging philological enquiry. This
seminar in turn served as a prototype of seminars founded later at Göttingen
and Berlin, and propagated ardently at other universities by educational
ministers and faculty in the nineteenth century under a more decidedly
wissenschaftlich intellectual environment.202
In Halle’s theological faculty, one sees the drift toward rationalism and a
freer biblical criticism in the career of Sigmund Jacob Baumgarten (1706–57),
an important though often overlooked juste-milieu Wgure, who managed to
bridge theological conservatism, characteristic of Lutheranism and pietism,
with an incipient rationalism. InXuenced by both the philosophy of WolV,
English Deism, and the French Enlightenment, Baumgarten argued that
truths in theology could not be contradicted by natural or philosophical
knowledge (quicquid verum est in philosophia, verum etiam est in theologia).
In biblical exegesis, he also adumbrated a consequential distinction between
the literal word and the general subject matter of Scripture and identiWed
God’s revelation with the latter not the former. His lectures, which prioritized
the critical over the edifying, were attended by hundreds of students, includ-
ing many of the important late eighteenth-century Wgures associated with
‘rationalism’ and ‘neology’.203
Baumgarten’s best-known pupil, the biblical critic and church historian J. S.
Semler (1725–91), remained and taught at Halle from 1753 to 1791.204 More
so than those of his mentor, Semler’s scholarship, teaching, and inXuence
earned Halle its reputation as the leading centre of ‘rationalism’—even if
Semler himself did not appreciate the label as he held traditional supernat-
uralist views on a number of key doctrines. Nonetheless, Semler brought an
Enlightenment-derived view of reason to bear on the practice of biblical
202 On Halle’s seminar, see Adolf Wuttke, Zur Geschichte des theologischen Seminars der
Universität Halle. Aus den Acten des Facultätsarchivs (Halle, 1869). On the history of the
university seminar in general, see Wilhelm Erben, ‘Die Entstehung der Universitäts-Seminare’,
Internationale Monatsschrift für Wissenschaft, Kunst und Technik, 7 (1913): 1248–64, and William
Clark, ‘On the Dialectical Origins of the Research Seminar’, History of Science 17 (1989): 113–54.
203 Hans Frei identiWes Baumgarten as the ‘harbinger of a new day’ in German theology and
biblical hermeneutics. See Hans Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative: A Study in Eighteenth and
Nineteenth-Century Hermeneutics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), 88 V. See also
Emmanuel Hirsch, Geschichte der neuern evangelischen Theologie (Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann,
1951), ii. 370–88, and Schrader, Geschichte der Friedrichs-Universität zu Halle, i. 291 V. The best
single study of Baumgarten is Martin Schloemann, Sigmund Jacob Baumgarten: System und
Geschichte der Theologie des Überganges zum Neuprotestantismus (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 1974).
204 Actually, Semler taught at the small Franconian university of Altdorf between 1750 and
1753 before returning to Halle. Details on Baumgarten’s inXuence on Semler are found in
Semler’s autobiography. See J. S. Semler, Lebensbeschreibung, 2 vols. (Halle, 1781–2).
interpretation, and became the Wrst major German critic to apply historical-
critical methods to the study of the biblical canon—most notably in his
Abhandlung von freier Untersuchung des Kanons (Halle, 1771–5)—and thereby
he laid the basis for the priority of historical exegesis over dogma, the
hallmark of later, nineteenth-century historicist biblical interpretation.205
Semler also challenged many popular beliefs, castigating, for example, belief
in demon possession and the rite of exorcism in his De daemonicis quoroum in
Evangeliis fuit mentio (1760).206 Finally, Semler left his mark on theological
pedagogy: his Versuch einer nähern Anleitung zu nützlichem Fleisse in der
ganzen Gottesgelehrsamkeit für angehende Studiosos Theologiae (1757) pre-
sented a programme of theological study that starkly contrasted with that of
his pietist predecessors and colleagues. Emphasizing mastery of ancient lan-
guages above all else, he saw ‘the task of academic theology not in religious
ediWcation or instruction in piety, but in the scholarly education of future
teachers and pastors’.207 By century’s end, hundreds of the some 6,000 clerical
posts in Prussia were staVed by men who had sat in the ‘enlightened’ lecture
halls of Semler.208 Liberal theologians of the nineteenth century regularly
singled out Semler as the transitional Wgure from the ‘Old Protestantism’ to
the ‘New Protestantism’ of the post-Enlightenment age.209
Semler taught with and was succeeded by two lesser-known but nonethe-
less signiWcant theologians: J. A. Nösselt (1734–1807) and A. H. Niemeyer
(1754–1828). Of the two, Nösselt’s star shone more brightly. A student of
Baumgarten and Semler and one familiar with many writings of the Enlight-
enment, Nösselt bordered on a purely moral interpretation of Christianity—a
position not unlike that of his contemporary Immanuel Kant. His erudition
won him invitations to teach at numerous universities, all of which he turned
all down, because, revealingly, he felt that only in Halle could he ‘teach my
views and conscience in full freedom’.210 Nösselt’s three-volume Anweisung
205 Frei, Eclipse of Biblical Narrative, 111 V.
206 This work was occasioned by an actual episode when a young woman in Kemberg, a town
near Halle, claimed to be possessed by the devil. See Schrader, Geschichte der Friedrichs-
Universität zu Halle, i. 295–6.
207 Gottfried Hornig, ‘Johann Salomo Semler’, in Martin Greschat (ed.), Gestalten der
Kirchengeschichte (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1983), viii. 272–3.
208 Halle came to draw more theology students than all the other Prussian universities
combined. See Henri Brunschwig, Enlightenment and Romanticism in Eighteenth-Century Prus-
sia, trans. Frank Jellinek (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 169–70. For further
reXections on both Baumgarten and Semler and their importance at Halle, see Niemeyer, Die
Universität Halle nach ihrem EinXuß auf gelehrte und praktische Theologie, pp. lxx V. I should
also note a dissertation in progress by Eric Carlsson, ‘Johann Salomo Semler, the German
Enlightenment, and Protestant Theology’s Historical Turn’ (University of Wisconsin-Madison).
209 e.g. see W. M. L. de Wette, Über Religion und Theologie (Berlin, 1815), 118 V.
210 Quoted in Ernest Barnikol, ‘Johann August Nösselt 1734–1807’, in 250 Jahre Universität
Halle: Streifzüge durch ihre Geschichte in Forschung und Lehre (Halle, 1944).
zur Bildung angehender Theologen (1786–9) is especially noteworthy for our
purposes.211 In one sense, this pedagogical work is a descendent of Melanch-
thon’s Loci communes, a straightforward overview of theology for the begin-
ning student. But in another sense, it bears witness, even more so than
Semler’s aforementioned Anleitung, to an ever-widening gulf between the
eighteenth-century concerns and Melanchthon’s world. Following Baumgar-
ten and Semler, Nösselt set out with the premise that valid theological
knowledge accorded with knowledge derived from nature. He praised the
great strides that had been made in ‘wissenschaftliche Philosophie’, calling
philosophy the ‘Grundwissenschaft’.212 For him, the aim of theology was not
primarily Gottseligkeit, as it was for Spener and Francke, nor the articulation
and defence of doctrinal verities (i.e. Lutheran scholasticism). Rather, Nösselt
deWned theology as the ‘scholarly knowledge of religion’ and divided it into
various ‘theological sciences’. In doing so, Nösselt too represents an important
transitional Wgure in theological education. His Anweisung became among the
most widely used introductory texts of the late eighteenth century; it antici-
pates the ‘theological encyclopedia’ of the post-Schleiermacher period, which
shall be discussed at a later point.213
The cumulative inXuence of Baumgarten, Semler, Nösselt, Niemeyer, and
other lesser lights secured Halle’s reputation as having one of the most
Enlightenment-inXuenced theological faculties in Germany—a reputation it
would carry well into the nineteenth century.214 Perhaps nothing bears
witness to this more evidently than a conXict that erupted at century’s end
between the theological faculty and the new Prussian minister, Johann Chris-
toph Wöllner (1732–1800). In 1788, a year after the accession to the throne of
Friedrich Wilhelm II, Wöllner, a member of the Rosicrucian order and
himself a former theology student at Halle, was made Minister of Justice, a
position which involved supervision of the state’s Department of Religious
AVairs.215 On 9 July 1788, he issued his infamous Religionsedikt, an edict
which eVectively dismantled the permissive religious policies of Friedrich II
and his minister Zedlitz in favour of a state-sponsored eVort to bolster
the Christian faith ‘in its original purity . . . and to protect it from all
211 J. A. Nösselt, Anweisung zur Bildung angehender Theologen, 3 vols. (Halle, 1786–9).
212 Quoted in Schrader, Geschichte der Friedrichs-Universität zu Halle, i. 483.
213 Farley, Theologia, 56 V. Nösselt also published a comprehensive and widely consulted
guide to theological literature entitled Anweisung zur Kenntniss der besten allgemeinen Bücher in
allen Theilen der Theologie (Halle, 1790).
214 In 1817, on the occasion of the tricentennial of the Reformation, Niemeyer compared
Halle to Wittenberg, suggesting that both had given birth to ‘a new order of things’ in matters
theological. Niemeyer, Die Universität Halle nach ihrem EinXuß auf gelehrte und praktische
Theologie, p. v.
215 On Wöllner, see ADB xliv. 148–59.
falsehoods’.216 He followed this with a censorship edict, promulgated on 19
December 1788, requiring that all books on God, the state, or morality receive
approval from government censors. To enforce these measures and to oversee
the implementation of a new orthodox Landeskatechismus issued in 1792,
Wöllner established an examination and visitation commission to survey all
Prussian parishes and educational institutions, including universities.217 Per-
turbed that his alma mater had become a ‘seedbed of irreligious clergymen’, he
turned a critical eye toward Halle’s theological faculty and ordered that the
faculty produce a manual on dogma, demonstrating their orthodoxy and
repudiating the religious novelties of the day (Neologie). He castigated Nösselt
and Niemeyer in particular for heterodox tendencies. The two took oVence;
Niemeyer even travelled to Berlin to try to discuss the matter with Wöllner,
but was denied a hearing.218
A few years passed before Wöllner—whose reactionary impulses had been
strengthened by the anticlerical turn of the French Revolution—expressed
dissatisfaction with the weak response of Halle’s theological faculty to his
charges. On 3 April 1794, basing his action on reports of the faculty’s
persistent ‘irreligiosity and radicalism’, he issued a blunt letter to Nösselt
and Niemeyer, asking them to desist from heresy, noting
that radical (neologische) principles are still being expressed in your dogmatic lectures,
because of which your listeners and colleagues are being confused and led astray from
knowledge of the true Christian doctrine of faith. So hereby consider yourselves
seriously admonished to turn [from your former practices] and adopt a diVerent
manner of teaching, one in which young theologians and future instructors of the
people (künftige Volkslehrer) can learn pure dogmatic teaching according to the Bible
and the revealed Word of God. If you fail to do this, you have yourselves to blame,
when . . . you Wnd yourselves facing . . . proceedings of dismissal.219
In a subsequent letter, Wöllner warned that the king would no longer tolerate
the theologians’ ‘wrongheadedness’ (Unwesen) and he even oVered corrective
pointers in biblical exegesis, forbidding them, for example, from regarding
demon possessions in the New Testament as mere instances of epilepsy.220
In the summer of 1794 Wöllner followed up his letters by sending delegates
from the examination and visitation commission (J. T. Hermes and G. F.
216 For the relevant pargraphs of the Edikt, see Schrader, Geschichte der Friedrichs-Universität
zu Halle, i. 532–3, n. 53.
217 Johann Karl Bullman, Denkwürdige Zeitperioden der Universität Halle (Halle, 1833), 45–6.
218 Schrader, Geschichte der Friedrichs-Universität zu Halle, i. 519.
219 The letter from Wöllner is provided in A. H. Niemeyer, Leben und Charakter und
Verdienste Johann August Nösselts nebst einer Sammlung einiger zum Theil ungedruckten Aufsätze,
Briefe und Fragmente (Halle, 1809).
220 Schrader, Geschichte der Friedrichs-Universität zu Halle, ii. 481–5.
Hillmer) to Halle to assess matters Wrst-hand. Upon their arrival, however,
they were accosted and harassed by masked students sympathetic to Nösselt
and Niemeyer. Shaken by the incident, they aborted their trip, returned to
Berlin, and reported the matter to Wöllner, who became predictably enraged,
suspecting that Nösselt or Niemeyer or some other faculty member had
put the students up to their action or at least had condoned it. A formal
investigation to determine the instigator was launched, but this proved
inconclusive—and had the unfortunate eVect of preventing the university
from celebrating its Wrst centennial in 1794. At this point there followed a
series of harsh letters from Wöllner and the commission, reprimanding the
professors for deWance. These letters were met with replies from the theo-
logical faculty, denying the charges, pleading for academic freedom, and
requesting a more impartial judge.
In the end, little came of the whole ordeal, and no professor was dismissed
as Wöllner had threatened. In large measure, this was because the king had
responded favourably, at the height of the mêlée, to a letter sent him by
Niemeyer, in which the theologian had explained his views. It appears that the
king’s response, although no endorsement of Niemeyer, nonetheless tempered
Wöllner’s inquisitorial actions. Still, tensions remained high between the
government and Halle’s theological faculty for some time. Only the death of
the king in 1797 and the subsequent dismissal of Wöllner in 1798 by the new
royal power, Friedrich Wilhelm III (r. 1797–1840), brought an end to the
conXict. Although deeply religious, the new king did not share Wöllner’s
suspicions of Halle and was unwilling to continue his coercive methods.221
Among other things, this episode illustrates the threat that Halle’s theo-
logical faculty, despite its pietist beginnings, posed to the conservative reli-
gious imagination in the late eighteenth century. Warnings against ‘Hallesche
Rationalismus’ became a refrain from many conservative clergymen during
this period. Not surprisingly, Wöllner’s actions had the general eVect of
dampening student interest in theology: matriculation rates in theology, at
Halle and other Prussian universities, fell precipitously in the 1790s as
students took stock of the politically perilous implications of this career
path.222 What is more, the ordeal made clear Wöllner’s indelicacy in handling
the matter—a trait of his which manifested itself in his treatment of other
perceived ‘neologists’ as well.
On a broader historical note, some of the most forward-looking
and inXuential religious writings of the German Enlightenment—writings
consequential, both directly and indirectly, for the future of university
221 Bullman, Denkwürdige Zeitperioden der Universität Halle, 48.
222 On this topic, see Brunschwig, Enlightenment and Romanticism in Eighteenth-Century
Prussia, 169–70.
development—should be interpreted as reactions to Wöllner’s 1788 edict and
the repressive religious climate it fostered. These writings include a short essay
by Wilhelm von Humboldt on religion and its elaboration in his Ideen zu
einem Versuch die Grenzen der Wirksamkeit des Staates zu bestimmen (1792), a
remarkably liberal book, later relished by John Stuart Mill, which argued
against state involvement in religious and cultural matters. Immanuel Kant’s
two most important works on religion, Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der
blossen Vernunft (1793) and Der Streit der Fakultäten (1798) also stem from
this period, the latter, examined below, being largely a critique of the theo-
logical faculty.223
Given the immediate inXuence and continued signiWcance of these works,
one might well argue, in ‘Hegelian’ terms, that the cunning of history
employed Wöllner for ends quite opposite from his intentions.
Roughly a half century before Wöllner’s conXict with Halle’s theologians,
another university was founded: the Hanoverian University in Göttingen or
simply the Georgia Augusta, named after its royal patron, George II. This
upstart institution soon rivalled Halle as the most forward-looking,
acclaimed, and emulated university in Germany. Indeed, Göttingen emerged
as central Europe’s première reform university, the model that many looked to
when championing university reform in general. Göttingen’s modernity is
attributable to the circumstances of its founding, its statutes, and the pro-
gressive scholarly views of its professors, many of whom had previously
studied at Halle. While the theological faculty was still symbolically regarded
as the Wrst of the higher faculties, its traditional primacy was greatly attenu-
ated at Göttingen, just as the confessional rationale for the university gave way
here, more deliberately than had been the case at Halle, to purely secular and
statist justiWcations. The law faculty rose greatly in importance, reXecting the
administrative and legal needs of an absolutist state.224 Of greater conse-
quence for the future, not least for theology, the philosophical faculty at
Göttingen became a much more extensive and multifarious enterprise, an-
ticipating, especially in such Welds as modern history and classical philology,
the rapid expansion and specialization that came to aVect nearly all univer-
sities in the nineteenth century. What is more, Göttingen’s philosophical
faculty openly broke from tradition in the noteworthy respect that many of
223 On the broader political implications of the religious climate in the 1790s, see Frederick
C. Beiser, Enlightenment, Revolution, and Romanticism: The Genesis of Modern German Political
Thought, 1790–1800 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), 48–9, 78, 128–30,
passim.
224 Wilhelm Ebel, Zur Geschichte der Juristenfakultät und Rechtsstudiums an der Georgia
Augusta (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1960), 9 V., and Hammerstein, Jus und Historie,
315, 331.
its members habitually lectured on subjects that were hitherto considered the
exclusive domain of theology—even on dogmatic theology. From J. D.
Michaelis and J. G. Eichhorn, who began this trend in the eighteenth century,
to the Old Testament scholar Julius Wellhausen in the nineteenth century,
some of Göttingen’s leading theological minds were not institutionally situated
in the theological faculty, preferring the critical ethos of the philosophical
faculty instead.225
The Georgia Augusta was born from a mixture of envy, ambition, and the
practical needs of a modernizing bureaucratic state. The house of Hanover
had long been a rival to the Hohenzollerns, but unlike the latter could not
boast of quality educational institutions. Its young men regularly went abroad
to study, often to the nearby Brunswick-Lüneburg university at Helmstedt. In
1732 the privy councilor Johann Daniel Gruber argued that making its best
and brightest have to study abroad did not serve the state’s interests, and
therefore urged that a Wrst-rate university be founded at home. The king
agreed and handed the matter over to Minister Gerlach Adolf von Münch-
hausen (1688–1770), the pivotal Wgure in the university’s founding period.
Prussian by birth, Münchhausen had studied law at Halle, Jena, and the Dutch
university of Utrecht. In 1727 he had become a member of Hanover’s Privy
Council and placed in charge of educational and religious aVairs.226
In founding a university, Münchhausen faced formidable obstacles. In
eVect, he sought to establish an institution that many felt outdated in an
age of enlightenment. At Halle, however, Münchhausen had learned Wrst-
hand that a university could survive and even thrive if it could provide a
more progressive type of education, one attractive to foreign students and one
that would lure sons of the nobility from the popular academies (Ritteraka-
demien). Because nobles and the wealthy paid more than poorer local stu-
dents, Münchhausen judged it necessary, if the university were to succeed, to
attract as many socially distinguished students and foreigners as possible,
both to defray the state’s expenses and to increase the prestige of the univer-
sity. To accomplish this aim, Münchhausen and his circle of advisers set out to
achieve speciWc statutory and curricular reforms to make the new university
as appealing as possible to the desired clientele. Oddly then, Göttingen was a
modern university because it strove to be an aristocratic university; progressive,
225 To be sure, earlier one can Wnd many individual examples of non-theologians lecturing on
theological topics, but at Göttingen this became something of an institutional norm. See Philipp
Meyer, ‘Geschichte der Göttinger theologischen Fakultät’, ZGNK 42 (1937): 9 and Rudolf
Smend, ‘Johann David Michaelis und Johann Gottfried Eichhorn—zwei Orientalisten am
Rande der Theologie,’ in Bernd Moeller (ed.), Theologie in Göttingen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck
& Ruprecht, 1984), 58–81.
226 On Münchhausen’s life, see Walter BuV, Gerlach Adolph Freiherr von Münchhausen als
Gründer der Universität Göttingen (Göttingen, 1937).
paradoxically, because it sought to woo a class largely associated with political
and social reaction. Optimistic that the new university could surmount the
challenges of the day, Münchhausen secured the imperial charter from
Charles VI in 1733. The Wrst lectures began in 1734. The university as a
whole, ceremoniously inaugurated, began full operations in the fall of 1737,
with the king himself assuming the title rector magniWcentissimus.227
From the start, Münchhausen knew that the role of the theological faculty
in the university was a delicate and important matter. Traditionally, theology
students came from more impecunious backgrounds than those who matric-
ulated in other faculties. For this reason, theology was not Münchhausen’s
foremost concern, given his aim of creating a wealthy, cosmopolitan univer-
sity.228 In another sense, however, Münchhausen knew that because of its
traditional clout and its bearing on broader religious and social matters, the
‘Wrst faculty’ had to be given thoughtful consideration. He was quite familiar
with the WolV aVair at Halle and the role of the theological faculty therein;
and this was something he surely wanted to avoid. He was also well aware of
the many acrimonious disputes among theologians and between theologians
and members of other faculties; and this too he sought to do without. As early
as 1733, Münchhausen had therefore warned against any extreme or modish
concepts in theology, arguing that men should not be hired ‘whose teaching
leads to atheism or naturalism . . . or [religious] enthusiasm’. He also rejected
those, even if orthodox subscribers to the Augsburg Confession, who pro-
moted ‘unnecessary discord’ and ‘inner turmoil’.229 But he was no secularist.
Like most contemporaries, he believed that an educated clergy presiding over
a well-functioning church was an immensely desirable good for state and
society. What he sought, Wnally, was an orthodox-Lutheran but highly irenic
theological faculty and one that played a relatively quiet, unassuming role
within the university. These objectives came to be reXected in hiring practices
and in the university’s statutes.
At the same time, Münchhausen did not want to settle for mediocre
scholars, in theology or any other Weld, simply because they Wt his bill of
religious moderation. This high-minded pursuit of the best and brightest, be
they local or foreign scholars, was another signature feature of Göttingen and
one that helps account for the calibre of the faculty and its progressive
227 I am indebted here to McClelland, State, Society, and University in Germany, 35–9.
228 On the social backgrounds of eighteenth-century theology students, see Anthony La
Vopa, Grace, Talent, and Merit: Poor Students, Clerical Careers, and Professional Ideology in
Eighteenth-Century Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
229 See ‘Nachträgliches Votum Münchhausens über die Einrichtung der Universität in der
Sitzung des geheimen Raths-Collegium’, in Emil Franz Rössler (ed.), Die Gründung der Uni-
versität Göttingen (Göttingen, 1855), 33–4.
conception of scholarship and learning. Shortly before the university was
founded, Münchhausen had written in a memorandum: ‘It is necessary that if
the new academy should excel, its chairs must be entrusted only to the most
famous and qualiWed men. Such men, however, are usually well provided for
and can be convinced to come to Göttingen only with great diYculty and if
they are granted considerable honour and pay.’230 In order to ensure that the
right men came and that they were suYciently compensated, Münchhausen
and his advisers embarked on a major and consequential innovation: they
denied the faculties the traditional corporate right to nominate and name
their own members; rather all faculty appointments were controlled by the
state. What is more, once hired, professors were digniWed with the title of
privy councilor (Geheimrat) to the king, further aligning their interests with
those of the government. This policy served two goals according to Münch-
hausen. First, it blunted the internecine debates that often divided faculty over
a new hire, as each ideological faction struggled to secure its choice—a
pervasive problem but especially so among theological hires, where not only
scholarly methods but the eternal felicity of students’ souls were often held to
be at stake. Second, a state monopoly on hiring would assure a higher quality
of faculty, since the faculties themselves, in Münchhausen’s judgement, often
seemed all too willing to base their decisions on nepotism or favoritism
instead of academic merit.231
To achieve this dual goal of religious moderation and academic excellence,
Münchhausen turned to Johann Lorenz von Mosheim (1694–1755),
neighbouring Helmstedt’s most accomplished and renowned theologian-
cum-church historian, a scholar whose irenic and academic qualities—
following in the tradition of Helmstedt’s famous Georg Calixtus—have led
some to dub him the ‘Erasmus of the eighteenth century’.232 Münchhausen
actually had sought to bring Mosheim himself to Göttingen as early as 1733,233
but various complications prevented this from happening. Eventually, he did
come in 1747 and taught at Göttingen until his death in 1755. But long before his
arrival at Göttingen, Mosheim exerted formidable inXuence on the university
and especially on the theological faculty through his position as Münchhausen’s
230 Ibid. 33, 37, and Ernst Gundelach, Die Verfassung der Göttinger Universität in drei
Jahrhunderten (Göttingen: O. Schwartz, 1955), 10.
231 McClelland, State, Society, and University, 40.
232 Bernd Moeller, ‘Johann Lorenz von Mosheim und die Gründung der Göttinger Universi-
tät’, in Moeller (ed.), Theologie in Göttingen, 18. In his ‘Nachträgliches Votum . . .’, Münchhausen
upheld the moderate spirit of Helmstedt as an example for Göttingen to follow. See Rössler
(ed.), Gründung, 34. Cf. Kelly, The Theological Faculty at Helmstedt, 26 V.
233 Rössler (ed.), Gründung, 34. On Mosheim in general, see RGG iv. 1158.
most trusted adviser. As one commentator has noted, ‘In his thoughts,
Mosheim sketched the city [i.e. the university] that Münchhausen later built.’234
Two years before the inauguration of the university and the formal codiW-
cation of the statutes, Mosheim produced for Münchhausen several memo-
randa on the soon-to-be-established university. One memorandum proposed
statutes for the theological faculty; another concentrated on the university
as a whole.235 These proposals from Mosheim and the lively correspondence
between the two men make up an unoYcial intellectual charter of the
new university. While many of Mosheim’s points did not make their way,
verbatim, into the Wnal statutes, their spirit thoroughly permeated the new
institution.
Mosheim’s proposed statutes for the theological faculty are especially
noteworthy. The document is replete with edifying language typical of similar
documents. With every opportunity, Mosheim noted, theology professors
should demonstrate ‘fatherly faithfulness, gentleness, compassion, friendli-
ness, [and] geniality’; those students ‘who have dedicated themselves to God’,
should be treated ‘like sons’ and, accordingly, be admonished and rebuked on
occasion, but never with force. Theology, he made clear, is not found ‘in
knowledge and disputation alone, but rather, primarily, in a lively faith and
active piety’. To foster the latter, Mosheim placed great emphasis on instruc-
tion in practical theology, both in the lecture hall and in the character of the
professor’s personal life, for not only should the student aspire to be ‘learned’
(gelehrt) but also ‘skilled’ (geschickt), someone capable of bringing the fruit of
scholarly training to bear on homiletics, catechesis, and the daily life of a
parish.236
However, alongside edifying and practical emphases, Mosheim’s statutes-
proposal anticipate several important developments in academic theology.
SpeciWcally, they suggest the necessity of increased scholarly rigour, the ebbing
of confessionalism, and the dawning of greater academic freedom; they also
point to the diminished institutional authority of the theological faculty.
Despite allowing that piety ultimately trumped erudition as the point of
theological training, Mosheim emphasized that no theological student should
shirk the pursuit of thorough learning and scholarly competence—a ‘grün-
dliche Gelehrsamkeit und Wissenschaft’ as he put it.237 With respect to ebbing
confessionalism, Mosheim stressed seeking out a peace-loving faculty, warn-
ing against men of ‘argumentative, divisive, and oVensive spirits’.238 Prudently
outWtting the theological faculty, he wrote elsewhere, was of utmost import-
ance: ‘if the theologians are quarrelsome and heretical, this misfortune will
234 BuV, Münchhausen als Gründer der Universität Göttingen, 77.
235 See Rössler (ed.), Gründung, 20–7, 270–97.
236 Ibid. 282, 290–3. 237 Ibid. 293. 238 Ibid. 271.
redound to the other professors, and [thus] the foundation for perpetual
discord (immerwährenden Unruhe) is established’.239 In their teaching,
publishing, and interaction with one another, faculty were enjoined to dem-
onstrate ‘brotherly unity,’ a phrase he repeatedly invoked. Additionally, he
commended ‘gentleness and humility . . . [as] the greatest virtues of a
teacher.’240
Of capital importance, Mosheim proposed that the traditional control-
function or right of censorship (Censurrecht) of the theological faculty be
done away with or at least severely limited; theologians should no longer have
the prerogative to censor the opinions and publications of their colleagues in
other faculties: ‘[T]he faculty is not allowed to censure the oral lectures or
written publications of their colleagues in the legal, medical, and philosoph-
ical faculties; neither should they, in public or in private, denounce or attack
their colleagues as heretical and erring.’ Whoever persisted in such activity,
Mosheim added, should be regarded unfavourably as a ‘disturber of the peace’
(Friedens-Stöhrer). What is more, theologians should not act as judges when
controversial religious issues arose in the city; they should keep their distance
and let the appropriate church and state authorities decide the matter. At the
same time, they should have the freedom to express their own opinions in the
lecture hall.
A peace-loving faculty, in Mosheim’s view, should also be an orthodox one;
he insisted that the faculty give evidence of correct belief (Rechtgläubigkeit).
But even on this vital issue one observes in Mosheim’s language a new spirit of
openness. For example, while he indicated that theology professors should
swear allegiance to the Bible, the Augsburg Confession, and Luther’s Longer
and Shorter Catechisms, he also added that in matters not directly and clearly
addressed by these documents, each theologian should have ‘complete free-
dom (vollkommene Freyheit) to assert, with modesty and love, what his
knowledge and conscience tell him is right and true’. And even in weightier
matters of doctrine that had given rise to diVering interpretations, Mosheim
warned against acrimonious wrangling and forbade the coercion of con-
science (kein Gewissens-Zwang)—a principle of freedom, he argued, deriva-
tive from the Reformation itself. Instead, he proposed that when dealing with
contested theological points, a professor should present various sides of the
issue as clearly as possible and then modestly state his own viewpoint.241
Although not all of Mosheim’s points made it into the actual statutes, these
nonetheless still bear witness to Mosheim’s inXuence.242 For example,
239 Quoted in the introduction, Ibid. 27. 240 Ibid. 289. 241 Ibid. 276–82.
242 The actual statutes were largely the work of professors C. A. Heumann (1681–1764),
Joachim Oporinus (1694–1751), and Magnus Cruse (1697–1751), although Münchhausen
himself was actively involved in their drafting.
evidence of rigorous scholarship was made a requirement for the faculty;
professors were enjoined to avoid acrimony at all costs; and ‘freedom of
teaching and conviction’ (docendi sentiendique libertate) was guaranteed, so
long as one did not deliberately work to undermine religion, the state, and
morality.243 Additionally, while members of the theological and philosophical
faculties were required to take a fairly traditional confessional oath, other
faculty members, as the general university statutes made clear, simply had to
agree not to teach anything that contradicted ‘the truth of the evangelical
religion’—a rather minimalist oath by the standards of the day.244 What is
more, in accordance with Mosheim’s suggestion, Göttingen became the Wrst
German university to restrict the theological faculty’s traditional ‘right of
censorship’, eVectively preventing denunciations of teachers for ‘heretical’
opinions. It is hard to overstate the historical importance of this measure,
even if its signiWcance lies largely in what it betokened for the future. By thus
restricting the theological faculty, Rudolf Vierhaus has commented, ‘the
confessional age ended for the universities.’245 Götz von Selle interpreted
this measure as ‘the pivot for the great turn in German life, which moved
its centre of gravity from religion to the state’.246
Mosheim’s inXuence on the university was magniWed when in 1747 he
decided to join the faculty himself, reversing his earlier decision to stay at
Helmstedt.247 To lure him to the Georgia Augusta, a special position was
established just for him: he became the ‘chancellor’ of the university. This
allowed him to teach outside the theological faculty, which at this time
included J. W. Feuerlein (1689–1766), Joachim Oporinus (1694–1751), and
Magnus Cruse (1697–1751)—all respectable scholars but none as noteworthy
as Mosheim.248 Mosheim’s coming to Göttingen, therefore, greatly enlivened
243 Ebel (ed.), Die Privilegien und ältesten Statuten, 181.

244 Ibid. 56 f., 106 f., 189 f.
245 Rudolf Vierhaus, ‘1737—Europa zur Zeit der Universitätsgründung’, in Bernd Moeller
(ed.), Stationen der Göttinger Universitätsgeschichte (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
1988), 21.
246 Selle, Die Georg-August Universität zu Göttingen, 41. Cf. Inge Mager, ‘Die theologische
Lehrfreiheit in Göttingen und ihre Grenze: Der AbendmahlskonXikt um Christoph August
Heumann’, in Moeller (ed.), Theologie in Göttingen, 43–4 and McClelland, State, Society, and
University, 39. A further major source of Göttingen’s academic freedom stemmed from the
Royal Privilege of 7 December 1736. Here one Wnds: ‘Professores . . . zu ewigen Zeit vollkommene
unbeschränckte Freyheit, Befugniß und Recht haben sollen, öVentlich und besonders zu lehren,
respective Collegia publica und privata zu halten . . .’ Ebel (ed.), Die Privilegien und ältesten
Statuten, 29 (emphasis added).
247 Moeller, ‘Johann Lorenz von Mosheim und die Gründung der Göttinger Universität’, in
Moeller (ed.), Theologie in Göttingen, 35.
248 Meyer, ‘Geschichte der Göttinger theologischen Fakultät’, ZGNK 42 (1937): 13 V. On the
make-up of the initial theological faculty at Göttingen, see Jörg Bauer, ‘Die Anfänge der
Theologie an der ‘‘wohl angeordneten evangelischen Universität’’ Göttingen’, in Jürgen von
the faculty and accorded it newfound signiWcance. (More broadly, one should
not fail to note that his arrival in Göttingen came just seven years after WolV’s
return to Halle and Wve years before Semler’s career began there. The presence
of these three men, though of diVerent characters and intellectual agendas, at
such progressive institutions had an abiding impact on the German theo-
logical climate in the mid- and late eighteenth century—one that unsettled its
allegiance to the past and set it on a course of deliberate, if uncertain,
modernization.)249
Characteristically enough, Mosheim’s inaugural address, De odio theologico
(1747) sounded a plea for a theology of moderation, scholarship, and peace-
seeking: a ‘theology of controversy’, he contended, served neither the Gospel
nor the human good.250 In 1749 he submitted a noteworthy memorandum to
the theological faculty that presaged future developments away from rigid
confessionalism. When asked his opinion of whether a ‘reformed’ student
from England visiting Göttingen might receive a doctoral degree in theology,
he opined that under certain conditions a doctorate could be considered not
so much a sign of doctrinal purity but rather ‘simply as a testimony of
theological learning’ (ein bloßes testimonium eruditionis theologicae).251
In theological method and pedagogy, Mosheim made a lasting contribution
through his lectures on the subjects, publishing posthumously Kurze Anwei-
sung, die Gottesgelahrtheit vernünftig zu erlernen (1756). This work reXects
many of the ideas put forth in his earlier statutes-proposal, and, viewed
historically, is of signiWcance in shaping theological study as a wissenschaftlich
enterprise. In it, Mosheim drew a sharp distinction between ‘theological
method’ and ‘pastoral theology,’ noting that the former was particularly at
home in the university, for it brought the ‘proWciency of reason’ to bear on
theological studies and helped the student approach his work in ‘a rational
manner’. Mosheim also made clear that theology, viewed as a human and
historical enterprise, must adapt to the changing times. In an age of enlight-
enment, this meant curtailing a narrow polemical theology (theologia polem-
ica), the hallmark of the confessional age, and developing a more urbane,
intellectually sophisticated outlook. ‘In our times, at least in the Christian
Stackelberg (ed.), Zur geistigen Situation der Zeit der Göttinger Universitätsgründung 1737
(Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1988), 9–56.
249 See Karl Aner’s overview of ‘die theologische Situation um 1740’ in Die Theologie der
Lessingszeit (Halle, 1929), 14 V.
250 Moeller, ‘Mosheim und die Anfänge der Universität Göttingen’, in Moeller (ed.), Theolo-
gie in Göttingen, 17. Writes Moeller of this address: ‘It was the opening of a new age in the
history of theology.’
251 UAG, Theol. SA 0004. Cf. Paul Tschackert (ed.), Johann Lorenz von Mosheims Gutachten
über den theologischen Doktorat vom 9. August 1749 (Leipzig, 1905), NStUBG, H. lit. part. IV
164/2.
West,’ Mosheim wrote, ‘human beings are more civilized, intelligent, [and]
enlightened. [A clergyman] must therefore interact with them diVerently and
himself be more educated.’252
With respect to his scholarly work, Mosheim continued at Göttingen
studies in church history, his signature Weld, publishing numerous works,
articles, and reviews, and bringing to completion in the year of his death his
magisterial Institutionum historiae ecclesiasticae antiqua et recentioris (4 vols.;
1755). For this and other pioneering works, Mosheim has been widely hailed
as ‘the father of modern church history’, the Wrst to emphasize the importance
of independent historical criteria, instead of strictly theological ones, to
understand and write the history of Christianity. As F. C. Baur, Mosheim’s
nineteenth-century heir, once commented, Mosheim was the Wrst ‘expressly
[to] posit as the most important principle of church historiography an
independence from everything subjective that can have an inXuence on
historical comprehension’. For this reason, Baur added, Mosheim ‘brought
church history out of the polemical and pietistic conWnes to which it still
clung into the vantage point of a freer and broader circle of vision’.253
During his time at Göttingen, Mosheim witnessed the blossoming of the
university into an eminent institution. As Münchhausen’s close ally and
university chancellor, Mosheim himself played no small role in this process,
proudly witnessing the realization of several ideas that he had either proposed
or approvingly discussed with Münchhausen in the 1730s and 1740s.254 One
of these was the establishment of a scientiWc society, the Königlich Societät der
Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, later simply called the Akademie der Wissenschaf-
ten. This was founded in 1751 largely through the eVorts of Albrecht von
Haller (1708–77), a professor of anatomy and natural science, who, with
Mosheim, became among Göttingen’s most celebrated and internationally
renowned professors.255 Modelled in part on the esteemed societies of science
in London, Paris, and Berlin, Göttingen’s academy came to function alongside
the university, concentrating especially in the physical, mathematical, and
historical sciences. Proponents of the academy held that university professors
would beneWt from its work, which, according to one contemporary, was to
produce ‘new discoveries’ of ‘general use to humanity’—a task diVerent from
but complementary to that of the university professor, who was charged to
252 Mosheim, Kurze Anweisung, die Gottesgelahrtheit vernünftig zu erlernen (Göttingen, 1756),
1 V., 7.
253 F. C. Baur, Ferdinand Christian Baur on the Writing of Church History, ed. and trans. Peter
C. Hodgson (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), 142 V. Cf. Karl Heussi, Johann Lorenz
von Mosheim. Ein Beitrag zur Kirchengeschichte des achzehnten Jahrhunderts (Tübingen, 1906).
254 BuV, Münchhausen, 77–8.
255 On Haller, see ADB x. 420–9.
oVer ‘complete and thorough instruction in all areas of knowledge’.256 The
symbiotic relationship between the two institutions, academy and university,
was the Wrst of its kind in Germany; it would later serve as a model when the
decision was made to found a new university in Berlin in conjunction with
Prussia’s pre-existing Royal Academy of Science.257
Already in the 1730s Mosheim had recommended that Göttingen become
the seat of a leading scholarly journal.258 This came to pass quickly with the
creation of the Göttinger gelehrten Zeitung in 1739. Although the journal
struggled at Wrst, it was taken over by Albrecht von Haller, renamed the
Göttingische Anzeigen von gelehrten Sachen, and enjoyed an illustrious period
of operation under the auspices of the Academy of Science. Its numerous
articles, reviews, and prizes (awarded for scientiWc excellence) became im-
portant catalysts for scholarship in Hanover and beyond. In the late eight-
eenth century, under the editorships of J. D. Michaelis and C. G. Heyne, this
journal emerged as arguably Germany’s leading organ of scholarly enquiry,
and a model for other scientiWc journals, spanning myriad Welds. In the Wnal
analysis, the close relationship between a pre-eminent scholarly journal, a
leading university, and a scientiWc society associated Göttingen for the re-
mainder of the century with the most forward-looking ideas of the day.259
‘Extra Göttingam non est vita,’ as one contended scholar summed up his lot
in the small university town.
During Mosheim’s tenure, another development took place, which, though
not attributable to Mosheim, would have accorded well with his ecumenical
temperament. Catholic students were allowed to attend their own private
worship services for the Wrst time. The fact that signiWcant numbers of
Catholic students were at Göttingen in the Wrst place was an unusual, if not
unique, phenomenon. Münchhausen had earlier commented on the poor
state of Catholic universities, and held out the hope that with suYcient
quality at Göttingen ‘their best people will come to us’.260 The fact that they
did come, along with non-Lutheran Protestant students, necessitated in turn
certain religious concessions by both town and gown. Thus, in 1747, Cath-
olics were allowed to hold their own worship services in a private home—so
long as the priest agreed not to wear his vestments outside! Concurrently,
students and professors (including Albrecht von Haller) of a Reformed
256 Johann Stephan Pütter, Versuch einer academischen Gelehrten-Geschichte von der Georg-
August-Universität zu Göttingen (Göttingen, 1765), 250. Cf. Gundelach, Die Verfassung der
Göttinger Universität, 46–8.
257 On the general impact of scientiWc societies on universities in early modern Europe, see
HUE ii. 480 V.
258 Rössler (ed.), Gründung, 266–9.
259 McClellan, Science Reorganized, 114–16.
260 Rössler, Gründung, 248.
background were granted more freedoms and opportunities; in 1753 Göttin-
gen witnessed the establishment of its Wrst Reformed church.261 The slacken-
ing of confessional barriers signiWed by these developments betokened the
possibility of more extensive future deconfessionalization.262
Finally, no discussion of Göttingen’s modernity would be complete without
further mention of the university’s philosophical faculty, the acclaim, dyna-
mism, and institutional clout of which brought it into conXict with the
theological faculty on a number of occasions. To a large degree, Münchhausen
himself should get credit for the strength of this faculty by his insistence that
its professors be mature and reliable scholars, instead of local secondary
teachers or those awaiting appointments in the higher faculties, as was often
the case in other German universities. More broadly, the faculty’s strength
might be regarded as the portentous realization of a view prevalent among
many progressive thinkers, which held that the future of universities
depended on transforming this faculty from a seat of preparation to one of
institutional leadership and intellectual progress. This direction is already
hinted at in the statutes of 1737, which enjoined members of this faculty ‘to
discover new truths and promote the progress of science’ (ad novas veritates
eruendas et promovenda incrementa scientiarum).263
By the later decades of the eighteenth century—as renowned professors
occupied its chairs and its matriculation rates outpaced those of other
universities—the philosophical faculty at Göttingen came to play an unpre-
cedentedly prominent role, not only within the Georgia Augusta but within
German academic life as a whole.264 As Ernst Brandes wrote in 1802, ‘But
what remains of inWnite importance for the welfare of the university is the
261 Prior to 1753, Reformed students attended services in private homes. The Wrst post-
Reformation Catholic church, St Michaeliskirche, was dedicated in 1789. See Pütter, Versuch
einer academischen Gelehrten-Geschichte von der Georg-August-Universität zu Göttingen, 225 V.
262 On religious requirements for student admission and graduation (and on how they ebbed
in the post-Reformation period), see HUE ii. 285 V. I should add that the ebbing of confession-
alism should not be exaggerated: there were setbacks along the way. At Göttingen, for example,
the Reformed pastor Gerhard von Hemessen (1722–83) sought to oVer lectures on Reformed
theology in the 1750s only to incur the protestations of the theological faculty and a government
ban against non-Lutheran theology in 1755. Indeed, the reality of a joint Reformed–Lutheran
theological faculty was a slow process, only fully realized (not surprisingly) in Prussia, at Halle
and then Berlin. See Bornhak, Geschichte der preussischen Universitätsverwaltung, 109 f. Despite
Göttingen’s progressive character, Herder once called it ‘a Lutheran Rome.’ See Meyer,
‘Geschichte der Göttinger theologischen Fakultät’, ZGNK 42 (1937): 34. It was not until 1921
that an honorary professorship for Reformed theology was established in Göttingen’s theo-
logical faculty; its Wrst occupant was none other than Karl Barth. See UAG, Theol. SA 0214.
263 Ebel (ed.), Die Privilegien und ältesten Statuten, 183.
264 The strength of Göttingen’s philosophical faculty is all the more impressive if one keeps in
mind that philosophical faculties generally were in a state of deterioration and neglect in the
early eighteenth century. Thus, while I have suggested that the century witnessed notable
advances in this faculty, we should remember that this progress should be measured against
particular care taken for the prosperity of the philosophical faculty. This
faculty contains the salt of the earth which all the other faculties require. . . . A
major reason for the fame of Göttingen has always been the care . . . lavished
on maintaining the Xourishing condition of the philosophical faculty.’265
And Xourish it did. The faculty roster from the mid- and late eighteenth
century amounts to a virtual who’s-who list of distinguished German
scholars. Such Wgures as J. D. Köhler (1684–1755), J. J. Schmauss (1690–
1757), Johann Gesner (1691–1761), J. C. Gatterer (1729–99), J. D. Michaelis
(1717–91), C. G. Heyne (1729–1812), and A. L. Schlözer (1735–1809), among
others, graced the philosophical faculty and together constituted the foremost
body of university scholars in Germany. ‘I always had Göttingen in view,’
Goethe once reXected, disappointed that his father had sent him to Leipzig.
‘Men like Heyne, Michaelis, and so many others commanded my complete
trust. My deepest longing was to sit at their feet and take in their teaching.’266
In quantity and quality, Göttingen’s publications exerted inXuence through-
out central Europe and abroad. By the 1790s textbooks written by Göttingen’s
distinguished professors were used in practically every German university.267
Students throughout central Europe, and eventually those from as far away as
the United States and Russia, Xocked to Göttingen’s lecture halls, and through
their experiences took back the latest fruit of German academic life to their
native lands. Because of its Hanoverian origins, English and American stu-
dents often preferred Göttingen—a trend that continued well into the nine-
teenth century despite strong competition from Prussian universities, Berlin
in particular.268
At Göttingen, like at Halle beforehand, a widening of the customary sphere
of the philosophical faculty took place. In addition to the faculty’s traditional
fare, Göttingen began to oVer lectures in empirical psychology, natural
law, politics, modern physics, mathematics, modern history, geography,
an initial condition of disrepair and neglect, as indicated by poor professorial salaries, paltry
matriculation rates, and little overall prestige. In 1721 at Frankfurt an der Oder, for example,
salaries in the philosophical faculty ranged from 100 to 175 thaler annually, while those in
theology and law respectively ranged from 338–500 and 200–500 thaler. See Bornhak, Geschichte
der preussischen Universitätsverwaltung, 113, and Turner, ‘University Reformers and Professorial
Scholarship’, in Stone (ed.), University in Society, ii. 499.
265 Ernst Brandes, Ueber den gegenwärtigen Zustand der Universität Göttingen (Göttingen,
1802), 143–4. Cf. Heyne’s high esteem of the philosophical faculty in Heyne, ‘Festrede zur
Fünfzigjahrfeier der Georgia Augusta’, in Wilhelm Ebel (ed.), Göttinger Universitätsreden aus
zwei Jahrhunderten (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1978), 140.
266 Goethe, Aus Meinem Leben: Dichtung und Wahrheit (Paderborn: F. Schöningh, 1956), 241.
268 Carl Diehl, Americans and German Scholarship, 1770–1870 (New Haven: Yale University
Press), 155 V. In 1766 Benjamin Franklin was the Wrst prominent American to visit the
University of Göttingen.
diplomacy, and modern languages. Here, the knowledge typically pursued
within the new scientiWc academies became customary in the university as
well—a consequence, no doubt, of the close ties between the two institutions
at Göttingen. In the process, entirely new disciplines were formed, and old
Welds were refashioned, updated, and popularized. For the purpose of under-
standing the shifting fortunes of the philosophical and theological faculties,
three areas of curricular innovation are of particular importance: history,
classical philology, and the study of antiquity or Altertumswissenschaft. At
Göttingen, these subjects began a metamorphosis, whereby they ceased to be
minor, subordinate (and often neglected) Welds of study and began to take
shape as autonomous ‘disciplines’ in their own right. As one might expect,
this process often led to conXict between the two faculties, since the study of
history and language had traditionally been regarded as auxiliary to theo-
logical study. At Göttingen, Wilhelm Dilthey once opined, ‘the worldly
sciences freed themselves from theological considerations.’269
While it only fully came into its own under the direction of Leopold von
Ranke (1795–1886) in the nineteenth century, modern professional histori-
ography—history as an autonomous university discipline and not the occa-
sional work of a dilettante or polymath—owes its birth to the eighteenth
century within the parameters of Göttingen’s philosophical faculty. At root,
history’s rise reXected the university’s eVort to attract aristocrats and foreign-
ers by oVering practical and rewarding subjects; and history, especially mod-
ern history, was regarded as eminently practical if one planned to make a
career as a diplomat or minister in an absolutist state. The fortunes of
historical study were enhanced at Göttingen by the careers of Johann Chris-
toph Gatterer (1727–99) and August Ludwig von Schlözer (1735–1809),
among the Wrst men in Germany to receive university chairs speciWcally
designated for history. Their eVorts hastened a disassociation of historical
enquiry from biblical chronology and eschatology, which had been closely
linked ever since Melanchthon Wrst lectured on ‘world history’ after the
Reformation.270 In the formulation of one commentator, Gatterer and Schlö-
zer began a ‘melting down’ of historia sacra into secular world history, despite
the fact that both were devout Protestants.271 By the 1760s, history had
become so popular at Göttingen that J. D. Michaelis called it ‘the favourite
science of our time’.272
269 Wilhelm Dilthey, Gesammelte Schriften (Leipzig: Teubner, 1962), iii. 261.
270 Hammerstein, Jus und Historie, 20 V.
271 John Stroup, ‘Protestant Church Historians and the German Enlightenment’, in Hans
Erich Bödeker et al. (eds.), Aufklärung und Geschichte: Studien zur deutschen Geschichtswis-
senschaft im 18.Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986), 171.
272 See the long discussion of history in Michaelis, Raisonnement i. 192 V. For treatments of
the birth of modern historical scholarship at Göttingen, see Georg Iggers, ‘The University of
But history’s success often caused consternation among members of the
theological faculty, especially when the question arose, as it inevitably did, of
which faculty had the right to teach church history. Should this important
topic remain within the purview of the theological faculty or should those in
the philosophical faculty—i.e. historians operating presumably with less
edifying concerns—be allowed to teach it too? Skirmishes along this intellec-
tual ‘border’ were frequent at Göttingen in the late eighteenth century. An
episode from the 1790s is especially revealing. In 1793, the theological faculty
attempted to forbid a recent Privatdozent in the philosophical faculty the right
to teach church history, claiming that the university statutes indicated that the
subject required the exclusive permission of the theological faculty. When
word of this reached the historian Schlözer, then dean of the philosophical
faculty, he demanded that the theological faculty withdraw its objection. His
colleague Gatterer sided with him, writing that ‘church history has nothing in
itself to do with theology. In its essence it is a part of history and has
[therefore] common form and material with all parts of history. It has facts
as its subject matter and must prove them from original sources.’ The dean of
the theological faculty, J. F. Schleusner (1759–1831), sought to rebut this view,
appealing again to the university’s statutes and claiming that church history
handled improperly might be injurious to orthodox doctrine. Eventually the
dispute became so acrimonious that the government intervened, deciding in
favour of the philosophical faculty, but making it clear that the faculty would
be held responsible if any of its members fostered heresy.273
Besides history, classical philology witnessed a dramatic rise at the Univer-
sity of Göttingen, and soon it and its sister discipline—Altertumswis-
senschaft—became the German sciences par excellence, and ones with far-
reaching ramiWcations for scholarship and the university system as a whole. In
the early eighteenth century, language study in German universities still rested
on the Melanchthonian-humanist reforms of the sixteenth century. In prac-
tice, this meant that while Latin was still the basis of education, both in the
preparatory Latin schools and in the universities, it was not taught in an
inspiring manner. Latin instruction stressed grammar and style above all else;
the goal of the student was, through rote memorization and tedious drills, to
improve his own Latin writing skills. Students rarely read the classics in their
entirety, but rather only in a variety of anthologies and textbooks. Greek too
had fallen on hard times; it was mainly taught, like Hebrew, as a ‘helping
Göttingen and the Transformation of Historical Scholarship, 1760–1800’, Storia della Storio-
graWa 2 (1982): 11–37; Josef Engels, ‘Die deutschen Universitäten und die Geschichtswis-
senschaft’, HZ 189 (1959): 223–378; and Herbert ButterWeld, Man on his Past: The Study of the
History of Historical Scholarship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955).
273 Wittram, Die Universität und ihre Fakultäten, 13 V.
discipline’ to allow theology students to read the Bible. General courses on
Greek and Roman history and civilization were practically non-existent.274
This changed as a consequence of Göttingen’s inXuence. The catalyst came
from Johann Matthias Gesner (1691–1761) of the philosophical faculty, who
launched a thoroughgoing critique of the status quo and sought to implement
various ‘neohumanist’ reforms.275 As the founder of a philological-peda-
gogical seminar at Göttingen in 1737 and as the supervisor for the Braun-
schweig and Lüneburg schools, Gesner occupied a powerful and strategic
position to realize his ideas. Attacking the sterility of the current classical
education, he advocated that beginning students, before being confronted
with the diYculties of writing, must be thoroughly immersed in the life and
culture of antiquity by reading the classics. This would enable them, he felt, to
draw broad intellectual nourishment from the aesthetic, moral, and cultural
sensibilities present in Greek and Roman literature. The professor—or Latin
schoolteacher—must accordingly de-emphasize grammar and elevate the
reading and appreciation of classical texts to the centre of instruction. To
accomplish his goals, Gesner was able to use his high-ranking status to expand
the classical curriculum in schools and universities.276
Gesner’s ideas gained a wider saliency. His successor at Göttingen, Chris-
tian Gottlob Heyne (1729–1812), proved especially receptive to Gesner’s
views and similar ones afoot in Germany’s thriving extra-university literary
culture. Although at Wrst relatively unknown, Heyne made a truly meteoric
career at Göttingen. Not only did he execute his teaching oYce with great
vigour, but he became a leading Wgure in the Academy, the director of the
university library and the philological seminar, a favourite of the king, and the
author of numerous inXuential books. Picking up where Gesner left oV,
Heyne taught that scholars must give up their preoccupation with grammar,
metric, and textual criticism in the narrow sense and study the classics with
the aim of recapturing and appropriating in their own lives the creative spirit
of classical antiquity as a whole. This approach must be more than simply
literary; scholars must evaluate the classics for what they reveal about culture,
274 Turner, ‘Prussian Universities’, 112 V.

275 The central idea of neohumanism (Neuhumanismus) was the full development (or
Bildung) of the entire human personality accomplished through study of ancient (especially
Greek) sources. On the historical background to neohumanism and on its social and intellectual
underpinnings, see Ralph Fiedler, Die klassische deutsche Bildungsidee: Ihre soziologischen Wur-
zeln und pädagogischen Folgen (Weinheim: Beltz, 1972).
276 Turner, ‘Prussian Universities’, 112–13. Gesner’s contemporary at Leipzig, Johann Augusti
Ernesti (1707–81) also implemented similar reforms. Thus, while it is fair to say that Göttingen
led the way in classical philology, one should bear in mind that there were like-minded
professors at other universities.
civic life, religion, mythology, and the like. Above all, Greek antiquity, hith-
erto neglected, must become a central area of investigation.277
The pedagogical emphases of Gesner and Heyne forged a tie between the
neohumanism of the universities and the explicit Hellenism of the new,
literary culture outside them, pioneered by writers such as Klopstock and
Goethe and by independent scholars such as J. G. Herder and J. J. Winck-
elmann. For example, shortly after the publication of Winckelmann’s famous
Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums (1764), Heyne incorporated its contents
into his lectures at Göttingen. Through his friendship with Herder, moreover,
Heyne developed many inXuential ideas about mythology and folk poetry
that also found their way into Göttingen’s curriculum.278 Such developments
allowed Göttingen by the end of the century to be regarded as the leading
centre of the new Altertumswissenschaft and—along with ‘Goethe’s Weimar’
and the University of Jena, which had witnessed new intellectual vitality in the
1780s and 1790s—one of the foremost transmitters of the neohumanist
philosophy.279 What is more, numerous leading nineteenth-century intellec-
tuals and reformers passed through Göttingen in the late eighteenth century,
rubbing shoulders with Gesner, Heyne, and others. These included F. A. Wolf,
who implemented Heyne’s ideas at Halle and then Berlin with a critical and
methodological rigour unparalleled in the history of philology; the Schlegel
brothers, who became the future leaders of German Romanticism; and
Wilhelm von Humboldt, an admirer and close friend of Heyne, whose eVorts
to establish the University of Berlin were, as is well known, deeply imbued
with neohumanist sensibilities.280
The new spirit of classical philology had enormous implications for in-
struction and scholarship in theology, especially in the areas of biblical
criticism and Old Testament history. As early as 1769, for example, the
attraction of Heyne’s outlook on theological students was evident. ‘What a
comprehensive mind!’ exclaimed one young theology student, after observing
Heyne’s ability ‘to conjure up before his large audiences the entire cultural
world of antiquity’. The same student had learned from J. D. Michaelis that
any worthy theologian should possess both philosophical and philological
277 Ibid. 112 V.

278 In 1775 eVorts were made to bring Herder to Göttingen, but these failed and Herder
became the superintendent of education in Weimar. See Meyer, ‘Geschichte der Göttinger
theologischen Fakultät’, ZGNK 42 (1937): 33–4. For material related to Herder’s ‘Berufung’,
see UAG, Kur. 4 II b.
279 On the revitalization of Jena in the late eighteenth century, which stemmed partly from
the inXuence of Halle and Göttingen and partly from the local inXuence of Goethe at Weimar,
see Theodore Ziolkowski, German Romanticism and its Institutions (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1994), 230–8.
280 Turner, ‘Prussian Universities’, 114–16.
acumen.281 Yet, as was the case with church history, developments in classical
philology often led to border disputes and the blurring of boundaries between
the theological and philosophical faculties. It is signiWcant that not only
Heyne but also his contemporaries J. D. Michaelis and J. G. Eichhorn, all of
whom accomplished major work in biblical scholarship, operated from the
philosophical faculty (particularly the philological seminar) where they were
not subject to the statutory requirements of theology.282 The application by
these scholars of innovative philological techniques to biblical texts proved
extremely inXuential, particularly in the development of ‘myth criticism’, the
exegetical eVort to separate the historical from the mythical in the Bible.283 By
the nineteenth century, this form of criticism was carried forward more freely,
increasingly from within theological faculties, by such critics as Wilhelm
Gesenius, W. M. L. de Wette, F. C. Baur, and David Friedrich Strauss,
among others.284 One is even tempted to generalize that the shape of nine-
teenth-century German historical criticism of the Bible—and the concomi-
tant critical theology that prioritized historical exegesis over dogma—bears
witness to a revolution in philology, which, although by no means exclusive to
Göttingen, found its early centre of gravity in the Georgia Augusta’s philo-
sophical faculty.
Finally, it is noteworthy that Göttingen’s philosophical faculty was among
the Wrst to remove explicitly Christian language from the oath required of its
graduates and faculty members. By doing this, the faculty anticipated devel-
opments that would eventually sweep most German universities, indeed
practically all major universities in the Western world. J. D. Michaelis insisted
on the change in the oath. From his perch as frequent dean of the philosoph-
ical faculty and through his many publications, Michaelis called into question
the pointedly dogmatic language of the traditional oath, which required
adherence to ‘the doctrines of the catholic, Christian, and apostolic religion
as given in the Old and New Testament’.285 In his Raisonnement über die
protestantischen Universitäten in Deutschland, Michaelis noted with exasper-
ation that because of Göttingen’s oath not even Socrates, the ‘father of
281 Victor Sallentien, Ein Göttinger Student der Theologie in der Zeit von 1768–1771 (Hanover,
1912), 49–50.
282 See Rudolf Smend, ‘Johann David Michaelis und Johann Gottfried Eichhorn—zwei
Orientalisten am Rande der Theologie’, in Moeller (ed.), Theologie in Göttingen, 58–81.
283 e.g. see J. G. Eichhorn, Einleitung ins Alte Testament, 3 vols. (Leipzig, 1780–3).
284 See C. Hartlich and W. Sachs, Der Ursprung des MythosbegriVes in der modernen Bibel-
wissenschaft (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1952); R. E. Clements, ‘The Study of the Old Testament’,
in Ninian Smart et al., Nineteenth-Century Religious Thought in the West (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1985), iii. 109–42; and John Rogerson, Myth in Old Testament Inter-
pretation (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1974).
285 Ebel (ed.), Die Privilegien und Statuten, 189.
philosophy’, or a renowned Jewish thinker such as Moses Mendelsohn would
be allowed to teach in Göttingen’s philosophical faculty. Since history, he
elaborated, showed that ‘vera philosophia’ was something that one always
strove towards, never fully attaining, how was it possible that a university felt
compelled to prescribe truth in an oath?286 His eVorts garnered enough
support so that in 1778 Göttingen’s oath in the philosophical faculty was
emptied of speciWcally confessional language; the new oath stipulated that
teachers would strive after the truth and agree to uphold belief in ‘God and
religion’. No attempt was made to invest these words with particular dogmatic
content.287
6. ‘ TORCHBEARER OR TRAINBEARER’?:
THE FAC ULTIES AND IMMANUEL KANT
The reforms at Halle and Göttingen (and similar but less eye-catching ones at
a handful of other universities) demonstrated to intellectuals and statesmen
that universities were not incapable of productive change; this held true
despite the fact that numerous smaller institutions continued to be plagued
by Wnancial diYculties, low student enrolment, and curricular stagnation. Yet
on their own merits the examples of Halle and Göttingen did not stem the
hefty tide of criticism directed against universities in general. In fact, evidence
suggests that towards century’s end, criticism of universities was on the rise.
I have already examined, for example, the discussions of Berlin’s Mittwochs-
gesellschaft in the 1790s over whether universities should be reformed or
simply abolished. The opinions voiced by this society were not without
supporters elsewhere, in Prussia and throughout central Europe.
Among the universities’ critics, a refrain from this time focused attention
on ‘the division of the faculties’ (Einteilung der Fakultäten) and the relation-
ship of the faculties to one another. Even loyal defenders of universities
believed that for further progress to take place a fundamental restructuring
of the faculties must be eVected. Or, at the very least, the philosophical faculty
must assume, as it had begun to at Halle and Göttingen, a more extensive and
independent role within the university and one partially imitative of the type
of learning associated with scientiWc academies and societies.288
286 Michaelis, Raisonnement, iv. 145 V.

287 Wittram, Die Universität und ihre Fakultäten, 18–19.
288 On eighteenth-century discussions of the faculties in general, see Regina Meyer, ‘Das Licht
der Philosophie. Reformgedanken zur Fakultätenhierarchie im 18.Jahrhundert von Christian
WolV bis Immanuel Kant’, in Hammerstein (ed.), Universitäten und Aufklärung, 97–124.
Not surprisingly, professors at Halle and Göttingen were among the fore-
most critics of the hierarchical ordering of the faculties. Already in the early
eighteenth century, Christian Thomasius of Halle had argued that the div-
ision of the faculties guaranteeing the supremacy of theology was traceable to
the medieval papacy’s intention of achieving clerical dominance over soci-
ety.289 Christian WolV sought to dispense with the propaedeutic status of the
philosophical faculty and make it an equal of the other faculties. ‘The
philosophical faculty,’ he wrote, ‘has hitherto been regarded merely as that
which prepares young people for the other faculties of theology, law, and
medicine. . . . [I]t is called the lower faculty and the others the higher faculties.
But this prejudice must be done away with, and one must regard the philo-
sophical faculty not merely as a lower one, but also as a higher one’ (sondern
auch als eine Obere Facultät).290 Similarly, Göttingen’s Mosheim had recom-
mended that ‘philosophy be regarded as equal to the higher faculties and
that the papal relic of the diVerences among the faculties be completely
abolished’.291 In his Raisonnement of 1768, J. D. Michaelis claimed that the
vitality of the philosophical faculty was signiWcantly more important
than that of the theological faculty for the health of a university.292 Such
sentiments were echoed by others and spread throughout the century. In 1795
W. A. Teller, a principal Wgure in the Mittwochsgesellschaft, wrote that ‘the
monastic division into faculties, in which philosophy walks behind like a
handmaid, must cease; everyone should be able to lecture on whatever he
wants.’ Revealingly, Teller, who supported the continuance of universities,
shared this view with J. G. Gebhard, an ardent abolitionist, who ridiculed
universities for their ‘scholastic division into faculties.’293
At the century’s turn, Christoph Meiners of Göttingen discussed the fac-
ulty-system at some length in his Ueber die Verfassung und Verwaltung
deutscher Universitäten (1801–2). Like earlier critics, Meiners lamented the
status quo and puzzled over whether theology should or could still be
considered ‘the Wrst science’. In typical fashion, he invoked the growth of
the philosophical faculty as a promising sign of the changing times: ‘The
disciplines of human knowledge, which in the universities one understands to
be within the parameters of the philosophical faculty, have been powerfully
289 See the material attributed to Thomasius in the entry on ‘Facultät’ in Johann Georg
Walch, Philosophischen Lexicon (Leipzig, 1726), 381.
290 WolV, ‘Unmäßgebliche Gedanken von Einrichtung einer Universität in Deutschland’, in
WolV, Gesammelte Schriften, ser. I, vol. 22, 59.
291 Quoted in Moeller, ‘ ‘‘Mosheim und die Anfänge der Universität Göttingen’, in Moeller
(ed.), Theologie in Göttingen, 32.
292 Michaelis, Raisonnement, i. 193 V.
293 Stölzel, ‘Die Berliner Mittwochsgesellschaft über die Aufhebung oder Reform der Uni-
versitäten (1795)’, FBPG 2 (1889): 204–6.
enhanced during our [the eighteenth] century, and will, so it seems, continue
to be so.’ One day, he added, philosophy might even be considered ‘the queen
of the sciences, the Wrst among her sister faculties’. Meiners also commented
admiringly on the growth and prestige of scientiWc academies in the eight-
eenth century, noting that they have a ‘completely diVerent criterion of
human knowledge’ than that of the universities, hinting that the latter should
follow suit. Meiners proposed that one possible remedy would be to subdivide
the philosophical faculty—a proposal that would have a long, mostly unreal-
ized life in the nineteenth century—and allow its various areas of enquiry, or
at least related clusters of them, to serve as autonomous faculties. This would
have the eVect, he reasoned, of enlarging the domain of genuinely scientiWc
knowledge within the university. A realist, however, he recognized that this
proposal would probably create other problems: the higher faculties would
object to their loss of power, and funding would be dispersed too thinly
among the newly created faculties.294
Published just nine years before the founding of the University of Berlin,
Meiners’s book was not without inXuence on educated opinion. However, it
stood in the shadow of a more widely discussed series of essays published by
Immanuel Kant in 1798 under the title Streit der Fakultäten, in which the
Königsberg philosopher also wrestled with the widely perceived problem of
the division of the faculties. Often passed over by Kant scholars in favour of
his three major critiques, Streit der Fakultäten is a work of rich signiWcance.
Not only does it shed light on Kant’s personal religious views, but the work
also eVectively summed up, while adding trenchant commentary to, the
growing concern many had about the division of the faculties. What is
more, the work inXuenced many future directions of German university
development; practically every major Wgure involved in the founding of the
University of Berlin would have known its contents and the circumstances of
its writing quite well.295
The circumstances are worth noting. Like many scholars sympathetic to the
Enlightenment, Kant had grown accustomed to the mild religious policy of
Friedrich the Great and his liberal minister Zedlitz, to whom Kant incidentally
had dedicated his Kritik der reinen Vernunft. The death of Friedrich the Great
in 1786, therefore, and the replacement of Zedlitz with Wöllner by the new
monarch, Friedrich Wilhelm II, left Kant and those with similar views ex-
posed to charges of inWdelity by the new conservative regime. Indeed, only a
few years after the proclamation of Wöllner’s religious edict on 9 July 1788,
294 See the section entitled ‘Ueber Facultäten’ in Christoph Meiners, Ueber die Verfassung und
Verwaltung deutscher Universitäten (Göttingen, 1801), i. 325 V.
295 Günther Bien, ‘Kants Theorie der Universität und ihr geschichtlicher Ort’, HZ 219 (1971):
134–60.
Kant, like Nösselt and Niemeyer at Halle, felt the coercive arm of the govern-
ment. Wöllner and his agents of censorship were particularly troubled by
Kant’s strictly moral interpretation of Christianity presented in his Religion
innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft. Initially, Kant had planned to
publish this work in instalments in the Berlinische Monatsschrift, a chief organ
of the Enlightenment in Prussia. The second instalment, however, did not
pass the oYcial censors. Undeterred, Kant procured support from the faculty
of (non-Prussian) Jena and decided to risk publishing the book in its entirety
in 1793. Shortly thereafter, he received a cabinet order, dated 1 October 1794,
from Wöllner, in which he was instructed that the king was ‘greatly displeased
to observe how you misuse your philosophy to undermine and destroy many
of the most important and fundamental doctrines of the Holy Scripture and
Christianity’. He was further asked to desist from writing or lecturing on
religion altogether or else to expect ‘unpleasant measures’. To make sure Kant
got the point, Wöllner issued an order to the university senate at Königsberg,
forbidding any professor from lecturing on Kant’s philosophy of religion.296
Distraught, Kant submitted a letter in defence of his Religion, claiming that he
did not slander Christianity, but, even so, he should have the scholarly right to
express his views freely, so long as he focused on the ‘philosophical’ aspects of
religion. But in the end the ageing philosopher deemed it prudent ‘hereby as
his Majesty’s faithful servant, to declare solemnly that I will entirely refrain in
the future from all public addresses on religion, both natural and revealed,
either in lectures or in writings’.297
This promise (and presumably the fear of ‘unpleasant measures’) prevented
Kant from publishing the Wrst part of Streit der Fakultäten, written in the
summer of 1794 and originally intended for publication in the Göttingische
Anzeigen von gelehrten Sachen, then edited by the liberal theologian, C. F.
Stäudlin (1761–1826).298 After the dismissal of Wöllner and the lapsing of
his edict, Kant decided, in 1798, to publish it as a book instead, dedicating it to
Stäudlin as a sign of apology perhaps for not publishing it earlier in his journal.
Kant entitled the Wrst and lengthiest section of the book straightforwardly,
296 Immanuel Kant, Der Streit der Fakultäten, with an English trans. and introd. by Mary
J. Gregor (New York: Abaris Books, 1979), p. xi.
297 Friedrich Paulsen recounts the encounter between Kant and the government well in
Immanuel Kant: His Life and Doctrine, trans. J. E. Creighton and Albert Lefevre (New York: F.
Unger, 1963), 48–50. Paulsen argues that the action against Kant probably originated with the
king himself and not Wöllner. In a letter to Wöllner, dated 30 March 1794, the king referred to
the ‘disgraceful writings of Kant’. Cf. Otto Schoendorfer, ‘Zur Entstehungsgeschichte des ‘‘Streit
der Fakultäten’’ ’, Kantstudien 24 (1920): 389 V. Cf. Götz von Selle, Geschichte der Albertus-
Universität zu Königsberg in Preußen, 2nd edn. (Würzburg: Holzner, 1956), 186 f.
298 On Stäudlin, see Meyer, ‘Geschichte der Göttinger theologischen Fakultät’, ZGNK 42
(1937): 40–1, 103.
‘The ConXict of the Philosophy Faculty with the Theology Faculty’.299 He
included in the preface the entire correspondence between him and the
government over the earlier publication of his Religion. Kant had addressed
the issue of university faculties in private correspondence as early as 1793, and
he broached it again in the introduction to his Religion.300 From these sources,
one gathers that Kant held it as anachronistic and wrong that the government
should stand in agreement with conservative theologians—‘biblical theolo-
gians’ as he called them—to deny a professor the right to express his opinions
on matters of intellectual importance. The Streit should be read therefore in the
light of the aforementioned dissatisfaction with the ‘monkly’ and ‘scholastic’
division of the faculties that had developed among progressive intellectuals in
the eighteenth century. The actions of the Wöllner regime, in other words,
while posing a personal threat to Kant, focused his mind on what he (and
others) already perceived as a defect in the structure of higher education.
Kant’s principal argument in Der Streit der Fakultäten rested on the En-
lightenment formula, which, in the words of Alasdair MacIntyre, held ‘ra-
tionality, like truth, [as] independent of time, place, and historical
circumstance’301—a formula to which Kant himself had contributed in his
three major critiques and in his famous essay, ‘What is Enlightenment?’ In the
latter, he famously deWned Enlightenment as freedom from all external,
tutelary authority in forming one’s own judgements. In his Streit, Kant in
turn sought to apply such conceptions of freedom and rationality to the
speciWc educational and political arrangements of late eighteenth-century
Prussia. In practical terms, this amounted to an unabashed defence of the
philosophical faculty as the bearer of Enlightenment rationality and a vindi-
cation of its right to freedom of expression, the right to have its members’
rational arguments answered by rational arguments rather than by coercion
or appeals to religious authority. Kant recognized that the current division of
the faculties was not without legitimacy as a means of dividing labour; he did
not, in other words, attempt to uproot the entire system. Rather, he sought to
defend and strengthen the philosophical faculty, redeWning its role as an
autonomous, self-conWdent dispenser of liberal, rational enquiry within the
university. ‘It is absolutely essential,’ he wrote, ‘that the learned community at
299 This was the section that Kant had written in 1794. He later added two more sections, one
on the conXict of philosophy with law and one on the conXict of philosophy with medicine. The
Wrst section though is the only one that truly deals with an actual conXict in the universities. It is
generally recognized that the three parts do not fuse together very well into an integral whole.
Kant himself seemed to admit this when he wrote in the preface that these three essays were
written ‘for diVerent purposes and diVerent times’. See Kant, Streit, 20–1.
300 See translator’s introduction in Kant, Streit, pp. vii-viii.
301 Alasdair MacIntyre, Three Rival Forms of Moral Inquiry: Encyclopedia, Genealogy, and
Tradition (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990), 65.
the university also contain a faculty that is independent . . . one that, having
no commands, is free to evaluate everything, and concerns itself with the
interests of science (Wissenschaft), that is, with truth: one in which reason
(Vernunft) is authorized to speak out publicly’.302
The distinction between the higher faculties and philosophy, according to
Kant, was that the latter had no master but ‘the free play of reason’, whereas
the former were bound by certain ‘external legislators’, such as, in the case of
theology, the Bible and credal formulations like the Augsburg Confession.
These legislators all had discernible historical origins in contrast to ‘reason’,
which, in Kant’s view, transcended human diversity and historical particular-
ities. Moreover, the higher faculties shared a utilitarian purpose with respect
to the government. Graduates of these faculties—‘tools of the government’ as
Kant called them—functioned to maintain the social order, from which the
government’s legitimacy was derived in the eyes of the people: the lawyer and
judge established security for persons and property, the doctor attended to
the health of the body, and the clergy provided spiritual comfort in this world
and guidance towards the world to come. By contrast, philosophy had no
utilitarian function; it was a free spirit whose only task was to tend the Xame
of rationality by looking after ‘the interests of science’. In performing this task,
no domain of knowledge should be oV-limits: the reach of the philosophical
faculty, Kant maintained, ‘extends to all parts of knowledge,’ including to ‘the
teachings of the higher faculties’.303
In Kant’s ideal view, the relevant parties—the higher faculties, the philo-
sophical faculty, and the government—would recognize that great social
importance inhered in the relationship of philosophy to the higher faculties.
The position of philosophy in this relationship was no longer to be one of
subservience, no longer a handmaid. Rather, from its vantage point of
freedom and reason, the philosophical faculty should perform a watchdog
function over the other faculties, criticizing and thus improving them when
they failed to comply with the universal canons of rationality. Indeed, phil-
osophy, not theology, should exercise the Wnal control function within the
university, albeit it should execute this function through argumentation and
critique, not coercion. In Kant’s formulation:
[A] university must have a faculty of philosophy. Its function in relation to the three
higher faculties is to monitor (controlliren) them and, in this way, be useful to them,
since truth (the essential and Wrst condition of learning in general) is the main thing,
whereas the utility the higher faculties promise the government is of secondary
importance.
302 Kant, Streit, 23–9. 303 Ibid. 32–45.

Kant recognized his claim amounted to a direct challenge to the age-old
primacy of theology. Diplomatically, he therefore suggested that ‘we can
also grant the theological faculty’s proud claim that the philosophical faculty
is its handmaid provided [that] it [philosophy] is not driven away or silenced’.
But he wryly added: ‘the question remains whether the servant is the mis-
tress’s torchbearer or trainbearer?’304 As the remainder of the work makes
clear, Kant assumed the former: in religious matters, theology should follow
philosophy’s skills in illuminating the path towards truth and reason. And for
Kant, this meant regarding Christianity in moral not doctrinal terms. Ac-
cordingly, extending lines of enquiry pursued in his earlier Religion, Kant
sought to demonstrate how the doctrines of the Trinity, the Resurrection, and
the Ascension were devoid of rational (read: strictly moral) religious content
and, from the standpoint of philosophy, dispensable.305
Revealingly, however, when discussing the social rationale of the philo-
sophical faculty, Kant strikes an ambiguous note. On the one hand, as
indicated already, he maintained that philosophy was completely disinter-
ested and impartial: ‘free and subject to laws only given by reason’. However,
he also subtly indicated that a modern state (one might read here Kulturstaat),
if it recognized its high calling to encourage rationality and progress, would
Wnd philosophy a useful ally: ‘The philosophical faculty can lay claim to any
teaching in order to test its truth . . . [and] the government cannot forbid it to
do so without acting against its own proper and essential purpose,’ which
Kant indeed regarded as cultivating greater reason, knowledge, and freedom
while never relinquishing its own absolute claim to sovereignty.306 Kant made
this idea more explicit, suggesting at one point that a disinterested, truth-
seeking faculty within the university was necessary to help the government
‘[be] adequately informed about what could be to its own advantage or
detriment’ and, therefore, it could ‘lead [state] oYcials more and more into
the way of truth’.307 If the government were to esteem philosophy appropri-
ately, then the philosophical faculty might one day triumph over the higher
faculties. In words subtly alluding to Christ’s in the New Testament, Kant
therefore summed up: ‘In this way, it could well happen that the last would
some day be Wrst (the lower faculty would be the higher). . . . For the govern-
ment may Wnd the freedom of the philosophical faculty, and the increased
insight gained from this freedom, a better means of achieving its end than its
own absolute authority.’308
304 Ibid. 44–5. 305 Ibid. 65 V.

306 Ibid. 42–5. On the complex relationship between Kant’s views of freedom, knowledge,
and the state, see Leonard Krieger’s discussion in The German Idea of Freedom (Boston: Beacon,
1957), 86–125.
307 Kant, Streit, 46–7. 308 Ibid. 58–9.
With Kant’s words and their historical context in mind, I shall comment, in
conclusion, on a relevant passage from Jean-François Lyotard’s much-dis-
cussed Postmodern Condition. Modern Western states since the Enlighten-
ment, Lyotard notes, have had a vested interest in ‘enabl[ing] science to pass
itself oV as an epic: the State’s own credibility is based on that epic, which it
uses to obtain the public consent its decision makers need’.309 Put diVerently,
without older religious-confessional or ‘divine rights’ forms of political legit-
imation, the modern state must derive it from other secular sources. Indeed,
the transition from religiously sanctioned states to non-religious ones is a
deWning aspect of Western modernity. Admittedly, in modern society, polit-
ical legitimation comes at some level from ‘the people’, the ‘general will’; but
in order to obtain and maintain credibility, Lyotard rightly observes, political
authority must convincingly demonstrate that its oYcials and policies are in
line with, or at least not wilfully contradicting, the latest in scientiWc schol-
arship, i.e. the authority of the university broadly understood. Government
must therefore stand arm in arm with further advances in knowledge for the
betterment of society.
Der Streit der Fakultäten and the body of progressive, late eighteenth-
century academic concerns that it embodies stands at the threshold of this
new understanding of political legitimation. While on a theoretical level, Kant
sought to maintain that the philosophical faculty (deWned as the locus and
curator of rationality within the university and society) was free from all
prejudice and connections to external authority, he also, on a practical level,
dangled before the government a powerful new carrot of legitimation and one
that implied entwining the interests of science and the state quite closely. The
carrot was simply that science itself oVered a promising new ‘epic’, not the old
‘biblical narrative’ or ‘story of salvation’ (historia sacra or Heilsgeschichte), but
a new Enlightenment story of overcoming the obscurantist past through
rational critique and the expansion of knowledge.310 Concurrently popular-
ized in the French Enlightenment by such writers as the Marquis de Con-
dorcet, this story, Kant suggested, should be wholeheartedly embraced by the
Prussian government and, by extension, all modern governments. Further-
more, if the theological faculty was the seat of intellectual authority, the Wnal
309 Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. GeoV
Bennington and Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1979), 28.
310 As a relevant, interesting aside, Kant’s own actions at the University of Königsberg often
illustrated his desire for the diminution of religious authority in academic (and by extension
social and political) aVairs. He regularly participated in academic processions, for example, but
once the procession reached the church for the customary university worship service, he
ostentatiously stepped aside from the procession and made his way home instead. Noted in
Karl Barth, Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century: Its Background and History, trans.
Brian Cozens and John Bowden (London: SCM, 1972), 267.
arbiter of valid and socially justiWable knowledge, in a confessional age, then
the philosophical faculty could provide a similar function, for both secular
and religious knowledge, in the modern era. In Kant’s judgement, the state
therefore had a vested and historically pivotal interest in seeing that the
hitherto queen of the sciences was unseated. In order to accomplish this,
the state must shift its loyalties from ‘theological’ verities to ‘philosophical’
ones, beneWting from the latter’s ‘epic’, while agreeing to recognize the
philosophical faculty’s claim of accepting no master but reason itself—reason
‘independent of time, place, and historical circumstance’. That reason might
Wnd it hard going to transcend time, place, and historical circumstance—and
indeed that it could function as a mere expression of them while insisting
otherwise—was not a thought that Kant and his intellectual progeny, includ-
ing many founders of the University of Berlin, entertained as seriously as one
might have wished.
3
Theology, Wissenschaft, and the
Founding of the University of Berlin
The founding of the University of Berlin is in point of fact one of the

most important movements in the history of modern Germany.
Heinrich SteVens, Was ich erlebte (1842)
Historically, then, the new theology is a child of almost pure German
blood. If its birthplace . . . must be Wxed we may, not without good
reason, name Berlin.
Francis G. Peabody, Unitarian Review (1879)
1 . IN T RO DU C TI O N
In the entry on ‘universities’ for the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia

Britannica (1875–89), the author marvelled at how the University of Berlin,
founded only in 1810, had quickly risen to hold ‘a foremost place among
universities of Europe’. A notable and inXuential characteristic of the new
university, the author continued admiringly, ‘was its entire repudiation of
attachment to any particular creed. . . . [I]t professed subservience only to the
interests of science and learning.’1 While credal strictures, as I have indicated,
were loosening at universities in the eighteenth century, it is fair to say that
the University of Berlin was the Wrst German university, at least in the
formulations of its founders if not entirely in actual practice, to sever the
centuries-old tie between confessionally deWned Christianity and university
education.2 It was the Wrst European university founded under purely na-
tional, secular auspices, bearing the imprimatur of neither emperor nor pope.
1 Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th edn., xxiii. 848.

2 Friedrich Paulsen, The German Universities and University Study, trans. Frank Thilly and
William W. Elwang (New York, 1906), 54. This point should be qualiWed by noting that the
decline of confessionalism applied Wrst to students and only gradually to the general faculty,
which was preponderantly Protestant throughout the nineteenth century. The theological
Theology, Wissenschaft, and Berlin 131
In retrospect, this has proved a momentous development, pivotal for German
universities, and for Western higher education generally. By the early twenti-
eth century the ‘German University’ led and typiWed by Berlin had risen to the
pinnacle of world esteem, the standard-bearer for numerous educational
institutions committed to science, research, and academic freedom. The co-
founder of Cornell University, Andrew Dickson White, spoke for many when
he called the University of Berlin ‘my ideal of a university not only realized—
but extended and gloriWed’.3
In the new university, the theological faculty managed to maintain a
respectable niche, even if some university founders saw it as anachronistic.
In point of fact, the medieval four-faculties system, demonstrating surprising
adaptability, persisted at Berlin, despite numerous calls to eliminate it in
favour of other forms of organization. Nonetheless, theology wholly ceased
to hold a position of pre-eminence except in symbolic and ceremonial
matters. InXuenced by the Enlightenment, Kantian idealist philosophy, and
the ethos of neohumanism, the university founders put forward secular or
only vestigially religious ideals to guide the university—ideals in many re-
spects antithetical to the lingering confessionalism that had justiWed theol-
ogy’s institutional centrality in the post-Reformation period. As is well
known, these new ideals articulated by Humboldt, Fichte, Schleiermacher,
and others rested on two pillars in particular: scholarly inquiry (Wissenschaft)
and the reWnement of individual character (Bildung). In turn, Wissenschaft
and Bildung were to be nourished in an atmosphere of teaching and learning
freedom (Lehr- und Lernfreiheit). The formulations of most founders on these
points implied that no predetermined conception of truth should interfere
with the pursuit of science and learning per se; scholars and students alike
should be freed of confessional constraints and utilitarian considerations to
lead the untrammelled life of the mind, conWdent that freedom itself was a
suYcient condition to advance reason, the unity of knowledge, and the steady
progress of humankind. As Humboldt famously put it, one should simply
‘live for science’ (der Wissenschaft leben) at the new university. Finally, as the
examples of Göttingen and Kant’s writings had anticipated, the philosophical
faculty should be the seat of this new academic vision, the nerve centre of the
institution, as it were, where reason obeyed no master but reason itself.
Such was the ‘rhetorical environment’ in which the erstwhile queen of the
sciences found itself circa 1810. If theology were to continue as a valid
academic enterprise (again, some doubted that it should or could, at least
faculty was ‘Protestant’, but only in the most generic sense; from Berlin’s inception distinctions
between ‘Lutheran’ and ‘Reformed’ played less important roles than at other Prussian univer-
sities.
3 Andrew Dickson White, Autobiography (New York, 1907), i. 291.
132 Theology, Wissenschaft, and Berlin
in a university setting), it would have to adapt to these new ideals in a creative
and convincing manner.4 But theology had more than new ideals to negotiate.
The realities of the University of Berlin in its early stages, and long after, were
much more complicated than simply the translation of its founders’ ideals
into practice. One does well to question this view, even if much adulatory
historiography on the German university tends to reinforce it. Instead, one
should bear in mind that the university was born during the Prussian Reform
Era (1807–15), a time of great social change and reform that resulted in
unprecedented state centralization.5 Prussian oYcials, through the power of
the purse strings, a virtual monopoly over academic appointments, the right
to administer obligatory state examinations to university graduates, and
various other supervisory and regulatory means granted to the newly created
Department of Ecclesiastical AVairs and Public Education, came to wield
heretofore unknown power over the universities. The notion of the university
as a quasi-feudal corporative enterprise, attenuated in the eighteenth century,
began to dissolve entirely in the nineteenth. Accordingly, one should take the
founders’ rhetoric of academic freedom with a rather large lump of salt.
Doing so helps one observe that theology faced not only an intra-university
discourse of academic freedom and scientiWc inquiry, but also an extra-
university reality of magniWed state authority. The fortunes of German
academic theology from 1810 onward, I thus venture, became closely bound
with the evolution of the modern Prussian state and the rise of modern
conceptions of Wissenschaft, among the two most consequential historical
forces afoot in the early nineteenth century.
In what follows, I consider what challenges and opportunities Berlin’s
theological faculty faced during the university’s founding era. Not surpris-
ingly, the circumstances of Berlin’s founding have attracted considerable
scholarly interest. Yet few historians have evinced serious and sustained
interest in the fate of theology. From a contemporary standpoint, this appears
perhaps understandable. As the entry from Britannica suggests, Berlin
supposedly inaugurated a new era, one open to freedom of inquiry and
research; it was only a matter of course—so the implication runs—that the
unbridled pursuit of knowledge would soon undermine theology’s institu-
tional signiWcance. However, accepting this view uncritically obscures im-
portant realities, as it ties historical insight to a particular teleological
judgment about the (secular) nature of modernity. Theology, in fact, proved
4 Leopold Zscharnack states that theology faced an ‘Existenzfrage’ during the founding of the
University of Berlin. See Zscharnack, ‘Das erste Jahrhundert der theologischen Fakultät Berlin’,
Chronik der christlichen Welt 20 (1910): 470.
5 E. R. Huber, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte seit 1789, 2nd. edn. (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer,
1990), i. 264 V.
quite resilient in the new intellectual and political climate, even if it undeni-
ably came to be overshadowed by other forms of inquiry as the nineteenth
century progressed. Theology’s fate, in other words, had a double mien, a
Janus-face.
Focus on theology during Berlin’s early years leads one necessarily to
Friedrich Schleiermacher. It is a remarkable fact that a theologian proved to
be among the most inXuential Wgures in founding a university best known for
its scientizing and secularizing inXuences. While Schleiermacher has been
treated extensively by theologians, most accounts only cursorily examine his
speciWc institutional and political context, focusing instead on his seminal
works of theology and their inXuence.6 My account casts Schleiermacher in a
diVerent light: as a Prussian academic bureaucrat, an intellectual architect of
the University of Berlin, a theological educator, and the Wrst dean and
enduring cornerstone of Berlin’s Wrst theological faculty. I accordingly treat
his historical context quite thickly, regarding his activities and writings
against the backdrop of the heady, conXict-ridden days of Prussia under
Napoleonic domination. Several shorter writings are more relevant for my
purposes; in addition to various memoranda, these include his Gelegentliche
Gedanken über Universitäten in deutschem Sinn (1808), arguably the charter of
the new university; and his Kurze Darstellung des theologischen Studiums
(1811), a short treatise on theological pedagogy.
To consider these texts properly, one must see Schleiermacher as simultan-
eously expressing and resisting intellectual and political currents in the early
nineteenth century. The texts express the near religious regard among the
intellectual classes for Wissenschaft and for the primacy of the philosophical
faculty, while they seek to resist the encroachments of the Prussian state into
ecclesiastical life and theological education. On the Wrst count, Schleierma-
cher’s eVorts proved inXuential: his models of university and theology helped
establish the institutional conditions for the renewed legitimation and ‘scien-
tization’ (Verwissenschaftlichung) of theology in the nineteenth century—
though this process provoked strong reactions from those less sanguine
about the marriage of theology and science. His eVorts to resist the state, a
sign of his political liberalism, were less eVective: theological education, along
with universities and churches, increasingly came under the ambit of the state
at this time.
6 On Schleiermacher’s general theological signiWcance, see MCT 588–92 and RGG v. 1422–35.
On Scheleiermacher’s life, see Martin Redeker, Schleiermacher: Life and Thought, trans. John
Wallhausser (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1973), and Kurt Nowak, Schleiermacher: Leben, Werk und
Wirkung (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2001).
2 . R EVO LU T I O NA RY TI M E S A N D T H E
ASCENDANCY OF WISSENSCHAFT
The period from the onset of the French Revolution in 1789 to Napoleon’s
defeat at Waterloo in 1815 was one of dizzying change, a political and social
watershed for both Germany and Europe as a whole. As James J. Sheehan has
summarized, ‘Every German government had to discover ways to deal with
the expansion of French power, to fulWll its demands, and to withstand its
destructive impact. . . . [P]olitical survival would require more than the ability
to endure. To exist in a revolutionary age demanded mastering the revolution
itself, acquiring the revolution’s power but turning to one’s own uses the
forces it had unleashed.’7 As I more fully show in Ch. 4, this ‘time of birth and
transition to a new period’ (Hegel) had major implications for church–state
relations in Prussia and elsewhere, and for the relationship of academic
theology to both ecclesiastical and political power. The period also had a
tremendous impact on German universities throughout the Holy Roman
Empire—a feeble political entity dissolved by Napoleon in 1806. In this
climate of upheaval, many struggling universities went under, often because
they lost their political and economic base of support during Napoleon’s
rapid territorial reorganization of the German states. Still other universities
were reconstituted or forced to consolidate with neighbouring institutions to
share scarce resources and students. All together, of the some thirty-two
German institutions in existence prior to 1789, roughly half had disappeared
thirty years later. Those that survived and new foundations, such as Berlin,
were indelibly impressed by the revolutionary milieu: they expired as autono-
mous corporations in a hierarchical, semi-feudal society of privilege and
tradition and were reborn as bearers of a new, albeit still ill-deWned identity,
in an era to be dominated by the modern state, bourgeois society, scientiWc
inquiry, and ideologies ranging from nationalism and liberalism to idealism
and positivism.
Hardest hit were the Catholic universities, nine of which were disbanded
during this period. Cologne was the Wrst to go in 1794, then the universities of
Mainz and Trier in 1798, Bamberg in 1803, Dillingen in 1804, Paderborn in
1808, Fulda in 1809, Breslau in 1811 (though it was soon reconstituted), and
Münster in 1818. The Bavarian University of Ingolstadt was Wrst moved to
Landeshut in 1802 and then to Munich in 1826; it underwent wide-ranging
changes as a consequence of the reforms that swept Bavaria under the
7 James J. Sheehan, German History, 1770–1866 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989),
251–2.
direction of Count Maximilian von Montgelas.8 These reforms paved the way
for Munich to become ‘the intellectual center of German Catholicism’ by the
mid-nineteenth century.9 While a number of Catholic theological faculties
survived the revolutionary onslaught, often proving to be fruitful centres of
inquiry and dialogue with their Protestant counterparts, seminaries directed
by bishops and religious orders, often tilting toward ultramontanism, began
to play a more prominent role in Catholic theology at this time.10
Protestant universities fared little better; seven of them closed their doors:
Altdorf in 1807, Rinteln in 1809, Calixtus’ and Mosheim’s Helmstedt in 1809,
Frankfurt an der Oder in 1811, Erfurt in 1816, and Wittenberg in 1817.
(Subsequently, the resources and personnel of Wittenberg and Frankfurt an
der Oder were merged, respectively, with Halle and Breslau.) The universities
that managed to survive—such as Marburg, Tübingen, Heidelberg, and
Göttingen—did so mainly because of better Wnancial proWles and because
they had the good fortune to receive support from the newly expanded
territorial states set up by Napoleon.11 Like Munich, many of these univer-
sities were the targets of their states’ reforming zeal and, as such, witnessed
considerable restructuring.12
As a result of Napoleon’s victories, French politics and culture shadowed all
Germany at this time. Not surprisingly, the French example of educational
reform exerted a powerful inXuence over the surviving German institutions—
an inXuence keenly felt by the founders of the University of Berlin, although
they were more often critical than accepting of it. In 1793, revolutionaries in
Paris had abolished the French universities and their faculties, proWting from
their endowments while regarding them as yet another ‘inutile’ aspect of the
Old Regime. Philosophes and revolutionaries alike especially deplored the
tight grip that the Catholic Church in France had exercised over university
studies.
8 See Laetetia Boehm and Johannes Spörl (eds.), Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Ingol-

stadt, Landshut, München, 1472–1972 (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1972), 177–250.
10 M. Braubach, ‘Die katholischen Universitäten Deutschlands und die französische Revolu-
tion’, HJB 49 (1929): 263–303. Prussia, notably, founded two Catholic theological faculties
during this era: Breslau in 1811 and Bonn in 1818. See RGG i. 1357–60, 1404–9.
11 H. George Anderson, ‘Challenge and Change within German Protestant Theological
Education during the Nineteenth Century’, CH 39 (March 1970): 36–48.
12 Indeed, it is worth pointing out that the founding of the University of Berlin was no
isolated phenomenon, but part (albeit the most conspicuous and consequential part) of a
general reforming impulse in higher education catalysed by Napoleon. On reforms in non-
Prussian areas during this period, see James Dennis Cobb, ‘The Forgotten Reforms: Non-
Prussian Universities, 1797–1817’, Ph.D. diss. (University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1980).
Almost a decade of educational experimentation followed in France after
1793, during which time secular and state-dominated schemes of education
supplanted traditional ones. It was not until the imperial period of Napoleon’s
reign that a comprehensive, ‘national’ system of higher education—under the
direction of the newly created Ministry of National Education—replaced the
older system that the Revolution had destroyed. The Napoleonic system
sundered the tasks of research and teaching, assigning the former to a number
of extra-university institutions rejuvenated during the Revolution, such as the
Collège de France, and to newly established scientiWc and professional training
centres such as the École polytechnique and the École normale supérieure. The
task of teaching was handed over to a new university apparatus, the Université
impériale, established by Napoleon in 1808. State-dominated, utilitarian in
focus, and having virtually no resemblance to the pre-revolutionary univer-
sity, the new educational structure was designed to prepare reliable teachers,
oYcials, and other professionals for imperial service.13 In this system, versions
of the medical and legal faculties were reconstituted because of their patent
usefulness to the state. The old arts/philosophical faculty was divided into the
‘natural sciences’ (faculté des sciences) and the ‘humanities’ (faculté des lettres).
As indicated earlier, the Revolution had closed down all theological faculties
in France, including Paris’s Sorbonne, once synonmous with theological
learning of the highest order.14 Although a handful of Catholic theological
faculties were reopened under Napoleon, the church regularly refused to
recognize their legitimacy, faulting their connections with the state, with the
result that their degrees carried little value and they produced few graduates.
The Concordat of 1801 had allowed for independent seminaries, however.
Consequently, most Catholic theology in France developed in the context of
seminaries, not universities—a major contrast with the predominantly Prot-
estant situation east of the Rhine, where theology developed largely in uni-
versities controlled and administered by the various German states.15
13 Napoleon’s Imperial University ‘was not a university at all in the traditional sense of the
word,’ writes L. W. B. Brockliss, ‘but a state department of education that controlled a series of
separate professional schools and their feeder institutions: these had no corporate identity, no
Wscal independence and little curricular freedom.’ See Brockliss, ‘The European University in the
Age of Revolution, 1789–1850’, in M. G. Brock and M. C. Curthoys (eds.), The History of the
University of Oxford (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), vi. pt. 1.98. Cf. Robert B. Holtmann, The
Napoleonic Revolution (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 1967), 139–62.
14 The Sorbonne was forsaken by the Revolution and Napoleon alike; its building was not
reoccupied until 1821 and then for entirely secular purposes. See R. R. Palmer, The Improvement
of Humanity: Education and the French Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985),
105 V.
15 Besides Catholic theological faculties, a Protestant faculty was established at Montauban in
1808 and later one at Strasbourg in 1818. On theological education in France during the
nineteenth century, see Bruno Nevo, ‘L’Église, l’état et l’université: les facultés de theologie
Concurrent with educational reforms in France and the reshuZing of central
Europe’s political map and university landscape, a re-envisioned conception
of the academic vocation and scholarship, a new ‘Wissenschaftsideologie’,
began to take shape and gain wide currency among inXuential segments of
Germany’s elite, educated classes. The new academic vision, elaborated in
several inXuential treatises occasioned by the founding of the university in
Berlin,16 was destined to have a lasting impact on nineteenth-century German
intellectual life through its near total institutional success in the broader
university network. A process well underway by the 1820s and 1830s, it played
a preparatory role in establishing the institutional conditions for the emer-
gence of the modern research imperative: the scholarly mandate to discover
new knowledge, not master and synthesize old knowledge.17 The new schol-
arly ideal—‘Wissenschaftlichkeit’ as it often appears in the literature of the
era—exerted, not surprisingly, tremendous inXuence on theological study
and learning. As indicated in the introduction, throughout the nineteenth
century, theology found itself in an intellectual atmosphere where the claims
of Wissenschaft reigned sovereign. Pietist and orthodox theologians often
demurred, regarding the new Wissenschaftsideologie as an idolatrous alterna-
tive to the praxis-centred, sapiential theology articulated in the past by
Luther, Spener, Francke, and others. Nonetheless, in the post-revolutionary
academic milieu, few options presented themselves except that of accommo-
dation to Wissenschaft. The charge that one’s outlook was unwissenschaftlich
(a term of derision increasingly applied to reactionary theologians by their
critics) amounted to an accusation of having no credible stake in the modern
university.
The intellectual origins of Wissenschaft as an academic ideology in the early
nineteenth century are fairly complex, although four main sources are iden-
tiWable. These merit brief mentioning.
First, the new academic ideal was partially bound up with the intellectual
and aesthetic movement of late eighteenth-century neohumanism, which, as
we have seen, found expression in Göttingen’s philosophical faculty and in the
works of Goethe, Winckelmann, Herder, and others. Neohumanism imbued
the incipient ethos of Wissenschaft with an elevated view of classical studies
catholique en France au XIXe siecle’, in Nigel Aston (ed.), Religious Change in Europe: Essays for
John McManners (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), 325–44.
16 Important treatises by Humboldt, Fichte, Schleiermacher, Schelling, and SteVens are
found in Ernst Anrich (ed.), Die Idee der deutschen Universität. Die fünf Grundschriften aus
der Zeit ihrer Neubegründung durch klassischen Idealismus und romantischen Realismus (Darm-
stadt: H. Gentner, 1956). I shall return to these treatises below.
17 R. Steven Turner, ‘The Prussian Universities and the Concept of Research’, Internationales
Archiv für Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur 5 (1980): 68–93.
and classical philology and it accented the importance of individual character
development (Bildung). Scholarly immersion in the classics and other hu-
mane studies, neohumanists argued, would counter the torpor of the eight-
eenth-century university and the general unruliness of student culture,
thereby allowing for the freer, fuller, and more harmonious development of
human personality. At its core, neohumanism was anti-utilitarian; it therefore
placed emphasis on the regeneration of the philosophical faculty and held the
professionalism of the higher faculties in partial contempt. Helmut Schelsky
has summed up the neohumanist vision as ‘Bildung durch Wissenschaft’.18
This idea proved to be a major component not only of Prussian university
reform but also of the reform of the Prussian Gymnasium, which was refash-
ioned in the early nineteenth century under the direction of Wilhelm von
Humboldt to reXect neohumanist principles.19
A second strand of Wissenschaftsideologie stemmed from educational the-
ories espoused by inXuential non-German thinkers such as Jean-Jacques
Rousseau and Heinrich Pestalozzi. Their ideas gained broad currency
among German scholars and writers in the late eighteenth century, especially
through such works as Rousseau’s Émile (1762) and Pestalozzi’s Meine Nach-
forschungen über den Gang der Natur in der Entwicklung des Menschenges-
chlechts (1797). As is well known, these giants of modern educational theory
disputed that the teacher’s primary task was imparting a uniform body of
knowledge to students. Rather, to help students conform to ‘nature’, teachers
should recognize the uniqueness of each individual and help students culti-
vate their own creative and scholarly potential. In many respects, such views
dovetailed with the neohumanist stress on Bildung, in that both held the free
development of the human intellect and personality as objectives beyond the
pale of criticism.20
18 Helmut Schelsky, Einsamkeit und Freiheit: Idee und Gestalt der deutschen Universität und
ihrer Reformen (Düsseldorf: Bertelsmann, 1971), 63.
19 On the reforms of the Prussian Gymnasium under Humboldt, see Clemen Menze, Die
Bildungsreform Wilhelm von Humboldts (Hanover: Schroedel, 1975), and Paul R. Sweet, Wilhelm
von Humboldt: A Biography (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1980), ii. 40–43. On the
idea of Bildung generally, see W. H. Bruford, The German Tradition of Self-Cultivation: Bildung
from Humboldt to Thomas Mann (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975); David
Sorkin, ‘Wilhelm von Humboldt: The Theory and Practice of Self-Formation (Bildung),
1791–1810’, JHI 44 (1983): 55–73; and Rudolf Vierhaus, ‘Bildung’, in Otto Brunner, Werner
Conze, and Reinhart Koselleck (eds.), Geschichtliche GrundbegriVe. Historisches Lexikon zur
politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland (Stuttgart: E. Klett, 1972), i. 508–51.
20 On the wave of enthusiasm for Pestalozzi that swept over Germany in the late eighteenth
and early nineteenth centuries, see Renate Hinz, Pestalozzi und Preussen. Zur Rezeption der
Pestalozzischen Pädagogik in der preussischen Reformzeit (Frankfurt am Main: Haag & Herchen,
1991), and Fritz-Peter Hager and Daniel Tröhler (eds.), Studien zur Pestalozzi-Rezeption im
Deutschland des frühen 19.Jahrhunderts (Berne: P. Haupt, 1995).
Thirdly, and crucially, the new conception of Wissenschaft grew out of
(Kantian and post-Kantian) idealist philosophy, especially the variety that
had found an institutional stronghold at the University of Jena in the last
decade of the eighteenth century. It was expressed there by scholars such as
Fichte, particularly in his famous Wissenschaftslehre (1794), and by his
younger colleagues, F. W. J. Schelling and G. W. F. Hegel, both of whom,
like Fichte, eventually taught at the University of Berlin.21 Idealist thinkers
implied with their usage of Wissenschaft a particular and rather lofty meta-
physical claim about the nature of knowledge and human intellectual cap-
abilities. In Schelling’s view, for example, Wissenschaft amounted to
knowledge of the essential unity existing between ‘the Real and the Ideal’.
The more wissenschaftlich knowledge human beings attained, the closer their
collective mind approximated the mind of ‘the Absolute’, Schelling’s term for
God (more or less). In Schelling’s formulation:
[A]lthough primordial knowledge is originally present only in the Absolute itself, it is
also present in ourselves in the idea of the essence of ourselves; and our total system of
knowledge can be only a copy of that eternal knowledge. . . . Only knowledge in its
totality can be a perfect reXection of the archetypal knowledge, but each single insight
and every individual science are organic parts of the whole.22
Following Schelling, other idealist thinkers deWned Wissenschaft as something
residing ‘in ourselves,’ which must be ‘awakened’ and cannot simply be
implanted through memorization and rote drills—the assumption of past
pedagogy. The phrase ‘awakening the idea of Wissenschaft’ among students,
in fact, recurs with mantra-like regularity in idealist literature on the subject of
the university.23 Furthermore, for Schelling and others, knowledge possessed
an organic unity, a fundamental interrelatedness and complementarity.
This theme too was echoed by a wide spectrum of turn-of-the century thinkers
and, as I have indicated earlier, contributed to the rage for producing encyclo-
pedias, concrete manifestations of the putative unity of all knowledge.
While human knowledge aspired to be a ‘copy of that eternal knowledge’,
according to Schelling, it was necessarily in a state of becoming, or emergence,
moving toward perfection without ever fully realizing it. For this reason,
idealists and their nineteenth-century successors frequently depicted
Wissenschaft in evolutionary or developmental terms—growing, unfolding,
21 On the importance of Jena as a bastion of the new discourse on Wissenschaft in the late
eighteenth century, see Theodore Ziolkowski, German Romanticism and its Institutions (Prince-
ton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 228 V.
22 Friedrich Schelling, On University Studies, trans. E. S. Morgan, ed. Norbert Guterman
(Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1966), 10.
23 R. Steven Turner, ‘The Prussian Universities and the Research Imperative, 1806–1848,’
Ph.D diss. (Princeton University, 1972), 259.
maturing towards ever-fuller actualization. In Hegel, the last and grandest of
the idealist system-builders, this evolutionary accent took centre stage and
came to permeate various academic discourses through his disciples and
epigoni. The emphasis on perpetual development lent Wissenschaft its dy-
namic and progressive qualities, making it a compelling and fertile vision of
the academic vocation. It reshaped the scholar’s self-understanding, investing
‘research’ with a morally obligatory character, and situated the individual act
of inquiry in an epic narrative of human striving and achievement.
According to R. Steven Turner, the growing usage of the word Wissenschaft
circa 1800 already suggests an incipient but distinctly modern ‘research
imperative’. In the seventeenth and well into the eighteenth century, the
word Wissenschaft actually occurred rather infrequently; the preferred terms
for a professor’s knowledge was Gelahrtheit or Gelehrsamkeit, which are closer
to the English ‘erudition’, and the professor himself was a Gelehrte, a ‘scholar.’
Gelehrsamkeit connoted an extensive, not intensive, approach to knowledge,
one that found scholarly expression in such genres as compendia and text-
books. By the early and mid-nineteenth century, however, Gelehrsamkeit
gradually gave way to Wissenschaft, Gelehrte to Wissenschaftler. Increasingly,
the professor’s identity was conceptualized as a ‘researcher’ or a ‘scientiWc
scholar’, someone committed to investigating the unknown, expanding the
frontiers of knowledge, publishing Wndings, and keeping up with the publi-
cations of others. Relatedly, the professor’s identity ceased to be deWned
primarily in collegial and pedagogical terms—that is, in his association with
his colleagues and teaching tasks at a particular university—and came to be
deWned more in disciplinary terms, in the professor’s contribution to his
scholarly Weld and interaction with colleagues at other universities and acad-
emies investigating and publishing on similar topics.24
The new ideology did not sever the tasks of scholarship and teaching; in
fact, in the context of the university (as opposed to a scientiWc academy) it
sought to unify them: the scholar should be able to bring the fruit of research
to the lecture hall or seminar and thereby inspire students with the same ideal
24 See R. Steven Turner, ‘University Reformers and Professorial Scholarship in Germany,

1760–1806’, in Lawrence Stone (ed.), The University in Society (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1974), ii. 495–532. On the modern evolution of the term ‘Wissenschaft’, see its entry in
Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob und Wilhelm von Grimm (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1960), xxx. 782–93. I
admit that the dichotomy between Gelahrtheit or Gelehrsamkeit and Wissenschaft is perhaps a bit
too tidy, for one often sees the terms used interchangeably during the period. Still, it is revealing
that champions of Wissenschaft were often at pains to distinguish the two understandings. For
example, the theologian K. R. Hagenbach wrote: ‘Vor allem müssen wir die falschen Vorstellun-
gen aussonderen, die man häuWg mit den Worte Wissenschaftlichkeit verbindet. Oft verwechselt
man die Wissenschaftlichkeit mit der bloâen Gelahrtheit . . .’ See Hagenbach, Über den BegriV
and die Bedeutung der Wissenschaftlichkeit im Gebiete der Theologie (Basle, 1830), 7.
of Wissenschaft that animated his own life.25 More fully, the professor should
do more than simply impart a given body of knowledge, the hallmark of the
premodern university; instead, by unabashedly exhibiting his own inquiring
cast of mind, he should awaken in his students a lasting, soul-enriching
curiosity about the world, a love of learning and investigation that would
inspire students to pursue Wissenschaft by their own lights. Once awakened to
the satisfactions of independent intellectual discovery, a crucial process of
character formation was to follow. Wissenschaft, in short, should give rise to
Bildung: hard-won knowledge should enrich and deepen the student’s interior
life and reWne his character.
Finally, alongside its neohumanist, Rousseau-Pestalozzian, and idealist
sources, the new Wissenschaftsideologie carried a distinctly nationalist dimen-
sion, as it was often linked to the ‘imagined community’ of emerging German
nationhood and Prussia’s dominant position therein.26 Since the ideology
came into its own during Napoleon’s imperium and the concomitant collapse
of Holy Roman Empire and the old German university system, proponents of
the new academic vision often expressed that it bore the capacity to eVect a
patriotic rejuvenation of Prussian/German intellectual life and political cul-
ture. Most famously, Fichte in his Reden an die deutsche Nation, delivered
during the French occupation of Berlin in 1807–8, linked the cause of
educational reform based on Wissenschaft with the goal of national unity
and moral regeneration—what he called ‘Nationalerziehung’. ‘[The] sole
means of preserving the existence of the German nation’ , he proclaimed,
was through ‘a total change of the existing system of education’. The old
system of ‘impotence and futility’ must give way to a ‘new world’ of education
that seeks to develop the whole character, intellect, and will of the student,
teaching not just individual parts of knowledge through memorization, but
‘knowledge of the laws which condition all possible mental activity’.27
Schleiermacher and the natural philosopher Heinrich SteVens elaborated
similar patriotic themes in their works, speaking frequently of wissenchaftlich
education ‘in the German sense’ to make sure that they were understood as
critics of the French, ‘utilitarian’ model of higher education. Likewise, in a
25 In the context of a scientiWc academy, an even stronger accent was placed on ‘pure
research’. Article One of the updated statutes of the Academy of Science in Berlin from 1812
proclaims: ‘Der Zweck der Akademie ist auf keine Weise Vortrag betreits bekannten und als
Wissenschaft geltenden, sondern Prüfung des vohandenen und weitere Forschung im Gebiet der
Wissenschaft’. Statuten der königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften in Berlin (Berlin, 1812),
NStUBG, H. lit. part. VIII 116/8.
26 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: ReXections on the Origins and Spread of
Nationalism, rev. edn. (London: Verso, 1991).
27 J. G. Fichte, Addresses to the German Nation, trans. R. F. Jones and G. H. Turnbull (New
York: Harper & Row, 1968), 1 V.
short essay, ‘Über das Wesen deutscher Wissenschaft’, Schelling concluded
that promotion of the ‘highest kind of knowledge’ was the pressing and
historically epochal task of ‘the German mind’.28 Indeed, numerous theorists
of education implied that Wissenschaft, and a university based upon it,
represented something distinctly German; the intellectually penetrating, char-
acter-formative, and ennobling aspects of Wissenschaft—so the argument
went—served as an indigenous defence against and criticism of the ‘shallow’
utilitarianism characteristic of the Western Enlightenment in general, and the
recent educational reforms of Napoleon in particular.29 Not surprisingly then,
once the University of Berlin was founded it was quickly heralded not only as
a bastion of the new learning, but as a focal point of Prussian-political and
German-national pride. The new university’s ‘Wrst eVect’, the scientist Rudolf
Virchow stated in an 1893 rectorial address, ‘was to stimulate most powerfully
the sense of national identity’.30
3. ‘A NEW CREATION’
How then did a university—what Fichte called ‘a new creation’31—come to be

founded in Berlin?
Few events in the history of education can boast of more self-conscious
deliberation, more dramatic historical conditions, and more long-term inXu-
ence than the founding of this single institution. Indeed, the University of
Berlin has obtained a near mythic status in the history of modern higher
education, representing an abrupt break with the past and a harbinger of the
present. Yet, while recognizing discontinuities, I am principally concerned
28 Schelling, ‘Über das Wesen deutscher Wissenschaft’ (1811), in Schellings Werke (Munich,
1927), iv. 377–94.
29 On the origins of this German criticism of the Enlightenment, which gave birth to a strong
and lasting sense among German intellectuals of their separateness from the West, see Fritz
Ringer, The Decline of the German Mandarins: The German Academic Community, 1890–1933
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969), 81–90. The metaphors of shallowness and
depth were sometimes employed to distinguish German Wissenschaft (deep) from other,
putatively shallow (often French or Anglo-American) forms of inquiry. As Hagenbach put it:
‘Tief aus der Erde Schacht wird das Gold ans Tageslicht gefördert und der Taucher holt die Perle
aus des Meeres dunkeln Gründen herauf. So auch muâ in die Tiefe graben und keine Mühe
scheuen der ächte Wissenschaft.’ See Hagenbach, Über den BegriV and die Bedeutung der
Wissenschaftlichkeit im Gebiete der Theologie, 9.
30 See Rudolf Virchow, Die Gründung der Berliner Universität und der Uebergang aus dem
31 ‘A new creation’ were Fichte’s words about the new university; see his letter to J. J.
Griesbach of 4 October 1810 in Fichte, Gesamtausgabe (Briefwechsel, 1806–1810), part III, vol.
vi, ed., Reinhard Lauth, Hans Glitwitzy, et al. (Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 1997), 339.
here with an institutional continuity: how did the theological faculty, deemed
a medieval relic by many contemporaries, continue at the university and
become a leading seat of ‘wissenschaftliche Theologie’?
Pursuit of this question leads us to the circumstances of Berlin’s founding.
For our purposes, the role of the state in this process is particularly
noteworthy. Indeed, despite the rhetoric of science and academic autonomy
espoused by Humboldt and other educational reformers, the powers of
the state (Erziehungsstaat or Kulturstaat) were greatly increased over higher
education during this time, just as they were increased over society as
a whole.32 Berlin’s founders, many of whom served as public oYcials in
some capacity, welcomed, or at least accepted, the state as the only force
powerful enough to overcome the corporative character of the universities
and establish the cherished principles of academic freedom and scientiWc
inquiry. For national and educational regeneration, Fichte had written, ‘it is
to the state therefore to which we shall Wrst of all have to turn our expectant
gaze’.33
For his part, King Friedrich Wilhelm III recognized that the Prussian state,
recently humbled by the loss to Napoleon in 1806, would beneWt immensely
from a grand, new institution dedicated to higher learning in the nation’s
capital; a Wrst-order university promised to inspire patriotic feelings and
produce loyal, intelligent civil servants—two pressing needs during a time
of political crisis and uncertainty. In the Wnal analysis, a political calculus, not
just the promulgation of academic ideals (important though they were), went
into the founding of the new university. As Lord Acton once commented,
Humboldt and other founders managed to forge ‘[a] link between science and
[political] force by organizing a university in Berlin.’34
The initial impulse to found a new ‘institution of higher learning’—few
reformers, revealingly, felt comfortable using the term ‘university’ because of
its medieval associations—in the Prussian capital originated shortly before
1800. Upon coming to power in 1797, Friedrich Wilhelm III made clear that
education at all levels would be a high priority. In a letter to minister Julius
Eberhard Wilhelm Ernst von Massow (1750–1816), who had been selected in
1798 to replace Wöllner as the head of the Geistliche Departement and director
of the Oberkuratorium (the agency responsible for the universities),35 the king
32 Nipperdey, Germany from Napoleon to Bismarck, 19 V.

33 Fichte, Addresses, 160.
34 Lord Acton, ‘German Schools of History’, in Essays in the Study and Writing of History
(Indianapolis: Liberty, 1986), 346.
35 On Massow, see ADB xx. 573. The Oberkuratorium or Oberschulkollegium was only
established in 1787; it was charged to direct ‘the entire school service’. See Huber, Deutsche
Verfassungsgeschichte, i. 278.
made clear ‘that [he] regarded the condition of education in [his] entire lands
as a subject matter worthy of utmost attention and concern’.36 Massow too
recognized that educational reform was a timely issue—a fact made clear to
him by the persistent and myriad criticisms levelled against the status quo.37 A
career civil servant largely untouched by currents of idealism and neohuman-
ism, and an admirer of the statist educational reforms of Joseph II in Austria,
Massow placed a premium on educational policies that would be eYcient and
useful to the government.38 He disparaged the current state of higher educa-
tion and openly sympathized with those who preferred the elimination of the
university as an institution. In his view, the nation would be better served by
scientiWc and vocation-oriented academies, similar to those later established
by Napoleon. The universities, he reasoned, were trying to get by on their
outworn ancient constitutions, which ‘[neither] met the moral, scientiWc, and
practical educational needs . . . of civic life . . . in its private and public dimen-
sions, nor produced useful citizens’.39 A realist however, Massow recognized
that formidable obstacles to change existed and that a scarcity of funds would
not allow for anything too ambitious to take place. He also feared that the
‘caste’ of university professors would resist reforms that threatened their
customary privileges.40
Nonetheless, the impulse for reform remained strong at the beginning of
the century. Massow was charged at the start of his oYce to reorganize the
entire Prussian educational system, which he promptly set out to accomplish
guided by the Enlightenment criterion of usefulness to state and society.41
Although most of his eVorts concentrated on secondary schools, he did
contribute to reforms at the University of Königsberg, bringing about there
36 Quoted in Rudolf Köpke, Die Gründung der königlichen Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu
Berlin (Berlin, 1860), 11.
37 Ibid. 13.
38 Max Lenz called Massow a ‘Fanatiker der Nützlichkeit’. See Max Lenz, Geschichte der
königlichen Friedrich-Wilhelms-Unversität zu Berlin (Halle, 1910), i. 38. In the late eighteenth
century, under the direction of Joseph II, the University of Vienna had been secularized and
placed under rigid state control. According to Rudolf Kink, the purposes of the reforms in
Vienna were threefold: ‘To set up institutions of study without exception as purely secular
organizations by removing all remnants of ecclesiastical tendencies; to declare them . . . prima-
rily and ever more exclusively to be serving the purposes of the state and the civil service; and to
use the school as a means of inculcating reforms throughout the territory of the state, in
opposition to the church . . .’ See Rudolf Kink, Geschichte der kaiserlichen Universität zu Wien
(Vienna, 1854), i. 486.
39 Quoted in Köpke, Die Gründung, 14.
40 Ibid. General scarcity of funds in Prussia stemmed from the fact that Friedrich Wilhelm II
had saddled Prussia with 55 million thaler of debt. See H. W. Koch, A History of Prussia
(London: Longman, 1978), 156.
41 On Massow’s reforms of secondary schools, see Alfred Heubaum, ‘Die Reformbestrebun-
gen unter Jul. v. Massow . . .’, Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft für deutsche Erziehungs- und Schul-
geschichte 14 (1904): 186–226.
moderate improvements, especially in medical and natural scientiWc instruc-
tion.42 Yet Massow’s reform agenda was soon overshadowed by the movement
to found a new educational institution in Berlin.
The catalyst of this movement was another high-ranking Prussian oYcial,
Karl Friedrich Beyme (1765–1832), who had been appointed chief of the
king’s civil cabinet in 1800.43 An accomplished jurist with liberal views,
Beyme felt Berlin oVered a favourable location for a new educational estab-
lishment. With others, he found it unbecoming that Berlin, unlike Copen-
hagen, Prague, or Vienna, could not boast of a major university. He also
thought that the number of smaller institutions devoted to cultural and
intellectual activity already in the city—the Academy of Science, the collegium
medico-chirurgicum (a college for surgical training), a veterinarian training
school, the botanical gardens, the opera, various military schools, a plethora
of museums and libraries, and several well-known Gymnasien—made Berlin a
logical choice for a new university; personnel and resources from these
establishments could be rendered useful to a new institution in relatively
inexpensive ways.44 Finally, as a populous, increasingly cosmopolitan capital
city, Berlin was already home to a Xourishing literary culture, the energies of
which might help invigorate a new institution. In the eighteenth century,
Berlin’s salons, public lectures, publishing houses, and book trade had served
as a magnet for progressive, freethinking intellectuals throughout Germany
and thus it had become one of the leading centres of the German Enlighten-
ment.45 The attractions for intellectuals continued in the early nineteenth
century, drawing to the city a number of inXuential writers and thinkers, such
as A. W. Schlegel and Fichte.
Encouraged thus by seemingly favourable conditions and acutely aware of
Prussian universities’ shortcomings, Beyme thought a propitious historical
moment was at hand to found in Berlin a new ‘allgemeine Lehranstalt’, as he
phrased it, avoiding the term ‘university’. The idea appears to have occurred
to him around the turn of the century, coinciding with Massow’s utilitarian
reforms.46 But Beyme was no Massow; he had much more in mind for Berlin
42 Lenz, Universität Berlin, i. 38. On the reforms at Königsberg, see Götz von Selle, Geschichte
der Albertus-Universität zu Königsberg in Preußen, 2nd edn. (Würzburg: Holzner, 1956), 213 V.
43 On Beyme, see NDB ii. 208.
44 Charles E. McClelland, State, Society, and University in Germany, 1700–1914 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1980), 104. On the various institutions in Berlin predating the
University, see Norman Balk, Die Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin. Mit einer Darstellung
der Berliner Bildungswesen bis 1810 (Berlin, 1926), 1–67.
45 Alexandra Richie, Faust’s Metropolis: A History of Berlin (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1998),
81. Two of the leading journals of the German Enlightenment—Friedrich Nicolai’s Allgemeine
deutsche Bibliothek and J. E. Biester’s Berlinische Monatsschrift—were seated in Berlin.
46 Köpke, Die Gründung, 17.
than purely utilitarian goals; he wanted to create something altogether new,
idealistic, and inXuential—something in the ‘spirit’ of, but even better than,
the Hanoverian University of Göttingen, as he later put it.47 To this end, he
initiated a correspondence about the matter and solicited ideas from several
conWdants and peers most of whom were respected public Wgures inXuenced
by the movements of neohumanism and idealism. These included the phil-
osopher and Gymnasium teacher J. J. Engel (1741–1802), who had instructed
Alexander and Wilhelm von Humboldt; the doctor J. C. Reil (1759–1824); the
Halle law professor T. A. H. Schmalz (1760–1831), who would later be
appointed as the Wrst rector of the new university; the director of the surgical
college, C. W. Hufeland (1762–1836); the philologist F. A. Wolf; and, not least,
the philosopher. Fichte. Later this list would grow, as others expressed interest
in the new opportunity. Unsolicited voices also made signiWcant contribu-
tions: Friedrich Schelling’s inXuential lectures at Jena, published as Vorlesun-
gen über die Methode des akademischen Studiums (1803), for example, were
not lost on the eVorts of Beyme and others. SigniWcantly, with the important
exception of Friedrich Schleiermacher, who only later joined the conversation,
few of Beyme’s interlocutors were theologically educated or possessed strong
ecclesiastical ties. Max Lenz has even speculated that Beyme originally in-
tended to omit a theological faculty from the new institution altogether.48
As one might expect, the letters, reports, and memoranda sent to Beyme by
this august group bear witness to a wide range of assumptions and view-
points. Still, a number of common opinions are evident. To a man, they
heaped scorn on the traditional university, regarding it as an anachronistic
‘guild’ (Zunft). Following Beyme, few used the disreputable term ‘university’,
preferring instead Lehranstalt, Lehrinstitut, Bildungsanstalt, or something
similar. With several exceptions, the theorists believed that the new institution
should not focus exclusively on vocational training, a position directly
contrary to that of minister Massow.49 Rather, in accord with Friedrich
Schiller’s famous 1789 inaugural lecture at Jena, ‘Was heißt und zu
welchem Ende studiert man Universalgeschichte?’, most believed that the
function of higher education was to produce serious thinkers not clever
47 Unfortunately, Beyme himself never systematically presented his own ideas on the new
institution. A marginal note by Beyme on a proposal submitted by F. A. Wolf, though, does
contain the following revealing comment: ‘Die Göttingsche Einrichtung, oder vielmehr der
Geist derselben, ohne die eingeschlichenen Miâbräuche, hat mir schon vor Jahren, als ich den
ersten Gedanken an eine von allem Zunftzwang befreite allgemeine wissenschaftliche Bildung-
sanstalt in der Residenz faâte, vorgeschwebt.’ Quoted in Lenz, Universität Berlin, i. 68.
48 See Lenz, Universität Berlin, i. 68, 106, and Köpke, Die Gründung, 45. Schmalz had limited
theological training before switching to the study of law. Fichte too had started out in theology
before taking up philosophical pursuits.
49 Schelsky, Einsamkeit und Freiheit, 42–3.
careerists.50 The new institution should serve only a ‘very few choice souls’, as
F. A. Wolf put it.51 Or, in Schiller’s well-known parlance, it should serve
‘philosophische Köpfe’ not ‘Brotstudenten’. Accordingly, most of Beyme’s
interlocutors subscribed to a rather lofty view of Wissenschaft, although
some were more conscious than others of the idealist and neohumanist
currents informing their view. Practically all wanted to end the special legal
privileges of the university: students and professors alike should submit to the
same state and local laws as everyone else; this seemed the best way to curtail
the chronic problem of student misconduct.52 Finally, while their views on the
relationship of the new institution to the state diVered, most nonetheless
admitted that a new high-proWle institution in the nation’s capital, even if it
was not vocationally oriented, would greatly beneWt the Prussian government.
As J. J. Engel put it in his memorandum of 1802, ‘Concerning the beneWts that
will directly redound to the state if it can put forth knowledgeable, enligh-
tened, skilled servants in all disciplines, I have nothing to say. They simply
leap before one’s eyes.’53
Predictably, many of Beyme’s discussants voiced familiar criticisms of the
‘faculties’ whenever they discussed the ‘inner organization’ of a new institu-
tion. Some were in favour of abolishing them altogether, for the faculties, they
argued, were the main culprits of the university’s lamentable ‘Zunftwesen’.
Schmalz lambasted traditional universities in this vein and warned against re-
establishing a ‘guild under the name faculty’. In the place of faculties, he
recommended that the university be divided into seven ‘classes’ (Classen),
three of which corresponded to the old professional faculties of theology, law,
and medicine, while the other four represented a widening of the philosoph-
ical faculty.54 Wolf too disparaged faculties as forms of ‘barbarism’ and
organized Welds of knowledge around eight sections (Sectionen), Wve of
which represented an expansion of the philosophical faculty: philosophy
proper, natural history, mathematics, philology, and history.55 Hufeland
reasoned similarly, voicing concern that anachronistic forms of organization
should not impede what he saw as the new institution’s ‘leading principle’: ‘to
50 See Friedrich Schiller, ‘Was heiât und zu welchem Ende studiert man Universalgeschichte?’
in Sämtliche Werke, ed., Otto Günter and Georg Witkowski (Leipzig, 1911), xvi.
51 Quoted in Schelsky, Einsamkeit und Freiheit, 45.
52 For example, J. J. Engel noted that the universities’ ‘eigene Gerichtbarkeit’ had led to all
kinds of ‘Unheil’. See his ‘Denkschrift über die Begründung einer grossen Lehranstalt in Berlin’
(3 March 1802) in Köpke, Die Gründung, 152.
53 Ibid. 149.
54 See T. A. H. Heinrich Schmalz, ‘Denkschrift über die Errichtung einer Universität in
Berlin. 22. 8. 1807’, in Wilhelm Weischedel (ed.), Idee und Wirklichkeit einer Universität:
Dokumente zur Geschichte der Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin (Berlin: Walter de Gruy-
ter, 1960), i. 11–15.
55 See Köpke, Die Gründung, 45, and Lenz, Universität Berlin, i. 108.
provide the greatest possible liberality and freedom (Liberalität und Freiheit)
for intellectual activity and inXuence.’56 Still others retained organization by
faculties, although, in Kantian fashion, they often voiced approval for the
expanded scope and prestige of the traditionally ‘lower’ faculty. J. J. Engel, for
example, did not criticize faculties per se, although he did voice doubts about
the theological faculty and deplored its penchant for ‘unholy polemicizing’.57
Although he was not in Beyme’s inner circle, the Berlin physician J. B. Erhard
went a step further, making the argument that theological faculties, long out
of step with modern reason, should be completely banned from the univer-
sity.58
The intellectual energy unleashed by Beyme’s initiative was remarkable,
even if at Wrst it amounted to more talk and expended ink than actions.
Practical concerns over lack of funding, scepticism of his ideas among other
government ministers, and outright opposition from some professors at other
universities and scholars at Berlin’s Academy of Science prevented immediate
action.
The situation changed dramatically in 1806. In October of this year, Prussia
abandoned its policy of neutrality, carefully maintained since the Peace of
Basle (1795), and re-entered the fray against Napoleon, but only to suVer
humiliating losses on the battleWeld at Jena and Auerstädt. The Peace of Tilsit
that followed in the summer of 1807 heaped insult upon injury: Napoleon
saddled the Prussian government with a war indemnity of 120 million francs
and stripped it of all its holdings west of the Elbe river—roughly half of its
territority.59 In these holdings, many of which had only been acquired after
1803, were a number of universities: Duisburg, Halle, Paderborn, Erlangen,
Erfurt, Münster, and Göttingen.60
What is more, Napoleon soon forced the closing of Halle, Prussia’s Xagship
university, located after 1807 in the Kingdom of Westphalia, a French satellite
56 C. W. Hufeland, ‘Ideen über die neu zu errichtende Universität zu Berlin und ihre
Verbindung mit der Akademie der Wissenschaften und anderen Instituten’, in Weischedel
(ed.), Idee und Wirklichkeit, i. 16–27.
57 Köpke, Die Gründung, 22, 152.
58 J. B. Erhard, Über die Einrichtung und den Zweck der höheren Lehranstalten (Berlin, 1802).
This work amounts to a relentless assault on the theological faculty.
59 HPG ii. 16–18.
60 In 1792 Erlangen came into Prussian hands through the acquisition of the Frankish
principality in which this university existed. Because of the reorganization of central Europe
by Napoleon in 1803, Prussia gained many territories; these contained the universities of Erfurt,
Münster, and Paderborn, all of which, in the words of Conrad Bornhak, were ‘hovering between
life and death’. Finally, Göttingen came brieXy under Prussian control in 1806. For further
details, see Conrad Bornhak, Geschichte der preussischen Universitätsverwaltung bis 1810 (Berlin,
1900), 189–94. Again, all of these universities, including historically Prussian ones such as Halle,
were lost because of the events of 1806–7. Afterwards, just before the founding of the University
of Berlin, Prussia possessed only two universities: Königsberg and Frankfurt an der Oder.
state placed under the rule of Napoleon’s brother, Jerome. This was a painful
experience for Halle’s professors, many of whom, including Schmalz, Wolf,
Schleiermacher and the philosopher Heinrich SteVens, were thrown into near
ruinous Wnancial diYculties.61 From this desperation, however, the idea to
found a university in Berlin received new life. F. A. Wolf immediately sug-
gested to Beyme that the loss of Halle aVorded the opportunity to push ahead
in establishing a new institution in Berlin.62 Professor Schmalz of Halle’s law
faculty went one step further: he organized a delegation from Halle and
travelled to speak directly to the king, whose residence was then in Memel
in East Prussia.63 A meeting between the two parties was arranged on 10
August 1807, shortly after the Peace of Tilsit. Here, in front of the king,
Schmalz argued that the University of Halle, by the letter of its privileges,
was still a Prussian ‘Landes-Universität’ and could not justiWably be dissolved
and reconstituted in the Kingdom of Westphalia. Therefore, as Schmalz later
recalled, ‘We requested that the king . . . remove the university over the Elbe,
where no more appropriate place for this purpose exists than Berlin.’64 To this,
the king allegedly responded: ‘That is right, that is good! The state must
replace with intellectual strength what it has lost in material resources.’65
Once the king’s word circulated, Prussia’s intellectual classes were abuzz
about the possibility that Halle, ‘the crown of German universities’ according
to Schleiermacher, might be relocated in Berlin. Beyme was delighted by the
turn of events, although he was less interested in faithfully transplanting Halle
to Berlin than in using the situation to implement his more ambitious plans
for an ‘allgemeine Lehranstalt’. In a cabinet order of 4 September 1807 the
king entrusted the entire matter to Beyme: ‘I have therefore resolved,’ wrote
the king, echoing Beyme’s own words, ‘to establish one such general educa-
tional institution (allgemeine Lehranstalt) in Berlin in suitable connection
with the Academy of Science. The establishment [of this institution] I hand to
you, who fully understands my intention.’66
Invested with new authority, Beyme began sending out queries, delegating
tasks, and soliciting advice on matters ranging from Wnances to curricular
organization to possible faculty appointments. He especially relied on the
advice of Fichte and F. A. Wolf.67 To Fichte, Beyme wrote enthusiastically on 5
61 Nowak, Schleiermacher, 178–82.

62 See Wolf ’s letter to Beyme of 3 August 1807 in Köpke, Die Gründung, 153.
63 As Napoleon’s troops approached, the king Xed Berlin, relocating Wrst in Königsberg and
then in Memel in East Prussia.
64 Köpke, Die Gründung, 37.
65 ‘Das ist recht, das ist brav! Der Staat muss durch geistige Kräfte ersetzen, was er an
physischen verloren hat.’ See ibid. 37.
66 Quotations from Köpke, ibid. 36–8.
67 Lenz, Universität Berlin, i. 83.
September 1807 that the opportunity to realize his ‘most cherished idea’ was
now at hand. Concurrently, he began fruitful exchanges with Wolf, who had
relocated from Halle to Berlin after Napoleon had closed Halle’s university.68
Prospective faculty were also considered at this time. Beyme tapped J. W. H.
Nolte (1767–1832), who served as councillor on the Lutheran Church’s High
Consistory (Oberkonsistorium) to consider which theologians might be suit-
able for the new university.69 Nolte, it appears, was among the Wrst to recruit
Schleiermacher, who also had moved from Halle to Berlin. Excited about the
possibility of teaching in Berlin, Schleiermacher, who was never personally
close to Beyme, penned his Gelegentliche Gedanken über Universitäten in
deutschem Sinn in October of 1807 and published it anonymously in 1808.
From this point on, Schleiermacher began to play an increasingly active role
in shaping the emerging university. In fact, along with several others, includ-
ing Schmalz, Fichte, and Wolf, Schleiermacher was soon granted permission
to hold lectures, even before the oYcial opening of the university. Among the
very Wrst lectures, then, were Schleiermacher’s on ‘ethics’, ‘the history of
ancient philosophy’, and ‘theological encyclopedia’. Simultaneously, Schmalz
lectured on ‘Roman, German, and Canon law’; Wolf discoursed on ‘philo-
sophical encyclopedia’, Homer, and Tacitus; and, in this context, Fichte gave
his famous Reden an die deutsche Nation.70
The period from the summer of 1807 well into 1808 bristled with excite-
ment for those involved. The spirit of the moment combined an eager
expectation of intellectual and moral renewal (many had interpreted the
loss to Napoleon’s as a sign of Prussia’s spiritual bankruptcy) and a German
nationalist sentiment born from resentment of the French occupation. EVorts
to found a new university ‘in the German sense’ were thus gleefully regarded
as a form of subtle, spiritual retaliation against the French imperium. Hein-
rich SteVens, among those deprived of a post at Halle, expressed well the
atmosphere of the times in his autobiography, Was ich erlebte. It is worth
quoting him at some length.
And yet, just at the time when the country seemed half-ruined, when all resources
seemed cut oV, when one of the richest provinces was in the hands of the enemy, and a
sorrowful future seemed to await the whole land, an eVort was put forth that even
after ten years of perfect peace would seem incredible. And how was the grand
accomplishment brought about? By the conviction that Prussia was called at this
time of her humiliation to establish a central point of inXuence which should be felt
through all parts of life and service in Germany.
68 Köpke, Die Gründung, 38–40.

69 Lenz, Universität Berlin, i. 81. The Oberkonsistorium was the highest Lutheran church body
in Prussia. Nolte had studied theology at Halle under Nösselt and Niemeyer.
70 For a complete list of the preliminary lectures, see Köpke, Die Gründung, 141.
In fact, the tone of feeling in Berlin during this sad time was wonderful. The capital
was occupied by hostile troops, the king held himself near the Russian frontier [in
Memel]. Yet, while the city and the land were outwardly conquered, only a fragment of
the people felt subdued in spirit. The enemy had taken the fortresses . . . but there were
forces rallying unseen by our foes . . .
At that critical moment Fichte stepped forward, and with wonderful courage
uttered words of freedom under the very eyes of our conquerors. Schleiermacher,
too, gave strength to the growing German feeling. . . . Both of these men spoke to the
heart of the nation. It will always be hard to win Germans over to any superWcial
scheme which looks only to the present moment. The French are diVerent. The
Frenchman undertakes the work of the hour without any harassing doubts. He has
no concern with past or future. . . . [But] the German cannot look at matters in this
way. . . . His whole life is penetrated with speculation, reaching out backwards and
forwards, and uniting all circumstances in cause and eVect. . . . So Germany was called
to lead the Reformation, and so this war of freedom from the French was made by
penetrating German minds in the [intent] of giving our nation a character which will
unfold itself for generations to come. All hope resting upon Prussian [military]
prowess had disappeared. Every one looked with conWdence to the founding of the
new university at Berlin. That city had by no means been a central light before. . . . And
yet this city, little thought of by Germans, possessed by enemies—this wasted city was
suddenly to be transformed into the centre of the brightest hopes for Germany. The
founding of the university was a grand event.71
SteVens was more than just a casual observer of events. Hopeful that he might
receive a post at Berlin,72 he published in 1809 Über die Idee der Universität,
which has been regarded as one of the principal theoretical texts of the
university, standing alongside two others produced during this period:
Fichte’s Deduzierter Plan einer zu Berlin zu errichtenden höheren Lehranstalt
(1807) and Schleiermacher’s Gelegentliche Gedanken (1808). Together, these
three texts linked up with Schelling’s earlier, widely read Vorlesungen and
Wilhelm von Humboldt’s short memorandum, ‘Über die innere und äußere
Organisation der höheren wissenchaftlichen Anstalten zu Berlin’ (c.1809–10),
to comprise an impressive philosophical foundation for the new university. In
fact, in the history of European universities, one is hard-pressed to Wnd
such a wide-ranging theoretical discussion about the nature and purpose of
universities to compare with that which took place at this time.
Although he had hardly resumed planning the new university, Beyme was
soon pushed aside by political events. Shortly after the Peace of Tilsit,
Napoleon put pressure on the Prussian king to recall the liberal minister
Karl Freiherr von Stein (1757–1831) to a leading government post, intending
71 SteVens, Was ich erlebte (Breslau, 1842), vi. 298 V.

72 SteVens did not receive a post at Berlin until 1832.
that Stein pursue major social and political reforms in Prussia. A reluctant but
weakened king complied, even though only several months beforehand he
had dismissed Stein for his ‘insolence’. As a condition of returning to gov-
ernment, however, Stein made it clear that he would not share power with
Beyme, whom Stein disliked and disagreed with on a number of key issues. A
potential conXict was averted when the king moved Beyme from the cabinet
and made him Grosskanzler, the supreme judicial administrator. Beyme was
embittered by the action, but with the urging of the queen he accepted the
new post with good grace, even if it meant the end of his direct inXuence on
university planning. Stein returned to oYce on 4 October 1807 and remained
there for roughly one year—a year of momentous decisions that were to
inXuence the course of German history.73
During Stein’s tenure, university planning hung in the lurch. On the one
hand, the level of expectation and excitement remained quite high, as wit-
nessed in numerous lively correspondences about the matter and in the
production of some of the aforementioned theoretical treatises. Yet since
Stein took as his task reforming Prussia at all levels, not just higher education,
he did not bring particular passion to what had been Beyme’s pet project.
Soon, rumours began to circulate that the project had run out of steam.
Former Halle professors who had gathered in Berlin hoping to obtain a new
post began to leave the city, accepting oVers from other institutions.74 Several
German newspapers and weeklies reported that plans for a new university in
Berlin had been sacriWced by Stein to the more pressing goal of getting Prussia
back on her feet Wnancially.75
But the idea was never extinguished. For his part, Stein believed that
national education was a crucial concern if Prussia desired to have a better
future. Thus, in his thoroughgoing reorganization of the government in 1808,
Stein made allowances for educational reforms and greater state centralization
in order to carry them out eVectively. A new department within the Ministry
of the Interior, the ‘Department of Ecclesiastical AVairs and Public Education’,
was charged to bring the embryonic university into full being. In the autumn
of 1808 Wilhelm von Humboldt was called to serve as head of the new
department. Already well known in political and intellectual circles, Hum-
boldt received the call in large part because Stein had recommended him for
the post.76 The new Minister of the Interior, Alexander von Dohna, had also
73 Koch, History of Prussia, 167; Köpke, Die Gründung, 49; and Marion Gray, Prussia in
Transition: Society and Politics under the Stein Reform Ministry of 1808, Transactions of the
American Philosophical Society, 76 (Philadelphia, 1986), 47.
74 Lenz, Universität Berlin, i. 140 V.
75 Köpke, Die Gründung, 52–3.
76 Daniel Fallon, The German University (Boulder: Colorado Associated University Press,
1980), 12.
known Humboldt for some twenty-three years and had great conWdence in
him. At Wrst Humboldt was reluctant to give up his diplomatic post in Rome,
but eventually acquiesced to oYcial pressures and accepted the position. He
arrived in Berlin in January 1809, just a month after French troops had
vacated the city.77 On 20 February 1809 he assumed his post, one he would
hold for just sixteen months. But during this time, the founding of the
University of Berlin was oYcially begun and he would receive much of the
credit—even if he was at Wrst sceptical that a city such as Berlin, which he
personally disliked, deserved a Wrst-order educational institution.78
In the spring of 1809, Humboldt was brought up to speed on the planning
process. He was already familiar with some of the ideas of Wolf, Schleierma-
cher, and Fichte, and he had previously approvingly read the works of Schiller
and Schelling on university education. What is more, by virtue of the fact that
he had studied at Göttingen he was already well versed in what Beyme had
previously upheld as a desirable ‘spirit’ for the new university. In a memo-
randum of 25 March 1809, Humboldt noted that ‘a great part of the father-
land’ already expected a new scientiWc and cultural system to be developed
that would have the university as its centrepiece; furthermore, it was expected
that such a new institution would ‘exert a signiWcant inXuence on all [of]
Germany.’79 To the end of making this goal a reality, Humboldt began to make
the necessary preparations.
In July of 1809, Humboldt sent an oYcial request to the king, asking for
permission to found the university without further delay. In the request, he
expressed admiration that the king had made ‘national education’ a priority
in such ‘unsettled conditions’ and he recalled to the king his earlier mandate
given to Beyme to establish an ‘allgemeine Lehranstalt’. The king would not be
sorry, Humboldt reassured, for such an institution promised to stimulate the
‘rebirth of his state’ and exercise immense inXuence over its borders. Indeed,
the new university would be a beacon of ‘German Wissenschaft’ for all Europe
to behold, thus compensating for Prussia’s meagre political circumstances.
Importantly, Humboldt reasoned that the new institution should use ‘the old,
established name of a university’, because a newfangled one might only prove
confusing. He was quick to add, though, that the new establishment would be
‘cleansed of all old abuses’ regularly associated with universities. Finally, as
77 On Humboldt’s impressions of Berlin see his copious letters to his wife Caroline from this
period: Anna von Sydow (ed.), Wilhelm und Caroline von Humboldt in ihren Briefen (Berlin,
1909), iii. 69 V.
78 For an overview of Humboldt’s ministerial tenure, see Rudolf Vierhaus, ‘Wilhelm von
Humboldt’, in Wolfgang Treue and Karlfried Gründer (eds.), Wissenschaftspolitik in Berlin:
Minister, Beamte, Ratgeber (Berlin: Colloquium, 1987), 63–76.
79 Wilhelm von Humboldt, Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Bruno Gebhardt (Berlin, 1903), x.
31–2.
Beyme and others had envisioned, Humboldt stipulated that the new univer-
sity would function in conjunction with other cultural and learning centres in
Berlin, each possessing ‘an appropriate independence’ but they should all
‘work together toward the [same] general purpose’ and thus, like knowledge
itself, form ‘an organic whole’.80
The king granted Humboldt’s wishes in a cabinet order of 16 August 1809,
noting that the university would enhance ‘intellectual development (Geistes-
bildung) in the state and over the state’s borders’. He echoed Humboldt’s
sentiment, moreover, that the new institution would indeed do well to stick
with ‘the old, established name of a university’.81
His intentions royally sanctioned, Humboldt intensiWed his eVorts of
faculty recruitment and appointment, negotiating with and oVering many
positions in the following months to former Halle professors, members of the
Academy of Science, and other scholars, hoping for nothing less than what he
called ‘the most important men in Germany’.82 He also set about getting the
Wnances of the university in order. Although Humboldt believed that educa-
tion was a duty of the state, he originally suggested that the king establish a
permanent endowment for the university, in order to assure that the institu-
tion have at least some measure of protection from Wnancial uncertainty and
the potential abuse of power. At Wrst, the king voiced approval of this idea, but
eventually, under the inXuence of Humboldt’s successor, Friedrich Schuck-
mann, the idea was abandoned for fear that it would make the university too
independent of the state. Instead, the university came to be funded by
periodic subsidies from the government This was a development of great
consequence, eVectively preventing the idea of private higher education and
forging a close and necessary Wnancial link between state and university that
would continue for years to come.83
By the following year, 1810, things were falling into place. The king had
granted a lavish site for the university, the palace built for Prince Heinrich, the
brother of Friedrich the Great. It was located on Berlin’s stately boulevard
Unter den Linden in close proximity to the royal library and the opera house.84
In the autumn of 1810, Theodor Schmalz, formerly of Halle, was appointed to
80 Wilhelm von Humboldt, ‘Antrag auf Errichtung der Universität Berlin von 24.7.1809’, in
Weischedel (ed.), Idee und Wirklichkeit, i. 210–12.
81 Weischedel, ibid. 212–13.
82 Letter to the king of 6 February 1809 in Humboldt, Gesammelte Schriften, x. 21.
83 See Weischedel (ed.), Idee und Wirklichkeit, i. p. xix; Sweet, Humboldt, ii. 63–4; and Fallon,
The German University, 23–4.
84 Lenz, Universität Berlin, i. 290 V. On the architecture and history of the university
building, see Klaus-Dietrich Gandert, Vom Prinzenpalais zur Humboldt-Universität (Berlin:
Henschen, 1985).
serve as the Wrst rector.85 On 6 October 1810 students began attending
lectures. The Wrst university senate meeting was held at four o’clock on 10
October 1810.86
A new era in the history of the university had begun.
4. THEOLO GY AND THE IDEA OF THE NEW UNIVERSITY
The opening of the University of Berlin, as I have indicated, was preceded by

an energetic outpouring of writings by leading minds, each seeking to rethink
the organization of knowledge, the purpose of the university, and the uni-
versity’s relationship to state and society.87 To varying degrees, each of these
so-called ‘Grundschriften’ or founding treatises—penned by Schelling, Fichte,
Schleiermacher, Humboldt, and SteVens—touched upon the question of the
faculties and theology, and other issues relevant to the position of theology in
the new institution. Fichte’s Deduzierter Plan einer zu Berlin zu errichtenden
höhern Lehranstalt (1808) and Schleiermacher’s Gelegentliche Gedanken über
Universitäten in deutschem Sinn (1808) are particularly noteworthy, although
they diVered in many points, not least in their conception of theological
study.88 Not surprisingly, Schleiermacher oVered the most constructive vision
of the theological faculty, traditionalist in some respects, but also intimately
tied to the new ethos of Wissenschaft and to a regard of the philosophical
faculty similar to Kant’s. Furthermore, Schleiermacher’s work most closely
approximated the actual university that came into existence in 1810; Hum-
boldt favoured his traditional conception of a university and its faculties over
more innovative proposals.
85 Because of various conXicts with the government, Schmalz soon resigned from his post
and the position of rector was later assumed by Fichte as a result of a faculty senate vote. Thus,
Fichte was the Wrst elected rector. Lenz, Universität Berlin, i. 327 V., 397–402.
86 Weischedel (ed.), Idee und Wirklichkeit, i. p. xxiv. At Wrst the university was called simply
the University of Berlin. In 1828, by royal decree, it became the Friedrich-Wilhelm University of
Berlin. During the GDR period, it was renamed the Humboldt University and this was retained
after reuniWcation in 1990. On the name changes and their political meanings, see Rüdiger vom
Bruch, ‘The Foundation of the University of Berlin’, in The Prussian Yearbook: An Almanac
(Berlin, 2001), 100–3.
87 A thoughtful, if terse, overview of these writings is found in Elinor S. ShaVer, ‘Romantic
Philosophy and the Organization of the Disciplines: The Founding of the Humboldt University
of Berlin’, in Andrew Cunningham and Nicholas Jardine (eds.), Romanticism and the Sciences
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 38–54.
88 Although they were penned in the same year, the authors did not read each other’s texts
until after the university was founded. Lenz, Universität Berlin, i. 124.
But traditional forms can be deceptive. One of the persistently curious
features of university history in the modern era is how old forms and customs
have been able to accommodate and even foster innovative intellectual agen-
das. Schleiermacher’s ideas, therefore, while couched in a comparatively
conservative idiom of university organization, expressed at root, in the
words of Max Lenz, something distinctly ‘modern’.89 This ‘modernity,’ once
institutionally seated in the Prussian capital with its wide sphere of inXuence,
helped pave the way for the transformation of German universities and
theological faculties in the nineteenth century.
Despite the fact that many ideas in the founding texts were never realized,
they have enjoyed a long life in German intellectual and educational history. I
emphasize this point because recent historiography has tended to distinguish
between the ‘ideas’ of the new university and the ‘reality’, focusing on the latter
and dismissing the former as often unrealizable, even utopian, musings. This
line of reasoning is salutary in so far as it corrects an older (often nationalist)
historiography that exaggerated the role of these texts on the actual constitu-
tion of the university.90 But the revisionist literature sometimes overcorrects
and, willy-nilly, dismisses the role of ideas in shaping institutional norms. I
would therefore advocate a via media, recognizing that the actual university,
quite complexly as it turned out, embodied, transcended, contradicted, and fell
short of these illustrious Grundschriften. But whatever the case, it cannot be
understood apart from them. The fact that these texts were (and still are)
reverently invoked at academic ceremonies should make us reXect on their
peculiar power and lasting, elusive, but certainly not negligible, inXuence.
Although it was not speciWcally prepared with the University of Berlin in
mind, Friedrich Schelling’s Vorlesungen über die Methode des akademischen
Studiums (based on a series of lectures given at Jena in 1802 and published in
1803) exerted weighty inXuence on the general discussion of university
organization and reform in this era—an honour shared with Kant’s previ-
ously discussed Streit der Fakultäten.91 Viewed as a whole, the fourteen
lectures that make up Schelling’s book provide a conception of academic
life and university organization, a ‘Wissenssystem’, based on the author’s
idealist philosophy, which in turn owed much to the ideas of Kant, Schiller,
and Fichte. But Schelling was no mere disciple of his illustrious predecessors;
his concept of ‘absolute Wissenschaft’ and his dogged insistence on the
primacy of speculative thought over all forms of naturalism and empiricism
89 Although they were penned in the same year, the authors did not read each other’s texts
until after the university was founded. Lenz, Universität Berlin, 130.
90 The works of both Paulsen and Lenz apply here.
91 Humboldt, for example, read Schelling’s work with ‘admiring approval’. See Sweet, Hum-
boldt, i. 56.
(an insistence that helped give rise to his works on Naturphilosophie) grant
him his own place in the pantheon of German idealism and in the general
Romantic movement of the early nineteenth century.92
At the heart of Schelling’s educational philosophy lies the conviction that
‘all true science’ forms an ‘organic whole’.93 A telltale characteristic of the new
Wissenschaftsideologie generally, as earlier indicated, this conviction received
virtuoso expression by Schelling. According to Schelling, before proceeding to
specialized tasks of knowledge, the student, who comes to the university
‘without compass or guiding star’, must Wrst orient himself by accepting this
basic conviction. To philosophy falls the crucial task of making sure that all
members of the university do not lose sight of ‘the whole’ and in fact conduct
their individual work in a manner that recognizes and participates in the
‘organic unity’ of knowledge: ‘This vision [of the whole] can be found only in
the science of all science (Wissenschaft aller Wissenschaft), in philosophy, and
it is only the philosopher who can communicate it to us, for his own special
Weld is the absolutely universal science.’94
Not surprisingly then, Schelling viewed theology from the standpoint of
philosophy. He regarded the sacred faculty, along with law and medicine, as
seats of ‘positive science’ (positive Wissenschaft), a mode of understanding and
a set of intellectual skills resulting in a speciWc practical function for society.
The ‘positive sciences’ roughly correspond to the higher faculties, which,
unlike philosophy, were not devoted to the pursuit of truth as such, but to
the pursuit of the natural ends of human beings: to enjoy felicity after death
(theology), to live securely in one’s person and property (law), and to enjoy
bodily health in the here and now (medicine).95 While these natural ends were
important, they cannot compare to the disinterested pursuit of truth as such,
the task of philosophy, which Schelling exalted with a true believer’s devotion.
But like Kant before him, Schelling recognized that the state had a legitimate
interest in the ‘positive sciences’ because the common good depended on
‘instruments of the state’—pastors, lawyers, and doctors—performing their
tasks well. He reasoned therefore that for the common good to be truly
served, a scientiWc understanding freed from all forms of coercion must
inform the positive sciences: ‘The usual view of the universities is that they
should produce servants of the state, perfect instruments for its purposes. But
92 On Naturphilosophie and on the contrast between Schelling and Kant’s views of science and
education, see Frederick Gregory, ‘Kant, Schelling, and the Administration of Science in the
Romantic Era’, Osiris 5 (1989): 17–35. For the intellectual context in which Schelling’s lectures
were written, see Ziolkowski, German Romanticism and its Institutions, 237–68.
93 Schelling, ‘Vorlesungen,’ in Anrich (ed.), Die Idee der deutschen Universität, 3–6.
94 Ibid. 6.
95 Ibid. 62 V.
surely such instruments should be formed by science. Thus, to achieve such
an aim through education, science is required. But science ceases to be science
the moment it is degraded to a mere means, rather than furthered for its own
sake.’96 SigniWcantly, Schelling did not question the premise that universities
should function to produce ‘perfect instruments’ for the state; he simply
claimed that the perfection of these ‘instruments’ rested on the opportunity
for students to acquire genuine Wissenschaft during their university days.
With Kant, Schelling held that true science must be divorced from utilitarian
concerns; if the state promoted such disinterested knowledge, it would,
paradoxically, gain the most useful ally of all: science. The legitimate modern
state, in the Wnal analysis, should be a scientiWc state, a Wissenschaftsstaat.
In his ninth lecture, ‘On the Study of Theology’, Schelling turned his
attention directly to the ‘positive science’ of theology, and attempted to present
a picture of what theological study informed by science might look like.97 He
did not concern himself with details of the theological faculty’s organization or
curriculum. Rather, writing in broad generalities, he charged theology to
overcome its lamentable, unwissenschaftlich state and embrace the spirit of
philosophy, for ‘philosophy . . . is the true organ of theology as science’ (wahre
Organ der Theologie als Wissenschaft).98 But it must be the right kind of
philosophy; Schelling was far more concerned with deWning what philosophy
should inform theology than deWning the substance of theology per se. Above
all, philosophy should not be identiWed with an empiricism because this will
lead theology down a confused path involving endless wrangling over causality
and factual detail based on the scant historical evidence provided by the Bible,
the principal source of theology’s authority. Although Schelling did not men-
tion individuals by name, it is likely that he had in mind various ‘rationalist’
biblical critics, such as G. L. Bauer and J. P. Gabler, who tried to account for
miraculous elements in the Bible by seeking natural causes and substituting
them for supernatural ones.99 For Schelling, such endeavours were only slightly
less futile than the penchant of orthodox theologians to ‘prove’ miracles on the
basis of the same empiricist epistemology. Instead, Schelling argued for a more
genuinely philosophical theology, one based on the ‘idea’ of theology. Such an
approach would give theology more latitude to engage in and beneWt from
philosophical speculation, and it would allow theology to express itself more in
step with what he called ‘the spirit of the modern age’.100
96 Schelling, ‘Vorlesungen,’ in Anrich (ed.), Die Idee der deutschen Universität, 17.
97 Schelling also touched on theology in the eighth lecture, ‘Über die historische Konstruk-
tion des Christentums.’ See ibid. 65–72.
98 Ibid. 75.
99 See RGG i. 924–5 and ii. 1185.
100 Schelling, ‘Vorlesungen,’ in Anrich (ed.), Die Idee der deutschen Universität, 77–8.
This plea to modernize theology recurs in Schelling’s ninth lecture. By
making this point, he appears not far removed from the later positions of
Schleiermacher and Hegel, which, mutatis mutandis, granted the historical
development of religious forms a greater place in Christian theology than
had traditionally been the case. Such a historically progressive or develop-
mental position also implicitly distanced Schelling from Kant, whom Schel-
ling in fact criticized for reducing Christianity to ‘a pure religion of reason’
only concerned with religion’s ‘subjective eVects on morality’.101 By contrast,
Schelling contended that theology, if guided by a speculative philosophy that
admitted historical development, could be liberated (from empiricism, from
Kant’s rational-moral interpretation, and, not least, from older orthodox
formulations) to express itself in new, speculative, and aesthetically creative
forms:
[T]he spirit of the modern world has suYciently revealed its intention, which is to
bring forth the inWnite in eternally new forms. It has no less clearly demonstrated that
it wills Christianity not as an individual empirical phenomenon, but as the eternal
Idea itself. The intended purposes (Bestimmungen) of Christianity, not restricted to
the past but extending over an immeasurable time, can be clearly recognized in poetry
and philosophy.102
Similar to Schelling’s work in form and content, Heinrich SteVens’s Vorlesung
über die Idee der Universität appeared in 1809, having grown out of a series of
lectures the author had given at Halle in 1808–9, shortly after the university
had been reestablished under the Kingdom of Westphalia. Because of its late
appearance, this work exerted the least inXuence on the University of Berlin,
but its contents are nonetheless signiWcant and indicative of the spirit of the
times. Following Kant and Schelling, SteVens unreservedly sang praises to
philosophy, calling the philosophical faculty the true Wrst faculty because
only in its precincts do students learn ‘to cultivate the general scientiWc
sense’ and only in a university suVused with its spirit can ‘free enquiry reign
unhindered’. The theological faculty, along with the faculties of law and
medicine, have particular professions useful to the state as their objective
and therefore they cannot single-mindedly serve the purposes of Wissenschaft.
At the same time, SteVens reasoned that it was much better for the state if the
courses in these faculties were penetrated with the ethos of Wissenschaft, for in
its pursuit ‘truth and morality, knowing and being, permeate each other in a
higher life’. Because of its publication after Napoleon’s victory over Prussia,
SteVens often struck a patriotic note. Identifying universities as the ‘caretakers
of the national spirit’ and ‘the stimulators of inner freedom’, SteVens’s work
101 Ibid. 75–6. 102 Ibid. 80–1.

bears witness to Prussia’s beleaguered political situation and, as such, it
resonates with Fichte’s Reden an die deutsche Nation.103
More relevant to the founding of the University of Berlin were the musings
of J. G. Fichte himself, whom SteVens considered ‘the most powerful concen-
tration of the era’s self-awareness’.104 As the conWdant of Beyme, a close friend
of other high-ranking Prussian ministers, and the leading philosopher of the
new university, as well as its Wrst elected rector, Fichte wielded powerful
inXuence both in the planning stages and in the early years of operation.105
Shortly after the Peace of Tilsit, Beyme had asked Fichte to draw up a proposal
for the new institution, suggesting to Fichte in a letter than he produce ‘a
complete whole’, expressive of his ‘own spirit’, and not bound by past forms of
university organization.106 Without delay, an exhilarated Fichte wrote Dedu-
zierter Plan and sent a copy to Beyme. Although Beyme was pleased with the
work, the political situation and Beyme’s removal from oYce prevented
immediate implementation. Later Humboldt would consider Fichte’s ideas,
sympathizing with many of them, even if Wnding others impractical.
Fichte’s treatise is at once an expression of the philosopher’s idealism, his
pedagogical convictions, and his experience of the world-historical events
taking place in his lifetime. As is well known, Fichte enthusiastically cham-
pioned the French Revolution and the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, both of
which, he thought, bore witness to a distinctly modern conception of human
freedom. Fichte met the Königsberg philosopher in 1791 and the next year
published his well-known Versuch einer Kritik aller OVenbarung, a work that
revealed considerable agreement with Kant’s philosophical and religious
outlook. Its success established Fichte’s reputation and helped land him a
teaching position at Jena in 1794. In the 1790s, diYculties with wayward
students at Jena focused Fichte’s mind on the need for fundamental educa-
tional reform. This became one of his pet passions, greatly quickened by the
inXuence of Heinrich Pestalozzi, whom he had met in Switzerland in 1793.
Fichte’s educational views took shape in several lectures and publications on
the vocation of the scholar and, later, in a plan to reorganize the University of
Erlangen, where he taught brieXy in 1805, having earlier been dismissed from
Jena on the grounds of alleged atheism.107 However, it was not until the
103 See SteVens, ‘Vorlesungen über die Idee der Universität’, ibid. 307 V.
104 From SteVens’s Was ich erlebte as quoted in Sheehan, German History, 345.
105 Lenz, Universität Berlin, i. 81 f., 111–22, passim.
106 Letter of 5 September 1807 in Weischedel (ed.), Idee und Wirklichkeit, ii. 28.
107 On Fichte and the so-called ‘atheism conXict’ in Jena, see Georg Biedermann, Die
Philosophie von Johann Gottlieb Fichte: sein BegriV der moralischen Weltordnung und die Atheis-
mus-Streit 1798/1799 (Neustadt am Rübenberge: Angelika Lenz, 1999). On Fichte’s famous
encounter with Kant, see Karl Vorländer, Immanuel Kant: Der Mann und das Werk (Leipzig,
1924), ii. 261 V. Cf. Anthony J. La Vopa, Fichte: The Self and the Calling of Philosophy, 1762–1799
tumultuous events of 1806–7 that Fichte and his educational philosophy were
thrust into the dominant currents of German history, and then mainly
through his Deduzierter Plan and of course his Reden an die deutsche Nation,
which itself amounts to an educational manifesto of sorts.108 These two works
were in fact produced at roughly the same time and in response to the same
set of historical circumstances; both therefore evince similar qualities: a
prophetic sense of urgency, patriotic zeal, an extreme statism, and an insistent
belief in the therapeutic powers of education to promote the onward-and-
upward course of human history.
Of all the founding treatises Fichte’s was the most discontinuous with the
past: ‘if we stick to what is old’, he wrote, ‘the result will be bad’.109 Accord-
ingly, he desired to create a ‘higher educational institution’ nowhere seen
before, charged to produce ‘scientiWc men . . . whose outlook transcended
time and place’.110 The problem with most extant universities, Fichte rea-
soned, was quite simply that they had come into existence before ‘the scien-
tiWc system of the modern world’ had arisen.111 They lived in a bygone,
church-dominated era, as revealed in their outdated teaching methods of
rote learning and mechanical repetition, which resulted in lack of student
enthusiasm and discipline. A new ‘scientiWc institution’ or ‘philosophical
academy’ (Fichte too eschewed the term ‘university’) should be based instead
on distinctly modern principles: reason, freedom, progress, and, not least,
Wissenschaft.
In the institution sketched in Deduzierter Plan, the professorial monologue
should give way to a dialogue. Teachers and students would enter into a
‘mutual relationship’ for the purpose of ‘continuous conversation’ conducted
in a ‘deliberate’ and ‘Socratic’ manner.112 In this relationship, the professor,
whom Fichte called a ‘free artist’ in the use of science, should not be overly
preoccupied with having a student master a particular body of knowledge;
instead he should demonstrate to the students, through his own scientiWc
habits of thinking, the allure and high calling of Wissenschaft. Fichte was thus
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). For more on the ‘Erlangen Plan’, which was
never implemented because of the events of 1806–7, see Lenz, Universität Berlin, i. 112–14.
108 Of the Reden, see especially lectures 2, 3, and 9–11.
109 Fichte, ‘Deduzierter Plan’, in Anrich (ed.), Die Idee der deutschen Universität, 145. My
translations of Fichte’s work owe a debt to those provided in G. H. Turnbull, The Educational
Theory of J. G. Fichte (London, 1926), 170–259.
110 Fichte, ‘Deduzierter Plan’, in Anrich (ed.), Die Idee der deutschen Universität, 189
111 Ibid. 127.
112 Ibid. 130 V. Furthermore, Fichte believed that for educational growth to occur the
student should be completely cut oV from the inXuences of the larger society beyond the
academy. In quasi-monastic fashion students should enjoy ‘complete isolation’ from the dis-
tractions of daily life, Wnancial anxiety, family life, and the like. See ibid. 135–40.
a strong proponent of the essential unity of research and teaching. If this unity
was realized, Berlin would become, in his oft-repeated formulation, ‘a school
of the art of using the understanding scientiWcally’ (eine Schule der Kunst des
wissenschaftlichen Verstandesgebrauches).113
Not surprisingly, Fichte designated philosophy as the spiritual nerve centre
of the new institution: ‘the philosophical spirit and the art of philosophizing’
were to be ‘developed’ and ‘spread . . . over the whole’.114 As with his contem-
poraries, Fichte invoked typically idealist phrases of the wholeness and or-
ganic unity of knowledge—something only philosophy could reveal.115 The
means to bear witness to this unity among the students, according to Fichte,
was through the production and use of encyclopedias, which in systematic
fashion would demonstrate the relationship between every conceivable
branch of knowledge. Such encyclopedic knowledge acquired by the begin-
ning student should have the additional eVect of stimulating him to add
knowledge ‘that no one before him has known so fully as he’.116
If philosophy was paramount in Fichte’s scheme, he regarded theology and
the other higher faculties warily.117 Like Kant before him, Fichte conceded
their legitimacy and social utility, but unless they were rendered more wis-
senschaftlich, they did not belong in his ‘philosophical academy’. Unlike the
disciplines within the philosophical faculty, the higher faculties ‘have a part
which does not belong to the scientiWc art but to the very diVerent practical
art of application in life’. For this reason, he proposed that the ‘scientiWc art’
and the ‘practical art’ be separated: the former belonged in his philosophical
academy and should ‘separate itself as completely as possible and concentrate
upon itself ’; the latter should be removed from the academy to ‘other self-
contained institutions’.118
113 Fichte, ‘Deduzierter Plan’, in Anrich (ed.), Die Idee der deutschen Universität, 131.
114 Ibid. 150.
115 Interestingly and rather hubristically given his likely intention, Fichte argued that in the
early stages of the new institution a single philosopher (presumably himself) in possession of a
single philosophical system (presumably his) should guide and direct the spirit of the university
in its eVorts to approximate the organic whole of knowledge. ‘When the institution begins,’ he
wrote, ‘this philosophical artist must be a single person and no one else will have any inXuence
on the pupil’s development in philosophising.’ See ibid. 148 V.
116 See Weischedel (ed.), Idee und Wircklichkeit, ii. 56. Further implications of this notion for
theology will be spelled out in Ch. 5 when I discuss theological encyclopedias in the nineteenth
century.
117 Lenz writes: ‘Mit einem Wort—die philosophische Fakultät umschließt alles, was in die
Fichtesche Universität gehört. . . . [D]ie Prinzipien der Philosophie . . . bilden den Maßstab, an
dem jede Disziplin sich messen lassen muß.’ Lenz, Universität Berlin, i. 119.
118 Fichte, ‘Deduzierter Plan,’ in Anrich (ed.), Die Idee der deutschen Universität, 155.
Fichte came down particularly hard on the theological faculty. Indeed, in
the literature on the University of Berlin’s founding, Fichte was unmatched in
his contempt of traditional, confessional theology and in his zeal to give
theological scholarship a new scientiWc legitimacy. While his eVorts were
not as immediately inXuential as Schleiermacher’s in the actual constitution
of Berlin’s theological faculty, he articulated ideas that nonetheless represent
important harbingers of future developments in academic theology. Espe-
cially noteworthy was his eVort to exclude the categories of ‘revelation’ and
‘mystery’ from the purview of academic theology, thus redeWning theology as
a largely historical and philological enterprise. Traditional theologies that
traYcked in ‘revelation’ and ‘mystery’, Fichte reasoned, were essentially ir-
rational and thus contradicted the purpose of his new academy. In his own
formulation:
A school for the scientiWc use of understanding assumes that what it deals with can be
understood. . . . [C]onsequently whatever did not allow the use of reason and set itself
up from the very beginning as an incomprehensible secret (unbegreiXiches Geheimnis)
would be excluded from it [the new academy] by its very nature. A school for the use
of the understanding could not concern itself with theology if the latter were still to
insist that there is a God who wills something without reason, that no one under-
stands the content of that will, but God must communicate it to him directly by a
special ambassador, that such communication has taken place and can be found in
certain obscurely written holy books, which one must understand correctly in order to
achieve salvation. [Theology] must give up this claim to the sole knowledge of secrets
and charms, frankly explaining and openly acknowledging that the will of God can be
known without any special revelation (ohne alle besondere OVenbarung) and those
books are not sources of knowledge but only a vehicle of popular instruction. . . . It is
only on this condition that the material which theology has hitherto possessed can be
admitted to our [new] institution.119
In short, theology might have a place in the new university, but it must, to use
a Kantian phrase, agree to recognize the limits of reason alone.
Fichte was well aware that the demands he placed on theology (and the
other higher faculties) were revolutionary. But he felt justiWed because the
previous ordering of the faculties, in his view, rested on erroneous and
outdated assumptions about the nature of human knowledge. The higher
faculties had inXated their importance, distorted the ‘organic whole,’ and
failed to heed the universal dictates of philosophical reasoning. ‘The three so-
called higher faculties would have done well previously if they had clearly
recognized their true place in the whole context of knowledge, [and] had
not . . . set themselves up as separate and more distinguished. Rather, they
119 Ibid. 154–5.

should have subordinated themselves to that context [of philosophy] and
acknowledged their dependence with due humility’. To show contrition for
past arrogance and gain admission into Fichte’s ‘scientiWc academy’, ‘modesty
of them is expected as soon they enter its sphere’.120
Practically speaking, such ‘modesty’ for the theological faculty required
nothing less than a transformation of its character through the division of its
former tasks: ‘a separation of its practical and scientiWc parts’. Theology’s
practical side—that is, the training of pastors and other ‘Volkslehrer’
(teachers of the people)—did not belong in Fichte’s ‘scientiWc academy’, but
should be reassigned to other institutions. While Fichte did not fully elaborate
on the nature of these institutions (presumably he meant seminaries),121 he
did remark that the criteria for admission should not necessarily be based on
‘glittering talents or extensive knowledge’ (presumably the criteria for admis-
sion to scientiWc institutions), but rather pastoral ability, popularity, and a
general love of mankind. He also suggested that prospective Volkslehrer
should possess skills of dissimulation, for science should be only carefully
and selectively mediated to ‘das Volk’. In teaching the Bible, for example,
Volkslehrer should focus exclusively on ‘pure religion and morals’; thornier
questions of interpretation and the application of scientiWc methods to sacred
doctrines should be ‘kept carefully from the people’, lest their disturbed
ignorance give rise to reactionary religious zeal.122
The rest of theology—what Fichte called its ‘scientiWc part’—can gain
admission into his institution, but it must obey the new imperatives of
philosophical and scientiWc understanding. ‘In the academy, the scientiWc
remainder of theology, which had perished as a priestly intermediary between
God and man, would cast oV its former nature entirely (seine ganz bisherige
Natur ausziehen) and don a new one as a result of the change.’ The new
theology would have two principal components: one philological, the other
historical. Philologically understood, theology would focus on the scientiWc
study of ancient languages of the Bible. The scholar must abandon interpret-
ation based on ‘a theological principle’, which was ‘very dishonest’ and
provoked ‘never-ending strife’, and adopt instead a human and scientiWc
principle, ‘which will honestly confess what it does not understand’. Viewed
in this light, the Bible has little to tell us about God’s ways to man; rather, like
the works of Aeschylus or Plato, it instructs us about earlier stages in ‘the
development of the human spirit’.123
120 Fichte, ‘Deduzierter Plan,’ in Anrich (ed.), Die Idee der deutschen Universität, 157.
121 Fichte suggested that a committee of ‘expert theologians and preachers’ be formed to
establish ‘a special institution for the training of future Volkslehrer’. Ibid. 157.
122 Ibid. 162–3.
123 Ibid. 161–2.
Fichte’s conception of historical theology, on the other hand, entailed a
thorough historicization of Christianity, anticipating the challenge to the-
ology posed by the comparative study of religion (Religionswissenschaft)—a
Weld that, while never supplanting theology as such, grew considerably in the
late nineteenth century.124 Implying that theology’s approach to history had
been too limited to Western church history, Fichte proposed that its new task
should be broadened to include ‘the history of the development of religious
conceptions among [all] peoples’. ‘It follows from this’, he continued ‘that
[this] task is more comprehensive (umfassender) than theology has under-
stood it, since one must consider the religious ideas of the so-called heathen,
and the scientiWc academy will understand it in this comprehensive form.’
Furthermore, even standard church history, in Fichte’s view, would never be
the same once it fully embraced modern scientiWc criteria. Freed from theo-
logical assumptions and committed to ‘honest love of truth’, church
history ‘will take on a completely diVerent form (eine ganz andere Gestalt),
and we shall come nearer to the solutions of several problems . . . or
know exactly what can and cannot be ascertained in this sphere’. As examples,
Fichte opined that exhaustive research will determine conclusively the iden-
tity of biblical authors and an objective history of the biblical canon can be
written.125
What is Wnally noteworthy about Fichte’s conception of theology (if we
may in fact call it theology) is that, when viewed in the light of his entire
treatise, theology’s position appears rather precarious, even questionable.
Since he handed over its traditional, practical tasks to extra-university insti-
tutions, theology’s remaining ‘scientiWc parts’ appear to fall entirely within
the purview and competence of the philosophical faculty, philology and
history in particular. While Fichte certainly believed that the study of religious
sentiment was of great value in ascertaining human intellectual development,
this does not in itself seem to provide suYcient warrant for an independent
division within the university; Fichte himself even suggested that the scientiWc
aspect of theology could ‘fall within the province of history’, thus eliminating
the need for separate theological faculties. Consequently, one should regard
Fichte as among the Wrst German scholars to lay the theoretical groundwork
for an entirely diVerent form of academic inquiry, one in which ‘religion’,
historically understood, threatened to displace ‘theology’ as a leading intel-
lectual category. His argument in favour of ‘religion’, it should be clear, does
not draw its strength from Christian theological reasoning per se, but from a
post-Enlightenment humanist sentiment and an idealist historical teleology
that placed unprecedented value on ‘the development of the human spirit’.
124 I shall return to this issue in Ch. 5. 125 Ibid. 162.

Taken up by others, Fichte’s line of reasoning faced challenges in the nine-
teenth century, but eventually its day would come in the movement of
comparative religion and religious history, and in theology’s own tilt towards
the historical and philological at the expense of the credal and apologetic.126
Shortly after Fichte had written Deduzierter Plan, Friedrich Schleiermacher
penned and anonymously published his Gelegentliche Gedanken über Univer-
sitäten in deutschem Sinn (1808).127 The impact of this work has been con-
siderable, if surprisingly often unrecognized, not only on the University of
Berlin but on the development of the modern German university generally.
Friedrich Paulsen dubbed it the ‘intellectual charter’ of the University of
Berlin.128 ‘Schleiermacher’s model university structure’, another scholar has
written, ‘became the basic organizational pattern for all German universities
up to the present time.’129
Like much of Schleiermacher’s life and thought, the work is distinguished
by a thoughtful complexity and a tendency towards intellectual mediation: it
evinces a simultaneous adherence to a variety of academic norms, old and
new, traditional and progressive. Indeed, it bears witness to Wilhelm Dilthey’s
claim that Schleiermacher ‘embraced all the greatest impulses of his time.’130
In contrast to Fichte, one is especially struck by Schleiermacher’s measured
and moderate outlook, his willingness to tolerate and even esteem old uni-
versity forms, even if he intended them to serve purposes quite at odds with
the confessional and practical aims of the premodern university. Neither the
name ‘university’ nor its division into faculties should be done away with, in
Schleiermacher’s view; rather, discriminating between what was ‘essential or
accidental’ in the history of universities, the new university should ‘breath
new life into their gothic forms’.131 His repeated usage of the phrase ‘in the
German sense’, moreover, indicates a patriotic sentiment: he regarded uni-
versity reform heedless of the German past as an intellectual capitulation to
France, whose 1808 educational reforms under Napoleon he objected to on
126 Claude Welch, Protestant Thought in the Nineteenth Century, 1870–1914, (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1985), ii. 146 V., 266 V.
127 On the early publishing history, see KGA I. vi. pp. xv–xviii, and Lenz, Universität Berlin, i.
122 V.
129 Fallon, German University, 36.
130 Wilhelm Dilthey, Selected Writings, ed. and trans. H. P. Rickman (Cambridge: Cambridge
131 Friedrich Schleiermacher, ‘Gelegentliche Gedanken über Universitäten in deutschem
Sinn. Nebst einem Anhang über eine neu zu Errichtende’, in Anrich (ed.), Die Idee der deutschen
Universität, 222, 293. English translations of this work closely follow those by Terrence N. Tice
and Edwina Lawler in Schleiermacher, Occasional Thoughts on Universities in the German Sense.
With an Appendix Regarding a University soon to be Established (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen,
1991).
the basis of their emphasis on technical expertise.132 Advocates of the French
way, Schleiermacher held, simply did not understand the conditions necessary
for authentic ‘German’ science to Xourish.133
But Schleiermacher was no reactionary. Like others before him, he was an
enthusiastic booster of the new Wissenschaftsideologie and he desired to see its
realization at the University of Berlin. Furthermore, although a theologian
himself, he desired to have nothing to do with the trappings of the confes-
sional university, which had assured the theological faculty a privileged
position. With Kant, he believed that the revitalization of the university
depended on the enhanced clout of the philosophical faculty, which he even
called the ‘lord’ of the other faculties, the only one committed to Wissenschaft
for its own sake and not subject to the practical and professional interests of
the higher faculties.
Throughout Gelegentliche Gedanken, Schleiermacher elaborated his con-
ception of the university in relation to the state and to the tripartite scheme of
higher learning already existing in Prussia, which included schools or Gym-
nasien, universities, and scientiWc academies. For Schleiermacher, the univer-
sity was neither a purely teaching institution, like schools, nor a purely
research institution, like academies, but rather something in-between, a
teaching and research institution, whose primary purpose was to demonstrate
to students the unitary nature of knowledge in the hope that they too might
devote themselves to ‘the supreme dignity of Wissenschaft’. But even if stu-
dents chose a practical professional course, and Schleiermacher accepted that
most would, their university years would at least have taught them to learn to
learn (das Lernen des Lernens),134 and this would serve them in their vocations
and redound to state and society.135 ‘Herein lies the essence of the university,’
Schleiermacher wrote,
132 In a letter of 1 March 1808 to Karl Gustav Brinckmann, Schleiermacher wrote of his work:
‘Meine Hauptabsicht indess was nur den Gegensatz zwischen den deutschen Universitäten und
den franzoischen Spezialschulen recht anschaulich, und den Werth unserer einheimischen Form
einleuchtend zu machen, ohne eben gegen die andere direct zu polemisiren.’ See Schleiermacher,
Aus Schleiermachers Leben in Briefen, ed. Wilhelm Dilthey and Ludwig Jonas (Berlin, 1863), iv. 149.
133 Schleiermacher also held out the hope that a single, new university, founded in a time of
crisis and uncertainty could demonstrate the ‘innere Einheit’ of the German nation to the
divided German peoples. See Schleiermacher, ‘Gelegentliche Gedanken’, in Anrich (ed.), Die
Idee der deutschen Universität, 228.
134 KGA I. vi. 35.
135 On this point, Schleiermacher diVered substantially from Fichte, who believed that
students desirous of practical careers should be excluded from the university and sent to
vocational schools instead. Schleiermacher wrote that besides being a bastion of Wissenschaft
‘the state must see to it that the universities are at the same time advanced schools for specialists
(höhere Spezialschulen), dealing with all that information useful in its service which above all else
cohere with actual scientiWc culture’. Schleiermacher, ‘Gelegentliche Gedanken’, in Anrich (ed.),
Die Idee der deutschen Universität, 248.
[b]reeding and education (Erzeugung und Erziehung) is its charge, whereby it forms a
point of transition (Übergangspunkt) between the time when the young are Wrst
inXuenced for science through a grounding in basic information [through the
schools] and the time when as adults in the mature power and fullness of the scientiWc
life they seek out on their own how to expand and improve the domain of know-
ledge.136
The charge to ‘expand’ knowledge recurs in the work, but Schleiermacher
made clear that the central function of the university was not necessarily
research, but for professors and students alike to keep alive ‘the idea of the
whole’. While knowledge should expand, it did so in accordance with an
underlying directive, an ‘invisible hand’ if one will, towards unity and inte-
gration. Thus, Schleiermacher asserted that although students in their uni-
versity years should be trained to extend the frontiers of knowledge in
particular areas, the ‘most necessary thing’ was what he called ‘the general
overview of the scope and cohesive structure of each area [of knowledge]’; this
should be the ‘foundation of all instruction’ for through it students come to
grasp ‘the unity and interconnectedness of all knowledge’.137
The inXuence of Kant manifested itself in the primary role that Schleier-
macher assigned to the philosophical faculty, the seat of true, disinterested
Wissenschaft, the very ‘centrepoint of knowledge’.138 ‘Everything begins . . .
with philosophy, with pure speculation.’ With the imminent establishment of
the new university in mind, Schleiermacher therefore argued (in a section
entitled ‘On the Faculties’) that ‘if a university ever arises through a free
uniting of scholars, then what is now conjoined in the philosophical faculty
will naturally Wnd Wrst place (die erste Stelle), and the institutions that state
and church will wish to join to the philosophical faculty [theology, law,
medicine] will take places subordinate to it.’139 In contrast to many of his
contemporaries, however, Schleiermacher was not terribly upset by the his-
toric understanding of philosophy as the lower faculty. For it was precisely
because of its customary propaedeutic function, he reasoned, that philosophy
possessed the capability for a new and expanded valuation:
[W]hat consequence is the ranking? It [the philosophical faculty] is still the
Wrst . . . and in fact the lord (Herrin) of all the others because all members of the
university must be grounded in it, no matter to which faculty they belong.
136 Schleiermacher, ‘Gelegentliche Gedanken’, in Anrich (ed.), Die Idee der deutschen Uni-
versität, 238.
137 Ibid. 234–45.
138 Ibid. 259. Cf. Lenz, Universität Berlin, i. 127.
This right it exercises almost everywhere upon students as soon as they come into
a university; that is, it is the Wrst to examine and receive them all, and this is a very
laudable and important custom. Only it appears that the custom has to be expanded
if its signiWcance is to be entirely realized. . . . Everyone must Wrst of all be a student
of philosophy.140
But if philosophy was the new lord, what then of theology? Unlike more
radical voices who wanted to exclude or diminish theology, Schleiermacher
vigorously defended the right of theology to exist in the university. However,
he recognized that under the new conditions of modernity its character would
be signiWcantly altered. Therefore, despite the nominal deference he gave to
the customary ranking of faculties, he admitted that the prevailing ordering of
the faculties gave the university a ‘grotesque appearance’ (groteskes Ansehn)
and it should be reconceptualized. Of the traditional place of theology, he
wrote:
The theological faculty has been formed in the church in order to maintain the
wisdom of the fathers, to separate truth from error in what has gone before so that
earlier truths are not lost for the future, and to provide an historical basis, a deWnite,
secure direction and common spirit, for further development of doctrine and of the
church. What is more, as the state came to be bound more and more closely with the
church, it had also to sanction these institutions and place them under its care.141
Schleiermacher recognized that this traditional deWnition would no longer
hold; in order to adapt to modern times, theology must shift its orientation
from tradition and the church to ‘the spirit of Wissenschaft’. Importantly
though, Schleiermacher never suggested that theology divorce itself from
the church. On the contrary, theology must combine ecclesial concerns and
scientiWc ones. An enlightened church would welcome Wissenschaft, and only
a theology informed by Wissenschaft could adequately lead the church and
foster appropriate ‘development of doctrine’. This latter point became one of
the leading insights in his Kurze Darstellung des theologischen Studiums
(1811), which shall be discussed below.142
140 Ibid. 260 (emphasis added).

141 Ibid. 257–8.
142 As is often noted, Schleiermacher sought to demonstrate in his own person simultaneous
commitments to church and university by serving as the lead pastor of Trinity Church in Berlin,
even as he maintained a full professorship at the University of Berlin and membership in the
Academy of Science. Nearly every Sunday for forty years, Berliners could hear Schleiermacher
from Trinity’s pulpit. On Schleiermacher’s various church commitments, see Redeker, Scheleier-
macher, 5, 187–208. Cf. B. A. Gerrish, A Prince of the Church: Schleiermacher and the Beginnings
of Modern Theology (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984). For a description of Schleiermacher’s manner
in the pulpit, see SteVens, Was ich erlebte (Breslau, 1842), vi. 271 V.
One way for theologians to acquire the skills and outlook of Wissenschaft,
in Schleiermacher’s view, would be for them to spend time actually teaching
in the philosophical faculty (which Schleiermacher regularly and enthusias-
tically did). In fact, Schleiermacher thought it advisable that all professors in
the higher faculties teach occasionally in the philosophical faculty. This would
give them a ‘vital linkage’ to ‘the doctrines of true science’. He deemed such
cross-pollination especially necessary for theologians, whose habits of mind
otherwise might ‘gradually and increasingly approach a mechanical tradition
or perish in an entirely unscientiWc superWciality’. Further still, he proposed
that any teacher of theology ‘surely deserves to be derided and excluded from
the university who would feel no inner power and desire to accomplish
something of one’s own in the sphere of Wissenschaft’.143 At some level then,
in his university a theologian must be a Wissenschaftler.144
In addition to his reXections on the faculties, Schleiermacher oVered a
nuanced understanding of the relationship between the state and university,
one that testiWed to his own patriotic and politically liberal sensibilities
awakened by the events of 1806–7.145 With his peers and fellow reformers,
he recognized that the state had a legitimate interest in universities and that its
‘protection and patronage’ was essential to their Xourishing. But he also
saw—more clearly, I believe, than his contemporaries—how potentially haz-
ardous the state’s involvement could become. Foremost, he feared that the
modern state, once fully aware of the usefulness of institutions of learning,
would ‘gradually appropriate and absorb them’ into itself ‘so that subse-
quently one can no longer decide whether they have arisen freely and for
their own purposes or by administrative Wat’. In his view, the state was
inclined to act in this manner because it required the information and
knowledge made available at institutions of learning for its own administra-
tive and legal operations, indeed its own legitimacy. But this self-serving
approach to knowledge violated a key criterion of true Wissenschaft—namely
disinterestedness.
The state naturally and necessarily [judges] . . . that it must be grounded in science and
that only through science can it be correctly propagated and improved upon. There-
fore it seeks to enter into a vital connection with all eVorts that lead to such
improvement and fulWlment. . . . However, the state works only for itself; historically
versität, 257 V.
144 Schleiermacher developed a more elaborate theory of knowledge or Wissenschaft in
various lectures he gave under the title ‘Dialektik’. See Schleiermacher, Dialektik (1811), ed.
Andreas Arndt (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1986).
145 On Schleiermacher’s politics, see Redeker, Schleiermacher, 87 V.
it is completely self-seeking; thus is tends not to oVer support to science except on its
own terms.
Eager to burnish its authority through an association with science, the state
easily fails to grasp the true nature of the scientiWc enterprise: ‘the state custom-
arily has quite a diVerent view from that of scholars regarding the way scientiWc
institutions must be ordered and led, since scholars enter into closer association
for the sake of science itself ’, whereas presumably the state does not. Attributing
the best of intentions to the academic classes, Schleiermacher elaborated that
true scholars are not content with mere information unless they can treat it
scientiWcally, which involved striving to see the ‘the whole in every particular
and every particular only in the whole’. Handled in this manner, the ‘inner unity’
of all knowledge can be demonstrated. Otherwise the accumulation of particu-
lar information would amount only to ‘an unsteady groping about’.146
But such reasoning, Schleiermacher concluded, is lost on the state, which
all too easily fails to recognize the worth of this eVort [of true Wissenschaft]. As for
speculation (Spekulation)—a term that we would always use for scientiWc activities
that preponderantly relate to the unity and common form of knowing—the more
clearly it is brought to notice the more the state tends to restrict it and use all its
inXuence . . . to promote only concrete information (realen Kenntnisse), piles of ma-
terial that have been dug up, without regard to whether it has the imprimatur of
science on it or not; and the state makes this to appear as the sole genuine result of all
striving for knowledge.147
Scholars concerned about true Wissenschaft must ‘oppose this course’ and
‘strive as much as they can to work toward independence from the state’. Still,
Schleiermacher recognized that necessity often required academics to cooper-
ate with the state in educational endeavours—such as the founding of the
University of Berlin itself. But, in doing so, they should try to inXuence the
state, so that it might esteem, and not merely utilize, scientiWc knowledge.
However, this prospect too was fraught with diYculties, for in the service of
government even ‘the scientiWcally cultured may get entangled in the state’.
When this takes place, ‘science is overcome by politics and does not come
clearly to consciousness. The more this occurs the sooner will they [scholars]
comply with such interference from the state’. And then the university is on a
slippery slope of becoming ‘a mere contrivance of the state’.148
147 Ibid. 231. Schleiermacher carefully distinguished between mere information (Kenntnisse)
and true science (Wissenschaft). The state, left to its own devices, naturally settles for the former,
which it can more easily manipulate for its purposes.
148 Ibid. 230 V.
While it might be an exaggeration to claim that precisely this scenario befell
Schleiermacher and his esteemed colleague, Wilhelm von Humboldt, employ-
ees of the government both after 1809–10, it is nonetheless undeniable that
their theoretical scepticism of the state (more on Humboldt’s below) was
often compromised, or at least pushed into the background, during the actual
launching of the new university.149 What is more, Schleiermacher’s warnings
against the potential abuse of state power were generally not heeded. In the
years after he wrote Gelegentliche Gedanken, the university, like society as a
whole, found itself caught up in the state centralizing measures of the
Prussian reform movement. Ironically, many oYcials, like Schleiermacher
himself, who condemned French state centralization in education, replicated
some of the tendencies they sought to disavow on practical if not theoretical
grounds. In the heady, reforming climate of the time, as Winfried Speitkampf
has put it, ‘the educational sector was viewed not as an isolated area of state
activity, but . . . as the building-block in the modernization scheme, always
related to the overall design of renewal. . . . [T]he eYciency of administrative
control was a major factor and one which of itself demanded that the newly
rationalized administration be extended to embrace the education system.’
This particularly applied to university reforms and new foundations, of which
Berlin was the most pre-eminent.150 In short, to invoke Lord Acton’s senti-
ment again, the ideal of free science and the reality of government interests
were fused together upon the founding of the University of Berlin.
Compared to the more elaborate treatises of Fichte and Schleiermacher,
Humboldt’s short memorandum of circa 1809, ‘Über die innere und äußere
Organisation der höheren wissenschaftlichen Anstalten in Berlin’, is neither
original nor comprehensive, nor does it directly address the place of theology
and the other higher faculties.151 Its genius lay rather in Humboldt’s ability to
sift through various intellectual currents and focus them on the task at hand.
149 Besides his oYcials posts at the university and the Academy of Science, Schleiermacher
served for a period as the leading member of the ScientiWc Deputation (Wissenschaftliche
Deputation), an arm of the Department of Ecclesiastical AVairs and Public Education, which
was designed to implement and oversee educational reform at various levels. See Franz Kade,
Schleiermachers Anteil an der Entwicklung des preussischen Bildungswesen, 1808–1818 (Leipzig,
1925). On the speciWc tasks of this deputation see Humboldt, ‘Ideen zur einer Instruktion für
die wissenschaftliche Deputation bei der Sektion des öVentlichen Unterrichts’, in Humboldt,
Gesammelte Schriften, x (II). 179–86.
150 Winfried Speitkampf, ‘Educational Reforms in Germany between Revolution and Res-
toration’, GH 10 (1992): 7 (emphasis added).
151 The memorandum was probably part of a longer document written by Humboldt in
either 1809 or 1810. Never published, the memorandum, or fragment thereof, was only
discovered in the late nineteenth century among Humboldt’s private papers by Bruno Gebhardt,
who published it in his 1896 biography of Humboldt. See Bruno Gebhardt, Wilhelm von
Humboldt als Staatsmann, 2 vols. (Stuttgart, 1896, 1899). Cf. Lenz, Universität Berlin, i. 179–80.
He eloquently restated the intellectual purpose of the new institution—the
‘pure idea of Wissenschaft’ as he called it.152 He also articulated a model of
state–university relations that has proven simultaneously inXuential and
problematic, and one at considerable odds with his own earlier views of the
role of the state in educational aVairs.153
Like Schleiermacher, Humboldt sought to distinguish the role of the
emerging university from that of secondary schools and scientiWc academies,
particularly from Berlin’s Academy of Science. Like other reformers, Hum-
boldt did not assign research to academies and teaching to universities, but
instead adovocated the unity of research and teaching: scholarship invigor-
ated teaching and vice versa. ‘If one limits the university to instruction . . . and
the academy to research,’ he wrote, ‘one obviously does the university an
injustice. Surely all the disciplines have been extended as much by university
professors as by members of scientiWc academies, and [the former] made
progress in their studies precisely because they also occupied teaching posi-
tions. For free oral expression before listeners, a signiWcant number of whom
are also thinking heads (mitdenkender Köpfe), surely inspires a man.’154
Although oppropriately inspired by bright students, professors should
resist making students per se their primary focus. They should keep their
sights resolutely on Wissenschaft alone, for in doing so, students would learn
to do so as well, and this lesson would become the sine qua non of their
university education. In famous words presaging the ‘research imperative’ of
the later nineteenth century, Humboldt elaborated:
It is a further characteristic of higher institutions of learning that they treat all
Wissenschaft as a not yet wholly solved problem and are therefore never done with
research (immer im Forschen bleiben). This is in contrast to the schools, which take as
their subject only the complete and agreed-upon results of knowledge and teach these.
This diVerence completely changes the relationship between teacher and stu-
dent. . . . [T]he teacher no longer exists for the sake of the student; both exist for the
sake of Wissenschaft.155
152 Humboldt, ‘Über die innere und äußere Organisation’, in Anrich (ed.), Die Idee der
deutschen Universität, 377.
153 I refer to Humboldt’s 1792 work, Ideen zu einem Versuch die Grenzen der Wirksamkeit des
Staates zu bestimmen. This work of the young Humboldt, a central document of German
liberalism, was Wrst published in its entirety in 1854 by his brother, Alexander von Humboldt.
Portions were earlier published by Humboldt himself in the journals Neue Thalia and Berlinische
Monatsschrift. On the genesis and inXuence of this work, see the Wne introduction by J. W.
Burrow to Wilhelm von Humboldt, The Limits of State Action, trans. Joseph Coulthard (In-
dianapolis: Liberty, 1969), xvii–lviii.
deutschen Universität, 382–3.
155 Ibid. 377–8.
Students nonetheless would beneWt from this arrangement, Humboldt rea-
soned, because once the student too embarked on a life of critical inquiry and
intellectual exploration, a vital process of inner development (Bildung) would
take place156 But the correct understanding of Wissenschaft necessarily pre-
ceded Bildung. Indeed, Humboldt regarded achieving this understanding as
absolutely critical to the new institution’s success, opining that ‘everything
depends on the preservation of the principle that Wissenschaft is to be
regarded as something not wholly found and never wholly able to be found,
but as something always to be searched for.’ ‘As soon as one stops searching for
Wissenschaft,’ he continued, ‘everything is irrevocably and forever lost.’157
Thus, Wissenschaft, although ultimately an integral whole (as the idealists
would have it) possessed an intensely dynamic quality in Humboldt’s formu-
lation.
Humboldt’s understanding of the proper relationship of the state to the
new university warrants consideration. In wrestling with the ‘state question,’
Humboldt found himself confronted by a delicate and much-discussed mat-
ter (as we have seen with Schleiermacher), complicated by his own ambivalent
attitude towards the state. In his younger years, in reaction to the Wöllner
Edict of 1788, he criticized the state’s overreaching proclivities, arguing that
government had no business in moral, religious, and educational matters, but
should restrict itself to the protection of its citizens, guaranteeing property
rights, and national defence.158 However, by accepting the leading post in the
Department of Ecclesiastical AVairs and Public Education, Humboldt impli-
citly endorsed the state’s tutelary involvement in educational matters.159 One
might reasonably conjecture that Humboldt felt far more comfortable deWn-
ing the state’s power broadly during the more liberal, post-1806 period than
he did during the prior, conservative days of Minister Wöllner and Friedrich
Wilhelm II. Yet Humboldt never completely abandoned his earlier view of
the state—even an enlightened state—as a potentially obstructive, even de-
structive, force when it entered too actively into the realms of culture and
education. This personal ambivalence resulted in a theoretical ambivalence,
evident in both his memorandum and in his activities as an educational
156 See Bruford, The German Tradition of Self-Cultivation, 1 V.

157 Humboldt, ‘Über die innere und äußere Organisation,’ in Anrich (ed.), Die Idee der
158 Sweet, Humboldt, i. 103–13, and Beiser, Enlightenment, Revolution, and Romanticism,
111–37.
159 E. R. Huber has called Humboldt’s ‘Wendung zum Staat’ one of the ‘greatest ironies in
German political and intellectual history’. See Huber, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte, i. 274–6.
Humboldt’s views on the state are systematically laid out in Siegfried A. Kaehler, Wilhelm von
Humboldt und der Staat (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1963), esp. 211–49.
minister.160 On the one hand, Humboldt insisted that the university embody
an unprecedented academic freedom while, on the other, he recognized that
pragmatic considerations necessitated greater state involvement in higher
education. More speciWcally: the post-1789 world of waning confessionalism,
feudal corporatism, and churchly inXuence (the hitherto environment of the
university) required that the modern state pick up the slack, so to speak, and
provide higher learning with order and direction. For a historical analogy, one
might consider Martin Luther who placed his hope of the Protestant
churches’ freedom in the hands of Germany’s secular princes. Similarly,
Humboldt turn to the modern state as the necessary, albeit problematic,
protector of academic freedom against confessionalism and corporative
privilege.161
In his memorandum, Humboldt thus argued—echoing Kant, Fichte, and
Schleiermacher—that true Wissenschaft emanated from human freedom
apart from all coercion and utilitarian concerns: ‘[It is] nothing other than
the spiritual life of those human beings who are moved by external leisure or
internal pressure toward learning and research.’162 Ideally, all that scholars
required to realize their intellectual aims were ‘solitude and freedom’ (Ein-
samkeit und Freiheit), which Humboldt called the ‘principles’ that should
govern the administration of institutions of higher education.163 But since
reality did not generously dispense these conditions, Humboldt admitted that
it was the paternal duty of the state, understanding its calling as an Erzie-
hungsstaat, to help create these conditions for an elect few.
But such action was fraught with potential problems, and Humboldt came
close to calling it a necessary evil, realizing that the state might demand
compensation for the freedom it allowed. ‘[T]he government,’ he therefore
wrote, ‘must always remain conscious that it really neither brings about such
results [free science] . . . nor can it bring them about.’ Indeed, its intervention
on behalf of science is ‘invariably an obstruction’ and, in an ideal world,
‘everything would proceed inWnitely better without its help’. But in the real
160 I note again in this regard Humboldt’s (failed) eVort to secure a permanent endowment
for the university in order to give it greater independence from the state. See Sweet, Humboldt,
ii. 64.
161 Lenz, Universität Berlin, i. 187. Humboldt did, however, move closer to his earlier view,
i.e. that the state should exercise greater restraint in educational matters, when the political
atmosphere turned reactionary after 1819. In frustration, he retired from public life at this time.
See Sweet, Humboldt, ii. 69.
162 Compare with his statement from 1792: ‘Der wahre Zweck des Menschen . . . ist die höchste
und proportionerlichste Bildung seiner Kräfte zu einem Ganzen. Zu dieser Bildung ist Freiheit die
erste und unerläßiche Bedingung.’ See Humboldt, Ideen zu einem Versuch die Grenzen der
Wirksamkeit des Staates zu bestimmen (1792), in Humboldt, Gesammelte Schriften, i. 158.
deutschen Universität, 377–8.
world, in the incipient modern era, the state must intervene because, without
its help, institutions of science would lack ‘external forms and means’ for their
noble activities or, worse, revert to their medieval ways. The state thus should
provide the basic infrastructure for universities—buildings, funding, protec-
tion, et cetera—but then assume a hands-oV policy, allowing Wissenschaft to
proceed according to its own internal rhyme and reason.
Nonetheless, Humboldt observed, in a line of reasoning strikingly similar
to that of Kant’s in Der Streit der Fakultäten that the state need not act from
pure altruism and disinterestedness, because, in the Wnal analysis, it too would
reap the beneWts of free science: ‘[the state] must hold fast to the inner
conviction that if the higher institutions [of learning] reach their own aim,
its aim, too, will be thereby fulWlled, and from a much loftier point of view
than any that could have been arranged directly by the state itself ’. Put more
fully: for its support of ‘Humboldtian’ ideals, the modern state might expect
to garner legitimacy for itself (especially through the consent of the educated
classes to its power) while enhancing the calibre of its operations (by provid-
ing an environment where future civil servants, imbued with Wissenschaft and
Bildung, could develop).164
In one crucial area, Humboldt conceded to the state a tremendous power:
the hiring of faculty. ‘The appointment of university professors,’ he opined,
‘must be exclusively reserved to the state, and it is surely not good to permit
the various faculties more inXuence in this matter than an understanding and
fair-minded administrative body will do of its own accord.’ He based his
reasoning on the view that petty jealousies and academic vendettas might
prevent faculty members from exercising prudence in their selection of new
faculty, and this might ‘distort completely their point of view as to what is
good for the whole.’ Government ministers, he presumed, acting paternally
and in a fair-minded and farsighted way, would, somehow, rise above the
ideological fray that dominated the professors’ world.165
The subsequent history of the university did not vindicate Humboldt’s
view: the state, through the Department of Ecclesiastical AVairs and Public
165 Humboldt’s harsh opinion of professors appears inconsistent with his high-minded view
of science and scientiWc progress, since presumably professors were the ones who were supposed
to advance science. Nonetheless, Humboldt’s regard of professors as a class was quite low. In a
letter to his wife Caroline, he noted, ‘You have no idea with how much diYculty I have to
contend with the scholars—the most unruly and hardest to please of all classes of people. They
besiege me with their eternally self-thwarting interests, their jealousy, their envy, their passion to
govern, their one-sided opinions, in which each believes that his discipline alone has earned
support and encouragement.’ Quoted in Lenz, Universität Berlin, i. 210.
Education, and later through the Ministry of Culture (Kultusministerium),
often acted from patently ideological and political motives. While these
motives varied according to the political winds, the powers of hiring and
Wring, alongside other factors, contributed to a state monopoly in the
educational system.166 What is more, not just hiring, but all forms of career
advancement, as will be spelled out later, came to depend on the all-powerful
imprimatur of the Minister of Culture.
In the Wnal analysis, Humboldt’s vision, while earnestly expressing faith in
the therapeutic potential of science, individual development, and academic
freedom, admitted state control and supervision of higher education to an
extensive degree. Given the circumstances of his writing during the Prussian
reform movement, this should not come as a great surprise. On the one hand,
the era marked by crisis and change called for new ideals: a new conception of
education and a forward-looking intelligentsia outside the church to com-
pensate for the faltering structures of the Old Regime. At the same time, in the
absence of older authorities, the modern state took on a magniWed role as the
dominant agent of eVective reform and modernization. This of course applied
to the educational system as well, including theological education, which had
hitherto been largely tied to churches and church bodies—entities which, not
surprisingly, emerged greatly weakened from this era of revolution and
reform. Given these realities, we should not put Humboldt’s (and other
reformers’) ideas on a pedestal and lament the failure of their implementation
due to the reactionary climate after 1819, the customary terminus of the
liberal reform period. This simpliWes matters too neatly. Instead, we should
recognize that the reformers’ vision itself—arguably with the singular excep-
tion of Schleiermacher—possessed a profoundly statist character. Ironically
though, this watered down and in some cases even worked against the very
liberal reforms sought, fostering a mandate for a ‘scientiWc state’ more than
for free science operating independently of the state. In the Prussian univer-
sity reforms, as Thomas Nipperdey has perceptively summed up, ‘the state
served education and in the Wnal reckoning, education served the true, free,
and rational state. These were, of course, idealistic assumptions in which the
realities of power were obscured.’167
166 Speitkampf, ‘Educational Reform in Germany’, GH 10 (1992): 6. Speitkampf is astute in

his observation that the instruments of bureaucratic supervision and surveillance, utilized for
reactionary ends after the Karlsbad Decrees (1819) were, ironically, put in place during the post-
1806 liberal reforms.
167 Nipperdey, Germany from Napoleon to Bismarck, 48. I shall return to this theme in Ch. 4.
5. EARLY OPERATIONS: BERLIN’S

T H E O LO G I C A L FAC U LTY, 1 8 1 0 – 1 8 1 9
SpeciWcally, how did theology Wt into the actual structure and workings of the
new university?
Obviously this is a large question, requiring several angles of approach.
I examine, Wrst, the university’s general statutes and those of the theological
faculty. OYcially promulgated only after operations had begun, both docu-
ments bear witness to Schleiermacher’s inXuence. Second, I call attention to
the outlooks and activities of the theological faculty’s initial professors, ‘the
nineteenth century’s greatest department of theology’ according to one critic,
and certainly among its most innovative and productive.168 SigniWcantly, the
initial theological professoriate—which besides Schleiermacher came to in-
clude Philipp Konrad Marheineke, W. M. L. de Wette, and August Neander—
were relatively young and ambitious; their activities at Berlin lend credence to
Thomas S. Kuhn’s observation that intellectual innovation strongly correlates
with fresh blood in the Weld.169 Third, I consider the shape of theological
education at Berlin, focusing particular attention on Schleiermacher’s Kurze
Darstellung des theologischen Studiums (1811). Finally, I turn my attention to
the general position and inXuence of the theological faculty in relation to
other faculties and to the university as a whole. To what extent was its position
after 1810 continuous with eighteenth-century patterns, and to what extent
did it reXect contemporary realities and mark new departures?
By the spring of 1810, the movement to establish the university was at full
throttle. Theoretical discussions about ‘the idea of a university’ had given way
to practical ones about getting this university up and running in an exped-
itious and impressive, if also cost-eVective, manner. Among the most pressing
items was drafting and ratiWcation of the statutes, a task which proved time-
consuming and contentious, lasting from 1810 until their oYcial promulga-
tion in 1817.170 In June of 1810, shortly before his departure from service,
Humboldt appointed a ‘start-up commission’ (Einrichtungskommission) to
168 Terrence N. Tice, ‘Schleiermacher and the ScientiWc Study of Religion’, in Herbert
Richardson (ed.), Friedrich Schleiermacher and the Founding of the University of Berlin: The
Study of Religion as a ScientiWc Discipline (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 1991), 46.
169 Writes Kuhn: ‘Almost always the men who achieve . . . fundamental inventions of a new
paradigm have been either very young or new to the Weld whose paradigm they change . . . [T]he
men who, being little committed by prior practice to the traditional rules of normal science, are
particularly likely to see that those rules no longer deWne a playable game and to conceive
another set that can replace them.’ See Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of ScientiWc Revolutions,
2nd edn. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 90. In the year that Berlin opened its
doors, Schleiermacher was the senior member at 42; de Wette and Marheineke were both 30;
Neander joined the faculty in 1813 at the age of 24.
discuss and draft the statutes and handle a variety of other matters. The
commission appointees included two high-ranking civil servants, Wilhelm
Uhden and J. H. Süvern, and Friedrich Schleiermacher; the law professor F. K.
Von Savigny also contributed. The various members wrote preparatory notes
and submitted them on 25 July to Schleiermacher, who drafted so-called
‘provisional guidelines’ for the new institution. The university began oper-
ations on the basis of this document, permanent statutes still pending.
Despite their provisional character, these guidelines are not without import-
ance. To a signiWcant degree, they reXect Schleiermacher’s personal conception
of the university as sketched in Gelegentliche Gedanken. They esteem past
university structures—such as the four faculties, faculty deans, the rector, and
the faculty senate—over more radical organizational schemes, such as those
proposed earlier by Fichte. At the same time, they bear witness to the milieu of
German idealism: the university was to make up an ‘an organic whole’ (ein
organisches Ganzes), working in conjunction with pre-existing institutions in
Berlin, the Academy of Science in particular. The provisional guidelines also
contain elements of striking modernity: no mention was made of the univer-
sity’s confessional identity, for example, and professors, including theologians,
were to be ‘liberated from all censorship’ (von aller Censur befreit).171
Under these guidelines, the new university opened its doors to students in
October of 1810. A festive inaugural ceremony was originally intended, but
the matter of having only provisional statutes and attention to other pressing
details, like Wlling out the faculty, prevented the necessary preparations.
A ceremony was therefore postponed, as it turned out, permanently. Festive
medallions were nonetheless minted,172 and several poems and songs by
Berlin’s literary luminaries were composed to mark the occasion.173 One
poem by the Romantic writer Achim von Arnim (1781–1831) proclaimed
the university a ‘fortress of heroes’ for scholarship and science. Incoming
students in the poem were motivated by a ‘pious desire for science’ (fromme
Lust j nach Wissenschaft). Wissenschaft itself was extolled for its power to unite
all the world: ‘. . . Wissenschaft, j Die aller Welt Verbindung schaVt.’174
A cantata, ‘Universitati Litterariae’, composed by Clemens Brentano (1778–
1842) is noteworthy for its blending of religious, neohumanist, patriotic, and
modern wissenschaftlich sensibilities. Declaring the University of Berlin ‘a
171 See especially §§1, 3, and 23 of ‘VorläuWges Reglement für die Universität zu Berlin’. HUA,
Med. Fak.- Dekanats-S. 1. Allgemeine Universitätsangelegenheiten 1810–1818, Signatur: A 1. A
printed version is found in Helmut Klein (ed.), Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Dokumente
1810–1945 (Berlin: Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaft, 1985), 10 V.
172 The transcription on the largest medallion reads ‘sigillum universitatis litterariae
berolinensis’ with the subscript: ‘fridericus guilelmus iii rex.’ See Lenz, Universität Berlin,
i. 284.
173 Ibid. 283 f.
174 Arnim’s poem is found in Erich Schmidt (ed.), Jahrhundertfeier der Königlichen Friedrich-
Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin 10–12. Oktober 1910 (Berlin, 1911), HUB, Ay 46226.
mountain for the German muses’ (ein deutscher Musenberg) and a seat of
‘intellectual freedom’ (Wissensfreiheit), Brentano invoked,
All-knowing God,
We follow the traces of your understanding,
And what we too understand
and what we always teach
is at root only your Being.
The king has established
a house of Wissenschaft,
[And] we men stand bound
under his grace and strength.
God, bless our desires,
Let us fulWll the promise . . .
to teach the truth faithfully.
The cantata also made allusive reference to the four faculties, personifying
them as ‘four wise, digniWed women’ strolling through the university palace’s
open gate. Honouring university tradition, theology entered Wrst, arrayed in
violet, her face veiled but turned heavenward, with an opened Bible in hand.
SigniWcantly, the Kulturstaat ideal is on prominent display in this cantata: a
chorus reminds professors of the state’s patronage and expectations. Teachers
must teach faithfully, because ‘that is what the state so desires from you, j the
state that supports you, j the state that learns from you and honours you
highly, j the state that protects your lofty freedom’.175
However, several months before this cantata was composed, Humboldt
shook things up by vacating his post. His reasons were varied, but at root they
had to do with disagreements with colleagues in the government about the
organization of his department.176 Humboldt’s responsibilities and the fate of
the university’s statutes fell then into the lap of his successor, Friedrich
Schuckmann (1755–1834), a more conventional civil servant and one whose
intellectual horizons compared poorly to those of his illustrious predeces-
sor.177 Among his Wrst actions, Schuckmann declared that the provisional
statutes could not serve very long and permanent ones should be drawn up.
He assigned Uhden the task of preparing a revised draft. Uhden, however,
made only minor changes to Schleiermacher’s original work. In 1812 Schuck-
mann then appointed a four-person commission to oVer Wnal advice and
conclude the task. This commission consisted of professors August Boeckh, K.
A. Rudolphi, K. F. Von Savigny, and, again, Schleiermacher. At this point, a
175 ‘Und Meister lehre treu, j Das ist, was ernst der Staat von euch begehrt, j Der Staat, der
euch ernährt, j Der Staat, der von euch lernend, hoch euch ehrt, j Der Staat, der hohe Freiheit
euch gewährt.’ See Clemens Brentano, ‘Universitati Litterariae, Kantate auf den 15ten October
1810’ (Berlin, 1810), HUB, Yt 16383: F8.
176 Details are provided in Sweet, Humboldt, ii. 76 V. and Lenz, Universität Berlin, i. 211 V.
177 On Schuckmann’s tenure in oYce, see Lenz, ibid. i. 305 V.
conXict arose between faculty members and the government over the com-
position of the faculty senate. The professors wanted to keep a senate com-
posed of all full professors (Ordinarien). Fearful that such a large body would
prove diYcult to manage, Schuckmann proposed a representative senate,
made up of only Wfteen professors. He also stipulated that the government’s
administrative and Wnancial representative—called the Syndikus (later the
Kurator or Kanzler)—could attend all senate sessions and bring his secretary.
Ultimately, the plan of the government was dictated to the faculty, insuring an
abiding presence of the state in the inner sanctum of university’s aVairs.178
In 1813 deliberations over the statutes were interrupted by the Wars of
Liberation against Napoleon and by the ensuing Congress of Vienna (1814–
15). Once these epochal events had passed, the matter was taken up again. In
March of 1816, the second draft of the statutes was Wnally, for some begrudg-
ingly, approved by the faculty senate. A year later, on 26 April 1817, the king
gave his oYcial stamp of approval. SigniWcantly, the Wnal version corre-
sponded considerably with the initial, provisional statutes drafted in 1810
by Schleiermacher, who during this protracted process emerged as the most
involved and industrious Wgure.
In the main then, the university’s statutes bear witness to Schleiermacher’s
Gelegentliche Gedanken, albeit one notices exceptions that suggest the strong,
often countervailing sway of the government’s interests. The general statutes
thus combine a recognizably ‘modern’ spirit with ‘medieval’ forms, all placed
under the guardianship of the bureaucratic apparatus of the state. The Wrst
paragraph, for example, made clear that the purpose of the institution was
‘scientiWc education’ (wissenschaftliche Bildung) of the youth, but it also
linked this purpose quite closely with state control, noting that the university
‘in all its departments is under the direct supervision of the Ministry of the
Interior’.179 Furthermore, while the new institution enjoyed ‘the essential
rights of a university’, these rights were inseparable from the ‘‘Landesväterli-
chen Schutze’’ of the state as laid out in the Prussian Civil Code of 1794, which
stipulated that all Prussian schools and universities were ‘Veranstaltungen des
Staats’.180
Not surprisingly, the four faculties were given their traditional form ‘as at
other German universities’. Out of deference to custom, theology was men-
tioned Wrst, but this fact was mitigated by the insistence that each of the
faculties made up an ‘independent whole’, the primary duties of which were to
178 Fallon, German University, 35–6. For further details, see Lenz, ibid. i. 433 V.
179 See Paul Daude (ed.), Die königl. Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin: Systematische
Zusammenstellung der für dieselbe bestehenden gesetzlichen, statutarischen und regelmentarischen
Bestimmungen (Berlin, 1887), I§1.
Verordungen, welche die Verfassung und Verwaltung dieser Anstalten betreVen (Berlin, 1839), i. 6.
oversee the granting of degrees and to ‘provide complete instruction in their
respective areas’. Perhaps as a nod to those critical of the traditional hierarchy
of the faculties, the various subWelds of the philosophical faculty were spelled
out individually: mathematics, natural science, history, the sciences of state-
craft, and so forth.181 Regarded as bodies of teaching and learning, faculties
consisted of ordinary and extraordinary professors, lecturers or Privatdozen-
ten, and students. As a governing body within the university, however, only
the ordinary professors enjoyed full rights and were eligible for selection to
the senate or to the position of dean or rector. Following custom, the rector,
elected by the senate, was the university’s highest authority, even if he, as the
Prussian Civil Code directed, had to answer to relevant government
oYcials.182
One of the more delicate matters handled in the general statutes, and one
quite relevant to theology, concerned academic freedom. As noted above, the
provisional statutes drafted by Schleiermacher granted extensive liberties to
the faculties—‘unbeschränkte Zensurfreiheit’ according to Lenz.183 However,
when the statutes were reviewed and reworked during the ministry of Schuck-
mann, government oYcials came to the conclusion this was too permissive.
Accordingly, alterations were made before the oYcial statutes of 1817 were
promulgated. While the oYcial version still used the phrase ‘freedom from
censorship,’ certain limitations were stipulated: professors could freely pub-
lish ‘writings that concerned scientiWc matters, but not ones on current
political circumstances.’ Furthermore, faculty were pointedly reminded not
to publish anything that contradicted the laws of the land.184 In short, as Lenz
has noted, ‘a far-reaching limitation on freedom of speech’ took place be-
tween the provisional statutes (1810) and the oYcial ones (1817).185 As is well
known, further limitations came after 1819 as a consequence of the Karlsbad
Decrees. These called for the close monitoring of all universities throughout
the newly created German Confederation (1815), so that no teacher misused
his authority ‘by spreading harmful ideas which would subvert public peace
and order and undermine the foundations of the existing states’.186 It should
be clear from the foregoing, however, that for Prussia the Karlsbad Decrees
did not represent an abrupt abrogation of academic freedom, but rather a
powerful supplement to restrictive tendencies afoot beforehand. Moreover, it
181 Daude (ed.), Statuten 9–11; I§§4, 5, II§6.

182 Ibid. 9 V; I§6, III, and Koch (ed.), Die preussischen Universitäten, i. 6 V.
184 Daude (ed.), Statuten 9–10, I§7. See also Lenz, Universität Berlin, i. 331–3.
185 Lenz, Universität Berlin, i. 331
186 The complete texts of the Karlsbad Decrees relevant to the universities are printed in E. R.
Huber, Dokumente zur deutschen Verfassungsgeschichte (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1961), i. 100 V.
is noteworthy that the limitations placed on academic freedom, both in the
university’s oYcial statutes and in the Karlsbad Decrees, focused more on
political utterances than religious ones—a fact that distinguishes this era from
the confessional past. The post-revolutionary, politicized climate, in other
words, not to mention the reality of Prussia as a confessionally pluralistic state
(much more so after the Congress of Vienna) resulted in the dimunition of
religious orthodoxy as a major concern of censorship, even if it admittedly
persisted as a minor one.187
The statutes of the theological faculty were not issued until the 1830s.
Although Schleiermacher had died by this time, these statutes nonetheless
bear his imprint. Besides the obvious inXuence of his Gelegentliche Gedanken,
they resonate strongly with ideas he set forth in a short memorandum ‘On the
Establishment of the Theological Faculty’, submitted on 24 May 1810. This
document in fact is the earliest blueprint for Berlin’s theological faculty and,
as such, is of considerable signiWcance for understanding modern academic
theology generally. In it Schleiermacher defended theology as a legitimate
university enterprise and sought to provide new directions for theology’s
response to contemporary realities.188 He dismissed the arguments of those
who suggested that some theological Welds (e.g. church history and biblical
exegesis) be relocated to the philosophical faculty, for theology, he reasoned,
made up its own ‘whole’ and this justiWed its abiding place within the larger
whole of the university.189 He accepted the customary division of theology
into four subWelds—biblical exegesis, church history, dogmatics, and practical
theology. He did not request a speciWc chair in practical theology, however,
187 Prussia’s pluralism increased signiWcantly after 1815 because of the acquisition of the
Rhine provinces, the home to numerous Catholics. To be sure, after 1819 some circles of the
government, especially those touched by the so-called pietistic ‘awakening’ or Erweckungsbewe-
gung, remained deeply concerned about religious orthodoxy. But as a strictly legal matter
pertaining to freedom of speech and instruction, those deemed politically subversive were
regarded as more threatening than those whose religious views fell outside the boundaries of
strict orthodoxy. Admittedly, for conservatives in the Vormärz era, political and religious
spheres were not neatly separated, as those deemed heterodox were also often regarded as
politically dangerous. Still, increasingly, it was the perceived political danger, not the content of
religious belief qua religious belief, that prompted and justiWed coercive government action.
Accordingly, the conservatism of the post-1819 era should be understood as a distinctly modern
political phenomenon, and not simply as a throwback to the confessional past. See Robert M.
Bigler’s chapter, ‘The Awakening of Political Consciousness and the Beginning of Political
Activity’, in The Politics of German Protestantism: The Rise of the Protestant Church Elite in
Prussia, 1815–1848 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), 3–50.
188 Walter Elliger, 150 Jahre Theologische Fakultät Berlin: Eine Darstellung ihrer Geschichte von
1810 bis 1960 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1960), 6 V.
189 Schleiermacher dismissed critics of theology as ‘speaking surely in jest’ and opined that
theological disciplines treated in other faculties would appear as ‘incongruous aberrations’. See
Schleiermacher, ‘25.Mai 1810 Professor Schleiermacher über die Einrichtung der theologischen
Facultät’, in Köpke, Die Gründung, 211.
because he believed this function should be shared by all professors or
supported by area pastors in Berlin.190 The principle of freedom should
govern the theological faculty; no single faculty member should therefore
exercise a ‘monopoly’ over a particular discipline, for ‘diVerent ways of
teaching these disciplines’ would redound positively to both students and
faculty.191
To launch the faculty, Schleiermacher requested three full professors (drei
ordentlichen Lehren), each of whom would be responsible for at least two
Welds. Ideally, the Wrst would cover exegesis and dogma; the second, exegesis
and church history; and the third, church history and dogma. ConWgured in
this manner, each would be responsible for overlapping Welds and hence
expose students to a greater diversity of viewpoints and forms of inquiry.
Moreover, this would foster ‘competition’ and thereby introduce ‘a stimulat-
ing spirit of rivalry among the teaching staV.’ Schleiermacher justiWed this
arrangement by appealing to past precedents, singling out practices at the
universities of Halle and Göttingen in particular—a line of argument that
indicates the authority that these two reform universities exercised over him
and, by inference, over Humboldt, to whom the memorandum was princi-
pally addressed.192
Although Schleiermacher clearly indicated that Berlin was to be a ‘Protest-
ant university’, he sought to relax confessional diVerences between Reformed
and Lutheran camps. He himself would later endorse and vigorously promote
the Church Union of 1817, fostered by Friedrich Wilhelm III, which sought to
establish a uniWed Protestant church in Prussia. But well beforehand he saw
the new university in general and its theological faculty in particular as a
vehicle for overcoming confessional hostilities and promoting a more open,
intellectual Protestantism. By adopting this point of view, he believed that
Berlin could embrace and even direct the spirit of the times, for already, he
noted, some German universities were no longer regarding confessional
distinctions as a major issue. ‘The diVerence of confession in the theological
faculties’, he therefore wrote, ‘should no longer be regarded’—a sentence of
no slight historical signiWcance.193
190 Redeker, Schleiermacher, 98.

191 Defending his colleague de Wette against government actions against him in 1819,
Schleiermacher argued that ‘unlimited freedom to teach in theology’ should be guaranteed in
the university. See the letter, drafted by Schleiermacher, and presented to the government on de
Wette’s behalf; reprinted in Lenz, Universität Berlin, iv. 366.
192 Schleiermacher, ‘25.Mai 1810 Professor Schleiermacher über die Einrichtung der theolo-
gischen Facultät’, in Köpke, Die Gründung, 211–12.
193 Ibid. 212. He supported his case by noting that an (unnamed) leading Reformed minister
had allowed his sons to study at Göttingen, a Lutheran university. Schleiermacher himself
had been the Wrst Reformed theologian to teach at Halle, so he had direct experience of
Furthermore, Schleiermacher reasoned that many scholarly tasks, espe-
cially writing church history and biblical exegesis, should and could rise
above confessional polemics. It was enough if theological faculties simply
elucidated the most important creeds of both major Protestant confessions
and let students judge their validity.194 Relevant church bodies then could
determine whether a particular candidate for ministry Wtted their theological
criteria. The underlying message of Schleiermacher’s memorandum on this
point is clear: the theological faculty at Berlin, and all German theological
faculties ideally, should cease serving the interests of a particular confession.
This was an anachronistic practice that only compromised commitment to
academic freedom and disinterested scholarship. Instead, by acquainting
students with diVerent points of view and by insisting on intellectual rigour,
Berlin’s faculty could become not only a centre for scholarly excellence but
also a seat of theological rapprochement (at least among Protestants; Cath-
olics remained beyond the pale).
Three further issues raised by Schleiermacher’s proposal for a theological
faculty warrant mentioning: the founding of a special theological seminar, the
granting of degrees, and the establishment of a university worship service.
(The latter was actually proposed in a separate memorandum.) While he
stopped short of calling for its immediate creation, Schleiermacher argued
that an advanced theological seminar (Seminarium für gelehrten Theologie)
should be established as soon as possible. In his view, this ‘excellent institu-
tion’ should be connected to but nonetheless distinct from the theological
faculty. It should not be mistaken for a homiletic seminar or ‘Prediger-
seminarium’, which ‘obviously has no place at a university.’ Rather, the sole
task of this projected institute was to promote Wrst-order theological schol-
arship, using grants and prizes as suitable incentives. As a model, he suggested
similar seminars for ‘Alterthumswissenschaft’, which had risen to distinction
under Heyne at Göttingen and Wolf at Halle.195
interconfessional cooperation; indeed, Schleiermacher’s appointment at the University of Halle

made its theological faculty technically the Wrst oYcially integrated one in Prussia. See Redeker,
Schleiermacher, 76.
gischen Facultät’, in Köpke, Die Gründung, 212.
195 The origin of the ‘seminar’ is an important topic, for it was the cell out of which the
methods of modern research institutions grew. While its roots are traceable to the early modern
period, at which time it was largely a practical institution for the training of future pastors and
teachers, it underwent a metamorphosis in the eighteenth century, whereby it became a more
theoretical, scientiWc institution. This process began at Halle with the pedagogical, theological,
and philological seminars established there after 1694. It was the seminarium philologicum at
Göttingen, however, that became the template for subsequent development. This seminar was
begun by Johann Mathias Gesner in the 1730s and continued by Heyne after his call to
Göttingen in 1763. See Wilhelm Erben, ‘Die Entstehung der Universitäts-Seminare’, Internatio-
nale Monatsschrift für Wissenschaft, Kunst und Technik 7 (July 1913): 1247–64.
In 1812 Schleiermacher’s wish became a reality and a theological seminar
was established at Berlin. Made up of philological and historical sections, and
directed by Schleiermacher with the help of his colleagues, the seminar was
commissioned ‘to lead excellent theological students to their own learned
research and work in the area of theological studies’.196 In the course of the
nineteenth century, other seminars and subsidiary institutions developed in
connection with Berlin’s theological faculty: in 1849 a museum for Christian
archeology and art,197 in 1875 a seminar for practical theology, in 1883 a
seminar for post-biblical Judaism, and in 1917 an institute for the history of
missions, later designated as an institute for general religious history and the
science of missions (Institut für allgemeine Religionsgeschichte und Missions-
wissenschaft).198 These types of institutions, as shall be explored in more detail
later, are crucial for understanding the shaping of nineteenth-century the-
ology.
In his 1810 memorandum, Schleiermacher suggested that the theological
faculty recognize two levels of academic rank: the doctorate and the licentiate.
The latter, gained through an examination and the production of a scholarly
work, should be the minimal requirement to teach as a private lecturer,
pursue the doctorate, or hold high church oYce. The doctorate, on the
other hand, should be ‘held in honour’ as the summit of theological learning,
awarded only after the completion of colloquia, a disputation, and the writing
of a major theological work. Schleiermacher evinced worry that this academic
rank had become watered down through granting it to undeserving candi-
dates. He therefore vigorously opposed those who wanted to establish two
versions of the doctorate: one for theology proper and another for Holy
Scripture, granted to outstanding clergymen. Instead, he opined that it was
not the task of a ‘learned body’ (i.e. the theological faculty) to evaluate
practical work (i.e. the homiletic skills of a clergyman). There should then
be just one doctorate, earned at the university through intensive wissenschaf-
tlich endeavour. If the theological faculty ever decided to award an honorary
doctorate outside the university, he conceded, this decision should still be
based on whether the candidate under consideration had produced ‘a learned
theological work of recognized merit’.199
196 The seminar’s ‘regulations’ are found in Köpke, Die Gründung, 239–40.
197 Ferdinand Piper, Das christliche Museum der Universität zu Berlin (Gotha, 1874).
198 See HUA, Theol. Fak. 43. There is also an informative description of the development of
theological seminars in the catalogue of the ‘Theologische Fakultät Dekanat’ in the university
archive.
gischen Facultät’, in Köpke, Die Gründung, 213–14.
Alongside his memorandum for a theological faculty, Schleiermacher pro-
posed the establishment of university worship service (Universitätsgottes-
dienst), a favourite idea that he regarded as indispensable to the success of
the university.200 Although his ideas on this matter were not immediately
taken up and never embraced to the extent that Schleiermacher had hoped,
this proposal is nonetheless revealing, not only of his ideas on university
matters, but of his larger theological vision.201
At root, the proposal gives evidence of his abiding desire to eVect ‘the
uniWcation of the scientiWc spirit with the religious sense’ (die Vereinigung des
wissenschaftlichen Geistes mit dem religiösen Sinn) and thereby, as he had
sought to do in his earlier Reden (1799), redress the decline of religion
among the educated classes, the so-called ‘despisers’ of religion. While he
indicated that a general dearth of religiosity was prevalent throughout society,
he deemed this an acute problem among ‘the learned class’, for its members
would shape the future and inXuence the church as well. He thus judged it
particularly necessary ‘to rekindle’ (wieder zu beleben) the religious sense in
this class by uprooting the ‘apparent conXict’ between religion and Wis-
senschaft. To accomplish such an important task, one must improve the
religious experiences among students during their university years, for
‘what a young person adopts during these years, he appropriates to himself
in freedom, and it surely passes over into his own [mature] character.’ The
most eVective means of going about this, Schleiermacher held, ‘is through a
well-established university worship service’.
The worship service he advocated would mirror the activities of any other
church, although its preaching, music, and liturgy would take on added
meaning because of its academic context within what one contemporary
called ‘Minerva’s new temple’.202 SigniWcantly, Schleiermacher proposed that
the Eucharist (to be oVered at least four times per year) should be an ‘open
communion’, one in which ‘everyone can participate, no matter to which
Protestant confession they belong’. It should also be oVered in a liturgical
environment designed to oVend neither confession. As such, the Eucharist
service should foster Protestant unity and point to the centrality of worship,
even at the heart of a predominantly scientiWc institution. If it fulWlled these
200 Previously, Schleiermacher had led the university worship service at Halle and this
experience served in part as the model for his Berlin proposal. See Lenz, Universität Berlin, i.
221. Cf. Paul Keyser, ‘Der akademische Gottesdienst’, in 250 Jahre der Universität Halle (Halle,
1944), 115 V.
201 Schleiermacher had hoped to use the French Reformed church on Berlin’s famous
Gendarmenmarkt for the university church, but its members rejected his proposal. Other
options were pursued, but more complications arose and this pet idea was eventually shelved.
See Köpke, Die Gründung, 86.
purposes, Schleiermacher concluded, the university church in general and its
Eucharist service in particular would serve as ‘the point of uniWcation for the
entire university’ (Vereinigungspunkt für die ganze Universität)—a fascinating
and noteworthy claim given the association of Berlin as the prototype of the
modern secular, research university.203
Schleiermacher’s house of worship would brook no ‘parochial coercion’
(kein Parochialzwang). Rather, the university chaplain—a professor of the-
ology, Schleiermacher recommended—should be allowed to work in ‘appro-
priate freedom’. For this to happen, the chaplain should not be placed under
ecclesiastical supervision like other clergymen; rather he should be ‘exclu-
sively subordinate to the Department of Ecclesiastical AVairs and Public
Education’.204 SigniWcantly then, Schleiermacher judged the state as the
ablest protector of academic freedom and progress in religion in the import-
ant sphere of university worship. Indeed, despite his many otherwise
sceptical remarks about the state, Schleiermacher here clearly enlisted it,
against ecclesiastical inXuence, as the necessary agent to further what he
presumably regarded as the church’s own highest interest: the uniWcation of
the scientiWc spirit and religion, which could best be accomplished in a
university setting.205 In the light of Schleiermacher’s previously indicated
wariness of state control, this recommendation appears anomalous, even if
it expressed a tutelary understanding of the state widely held by many of his
contemporaries.
However revealing of his personal views, Schleiermacher’s proposal for a
university church, in the end, went unrealized, and for some three decades
after its founding Berlin had no oYcial university worship service and no
oYcial chaplain. Although the faculty petitioned the government again for
one in 1830, they were not successful. It was not until 1847 that a university
worship service was Wnally established. Seated in Berlin’s Dorotheenstädtische
Kirche, its Wrst pastor was the famous ‘mediating theologian’, Karl Immanuel
Nitzsch (1787–1868).206
203 Schleiermacher, ‘25.Mai 1810 Desselben Entwurf zur Errichtung eines Universitäts-
gottesdienstes in Berlin’, in Köpke, Die Gründung, 214–16.
204 Ibid. 215.
205 Ibid. 214–16.
206 Köpke, Die Gründung, 291–2. On Nitzsch, see ODCC 1157. The Wrst service took place on
the third Sunday of Advent, 1847. The oYce of university chaplain lasted until 1870, at which
time it and all religious services were suspended. In 1916 they resumed, located in the Kaiser-
Wilhelms-Gedächtnis Kirche, but with no designated chaplain. In 1938, under the National
Socialist government, services were suspended again. See the brief overview of the Gottesdienst
in the catalogue to the ‘Theologische Fakultät Dekanat’, HUA. For the government’s involve-
ment, see ‘Die kirchlichen Angelegenheiten der Universität zu Berlin und die Einrichtung eine
besonderen Universitätskirche,’ GStA PK, HA Rep. 76 Kultusministerium Va Sekt. 2, Tit. 1, Nr.
8. On the broader history of university churches in Germany, see Konrad Hammann’s recent
The statutes of Berlin’s theological faculty set forth rules and practices that
would govern this faculty’s development and the position it would occupy in
the new university.207 Although wording of the statutes granted theology
customary ‘Wrst place’ at university ceremonies, they also made clear that
theology existed on an equal legal footing with the other faculties
(Rechtsgleichheit aller Fakultäten).208 Viewing the statutes as a whole, one is
struck by overtures to traditional university forms even as they prescribe a
decidedly modern and liberal theological programme. Put diVerently, the
statutes bear witness to theology’s attempt to validate itself, not as a confes-
sional or pietistic enterprise, but as a rigorous academic undertaking, as a
Wissenschaft in good standing with other Wissenschaften. As Walter Elliger has
put it, Berlin’s theological faculty sought after ‘a new conception of the
theological discipline’, one no longer yoked to the ‘complex order of a
confessional doctrinal system [but to] . . . the limitless freedom of the scien-
tiWc spirit in lively interaction with the intellectual and religious forces of the
past and present’.209
While emphasizing theology’s wissenschaftlich character, the statutes con-
vey neither indiVerence to the needs of the church nor criticism of the
theological faculty’s customary role as supplier of church leaders. Indeed,
the statutes resonated with Schleiermacher’s lifelong insistence that concili-
ation between science and religion should beneWt ecclesial life. The statutes’
Wrst paragraph accordingly aYrmed the faculty’s link with the church: ‘The
theological faculty has the vocation of proceeding according to the teaching of
the Protestant church so as not only to propagate the theological sciences in
general, but also especially to make competent by means of lectures and other
academic exercises the young men who dedicate themselves to the service of
the church.’210 The faculty served the church best, however, by producing
graduates capable of scholarly rigour. Attenuating confessional or pietistic
emphases, therefore, Berlin’s statutes endorsed a theological programme
focused on lifting the intellectual credentials of its graduates and enhancing
the faculty’s overall scientiWc standing within the university.211 This focus is
study, Universitätsgottesdienst und Aufklärungspredigt: Die Göttinger Universitätskirche im

18.Jahrhundert und ihr Ort in der Geschichte des Universitätsgottesdienstes im deutschen Protes-
tantismus (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000).
207 These statutes were not oYcially issued until 1838. They represent a collaborative eVort
between the theological faculty and the Prussian Kultusministerium. With the other statutes,
they bore the oYcial signature of Karl von Altenstein, then Minister of Culture. GStA PK I HA
Rep. 76 Kultusministerium Va Sekt. 2 Tit. 1 Nr. 6 Bd. 3.
208 Daude (ed.), ‘Die Statuten der theologischen Fakultät’, 47, I§4.
209 Elliger, 150 Jahre Theologische Fakultät Berlin, 7.
210 Daude (ed.), ‘Die Statuten der theologischen Fakultät’, 46, I§1.
211 Elliger, 150 Jahre Theologische Fakultät Berlin, 1 V.
attested to by the statutes’ insistence on deep and wide coverage of all relevant
theological Welds and by the demanding requirements set for professors,
lecturers, and degree recipients.
In a section on teaching duties, the statutes outlined Welds that professors
should cover, indicating that every Weld was to be covered at least twice during
a three-year period. The Welds mentioned included the encyclopedia and
methodology of theology; introduction to the Old and New Testaments;
biblical criticism and hermeneutics; the history of the Old Testament and
biblical archaeology; biblical interpretation; church history and the history of
dogma; dogmatics, moral theology, practical theology, and symbolics (Sym-
bolik).212 Besides covering these Welds in their lectures, professors were also
enjoined to supervise students’ work in the theological seminar that had been
established in 1812.213
To uphold rigorous standards, the statutes placed teaching duties prepon-
derantly in the hands of the more experienced ordinary and extraordinary
professors, from whom a doctorate was expected along with evidence of
further scholarly achievement.214 However, following university custom, the
statutes also allowed for unpaid lectures by Privatdozenten. Since this post
usually represented the crucial Wrst step of a young scholar into the academic
profession, the drafters of the statutes saw Wt to make its attainment quite
diYcult; no fewer than thirteen paragraphs were devoted to the requirements
necessary for attaining the ‘permission to teach’ (venia legendi or Habilita-
tion). To apply in the Wrst place, a prospective candidate Wrst had to possess a
theological degree (either a licentiate or doctorate) from the University of
Berlin or another recognized university. Furthermore, at least three years
must have elapsed, spent in a ‘scientiWc manner’, since the end of one’s
university studies before one was considered fully eligible for Habilitation.215
If eligible, the applicant would then submit to the faculty a curriculum vitae
and a learned theological treatise. If these passed muster, he would be allowed
to give a ‘trial lecture’ (Probevorlesung) and afterwards hold a colloquium on
the same topic in the presence of the faculty. Once all these requirements had
been approved by an absolute majority of the faculty—who were enjoined to
make their evaluations based on the moral integrity, preparedness to teach,
212 Daude (ed.), ‘Die Statuten der theologischen Fakultät’, 56; III§39. Symbolics or Symbolik
refers to the comparative study and interpretation of church creeds and confessions. See
‘Symbolik’, in LTK 1162.
213 Daude (ed.), ‘Die Statuten der theologischen Fakultät’, 60–1; III§54.
214 Ibid. 48; II§7.
215 Ibid. 61; III§55. The Habilitation requirements for theology were not unique to this
faculty but harked back to the general statutes of the university. See Alexander Busch, Die
Geschichte des Privatdozenten (Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke, 1959), 21 V.
and ‘scientiWc capability’ (wissenschaftliche Tüchtigkeit) of the candidate—the
aspiring Privatdozent could be admitted to the Wrst rung of the academic
profession.216 Such rigorous requirements became increasingly standard at
Prussian universities in the early nineteenth century. Far from discouraging
young men, they had the eVect of transforming the position of Privatdozent
from a relatively unsung and menial position to a prestigious and coveted
one. In all faculties, the number of Privatdozenten rose steadily during the
Vormärz period, creating a much more competitive academic environment
and one in which one’s reputation and institutional preferment depended
largely on scholarly accomplishment.217
Students seeking degrees in the theological faculty also faced demanding
standards. Two degrees in theology were possible: the licentiate and the
doctorate. To be considered for the former, at least three years of university
instruction were required. Afterwards, the candidate could submit to the
theological faculty application materials, which included a curriculum
vitae and a treatise on ‘a self-selected subject from the theological discip-
lines, on which the candidate especially desired to dedicate his eVorts’.
If successful, the candidate could proceed to an oral examination,
during which he was expected to demonstrate ‘comparable development
in all the major theological disciplines and a certain virtuosity in a single
discipline’. Anyone found wanting in a particular area or who did not seem
to evince a ‘superior capability’ should not be admitted to the examination
stage.218
The statutes spelled out in detail the rather comprehensive knowledge
expected of the candidate for examination. In the area of church history, for
example, the statutes required knowledge of important historical documents
and aids for their investigation, a thorough ability to account for past epochs
and facts, and, not least, a ‘scientiWc overview of the whole’. In biblical
exegesis, the candidate must demonstrate ‘thorough knowledge of the ori-
ginal languages, knowledge of the correct hermeneutical principles, and
ability and skill in their application’. In dogmatic and moral theology, the
candidate was expected to show ‘a scientiWc knowledge of the distinctive
character of the Christian faith and the laws of Christian life derived there-
from, as well as knowledge of the systematic connection of both disciplines
and their reciprocal relationship to one another, so that [the candidate] might
give evidence of a scientiWc comprehension in the treatment of individual
important subjects of both disciplines’. Furthermore, the candidate should
216 Daude (ed.), ‘Die Statuten der theologischen Fakultät’, 62–3; III§§56, 57, 58.
217 Turner, ‘Prussian Universities’, 362 ff.
218 Daude (ed.), ‘Die Statuten der theologischen Fakultät’, 73–5; III§§89–94.
demonstrate ‘familiarity with the various, contemporary dogmatic schools of
thought and the points of conXict between them’.219
If the candidate was judged in possession of such extensive knowledge, he
could be admitted to the oral examination held in the presence of the faculty.
His success here depended on making clear his verbal command of the
knowledge.220 If successful, the candidate could proceed to a formal, public
disputation and promotion ceremony, oYciated by the dean of the faculty. At
this event, reXecting medieval custom, the candidate was expected to defend
one or several theses, which were printed and circulated beforehand to the
members of the theological faculty, other professors, and relevant public
oYcials. Upon completion of this Wnal step, the candidate gave a short speech
of gratitude and received his diploma of licentiate, which bore the signature of
the dean and the oYcial seal of the theological faculty.221
The most prestigious theological degree was, of course, the doctorate, a
measure of accomplishment reserved for those select few who had demon-
strated exceptional skills and promise. While the statutes indicated that under
some circumstances ecclesiastical service and other practical work could be
taken into consideration in awarding this degree, the emphasis rests on
scholarly accomplishment—over and beyond the requirements for the licen-
tiate. Foremost, it was expected of all aspiring doctors to produce a major
work that gave evidence of ‘extending the breadth of science’ (Bereicherung
der Wissenschaft). As the statutes ampliWed, the candidate must ‘demonstrate
a special virtuosity or a high degree of profundity and breadth in scholarly
understanding’.222 Once the candidate’s work had met these high standards
and gained the stamp of the faculty, a formal degree-granting ceremony took
place, which, like the licentiate ceremony, strongly echoed medieval practice.
The candidate gave a short speech and afterwards was invested with the
insignia of his new status: a diploma, a ring, and a Bible.223
Importantly, a doctoral oath (Doktoreid) was also taken by the candidate
upon completion of his studies. However, this ritual was no longer a pointedly
confessional event, as it would have been in the seventeenth century. Formu-
lated during an era when the royal house was committed to the Protestant
219 Daude (ed.), ‘Die Statuten der theologischen Fakultät’, 75; III§95.
220 Ibid. 76; III§§96–9.
221 Ibid. 77–8; III§105. The theological faculty’s seal bore the Latin inscription ‘facultatis
theologiae’ with an image of a veiled female Wgure, a symbol of theology, holding a cross and
chalice. Lenz, Universität Berlin, i. 284.
222 Daude (ed.), ‘Die Statuten der theologischen Fakultät’, 79; III§109.
223 Ibid. 79; III§110. The statutes also make allowance for the granting of honorary doctoral
degrees. While extraordinary church service might be the basis for such a degree, the predom-
inate criterion remained ‘[an] exceptional contribution to science’. Ibid. 79–80; III§§111–14.
Church Union of 1817, Berlin’s oath had a somewhat generic, even pro forma
quality. Candidates were expected not to teach anything contrary to Holy
Scripture, ecumenical creeds, and the Augsburg Confession, but strict distinc-
tions between Lutheran and Reformed camps were elided. Indeed, the oath
suggests that the notion of the theological faculty as the keeper of a particular
orthodoxy, challenged already in the eighteenth century, had now begun to
reach the end of its line. Theology, instead, sought a new scholarly validation.224
Besides the progressive direction of the university’s statutes, Berlin’s initial
professoriate greatly contributed to the university’s modernizing ethos and
prestigious reputation. In his memorandum of 1809, Humboldt had made
clear that the ‘intellectual power’ of the new institution depended largely
upon the correct choice of scholars.225 That Humboldt’s words were well heeded
is borne out in the extraordinary pool of talent that the University of Berlin
acquired and, in large measure, maintained throughout most of the nineteenth
century.
Not surprisingly, the industrious Schleiermacher took the initiative in 1809
of putting together a Wrst-order theological faculty, convinced too that good
hiring was the cornerstone of future success.226 Above all, he wanted to assemble
a faculty whose scholarship and teaching demonstrated to religion’s ‘cultured
despisers’ the contemporary relevance and intellectual credibility of theology.
He desired neither old-style confessionalists nor doctrinaire rationalists, but
scholars able to transcend hackneyed eighteenth-century debates and thereby
put Protestant theology on a new and Wrmer footing. Indeed, his hiring prin-
ciples seem to correspond with his overall theological aim, which, as he put it in
one famous formulation, sought ‘to create an eternal covenant between the
living Christian faith and an independent and freely working science, a covenant
by the terms of which science is not hindered and faith not excluded’.227
224 The actual oath is found in Hermann Mulert, Die LehrverpXichtung in der evangelischen
Kirche Deutschlands (Tübingen, 1906), 81–2. Cf. Elliger, 150 Jahre Theologische Fakultät Berlin, 7.
226 See the correspondence between Humboldt and Schleiermacher concerning hiring mat-
ters. Schleiermacher, Aus Schleiermachers Leben in Briefen, iv. 169–71. Humboldt had a high
regard for and conWdence in Schleiermacher, referring to him once as ‘einer der vorzüglichsten
jetzt so seltenen theologischen Universitäts-Lehrer also auch einer der besten und beliebsten
Kanzelredner in Berlin und ein Mann von durchaus unbescholtenem Charakter.’ See ‘Antrag für
Schleiermacher 5. Juli 1809’, in Humboldt, Gesammelte Schriften, x. 80.
227 He regarded this as the goal of the Protestant Reformation and still relevant in his time.
See Schleiermacher, Sendschreiben an Dr. Lücke (Giessen, 1908), 40. Friedrich Lücke (1791–
1855) was a student and Privatdozent in Berlin from 1816 to 1818. A devotee of Schleiermacher,
he later became one the principal champions of so-called ‘mediating theology’ (Vermit-
tlungstheologie). See Alf Christophersen, Friedrich Lücke (1791–1855), 2 vols. (Berlin: Walter
de Gruyter, 1999).
In the spring of 1810 members of the start-up commission turned their
attention to Wlling out the faculties, theology and others. A number of names
for theology were proposed and several queries sent out. Schleiermacher felt it
his competence to teach New Testament studies and dogmatics. He was
therefore particularly eager to hire for Old Testament and church history.
Among the early candidates for consideration were J. E. C. Schmidt of
Giessen, J. G. Planck of Göttingen, C. F. von Ammon of Erlangen, and J. F.
Schleusner of Wittenberg. However, in pursuing these men, many of whom
were quite well known, complications arose and the start-up commission was
forced to look elsewhere.228 Its members eventually settled on a couple of
younger, up-and-coming theologians teaching at the University of Heidel-
berg: W. M. L. de Wette in Old Testament and Philipp Konrad Marheineke in
church history. Once oVered positions, both accepted; de Wette came for the
Wrst autumn term in 1810; Marheineke came the following spring. Later
joined by another historian, August Neander, Berlin’s theological faculty,
like the university itself, soon began to rise in signiWcance.229
A scholar of prodigious energy and range, de Wette proved an especially
valuable acquisition. Were it not for Schleiermacher’s large shadow and de
Wette’s own political misfortune (more about this later), one could even
imagine identifying de Wette as the father of modern liberal theology.230
The son of a Lutheran clergyman, de Wette received his earliest education
Wrst at Weimar, partly under the school superintendent J. G. Herder, and then
at the University of Jena. At Jena he had imbibed the philosophy of Kant and
rubbed shoulders with some of the greatest luminaries of the time, including
the rationalist theologians and biblical scholars J. P. Gabler, H. E. G. Paulus,
and J. J. Griesbach and, in the philosophical faculty, Fichte, Reinhold, Schiller,
Schelling, and especially J. F. Fries, a devout Kantian and Wery political liberal,

229 De Wette received a call on 11 July 1810, Marheineke on 10 August 1810. See ibid. and
Köpke, Die Gründung, 77. The letter of invitation to de Wette from the Department of
Ecclesiastical AVairs and Public Education is reprinted in Ernst Staehelin (ed.), Dewettiana:
Forschungen und Texte zu Wilhelm Martin Leberecht de Wettes Leben und Werk (Basle: Helbing &
Lichtenhahn, 1956), 67–8. Besides Schleiermacher, de Wette, Marheineke, and Neander, another
instructor, Johann Joachim Bellermann (1754–1851), taught in the theological faculty during
the university’s earliest years; however, he was never given full status. See Elliger, 150 Jahre
theologische Fakultät Berlin, 36. There was not a professor of practical theology until the hiring
of Gerhard Friedrich Abraham Strauss (1786–1863) in 1822. Strauss also served as Domprediger
in Berlin and as rector of the university in 1833–4. See Friedrich Herneck and Oskar Tyzko
(eds.), Die Rektoren der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (Halle: Niemeyer, 1966), 44.
230 See Thomas Albert Howard, Religion and the Rise of Historicism: W. M. L. de Wette, Jacob
Burckhardt, and the Theological Origins of Nineteenth-Century Historical Consciousness (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 23–77.
with whom de Wette maintained a lifelong friendship. The result of contact
with such varied and scintillating minds meant that de Wette was no run-of-
the-mill biblical critic, but one alive with practically every major intellectual
current of the time. Besides biblical scholarship, he published in dogmatic
theology and Christian ethics, and distinguished himself as a novelist as
well.231
Called to Berlin at the age of 30 (having taught at Heidelberg only since
1807), de Wette had already authored a number of signiWcant works: two
provocative essays, Eine Idee über das Studium der Theologie (1801) and
AuVorderung zum Studium der hebräischen Sprache und Literatur (1805) and
two major pieces of scholarship, a groundbreaking dissertation on the Book of
Deuteronomy (1805) and an equally important two-volume Beiträge zur
Einleitung in das Alte Testament (1806–7). The latter two works had begun
to distinguish de Wette as one of the most original and incisive Old Testament
scholars of his day. In them, he reWned the concept of ‘myth’ as a category of
biblical exegesis and thereby laid the groundwork for its widespread use in
nineteenth-century biblical interpretation, inXuencing such critics as the
controversial David Friedrich Strauss and the Old Testament scholar Julius
Wellhausen.232 For his pioneering criticism, de Wette’s inXuence lives on
today; one scholar has recently even called him ‘the founder of modern
biblical criticism’.233
Of less distinction but noteworthy nonetheless, de Wette’s colleague at
Heidelberg, Marheineke, arrived in Berlin in the spring of 1811. Born in
1780, Marheineke had studied theology at the University of Göttingen. In
1803 he left Göttingen for the University of Erlangen, where, in 1805, he was
appointed extraordinary professor of church history and assistant university
preacher. While at Erlangen he read Schleiermacher’s Reden and later credited
231 De Wette’s best known ‘theological novel’ was his Theodor, oder des ZweiXers Weihe:
Bildungsgeschichte eines evangelischen Geistlichen, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1822; 2nd edn., 1828), which,
drawing heavily from autobiographical material, sketches the educational experiences of a
theological student confronted by the various intellectual currents of the day. The work was
translated into English by James F. Clark and published in Boston in 1843 as Theodore; or, the
Skeptic’s Conversion.
232 On de Wette and myth, see C. Hartlich and W. Sachs, Der Ursprung des MythosbegriVes in
der modernen Bibelwissenschaft (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1952).
233 See John Rogerson, W. M. L. de Wette: Founder of Modern Biblical Criticism: An Intellectual
Biography (SheYeld: JSOT, 1992) and Rudolf Smend, Wilhelm Martin Leberecht de Wettes Arbeit
am Alten und am Neuen Testament (Basle: Helbing & Lichtenhahn, 1958). On de Wette and the
teaching of the Old Testament at Berlin, see Rüdiger Liwak, ‘Das Alte Testament und die
theologische Fakultät in der Gründungszeit der Friedrich-Wilhelms Universität’, in Gerhard
Beiser and Christof Gestrich (eds.), 450 Jahre Evangelische Theologie in Berlin (Göttingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1989), 163–82.
it with re-enlivening his own faith. From Erlangen he moved on to Heidelberg
in 1807, the same year that he rose to scholarly acclaim through two publi-
cations, Universalkirchenhistorie des Christentums and a lengthy study of the
history of canon law and church polity in the Middle Ages. Largely on the
strength of these works, he received the call to Berlin, despite fears that he was
an uninspiring lecturer—fears later conWrmed!234
In the Prussian capital, Marheineke covered a wide range of courses and
became the second pastor at Trinity Church, where Schleiermacher held the
position of Wrst pastor. During his Wrst decade, Marheineke’s scholarly inter-
ests turned increasingly from history to philosophy and speculative theology,
and to the thought of Schelling and Hegel. When Hegel actually joined the
philosophical faculty in 1818 to assume the chair vacated by Fichte, Marhei-
neke soon became an avid follower. He was convinced that the Hegelian
system had in fact, as Hegel claimed, reconciled the seemingly disparate
claims of traditional Christianity, expressed in primitive ‘representations’
(Vorstellungen) and modern philosophical consciousness, capable of expres-
sion in mature ‘concepts’ (BegriVe).235 Indeed, in Hegelian parlance, Marhei-
neke came to call himself a ‘theologian of the concept’ (BegriVstheologe) and
he became a vocal apologist for Hegelian thought in the classroom and in a
variety of publications, such as his Vorlesungen über die Bedeutung der
hegelschen Philosophie in der christlichen Theologie (1842). Marheineke’s
wholesale conversion to Hegelianism caused no small rupture in his relation-
ship with Schleiermacher, who doubted the relevance of Hegelian philosophy
for theology and generally disliked Hegel himself.236
In 1813 the theological faculty added another member, someone capable of
covering early church history, as Marheineke’s historical interests were largely
in the post-Reformation period. Born in 1789 of Jewish descent as David
Mendel, the new professor had changed his name to Johann August Wilhelm
Neander upon converting to Christianity in 1806. As a student of law at the
University of Halle, he had heard Schleiermacher lecture on church history
and had read his Reden; these experiences contributed to his decision to
forsake law for theology. With the closing of Halle by Napoleon in 1807,

235 On Hegelian philosophy and Christianity generally, see Welch, Protestant Thought in the
Nineteenth Century, i. 86–107.
236 On Marheineke, see Friedrich Wilhelm Graf ’s entry in Biographisch-Bibliographisches
Kirchenlexikon (Herzberg: T. Bautz, 1994), v. 805–12. On Marheineke’s appropriation of He-
gelian philosophy, see John E. Toews, Hegelianism: The Path toward Dialectical Humanism,
1805–1841 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 147–9. On the conXict between
Schleiermacher and Hegel/Hegelians at Berlin, see Richard Crouter, ‘Hegel and Schleiermacher
at Berlin: A Many-Sided Debate’, JAAR 48 (1980): 19–43.
Neander moved on to Göttingen, where he taught as a lecturer for several
years. In 1809 he returned to Hamburg, the city of his youth, and was
examined for the ministry. But judging himself more Wt for the lectern than
the pulpit, he accepted in 1811 a call to the University of Heidelberg, where he
produced an acclaimed study of Julian the Apostate and was made an
extraordinary professor in 1812. The following year, at the age of 24, he
heeded the call from his former mentor at Halle and joined the faculty at
Berlin, where he established a reputation as Germany’s foremost church
historian. His voluminous publications touched on many subjects, although
he became best known for his widely translated multivolume Allgemeine
Geschichte der christlichen Religion und Kirche (Hamburg, 1825–54).237 Always
a favourite among Berlin’s students and more inclined to traditional
orthodoxy than his colleagues, Neander taught at Berlin until his death in
1850. ‘Schleiermacher was admired and feared,’ Philip SchaV once opined,
while ‘Neander was esteemed and beloved.’238
6. ‘RENEWING PROTESTANTISM’:
SCHLEIERMACHER AND THE CHALLENGE
OF MODERN THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION
Schleiermacher was above all a university man.

August Twesten
The labours of Schleiermacher, de Wette, Marheineke, and Neander after 1810
were impressive, and rather quickly Berlin assumed a leading position among
German theological faculties. Despite their relative youth, the combined ex-
periences of these scholars at other intellectually vibrant institutions—such as
Halle, Göttingen, Jena, and even ancient Heidelberg (which had witnessed
major renovation as part of the expanded state of Baden after 1803) meant that
Berlin’s theologians were in touch with some of the most forward-looking
academic currents of their day. That some of their most productive years
coincided with the launching of a major, new university redounded both to
their scholarship and to the reputation of the university as well. What is more,
237 See Kurt-Victor Selge, ‘August Neander—ein getaufter Hamburger Jude der Emanzipa-
tions- und Restaurationszeit als erster Berliner Kirchenhistoriker’, in Beiser and Gestrich (eds.),
450 Jahre Evangelische Theologie in Berlin, 233–76.
238 Philip SchaV, Saint Augustin, Melanchthon, Neander: Three Biographies (New York, 1886),
135.
the reform-saturated milieu of the university’s founding contributed to the
ethos of the theological faculty. Sandwiched between two eras of reaction (the
earlier Wöllner years and the post-1819 Vormärz era) and in the train of the
deWning political revolution of modernity, the university’s infancy allowed for
a remarkable degree of intellectual experimentation and innovation. The
German nation must respond to a ‘new age’, Fichte had said, for ‘time is taking
giant strides with us more than with any other age since the history of the world
began’—hyperbolic words no doubt, but suggestive of a mood felt by many.239
To be sure, the reality of a new age was also not lost on other German
theological faculties, but the University of Berlin, founded in this era of
upheaval and transition, could claim the spirit of modernity as its own
patrimony. Further, since theology, in the eyes of its critics, properly belonged
to a vanishing world, Berlin’s theologians were all the more determined to
confer upon their discipline new legitimacy. Each would have felt acutely a
sentiment expressed well by Claude Welch: ‘At the beginning of the nineteenth
century, the theological problem was, simply, ‘‘how is theology possible?’’
This was a question of both rationale and method, and included, at least
implicitly, the question of whether theology is possible at all.’240
Consequently, much theological work from the period reXects a concern
with what one might call foundational disciplinary issues (what is the dis-
tinctive nature of theology?), which took into account the widespread con-
viction of novel circumstances (how does theology proceed in this post-
Enlightenment, post-revolutionary era?). Responses to these questions varied
among Berlin’s four founding theologians, but they were taken up by each.
ReXecting the new historical consciousness of the times, Neander turned to
historical inquiry as a means for opening up theology’s future; only through
comprehensive historical knowledge of the Christian past could academic
theology and the church acquire a Wrmer footing to respond to present and
future challenges. To varying degrees, his colleagues too embraced greater
appreciation for historical research and historical development in matters
theological. But history was only one possible avenue of renewal.
Philosophy was another. And Berlin’s theological faculty—Schleiermacher,
Marheineke, and de Wette in particular—were keen on opening up theology
to philosophical inXuences—be they Kantian, Hegelian, or other. Schleier-
macher regularly taught philosophical subjects at the university,241 he devoted
239 Fichte, Addresses to the German People, 2–3.

240 Welch, Protestant Thought in the Nineteenth Century, i. 59.
241 An index of all of Schleiermacher’s lectures, philosophical and theological, is found in
‘Index lectionum quae auspiciis Regis Augustissimi Friderici Guilelmi in Universitate Litteraria
Berolinia constituta 1810–1832’, NStUB, H. lit. part. III 38/1.
years to a translation of Plato’s dialogues, and he served in the philosophical
section of Berlin’s Academy of Science, also acting as the Academy’s secre-
tary.242 Marheineke came to embrace Hegelian philosophy to such an extent
that he was regularly accused of selling theology’s birthright to philosophy,
siding with ‘Athens’, his critics charged, against ‘Jerusalem’. De Wette too was
conversant in the leading philosophical currents of the day; his own theology
and biblical criticism were grounded in a meticulously worked-out philo-
sophical system, which contained elements of the thought of Herder, Schel-
ling, Kant, and especially J. F. Fries.243
Often the varying philosophical currents among Berlin’s theological faculty
resulted in discord. The relationship between Schleiermacher and Marheineke
grew particularly sour, as I have suggested, because of their contrasting
evaluations of Hegel’s philosophy. De Wette and Schleiermacher too often
came into conXict. De Wette once conWded to a friend that the epistemo-
logical basis of Schleiermacher’s theology led to a ‘lax mysticism’ and ‘eso-
tericism’. Conversely, Schleiermacher worried that de Wette’s historical
criticism of the Bible was at times ‘too radical’.244
Despite their diVerences, Schleiermacher, de Wette, Marheineke, and Nean-
der recognized that the revolutionary epoch in which they lived called for a
new theological programme—a programme neither rigidly confessional nor
rationalist nor neologist in the eighteenth-century sense, a programme in which
modernity in its broadest scope, especially the new imperative of Wissenschaft,
was taken into consideration, but nonetheless a programme faithful to the
deeper currents of the Christian faith. What is more, the programme should
give expression to the particular genius of the German people, who three
centuries earlier had given the world Martin Luther, the Protestant Reforma-
tion, and hence—so the argument went—new avenues of truth-seeking and
emancipation.245 Perhaps de Wette expressed this sense of historical transition
and new theological undertaking best when he wrote in his Über Religion und
Theologie (1815) that ‘everyone [nowadays] searches and strives for a new,
higher religious life. But clarity of consciousness has not arrived yet, and the
conXicting views and eVorts are well known. Many want to return wholly to
242 Redeker, Schleiermacher, 151 V., and Harnack, Geschichte der königlich preussischen Aka-
demie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin (Berlin, 1901), i. 848 V.
243 Rudolf Smend, ‘De Wette und das Verhältnis zwischen historischer Bibelkritik und
philosophischem System im 19.Jahrhundert’, TZ 14 (1957): 107–19.
244 See material in Staehelin (ed.), Dewettiana, 72, 77, 81.
245 e.g. de Wette argued in his Über Religion und Theologie (Berlin, 1815) that the Reforma-
tion represented ‘the third great moment in the history of the freeing of the religious spirit’—the
other two being Mosaic monotheism and apostolic Christianity. See p. 107.
the old, others want to create something new. A solidly formed, agreed-upon
theology eludes us.’246
Despite the industrious eVorts of his colleagues at Berlin and contempor-
aries elsewhere, it was Schleiermacher, above all, who transformed Protestant
theology in the early nineteenth century and gave shape to something known
as liberal or cultural Protestantism, which has had immeasurable inXuence
not only on academic theology but on the general religious sensibilities of the
modern world. As his colleague and no less a historical mind than Neander
put it upon Schleiermacher’s death: ‘From him a new period in the history of
the church will one day take its origin.’ Or, as Karl Barth, Schleiermacher’s
greatest adversary and admirer, famously expressed it: ‘The Wrst place in the
history of the theology of the most recent times belongs and will always
belong to Schleiermacher, and he has no rival’—an exaggeration perhaps
but not an altogether groundless one.247
To a large degree, Schleiermacher’s renown rests on his Reden (1799) and
his well-known Der christliche Glaube (1821; 2nd edn., 1830), his most
comprehensive and systematic work. But for shaping the liberal theological
enterprise in German Protestant universities throughout the nineteenth cen-
tury and beyond, his slender Kurze Darstellung des theologischen Studiums
(1811, 2nd edn.; 1830) stands out as the more signiWcant work.248 This is the
case for at least three reasons. First, Kurze Darstellung was intended as a
pedagogical work, derived from Schleiermacher’s lectures on ‘theologische
Encyklopädie’, his introductory course taken by beginning students. Initially
246 De Wette, Über Religion und Theologie (Berlin, 1815), 123.

247 Karl Barth, Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century: Its Background and History,
trans. John Bowden (London: SCM, 1972), 425; the quote from Neander is also taken from Barth.
248 The full title of the Wrst edition was Kurze Darstellung des theologischen Studiums zum
Behuf einleitender Vorlesungen entworfen von F. Schleiermacher (Berlin, 1811); the second
edition: Kurze Darstellung des theologischen Studiums zum Behuf einleitender Vorlesungen.
Entworfen von F. Schleiermacher. Zweite umgearbeitete Ausgabe (Berlin, 1830). My citations are
from the second edition (which, though expanded and reworked, does not substantively deviate
from the Wrst), although they are made in consultation with the Wrst edition and with the
published notes to Schleiermacher’s course on the topic made by David Friedrich Strauss. See
Strauss, Theologische Enzyklopädie (1831/32) Nachschrift David Friedrich Strauss, ed. Walter
Sachs (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1987). Strauss’s notes were based on Schleiermacher’s Wnal
course on theological encyclopedia given at the University of Berlin. The 1830 edition of
Schleiermacher’s work was Wrst translated into English by William Farrer in 1850. Terrence
Tice produced another English translation in 1966. See Schleiermacher, Brief Outline of the
Study of Theology, Drawn up to Serve as the Basis for Introductory Lectures, trans. William Farrer
(Edinburgh, 1850), and Schleiermacher, Brief Outline on the Study of Theology, trans. Terrence
Tice (Richmond, Va.: John Knox, 1966). I have relied heavily on these translations, particularly
the latter.
oVered by Schleiermacher while at Halle, he would teach the subject eleven
times altogether, instructing some 600 students, making it among his most
frequently oVered and best-attended courses.249 Schleiermacher himself
placed great importance on this course: the success of theological rejuven-
ation in the modern era, he held, depended on the ability to transmit theology
eVectively and clearly to a new generation of clergymen and professors in the
universities; and this could only take place once beginning students obtained
‘a solid and thorough view of the entire Weld of theology’.250 During the time
of Berlin’s founding, therefore, publishing an introductory book on theo-
logical encyclopedia became one of Schleiermacher’s abiding concerns. To his
bride, Henriette von Willich, he expressed a desire to publish ‘a small aca-
demic handbook’, noting elsewhere that his new post at Berlin would provide
him the occasion ‘to set down in writing [his] complete theological viewpoint
in his own instructional manuals’ and thereby ‘found a theological school
for building up and renewing Protestantism, which can no longer continue
as it is’.251
Second, Kurze Darstellung oVered an intellectual rationale for university
theology. The nature of the encyclopedia genre was not, as we might assume,
the alphabetic organization of various bits of knowledge; rather, reXecting the
original meaning of the term ‘encyclopedia’ (the circle of knowledge), the
genre sought to justify and delineate a particular branch of knowledge in
relation to the whole.252 Schleiermacher thus oVered much more than an
introduction to theology for beginning students. Indeed, at an important
juncture in the evolution of the modern German university, he responded to
249 A chronological listing of Schleiermacher’s courses on the subject, including the number
of students registered, is found in Dirk Schmid’s ‘historical introduction’ to Schleiermacher,
KGA I. vi. pp. xxxvi–xxxviii. Before publishing his own book, Schleiermacher relied on two
widely used eighteenth-century texts that I have mentioned previously: J. A. Nösselt’s Anweisung
zur Bildung angehender Theologen, 2 vols., 2nd edn. (Halle, 1791) and G. J. Planck’s Einleitung in
die theologischen Wissenschaften, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1794–5).
250 This was how August Twesten, Schleiermacher’s pupil and eventual successor, described
his mentor’s course. Georg Heinrici (ed.), D. August Twesten nach Tagebüchern und Briefen
(Berlin, 1889), 51.
251 See the letter of 28 March 1809 in Schleiermacher, Aus Schleiermachers Leben in Briefen, ii.
235, and the letter of 17 December 1809 (to Carl Gustav von Brinckmann) in Schleiermacher,
Aus Schleiermachers Leben in Briefen, iv. 172. In the letter to Brinckman, Schleiermacher tied
renewing Protestantism to overcoming confessional divisions: ‘In einem solchen Zeitraum
würde ich im Stande sein . . . meine ganze theologische Ansicht in einigen kurzen Lehrbüchern
niederzulegen und wie ich hoVe dadurch eine theologische Schule zu gründen, die den Protes-
tantismus wie er jetzt sein muß ausbildet und neu belebt, und zugleich den Weg zu einer
künftigen Aufhebung des Gegensatzes beider Kirchen frei läßt und vielleicht bahn’ (emphasis
added).
252 See EKL 1097 V. A fuller discussion of this academic genre and its importance in the
nineteenth-century German university context will be given in ch. 5.
theology’s critics by seeking to legitimize theology within the totality of the
Wissenschaften, making the case that theology both qualiWed as a Wissenschaft
and possessed a certain internal unity and purpose that justiWed having its
own university faculty. In other words, academic theology should not simply
be subsumed under history and philology, as some university reformers, such
as Fichte, had suggested.
Finally, the signiWcance of Schleiermacher’s Kurze Darstellung is attested to
by its inXuence. Although it never became a popularly used textbook itself,253 it
left a profound mark on the eVorts of others, notably those of Karl Rudolf
Hagenbach (1801–74), who produced the most popular Protestant theological
encyclopedia in the nineteenth century. It also aVected Catholic thought,
especially its more liberal branches. In particular, the Catholic theologian
Johann Sebastian Drey (1777–1853), the father of the so-called ‘Catholic
Tübingen School’, was quite taken by Schleiermacher’s volume and employed
its ideas in his own inXuential works.254 Subsequent theological encyclopedias
and textbooks, a few Catholic but mainly Protestant, almost universally paid
tribute to Schleiermacher’s slender encyclopedia, portraying it often as a
turning point in modern theological education.
The work itself is divided into three sections: philosophical theology,
historical theology, and practical theology. As such, it is somewhat idiosyn-
cratic, breaking with the more typical fourfold pattern of exegesis, dogmatics,
history, and practical theology.255 Stylistically, the work is notoriously diY-
cult, written in a highly compressed, suggestive form, which in part helps
account for the fact that it was rarely used in courses. Several reviewers
complained of its ‘incomprenhensibility’, one even suggested that it was better
suited for students completing, not beginning, their theological studies.256
253 The only scholar who appears to have used the text in his courses was Schleiermacher’s
friend J. C. Gaß at Breslau, who claimed that from Schleiermacher’s work ‘a new school of
theology should be established’. See letter of 16 November 1822 in W. Gaß (ed.), Fr. Schleier-
macher’s Briefwechsel mit J. Chr. Gaß (Berlin, 1852), 195.
254 Hagenbach’s work will be treated in Ch. 5. On Drey and the ‘Catholic Tübingen School’
(the label is sometimes contested), see Drey, Brief Introduction to the Study of Theology with
Reference to the ScientiWc Standpoint and the Catholic System, trans. and with an introd. by
Michael J. Himes (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994). Cf. J. T. Burtchaell,
‘Drey, Möhler and the Catholic School at Tübingen’, in Ninian Smart et al. (eds.), Nineteenth
Century Religious Thought in the West (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), ii. 111–
39. The Catholic Tübingen School was undoubtedly one of the most important intellectual
movements in nineteenth-century Catholicism, widely recognized as anticipating twentieth-
century developments, not least the Second Vatican Council.
255 Edward Farley, Theologia: The Fragmentation and Unity of Theological Education (Phila-
delphia: Fortress, 1983), 84.
256 For the reviews and reception of Kurze Darstellung, see KGA I. vi. pp. xlvii–lxiii, lxix–
lxxvii.
Nonetheless, Kurze Darstellung stands at the threshold of modern academic
theology and modern university development. Schleiermacher oVered a preg-
nant deWnition of theology at the outset of the work: ‘Theology is a positive
science (positive Wissenschaft) . . . whose parts join into a whole only through
their common relation to a particular mode of faith, a particular way of being
conscious of God. Thus, the various parts of Christian theology belong
together only by virtue of their relation to Christianity.’257 The term ‘positive
science’ is a revealing one, which Schleiermacher had borrowed from Schel-
ling. As we have seen, Schelling used the term in reference to the higher
faculties, which found their legitimacy in the university because they fostered
knowledge that addressed practical human and social needs.258 By contrast,
the philosophical faculty derived its legitimacy from ‘primal knowledge’
alone, the pure idea and pursuit of Wissenschaft, which both Schelling and
Schleiermacher held as an intrinsic good apart from practical consider-
ations.259 Criticized, however, for not making clear what he meant by ‘positive
science’ in the Wrst edition of his work, Schleiermacher assayed his own
deWnition in the second: ‘a positive science is a gathering of scientiWc com-
ponents which belong together not because they form a constituent part of the
organization of the sciences, as though by some necessity arising out of the idea
of science itself, but only insofar as they are necessary for carrying out a practical
task’.260 In eVect, Schleiermacher conceded that theology had no academic
legitimacy apart from its ‘practical’ function. Without a relation to ecclesias-
tical life, he elaborated, the same knowledge ‘ceases to be theological and
devolves to those sciences to which it belongs according to its varied con-
tent’.261 The study of the New Testament, for example, if undertaken oblivious
to the current needs and state of the church, might as well fall within the
257 KGA I. vi. 325.

258 The term, though, had antecedents before Schelling. See Pannenberg, Theology and the
Philosophy of Science, 248 V.
259 Schleiermacher had written a critical review Schelling’s Vorlesungen über die Methode des
akademischen Studiums for the Jenaische Literaturzeitung in 1804. Nonetheless, his understand-
ing of the term ‘positive science’ and the role of the ‘higher faculties’ appears to be largely
derivative from Schelling. Already in his work on the university of 1808 he had written: ‘The
positive faculties each arose from the need to establish an indispensable praxis securely on
theory and the tradition of knowledge.’ Schleiermacher, ‘Gelegentliche Gedanken’, in Anrich
(ed.), Die Idee der deutschen Universität, 282. On Schleiermacher’s debt to Schelling, see
Pannenberg, Theology and the Philosophy of Science, 249.
260 KGA I. vi. 325–6 (emphasis added). Twesten summed up Schleiermacher’s understanding
of university theology as follows: ‘Die Theologie gehört nach Schleiermacher zu denjenigen
Wissenschaften, deren Einheit und Gliederung in der Beziehung auf einen gewissen Beruf
gegründet ist; sie ist ihm der InbegriV von Kenntnissen, welche den Theologen zu einer
fruchtbaren Thätigkeit im Dienste der Kirche befähigen sollen.’ August Twesten, Zur Errinner-
ung an Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher (Berlin, 1869), 25–6.
261 KGA I. vi. 328.
purview of secular history, philology, ethics, linguistics, or something else.
Thus theology qua university science was intimately tied to the church or,
more speciWcally, to church leadership (Kirchenleitung).
Such a concession prompted Schleiermacher to attribute special signiW-
cance to practical theology, the third in his tripartite scheme. In the 1811
edition he referred to practical theology as the ‘crown’ of theological study.262
A true student of theology should recognize that everything he accomplished
during his university years, all the knowledge acquired, should be animated by
a certain ‘ecclesial interest’, which regarded the ediWcation and mission of the
church as its rightful end. If this ‘ecclesial interest’ was somehow lost or never
present in the Wrst place, one still might be considered a Wissenschaftler in
religious matters, but no longer a theologian in the proper sense of the word.
In the Wnal analysis, Schleiermacher deWned theology in relation to the
purpose of the knowledge, not the content; if theology lost sight of this
purpose, its various disciplines, again, might as well be taken up within the
philosophical faculty, as Fichte and others had intimated.
However, while a Wissenschaftler engaged in traditionally theological sub-
jects might not classify as an actual theologian, according to Schleiermacher, a
theologian must, at some level, be a Wissenschaftler, especially if he sought an
academic vocation. A professor of theology, he had written in Gelegentliche
Gedanken, did not deserve to be part of the university unless he was capable of
high-level scientiWc distinction.263 Thus, the true theologian should gracefully
combine ecclesial and scientiWc interests; the individual who could achieve
such a balance deserved the highest praise and emulation by others. As
Schleiermacher expressed it, ‘If one should imagine both a religious interest
and a scientiWc spirit united in the highest degree and with the Wnest balance
for the purpose of theoretical and practical activity alike, that would the idea
of a ‘‘prince of the church’’ ’ (Kirchenfürsten).264
But what exactly did Schleiermacher have in mind by the graceful combin-
ation of the ecclesial and the scientiWc? At Wrst glance, it would appear that by
privileging practical theology, Schleiermacher desired a predominantly cler-
ical or church-directed theology. In fact, some of the Wrst reviewers of his
work faulted Schleiermacher for precisely this reason, for appearing too
reactionary, threatening the development of free science and ‘clericalizing’
theology.265 This is of course a misjudgement, but one that reveals the opacity
often rendered by Schleiermacher in his eVorts to build bridges between
262 ‘Die praktische Theologie ist die Krone des theologischen Studiums.’ KGA I. vi. 253.
versität, 257 V.
264 KGA I. vi. 328.
265 Noted ibid. p. lvi.
traditional Christianity and modern culture. Further reXection suggests that
the relationship between the scientiWc and the ecclesial was in fact no simple
matter. What does appear evident, however, is that Schleiermacher invested
science with a predominantly active role and the church with a passive one:
the church was presented as the needy recipient of scientiWc tutelage, whereas
science appears as autonomous and self-justifying. Further insight into this
matter is found in the other two sections of the work, the more explicitly
scientiWc sections on philosophical and historical theology. In these, Schleier-
macher introduced concepts and patterns of thinking of immense import-
ance, for theological education in particular and liberal Protestant thought in
general.266
According to Schleiermacher, deWning the ‘distinctive nature of Christian-
ity’ constituted the special task of philosophical theology. To do this properly,
the theologian must adopt a ‘critical’ attitude, one that somehow stood ‘above
Christianity’ but, paradoxically, remained rooted ‘in the general concept of
[a] religious community of fellowship of faith’.267 The critical theologian
should survey the vast array of religious communities and compare them to
the ‘idea’ of Christianity, which Schleiermacher in quasi-Platonic fashion
believed apprehensible to the tutored Christian mind even if no pure ex-
amples existed in reality. (This is not unlike Adolf von Harnack’s famous
eVort to deWne the ‘essence’ (Wesen) of Christianity in the early twentieth
century.)268 The goal of the theologian then, through critical inquiry and
reXection, was to identify ‘diseased’ forms of Christianity while steering the
church toward greater approximation of the pure idea of Christianity.
Schleiermacher indicated that this conception of philosophical theology
stood in a close proximity to historical theology, which he labelled the ‘true
body of theology’.269 In fact, philosophical theology could accomplish its own
aim only after obtaining a mature ‘historical perspective on Christianity’.
Otherwise, the tasks of practical theology and church leadership were also
impossible.270
Historical theology, I would then submit, provides the linchpin to the
entire text and helps clarify Schleiermacher’s understanding of the relation-
ship between scientiWc understanding and ecclesial practice.271 Indeed,
266 Welch, Protestant Thought in the Nineteenth Century, i. 69 V.

267 In the 1811 edition he speaks simply of the ‘idea of religion.’ KGA I. vi. 256.
268 Adolf von Harnack, Das Wesen des Christentums (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus,
1999).
269 KGA I. vi. 336.
270 Ibid. 342–52.
271 In the 1811 edition Schleiermacher wrote that ‘historical theology is the actual body of the
whole of theological study and in its own way contains within it both other parts,’ i.e.
philosophical and practical theology. ibid. 254.
Schleiermacher elevated the historical dimension of theology to a level of
importance previously unknown in the history of theological education.
Historical knowledge was ‘Wrst and foremost, the indispensable condition of
all intelligent eVort towards the further cultivation of Christianity’. Schleier-
macher’s placed under historical theology not only church history, but Old
and New Testament exegesis, hermeneutics, linguistic study, and even church
statistics. SigniWcantly and quite radically, he also identiWed dogmatics as
a component of historical theology. Dogma was no longer a timeless phe-
nomenon expressed in historical creeds and based on the Bible and revelation,
but, for the critical theologian, a developing, dialectical enterprise that ad-
mitted science as major arbiter of its essence: ‘the development of doctrine
(Entwicklung der Lehre) is determined by the entire state of science and
especially by prevailing philosophical views’.272 It was this aspect of Schleier-
macher’s course on theological encyclopedia that had disturbed but nonethe-
less made sense to the young August Twesten, Schleiermacher’s future
successor at Berlin. ‘In his encyclopedia’, Twesten wrote in his diary for 21
January 1811,
Schleiermacher places dogmatics under the historical sciences and comprehends it
under . . . the knowledge of the present doctrinal condition of Christianity. At Wrst this
seems strange, but it’s right, because suppose someone wanted to stick solely with the
Bible and build a [theological] system from it, but wouldn’t this system also be a
product of his current education, and thus the time in which he lived?273
Or, as Karl Barth—commenting on the section on historical theology in the
Kurze Darstellung—later expressed it: ‘theological historicism is [here] . . .
established Wrmly and solidly and deWnitively’.274
In large measure then Schleiermacher associated scientiWc with historical
understanding, and intimated that valid doctrinal development must take
modern historical consciousness into consideration. He no longer regarded
dogma as an absolute phenomenon, which emphasized timeless verities, but
as a dialectical one, which emphasized process and development—‘the dia-
lectical element in doctrine’ as he phrased it.275 For this reason, future
religious leaders must possess an extensive and wissenschaftlich historical
awareness. ‘[T]he historical knowledge of the present moment of history
stands in direct relation to church leadership, since it is that out of which
versität, 385 f.
273 Heinrici, D. August Twesten nach Tagebüchern und Briefen, 118.
274 Karl Barth, The Theology of Schleiermacher: Lectures at Göttingen, Winter Semester 1923/
24, ed. Dietrich Ritschl, trans. GeoVrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982), 152.
275 KGA I. vi. 402.
future movements are to be derived.’276 Without history, the student of
theology ‘will not be able to exercise his own discretion in church leader-
ship’.277
In sum, an impetus toward greater historical consciousness and criticism,
as an expression of scientiWc awareness generally, constitutes a major legacy of
Kurze Darstellung for Protestant theological education. The theological fac-
ulty, to be sure, should maintain an orientation towards the church; this in
fact secured its legitimacy as a positive science and a university enterprise. Yet
Schleiermacher’s conception of ‘the church’ was rather general, insuYciently
attentive perhaps to the actual state church existing in Prussia at this time.
And thus by connecting theology to the church, Pannenberg has noted,
‘Schleiermacher forgot that it was not the church that gave theology a place
in the university. Theology would continue as a university faculty only
if . . . the state also had reasons for wanting to keep it there. This would have
meant a connection between church and state which Schleiermacher [other-
wise] opposed.’278
Moreover, the primary purpose of theology’s ecclesial orientation was to
ensure that the church maintained a ‘vital linkage’ to historical understanding
and scientiWc progress, without which it risked drifting into obscurantism,
irrelevance, and confessional rigidity. Whether or not the church possessed
any indigenous intellectual resources relevant to assessing the claims and
purview of modern Wissenschaft was not a question that Schleiermacher
extensively took up. That he did not should tell us something both about
Schleiermacher’s general historical situation and his particular preoccupa-
tions, which had great consequence for the modern theological enterprise as
the nineteenth century progressed. ‘His inXuence did not decrease, it in-
creased as time went on, and his views established themselves more and
more.’279
If one then understands Schleiermacher’s Kurze Darstellung as a peda-
gogical manifesto of sorts to transform and reanimate Protestantism with
the needed assistance of modern scientiWc and historical consciousness,
Schleiermacher’s colleagues, despite their diVerences and conXicts, would
largely stand in agreement with his general aims. At least they too would
hold that Christian theology stood in need of re-envisioning as a response to
the cultural conditions of modernity. To this end, all members of Berlin’s
276 KGA I. vi. 357.

277 Ibid. 364. For a thoughtful analysis of Schleiermacher’s views on history and doctrinal
development, see John E. Thiel, ‘Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy in Schleiermacher’s Theological
Encyclopedia: Doctrinal Development and Theological Creativity’, HJ 25 (1984): 142–57.
278 Pannenberg, Theology and the Philosophy of Science, 251.
279 Barth, Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century, 425.
theological faculty laboured with great intensity and productivity during the
early years of the new university.
Besides his Kurze Darstellung, Schleiermacher taught and published in
hermeneutics, New Testament studies, dogmatics, Christian ethics, practical
theology, and homiletics—all this in addition to teaching philosophical
courses, preaching at Berlin’s Trinity Church, and serving as a member and
secretary of Berlin’s Academy of Science. In 1821 he capped oV a decade of
labour by publishing Der christliche Glaube, which ever since has assured him
a place in the pantheon of modern Christian thought. Meanwhile, de Wette
undertook Old and New Testaments studies, Christian ethics, dogmatics,
hermeneutics, Jewish biblical history, and biblical archaeology. Marheineke
taught church history, the history of dogma, homiletics, practical theology
and liturgy, theological encyclopedia, and symbolics; whereas Neander cov-
ered church history, the history of dogma, and patristics, among other
subjects.280
As records indicate, these four theologians could boast over 1,220 students
enrolled in their courses between 1810 and 1820—roughly 15 per cent of
all matriculated students.281 Included among the faculty’s early and mid-
nineteenth-century students were some of the leading lights (and leading
troublemakers) of future German theology, including August Twesten,
Friedrich Lücke, Wilhelm Vatke, Philip SchaV, Karl Rudolph Hagenbach,
Alois Emmanuel Biedermann, Richard Rothe, David Friedrich Strauss, and
Bruno Bauer, among others. The attraction of Berlin for Germany’s top
theological students was borne out in Karl Schwarz’s Zur Geschichte der
neuesten Theologie (1869). ‘In the 1820s and 1830s,’ Schwarz wrote,
streamed the elite of the young theologians [to Berlin] in order to receive . . . the
consecration of science (Weihe der Wissenschaft), a stimulus for one’s whole life. And
not just those who wanted to take their Wnal theological examination . . . but older
men in large numbers, those already ordained in the ministry, curates from Baden,
from Switzerland, from Württemberg, tutors and those with doctorates from Tübin-
gen; men who had laboured in their academic pursuits with zeal and distinction, full
of respect before the names of Schleiermacher, Neander, Hegel, Marheineke, made
their pilgrimage to Berlin in order to return to their native land with a richer knowl-
edge. . . . It was, at that time, the golden age of our theology.282
280 On the course listings, see ‘Index lectionum quae auspiciis Regis Augustissimi Friderici
Guilelmi in Universitate Litteraria Berolinia constituta 1810–1832’, NStUB, H. lit. part. III 38/1.
281 The percentage of students in the theological faculty rose during the Vormärz period to a
high of 31.8% in the early 1830s before beginning a steady decline throughout the rest of the
century. On student matriculation in the theological faculty, see Lenz, Universität Berlin, v. 517.
282 Karl Schwarz, Zur Geschichte der neuesten Theologie, 4th edn. (Leipzig, 1869), 56.
In addition to heavy teaching assignments, church duties, and administra-
tive obligations,283 Berlin’s theologians produced a steady stream of sig-
niWcant scholarship. Leaving Schleiermacher’s indefatigable industry aside,
de Wette published Beytrag über die Psalmen (1811), Commentatio Morte Jesu
Christi expiatoria (1813), Lehrbuch der christliche Dogmatik (1813), Die neue
Kirche oder Verstand und Glaube im Bunde (1815), Über Religion und Theo-
logie (1815), and Lehrbuch der historisch-kritischen Einleitung in die Bibel
(1817). Marheineke produced Grundlegung der Homiletik (1811), Christliche
Symbolik (1813), and his acclaimed Geschichte der deutschen Reformation
(1816). Neander too authored several important works, including Bernhard
von Clairvaux (1813) and Die Gnosis (1818); he also broke ground with his
magisterial multivolume Allgemeine Geschichte der christlichen Religion, the
Wrst volume of which appeared in 1825.
Despite manifold diVerences, which the content of the above works would
amply bear out, important collaborative work regularly took place among the
faculty. The theological seminar, established in 1812, was one example; it
became a seedbed for critical theological scholarship throughout the rest of
the century, regularly serving as a model for similar institutions at other
universities. Another example was a theological journal, the Theologische
Zeitschrift, founded in 1819 by Schleiermacher, de Wette, and the young
Privatdozent, Friedrich Lücke. Its inaugural volume included a charge from
the founders that Wttingly sums up the ethos of the new faculty: ‘We insist
only on seriousness, profundity, clarity, and liveliness—in a word Wis-
senschaftlichkeit; and we promise to take great pains to accomplish the highest
possible impartiality and versatility, although each [scholar] in his own work
will remain tenaciously faithful to his own presuppositions and convictions.’
Eschewing confessional rigidity, the journal sought to unite young, learned
theologians around ‘the higher purposes of Wissenschaft ’.284
Such lofty sentiments notwithstanding, it would be remiss to portray the
activity of Berlin’s initial theological faculty in exclusively positive terms.
Early on, troubling signs about the practical workability of theology’s new
pact with ‘Wissenschaftlichkeit’ were evident. In his 1813 Commentatio morte
Jesu Christi expiatoria, for example, de Wette appeared to deny the traditional
doctrine of the Atonement on the basis of historical-critical evidence. This
283 Both Schleiermacher and Marheineke were honoured by election to serve as rector of the
university: Schleiermacher in 1815–16, Marheineke in 1817–18 and again in 1831–2. See Her-
neck and Tyzko (eds.), Die Rektoren der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 18, 22.
284 Theologische Zeitschrift 1 (1819): 1, NStUBG 8 TH Misc. 216/34. While this journal was
short-lived (1819–22), its spirit lived on in the journal Theologische Studien und Kritiken, co-
founded by Lücke at Bonn in 1828; this became one of the most important theological journals
of the century. See Christophersen, Friedrich Lücke, i. 138–46, 179–91.
book raised a storm of protest from Prussia’s more conservative political and
religious elites, disquieted by the faith-threatening implications of modern
critical inquiry. Eventually, the book would play a role in de Wette’s dismissal
from Berlin in 1819, a victim of the new conservative Restoration politics.285
What is more, in part because of de Wette’s association with the Theologsiche
Zeitschrift, the journal never realized its goals and ceased publication in 1822.
Although generally sanguine about the future relationship of science and
theology, Schleiermacher too gave voice to subtle signs of warning. ‘In the
study of church history, the ecclesial and scientiWc interest must not be
allowed to fall into contradiction with each other (in Widersprüch mit einan-
der gerathen),’ he wrote in his Kurze Darstellung, admitting the latent poten-
tiality for just such a development.286 In the section on practical theology, this
fear was even more apparent: ‘Since the academic instructor, in dealing with
youth who are especially motivated by religious interest, has to bring . . . the
scientiWc spirit to their awareness for the Wrst time, the method is thus to be
speciWed by which this spirit may be quickened in them without weakening
their religious interest.’ Then Schleiermacher added: ‘How little we are as yet
in possession of such a method may be learned from experience, of a sort
which happens only too often’—presumably the quickening of the scientiWc
spirit at the expense of the religious.287
Indeed, deWning the relationship of the new spirit of Wissenschaft to
theology became one of the most worrisome, controversial, celebrated, and
extensively discussed issues of the times. Throughout Germany, in university
addresses, lectures, sermons, and popular literature, debates and discussions
on the topic took place. Addresses, such as Hagenbach’s ‘Ueber den BegriV
and die Bedeutung der Wissenschaftlichkeit im Gebiete der Theologie’
(1830), proliferated from lecturn and pulpit alike. In 1828 the conservative
Evangelische Kirchenzeitung charged that the new ‘Wissenschafts-Enthusias-
mus in Deutschland’ had become a ‘Surrogat für Religion’.288 The fears of
theological conservatives seemed realized in 1835 when David Friedrich
Strauss, a devotee of Hegel and one of Schleiermacher’s last pupils at Berlin,
sought to expose the ‘mythic’ nature of Christianity in his Das Leben Jesu,
basing his claims on a putatively ‘presuppositionless’ Wissenschaft. As is well
known, this book ignited heated controversy and debate, which extended far
beyond Germany’s borders and outside the boundaries of academic theology.
285 Bigler, The Politics of German Protestantism, 44–5. I shall return to the topic of the post-
1819 conservative milieu and the University of Berlin in chs. 4 and 5.
286 KGA I. vi. 392.
287 Ibid. 443.
288 EKZ 62 (27 August 1828): 545 V. This journal was edited by E. W. Hengstenberg, a
proponent of confessional orthodoxy, who was hired to replace de Wette at Berlin.
To some, the book betokened the end of Christianity as a viable system of
belief. To others, it conWrmed the apostate spirit lurking in the heart of
modern scientiWc consciousness.289
However, more than science presented a dilemma for theology in the early
nineteenth century: the expanded power and tutelary reach of the state posed
another. The centralizing government directions of the Reform Era after 1806,
the statist measures of the reactionary political milieu after 1815–19, and the
state-orchestrated Prussian Church Union of 1817—albeit very diVerent
historical phenomena—all nonetheless had the eVect of increasing the
power of the state over church, education, and society alike. As a result,
German academic theology became inextricably and problematically yoked
to what one clever observer called the ‘the cold step-motherly arm of the
nominally Christian state’.290 To be sure, the state’s reach into religious
matters had characterized German Protestant political life since the Refor-
mation. However, historical forces in the early nineteenth century, as I shall
elaborate in ch. 4, contributed signiWcant new dimensions to this venerable,
questionable arrangement.
289 Horton Harris, David Friedrich Strauss and his Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1973), 41 V.
290 Philip SchaV, Germany; its Universities, Theology, and Religion (Edinburgh, 1857), 70.
4
An Erastian Modernity? Church,
State, and Education in Early
Nineteenth-Century Prussia
If the state recognizes the idea of guiding humanity to its highest joy as its
leading principle, then it will view the promotion of religiosity as the
highest goal and from [this] lofty standpoint . . . esteem the true worth of
religion.
Karl von Altenstein ‘Riga Memorandum’ (1807)
In Germany we have the peculiar condition that the servants of the
church receive their education in state institutions from state oYcials.
Friedrich Paulsen, Die deutschen Universitäten
und das Universitätsstudium (1902)
1 . IN T RO DU C TI O N
In a short guide for theology students published in 1905, the theologian

Heinrich Bassermann commented on the ‘double character’ of Germany’s
theological faculties. On the one hand, they ‘consisted of a churchly character’,
responsible for supplying society with future clergymen. On the other hand
‘they are, as a part of the state university, purely state institutions (reine
Staatsanstalten); the state hires and pays their professors’.1 Broaching this
same reality, Ernst Troeltsch remarked in 1907 that ‘the justiWcation of
theology within [state] universities has everything to do with the relationship
between church and state’. Calling attention to developments in the United
States and France, Troeltsch noted the increasingly anomalous case of the
German system, which allowed for avowedly church-related theological fac-
ulties in state-funded institutions of higher learning. He called this a ‘special
1 Heinrich Bassermann, Wie studiert man evangelische Theologie? (Stuttgart, 1905), 27–8.
Church, State, and Education 213
German tradition’ which traced its modern roots to the early nineteenth
century.2
Following Troeltsch’s lead, I focus attention in what follows on the early
nineteenth century, in particular on the Prussian Reform Era and the early
Vormärz period, which, as I have previously indicated, witnessed the emer-
gence of a new conception of the state as a tutelary agent in religious and
cultural matters (i.e. Erziehungsstaat or Kulturstaat).3 As the logical extension
of the state’s transformation, church–state relations underwent many
changes. The epochal events after 1806, Troeltsch remarked, ‘necessitated a
new legal construction of the church and a new formula for church–state
relations’.4 I characterize these developments here as an Erastian modernity
because of the extensive powers the state acquired over religious and cultural
matters. This new situation had implications for ecclesiastical life and theo-
logical faculties, not to mention for the general relationship between religion
and public life.
To underscore the signiWcance of these developments, it is helpful to relate
the church–state conWgurations of the post-1806 period to those of earlier
eras, to the eighteenth century in particular. My argument is best clariWed by
reference to a classic work, Erich Foerster’s Die Entstehung der preußischen
Landeskirche unter der Regierung König Friedrich Wilhelms des Dritten (1905).
Foerster contended that the creation of a state church (Staatskirchentum) by
Prussian ministers in the early nineteenth century represented ‘an overcoming
of the Enlightenment idea of the state’ and a return to an earlier ‘Reforma-
tion-Lutheran’ pattern.5 Other scholars too have viewed the establishment of
Prussia’s Protestant state church in the early nineteenth century either as a
relapse to less enlightened times or else as the culmination of the ecclesiastical
policies of eighteenth-century absolutism, which sought to harness religion
for the state’s utilitarian purposes.6 In both cases, continuity with the past is
2 Ernst Troeltsch, Die Trennung von Staat und Kirche, der staatliche Religionsunterricht und die
theologischen Fakultäten (Tübingen, 1907), 4, 41 f.
3 While I concentrate primarily on Prussia in what follows, many of my points—because of
parallel developments elsewhere and because of Prussia’s inXuence—could be made of other
German states as well. Admittedly though, when dealing with the early nineteenth century, one
must be careful about applying generalizations about Prussia to other German states. See
Matthew Levinger, Enlightened Nationalism: The Transformation of Prussian Political Culture,
1806–1848 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 41–70.
4 Troeltsch, Die Trennung von Staat und Kirche, 41.
5 Erich Foerster, Die Entstehung der preußischen Landeskirche unter der Regierung König
Friedrich Wilhelms des Dritten (Tübingen, 1905), i. 126. Foerster himself was a strong apologist
of the Prussian territorial church.
6 Besides Foerster, see Nicholas Hope, German and Scandinavian Protestantism, 1700–1918
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), 336 V.; Otto Hintze, ‘Die Epochen des evangelischen Kirchenregi-
ments in Preußen’, HZ 97 (1906): 67–118; and Rudolf von Thadden, Prussia: The History of a
Lost State, trans. Angi Rutter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 86–117.
214 Church, State, and Education
emphasized, whether in an immediate sense or else as a reversion to previous
patterns.
However, by interpreting the ecclesiastical aspect of the reform period as
a matter of continuity (or atavism), one obscures the novelty, the striking
modernity, of the changes that took place after 1806, minimizing crucial
diVerences that distinguish the reconstruction of the Prussian territorial
church (Landeskirche) in the early nineteenth century from that of preced-
ing eras. Above all, the conception of the state held by the leading Prussian
reformers—Stein, Hardenburg, Altenstein, Ludwig Nicolovius, Johann Wil-
helm Süvern, and Alexander von Dohna, among others—diVered markedly
from that of their early modern and absolutist forebears. It was derived in
part from the revolutionary-Bonapartist example, but it also grew from the
native soil of German idealist philosophy, whose key exponents and delin-
eators, though often deeply religious, depreciated the moral and pedagogic
value of the church (as a concrete, historical institution) in favour of that of
the state, upon which they (most prominently Fichte and Hegel) conferred
the grand purpose of morally and intellectually enlightening Prussia’s cit-
izens—and, in turn, all modern peoples.7 This, at root, constituted the
Kulturstaat ideal.
Giving practical expression to currents of German idealism, Prussian
ministers eagerly sought to deploy the powers of the state to rejuvenate the
German Volk and modernize Prussia after the humiliating loss of 1806. Mostly
pious, Protestant men, they believed that ‘religiosity’, as it was often generally
expressed, should play a vital role in this process, in what Fichte had called
‘national education’. But in subordinating the Protestant ecclesiastical polity
to Prussia’s nationalist raison d’état and bureaucratic apparatus, they ham-
pered the church capacity to develop independent moral and political judg-
ment—judgment apart from ‘the things that are Caesar’s’.8 The interests of the
City of God and the City of Man were conXated. As Philipp Konrad Marhei-
neke later expressed it: ‘the church is the truth of the state and the state is the
reality of the church’.9 While much of the rhetoric that allowed for this
arrangement seemingly harked back to early modern ecclesiastical territori-
alism and the absolutist regimes of the eighteenth century, the progressive,
culture-minded state, with its tight grip on the churches, that arose after 1806
bespeaks, more tellingly, the modern inXuence of German idealism and the
Historical Essays by Hajo Holborn (Garden City, NY: Anchor, 1971), 1–32.
8 Jacques Maritain, The Things that are not Caesar’s, trans. J. F. Scanlan (New York, 1931).
9 ‘Die Kirche ist die Wahrheit des Staats, der Staat ist die Wirklichkeit der Kirche.’ See
Marheineke, Einleitungen in die öVentlichen Vorlesungen über die Bedeutung der hegelschen
Philosophie in der christliche Theologie (Berlin, 1842), 16.
powerful example of Bonapartist statecraft: an impetus for cultural renewal
connected to the reality of state centralization.
Because of their ‘double character’ (state institutions serving the church),
theological faculties were, willy-nilly, caught up in these epochal changes. Like
churches, theological faculties too came under the magniWed purview of the
state. The government organ aVecting them most directly was the Prussian
Ministry of Culture (Kultusministerium), a section of the Ministry of the
Interior after 1808 before becoming a self-standing ministry in 1817. Initially
under the leadership of Wilhelm von Humboldt and Ludwig Nicolovius, this
ministry not only worked to revise church–state relations but helped foster a
wissenschaftlich ethos in universities and theological faculties. Under the
ministerial leadership of Karl von Altenstein and Johannes Schulze after
1817, the modernizing trends of the reform era continued during the Vormärz
period, even if this era is better known for its reactionary tendencies.
To understand Prussia’s ‘Erastian modernity’, developments in church–
state relations before and after the pivotal year of 1806 must be examined
more closely. We must also attend to the establishment of the Kultusminister-
ium and consider how, during the reform period and early Vormärz, this
ministry worked to curtail confessionalism and particularism, expand the
powers of the state over ecclesiastical and educational institutions, and en-
courage, in a period of reaction, a more scientiWc, less ecclesial theology. All
these developments left a powerful legacy in German academic theology,
which fostered a growing understanding of the university as a state-protected
sanctuary, where theology could commingle with the spirit of modern Wis-
senschaft at a cool distance from confessional strictures and ecclesiastical
structures.10 Yet the emergent symbiosis of Wissenschaft and Staat of the
early nineteenth century also contributed to a dilemma, more acutely per-
ceived and openly discussed in the mid- and late nineteenth century: were the
churches and academic theology on the same track or had they begun to
pursue interests incommensurate, even hostile, to one another?
2 . C H U RC H A N D S TAT E B E F O R E 1 8 0 6
The forms of church government that developed in Protestant, German lands

in the wake of the Reformation reXected the tensions and uncertainties
10 See Hermann Mulert, Evangelische Kirchen und theologischen Fakultäten (Tübingen, 1930),
and Friedrich Paulsen, The German Universities and University Study, trans. Frank Thilly and
William W. Elwang (New York, 1906), 137 V.
inherent in this period of crisis and transition. Luther and his allies had
questioned the church–state union of the Middle Ages and had sought to
establish stricter boundaries between temporal and spiritual authority. The
church should be an exclusively spiritual community (ecclesia spiritualis), as
the Augsburg Confession expressed it, unencumbered by the things of this
world.11 However, without the Roman ecclesiastical hierarchy, Protestant
princes began, often in an ad hoc fashion, to exercise the temporal power
and administrative authority formerly wielded by representatives of
the mother church. Encouraged by Luther, Prince Johann of Saxony was the
Wrst to improvise a new ecclesiastical polity in 1527. He came to assume
the title of summus episcopus (highest bishop), appointed a consistory to
supervise church aVairs, and nominated various superintendents to admin-
ister the dioceses recently shorn of bishops. With numerous regional vari-
ations, this model soon caught on. The Mark Brandenburg embraced the
Reformation in the 1530s; the Elector of Brandenburg (later king of Prussia)
held the title summus episcopus until the November Revolution of 1918.12
The consequential principle of cuius regio, eius religio, set down in the Peace
of Augsburg (1555) and in the Peace of Westphalia (1648), more or less
upheld the measures that Protestant princes had adopted. The secular powers
were allowed to determine the confession of their respective states and
regularly held the oYce of supreme ecclesiastical prelate. This situation
aVected all church communities, not to mention institutions of education,
which were regularly regarded as appendages of the territorial church. Such an
arrangement, according to numerous commentators, is of great signiWcance
for understanding the development of church–state relations in German-
speaking Europe, in particular for understanding the temporal supremacy
of the state over the church.
But a word of caution is in order. For what looks like extensive state-
domination, or Erastianism, during the post-Reformation period is, upon
closer inspection, considerably less so. From the mid-sixteenth to the eight-
eenth century, the power that princes actually exercised over ecclesiastical
aVairs was mitigated by many particularist forces in a feudal ‘society of
11 The Augsburg Confession in article VII reads: ‘The Church is the congregation of saints, in
which the Gospel is rightly taught and the sacraments are rightly administered.’ Quoted in
Martin Heckel, ‘Zur Entwicklung des deutschen Staatskirchenrechts von der Reformation bis
zur Schwelle der Weimarer Verfassung,’ ZEK 12 (1966): 3–4.
12 Andrew L. Drummond, ‘Church and State in Protestant Germany before 1918’, CH 13
(1944): 211. On consistories, see Rudolf Smend, ‘Die Konsistorien in Geschichte und heutiger
Bewertung’, ZEK 10 (1963–4): 134–43. On superintendents, see Oskar Foellner, Geschichte des
Amtes der Generalsuperintendenten in den altpreussischen Provinzen (Gütersloh, 1931). The term
‘superintendent’ was taken over from the later scholastics who had used it as a translation of
episcopus.
estates’ (Ständegesellschaft). Unlike the situation after 1806, states possessed
neither the intellectual justiWcation nor the centralizing capacities to exercise
full control over the churches. One should thus not attribute the state’s
ascendency over the church in Germany solely to the post-Reformation
settlement and its long-term consequences; for in a number of respects such
a generalization is not supportable.13
First, quite often the prince qua summus episcopus did not meddle in
matters of faith and doctrine, which were left for churchmen with theological
competence to determine; the prince restricted himself to the external features
of church government (the so-called jus circa sacra in legal parlance) as
opposed to more delicate internal features (jus in sacra). Second, the consis-
tories set up in the various German Länder regularly comprised both lay and
ecclesiastical persons. They remained semi-state agencies, to be sure, depen-
dent on the government and not on the churches, but since important
churchmen were always appointed to consistories, it cannot be assumed
that the church was entirely under the thumb of the government. ‘Very
often’, notes Ernst Helmreich, ‘the consistories protected the rights of the
church against the prince.’14 Furthermore, in addition to consistories, synods
and presbyteries in Calvinist areas gave Reformed communities a signiWcant
degree of autonomy and self-administration.15
Third, an important practice of the medieval church continued, in both the
Protestant and Catholic churches after the Reformation, that tended to check
the power of governments. Beginning in the early Middle Ages, wealthy
aristocrats who assisted in building a church or who had donated it lands
were recognized to have certain patronage rights (Patronatsrechte) over that
church. These often included the right to name pastors, be mentioned
honoriWcally in prayers, and receive choice pews and cemetery plots for family
members. These rights entailed duties, which usually included Wnancial
support for pastors and the responsibility to maintain church buildings and
properties. Patrons occupied an important intermediary position of power
between the state and individual churches.16 As the state assumed more power
13 The literature on the eVects of the Reformation on German political attitudes and behav-
iour is quite large. On the view that Lutheranism promoted political quietism and docility, see
Fritz Fischer, ‘Der deutsche Protestantismus und die Politik im 19.Jahrhundert’, HZ 171 (1951):
473–518. For a contrary view, see Peter Blickle, Obedient Germans? A Rebuttal: A New View of
German History, trans. Thomas A. Brady (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1997).
14 Ernst Helmreich, The German Churches under Hitler: Background, Struggle, and Epilogue
(Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1979), 18.
15 On the spread of Calvinism within the Holy Roman Empire, see Hajo Holborn, A History of
Modern Germany: The Reformation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), i. 187 V., 258 V.
16 This is, of course, not to say that patrons were never intrusive and authoritarian in their
own right. See ‘Patronat’ in RGG v. 156–9.
from the sixteenth century on, it usually permitted traditional patronage
rights to remain intact, for they relieved the state (and congregations) of
onerous Wnancial burdens. In fact, princes were often more concerned with
getting patrons to live up to their responsibilities than in having the state
assume them.17 Patronage rights continued apace in Prussia until the early
nineteenth century, at which time they were considerably restricted and in
some cases eliminated. Concurrently, many church properties were secular-
ized by the state, triggering a massive reorganization of ecclesiastical assets.18
Fourth, the sheer political complexity and fragmentation of central Europe
in the early modern period makes it diYcult to generalize about church–state
relations, and thus about the powers exercised by the state over the church.
Naturally, some princes acted heavy-handedly in their relations with the
church, whether for political or pious reasons. But many were more relaxed,
allowing churchmen and consistories considerable autonomy so long as the
social peace was kept. In the sixteenth century alone, no less than 172 separate
ecclesiastical constitutions came into existence.19 In addition to a host
of imperial cities, the Holy Roman Empire comprised some 300 states—
Catholic, Protestant, and Reformed—before its abolition in 1806 and the
subsequent reduction of German states to thirty-nine in 1815. This situation
of Kleinstaaterei, extreme political fragmentation, and overlapping jurisdic-
tion between individual states and empire, placed practical limitations on the
designs of princes, whether in the ecclesiastical sphere or in other social
domains.20
Finally, the workings of the Holy Roman Empire itself tended to provide
both Protestant and Catholic communities with a ‘multilateral’ voice that
reigned in the powers of individual states. When Lutheranism received oYcial
recognition at the Peace of Augsburg, the problem of building Protestantism
into the constitutional structure of the Empire became acute, and gradually
thereafter Protestants became a tacitly recognized body at Reichstag meetings.
This corpus evangelicorum, as it came to be known, often held separate
deliberations to discuss issues of particular concern to Protestant areas. At
Wrst resistant to this Protestant innovation, Catholic estates later formed their
own corpus catholicorum. The Peace of Westphalia gave legitimacy to the two
bodies, for in speciWc terms article 52 stated that when religious matters were
under discussion they should not be decided by majority vote but by ‘friendly
reconciliation’ between the two confessional bodies.21 By the early eighteenth
17 Helmreich, German Churches, 20.

18 Foerster, Die Entstehung der preussischen Landeskirche, i. 52, 193.
19 See A. L. Richter, Die evangelischen Kirchenordnungen des 16.Jahrhunderts (Weimar, 1846).
20 James J. Sheehan, German History, 1770–1866 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989), 14 V.
21 F. A. Six (ed.), Die westfälische Frieden von 1648 (Berlin, 1942), 60.
century the corpora had become Wxtures of the Empire. The disappearance of
the Empire in 1806 and with it these bodies left Protestant churches in
Germany with no united voice that transcended national boundaries. Such
a voice did not exist in Germany until the formation of the German Evan-
gelical Church Conference (Deutsche evangelische Kirchenkonferenz) in 1852.22
Thus, for the better part of the nineteenth century, individual Protestant
churches (Landeskirchen) were isolated and at the mercy of their respective
states’ modernizing actions. It was during this time that many states, Prussia
arguably foremost, pursued aggressive policies of centralization, the secular-
ization of church properties, and Erastianism in ecclesiastical aVairs generally.
Institutions such as church consistories and universities, hitherto in posses-
sion of at least a modicum of corporative autonomy, found themselves at this
time caught up in the identity struggle of the modern nation-state.
As is well known, Brandenburg-Prussia evolved from a modest-sized duchy in
the Empire to a European ‘great power’ in the course of the eighteenth
century, due in large measure to the successful military exploits of Friedrich
the Great, the ‘enlightened despot’ par excellence, who built on the achieve-
ments of his predecessors, Friedrich I and Friedrich Wilhelm I. During
Friedrich the Great’s reign, Prussia continued a tradition of religious openness
that earlier had found expression in allowing asylum to exiled Huguenots
from France. An admirer of philosophes such as Voltaire and D’Alembert, ‘the
Wrst servant of the state’ oVered complete freedom to sects barely tolerated
elsehwere—Mennonites, Moravians, and Socinians, among others. ‘All reli-
gions are equally good,’ Friedrich famously remarked, ‘if only the people who
profess them are honest; and if Turks and heathen came and were willing to
populate the land, we would build mosques and temples.’23 While this
unusual tolerance was brieXy suspended under his successor, Friedrich Wil-
helm II, with the repressive Wöllner Edict of 1788, it received legal codiWca-
tion in the Allgemeines Landrecht (Prussian Civil Code) of 1794—a legal
system that exercised tremendous inXuence in Prussia and in other German
states for more than a century after its promulgation.
The work of Friedrich the Great’s legal advisers, the Civil Code reXected the
enlightened despot’s sympathies for the Western Enlightenment, especially his
predilection for the ideal of toleration.24 ‘Every inhabitant of the state must be
22 Helmreich, German Churches, 20–1.

23 Quoted in Alexander Drummond, German Protestantism since Luther (London, 1951), 214.
24 The Civil Code was commissioned by a cabinet order of 14 April 1780 that Friedrich the
Great issued to his Grosskanzler, Heinrich Casmir von Carmer (1721–1801). Carmer along with
assistants—especially Carl Gottlieb Svarez (1746–98) and Ernst Ferdinand Klein (1744–
1810)—worked on the Civil Code for fourteen years before its promulgation. The Wnal version
contained 19,000 paragraphs organized in two parts under a total of forty-three sections and
covering some 2,500 printed pages. German legal scholars generally regard it as a major step in
granted complete freedom of faith and conscience’ (vollkommene Glaubens-
und Gewissensfreyheit), it radically asserted in the section dealing with the
rights and obligations of churches.25 Moreover, it made clear that ‘no one on
account of their religious opinions should be called to account, disturbed,
slandered, or persecuted’.26
Nonetheless, the Civil Code gave priority to the three main historic con-
fessions of central Europe—Lutheran, Reformed, and Catholic. All three
existed in Prussia because of the state’s past expansionist policies and legacy
of toleration. In calling for legal parity between them, the Civil Code repre-
sents an evolution away from a confessional state of religious conformity
(which had never completely been the case with Prussia) to what some have
called a ‘parity state’ (Paritätsstaat), a system in which the three major
confessions were, in principle at least, granted the same legal rights and
privileges in the eyes of the government. SigniWcantly, at the Congress of
Vienna in 1815, a similar legal evolution became valid for all states in the
newly created German Confederation.27
For all its overtures to religious openness, the Prussian Civil Code none-
theless reXected the realities of an absolutist regime and hence the importance
of homage to Caesar. Thus, while promoting general religious toleration and
parity between the established confessions, the Civil Code also made clear that
all ‘church societies’ were subject to state authority and that ‘faithfulness to
the state’ was obligatory.28 In practical terms, this meant that all churches,
their rights and privileges notwithstanding, were required to submit to the
oversight and authority of Prussia’s Department of Ecclesiastical AVairs or the
Geistliche Departement, the forerunner of the Kultusministerium of the
nineteenth century.
A symbol of absolutism in ecclesiastical matters, the Geistliche Departe-
ment had been established in 1736 and located within the Ministry of Justice.
During the reign of Friedrich the Great, the Minister of Justice simultaneously
served as the head of the Geistliche Departement. This was true of all late
transforming Prussia from an Obrigkeitsstaat (a state based on authority) to a Rechtsstaat (a
state based on law). See Klaus Epstein, The Genesis of German Conservatism (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1966), 372–86, and Hermann Conrad, ‘Das Allgemeine Landrecht
von 1794 als Grundgesetz des fridizianischen Staates’, in Otto Büsch and Wolfgang Neugebauer
(eds.), Moderne Preußische Geschichte, 1648–1947 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1981), ii. 598–621.
25 Quoted in Holborn, A History of Modern Germany ii. 274.
26 See E. R. Huber and Wolfgang Huber (eds.), Staat und Kirche im 19. und 20.Jahrhundert:
Dokumente zur Geschichte des Staatskirchenrecht (Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 1973), i. 3 V.
27 Huber and Huber (eds.), Staat und Kirche, i. 115. According to Article 16 of the Deutsche
Bundesakte of 8 June 1815: ‘Die Verschiedenheit der christlichen Religions-Partheyen kann in
den Ländern und Gebiethen des deutschen Bundes keinen Unterschied in dem Genusse der
bürgerlichen und politischen Rechte begründen.’
28 Ibid. 4.
eighteenth-century ministers before the great transition after 1806, including
Karl Abraham Freiherr von Zedlitz (1771–88), Johann Christoph von Wöllner
(1788–98), and Julius von Massow (1798–1807).29 This ministerial oYce, and
the organ of the government it represented, became, in eVect, ‘the highest
ecclesiastical authority’ in Prussia, even if it patently served the interests of the
state and not churches.30 It rarely failed to recognize the social usefulness of
the churches and regarded them as a necessary channel for promoting decent
behaviour, social welfare, and obedience to the state. For this reason, the
department has been widely interpreted as an agent of absolutism that sought
to reduce the church to a bureaucratic appendage of the state.
This interpretation holds true in a number of respects. However, even
under absolutism the church had recourse to spheres of independence un-
available after the reorganization of the state during the Napoleonic period.
Such relative autonomy came from two directions. On the one hand, the Civil
Code itself, as suggested, promoted certain progressive elements that tended
to foster governmental indiVerence to religion, especially in doctrinal and
liturgical matters, so long as religious divisions did not disturb the social
peace. Foerster has rightly noted that the Civil Code was the Wrst of its kind in
central Europe ‘to recognize in a large way the ecclesiastical freedom of
congregations and individuals’.31 On the other hand, the persistence of
local, provincial, and corporate privileges—despite the centralizing elements
of absolutism—amounted to checks on state power in ecclesiastical matters.
Synods among Reformed communities carried on as they had since the post-
Reformation period. Patronage rights persisted for all confessions. Lutheran
consistories also continued to exist. In fact, a Lutheran High Consistory
(Oberkonsistorium) was established in 1750, comprised of high-ranking cler-
gymen and theologians. While it functioned as a subsidiary to the Geistliche
Departement in many respects, it nonetheless gave Lutheran churches in
Prussia a collective voice. Moreover, it conducted much church business
without direct government oversight, and its members could disagree with
the state’s directives. Such a disagreement took place, for instance, after
1788 when several members of the High Consistory took issue with the
Wöllner Edict, complaining that the government was ‘intervening in aVairs
29 On the establishment of the Geistliche Departement, see Otto Hintze, ‘Die Epochen des
evangelischen Kirchenregiments in Preußen’, HZ 97 (1906): 96 V. OYcial documents are found
in Gustav von Schmoller (ed.), Acta Borussica: Die Behördenorganisation und die allgemeine
Staatsverwaltung Preussens im 18.Jahrhundert (Berlin: P. Parey, 1982), xvi.
30 Von Thadden, Prussia, 94.
31 Quoted in Andrew L. Drummond, ‘Church and State in Protestant Germany before 1918,’
CH 13 (1944): 215–16.
which . . . were the concern of the church and as such, ought certainly to be
settled without any outside interference’.32
Admittedly, patterns of continuity existed between the Erastian measures of
eighteenth-century absolutism and those of the nineteenth century: the
operations of the Geistliche Departement preWgured those of the Kultusmi-
nisterium in many respects. The state’s ascendency over the church after 1806,
in other words, would be unthinkable without the legacy of church–state
relations under royal absolutism. Nonetheless, the extreme Erastian measures
of the Prussian Reform Era cannot be accounted for predominantly in terms
of continuity with the past. One must turn to novel historical forces from the
1789–1815 period, particularly new political exigencies set in motion by the
French Revolution and Napoleon Bonaparte, and a new doctrine of the state
as an ethical-cultural force fostered by German idealism. These two modern
forces contributed greatly to Prussia’s statist ecclesiastical polity of the early
nineteenth century. They also provided justiWcation for heightened state
involvement in higher education and theology, which along with church
aVairs fell under the administrative jurisdiction of the Kultusministerium.
3 . THE G R EAT TR ANSITIO N:

C H U RC H A N D S TAT E A F T E R 18 0 6
At that time the religious aVairs of Protestantism were made wholly a

matter of the state.
Willibald Beyschlag, 189133
Few years are more important than 1806 in understanding modern Ger-
many’s social and political evolution. Prussia’s defeat by Napoleon in this
year hastened an epochal transformation of central Europe, begining with the
Reichdeputationshauptschluß of 1803, which secularized ecclesiastical proper-
ties and paved the way for the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire three
years later.34 The Napoleonic victory and subsequent occupation set in
motion impulses for major reform. The reforms in Prussia are sometimes
referred to as the Stein-Hardenberg reforms because of the central role
played by the ministers Karl von Stein (1757–1831) and Karl August von
32 von Thadden, Prussia, 96.

33 Willibald Beyschlag, ‘Welche Entwicklung hat das Verhältniß von Staat und Kirche in
Preußen im 19.Jahrhundert genommen . . .’ (Halle, 1891), BTFG, 7263/110.
34 On secularization measures in central Europe during this time, see Owen Chadwick, The
Popes and European Revolution (Oxford: Clarendon, 1981), 494–504.
Hardenberg (1759–1822).35 With the crown’s role curtailed by Napoleon’s
European hegemony, these progressive ministers and other kindred spirits
sought to modernize the Prussian state and society in partial emulation and
reaction to the ideals of the Enlightenment and French Revolution. Indeed,
because of the long shadow cast by Napoleon, princes and ministers alike were
forced to recognize that their states’ viability in the modern era depended on
making concessions to the uneasy but ostensibly workable combination of
revolutionary ideals and Bonapartist statecraft. ‘The power of these [revolu-
tionary] principles is so great, so universally recognized and widespread,’
Hardenberg observed in his Riga Memorandum of 1807, ‘that a state that
does not recognize them must face either their forcible imposition or its own
extinction.’36 Yet for Stein and Hardenberg the desired reforms were more
than concessions; they earnestly desired to create a great modern state, one
rivalling France in organization, eYciency, and national spirit.37 Educated at
the progressive university of Göttingen and inXuenced by German idealist
philosophy, both men were convinced that the old feudal system of estates
and privileges, considerably retained in the 1794 Civil Code, had at last
reached the end of its line.38
However, Stein and Hardenberg, along with fellow reformers, were often
unwilling to embrace the democratic and egalitarian implications of the
French Revolution outright and instead adopted ambivalent positions, advo-
cating the desirability of freedom and greater meritocracy, on the one hand,
but simultaneously looking not to the people but to a powerful, centralized
state (staVed by enlightened, progressive civil servants) as the appropriate
35 Stein was appointed chief minister on 4 October 1807 and served in this capacity,
overseeing a number of important reforms, for over a year. The king dismissed him on 24
November 1808, having received pressure from Napoleon to do so because a letter of Stein’s,
intercepted by Napoleon’s agents, referred to the likelihood of war against France. After the
short-lived ministry of Karl von Altenstein and Alexander von Dohna (November 1808 – June
1810), Hardenberg was then appointed chancellor (a position created explicitly for him) and he
undertook a number of equally important reforms. On Stein’s dismissal and the appointment of
Hardenberg, see Reinhart Koselleck, Preußen zwischen Reform und Revolution (Stuttgart: Klett,
1967), 163–216.
36 Quoted from Hardenberg’s Riga Memorandum of 1807, in George Winter (ed.), Die
Reorganisation des Preussischen Staats unter Stein und Hardenberg (Leipzig, 1931), i. 305–6.
37 Important distinctions characterize Stein’s and Hardenberg’s reforms. At the risk of over-
simpliWcation, Stein favoured a more egalitarian approach to the reform process whereas
Hardenberg favoured what he called ‘democratic principles in a monarchical government’. See
Friedrich Meinecke, The Age of German Liberation (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1977), 44–101.
38 On their educational experiences at Göttingen, see Götz von Selle, ‘Stein und Hardenberg
als Göttinger Studenten’, Göttinger Nebenstunden 5 (1927): 47 V. For the inXuence of Kant on
Stein, see ‘Der Reichherr Karl vom Stein und Immanuel Kant’, in Büsch and Neugebauer (eds.),
Moderne Preußische Geschichte, iii. 1328–45, and Karl von Raumer, Die Kantische Geist in der
Erhebung von 1807/1813 (Rede zur Kantfeier der Universität 1940) (Königsberg, 1940).
vehicle for realizing modernity. Freedom for them was not necessarily the
freedom of the individual from the state and feudal-corporative powers, the
liberty to develop one’s own individuality (the concept more characteristic of
the Western Enlightenment). Rather, to have freedom was to have a share in the
modern state; it meant the ability as a citizen to participate in building a
rational, liberal, and strong state, and one active in religious and cultural aVairs.
To be sure, reformers believed that their post-feudal state had a universal
mission to beneWt all citizens; still, no popular movement coincided with the
changes advocated ‘from above’. Theirs was a project for the bureaucracy.
To achieve the enlightened, centralized state envisioned by Stein, Hard-
enberg, and others, government oYcials found it necessary, following the
example of France, to eliminate or restrict the autonomy of various inter-
mediary institutions or ‘mediating structures’—feudal relations, guild privil-
eges, provincial governments, churches, consistories, and the local rights of
institutions of education—that might oVer resistance by refusing to recognize
the state as the appropriate ‘school for building the character of man’, as
Heinrich von Sybel once characterized Stein’s conception of the state.39 This
necessity had momentous consequences for church–state relations, univer-
sities, and theological education in Prussia.
In marked contrast to the anticlericalism of revolutionaries in France or the
religious volunteerism of the United States, the reformers in Prussia saw their
task as a religious one and wanted to see a society and a state founded in the
bosom of a robust ethical, modern Protestantism. The promotion of this
conception of religion was not left up to society; rather it was understood as
the responsibility of the state—indeed as one of the state’s most necessary
undertakings. Ministers Stein, Hardenberg, Dohna, and Altenstein, among
others, shared this view, which had been derived, both directly and indirectly,
from prevalent currents of German idealism.40 Among idealist intellectuals,
for example, Fichte in his programme of Nationalerziehung called for revital-
izing religion—a task he charged to the state, not the church.41 Later, Hegel
took the statist implications of Fichte’s reasoning to extreme lengths, arguing
that all citizens, including clergymen, should identify their interests closely
with the state because ‘all the value that human beings possess, all their
spiritual reality, they have through the state alone. . . . The state is the divine
Idea as it exists on earth.’42 Due to the inXuence of idealism, Foerster has
39 Quoted in Meinecke, The Age of German Liberation, 50.

40 The direct relationship is especially clear in the case of Altenstein. See Eduard Springer,
‘Altensteins Denkschrift von 1807 und ihre Beziehung zur Philosophie’, FBPG 18 (1906): 107–58.
41 Fichte, Reden an die deutsche Nation (Leipzig, 1871).
42 G. W. F. Hegel, Introduction to the Philosophy of History, trans. Leo Rauch (Indianapolis:
Hackett, 1988), 41–2.
described the state’s role after 1806 as the ‘shaper and teacher of the nation’
(Bildner und Erzieher der Nation), a role that entailed hands-on upkeep of
religious and intellectual aVairs (ReligionspXege and WissenschaftspXege).43
Such sentiments among leading Prussian ministers tended to promote
Erastian inclinations in church–state matters. What is more, these sentiments
bespeak a general tendency of German idealist philosophy in the early nine-
teenth century. As Maurice Mandelbaum has noted, religion was of utmost
importance for idealist thinkers, yet their understanding of religion was ‘not
dependent on revelation to apprehend the truth’; rather ‘man’s own spiritual
nature was taken as basic in reality’.44 This view—which, mutatis mutandis, is
evident in Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Schelling, and in many lesser lights—resulted
in the denigration of revelation- and confession-based traditional churches,
for their attachment to past doctrines and creeds only prevented recognition
of humankind’s general ‘spiritual’ essence, which idealists took to be religion’s
most fundamental impulse. The state should take the utmost interest in
religion, but it should understand religion in ‘spiritual’ terms—terms that
did not tie it to past institutional structures, but allowed it to march ‘hand in
hand’ with the spirit of modern philosophy, as Altenstein averred in 1807.45
A consequence of this view (what Ernst Müsebeck has called idealism’s
‘Verinnerlichung der Religion’) was that the church’s relevance as a concrete,
institutional-historical force and as an independent morality-generating
agency within society was signiWcantly attenuated.46 ‘[T]he church . . . only
obstructs all good education,’ wrote Fichte, ‘and must be dispensed with.’47
Indeed, religion was spiritualized, made immanent in the general experience
of humanity, divorced from the necessity of particular ecclesiastical and credal
manifestations. According to Hajo Holborn, this tendency within German
idealism, combined with its rejection of natural law, proved consequential
(both for German ecclesiastical life and political culture), separating Germany
from some of the most dominant currents of Western liberalism. In the light
of past discussions of a German Sonderweg, a special path to modernity, one
should be cautious of reading too much into this development. Nonetheless,
by weakening the this-worldly moral relevance of churches, German idealism,
in eVect, magniWed the state as a cultural and ethical force (the guiding notion
43 Foerster, Die Entstehung der Preußischen Landeskirche, i. 126 V. On the intellectual ex-
change between German idealism and Prussian oYcialdom, see Hermann Beck, ‘The Social
Policies of Prussian OYcials: The Bureaucracy in a New Light,’ JMH 64 (June 1992): 263–98.
44 Maurice Mandelbaum, History, Man, and Reason: A Study in Nineteenth-Century Thought
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971), 6.
45 See Altenstein,‘Riga Memorandum’ (1807), in Ernst Müsebeck, Das preussische Kultusmi-
nisterium vor hundert Jahren (Stuttgart, 1918), 254.
46 Müsebeck, Das preussische Kultusministerium, 184.
47 Fichte, Reden an die deutsche Nation, 137.
of the Kulturstaat or Erziehungsstaat ideal) and subordinated the church to
the state’s own quasi-sacral purposes. In Holborn’s provocative formulation:
German idealism . . . [in the] early nineteenth century represented a passionate at-
tempt to realize a new ‘religious’ meaning in life. But at the same time . . . [it] simply
disregarded essential tenets of the historical faith, such as the concepts of a persona-
listic God and consciousness of sin. At the same time, German idealism changed the
sphere of ethical and spiritual action in human history. Despite his uniqueness, Hegel
is a typical example. For Hegel the state was the realization not only of law, but also of
morality. If this is the case, the church loses any vital role it had in history. . . . German
idealism did not have any great place for the church in its intellectual house.48
By way of contrast, Alexis de Tocqueville had suggested that in a democratic
age religion had the potential to serve as a pillar of liberalism by providing
society with resources of moral initiative, independent judgment, philan-
thropy, and social volunteerism apart from (and often in critical opposition
to) the modern state.49 German idealism’s religious outlook, however, con-
tributed to rendering this a negligible factor in the evolution of modern
German religious and political culture. The state itself became a dominant
agency of morality, and the church’s social role was interpreted ‘as a duty it
would perform on the state’s behalf ’.50
Revealingly, contemporaries and epigoni of idealists often wound up hold-
ing even more extreme positions than Fichte or Hegel—a fact that bears
witness to an intellectual landscape conducive to the triumph of Erastian
principles. A particularly revealing example is the theologian Richard Rothe
(1799–1867), a pupil of Schleiermacher and Hegel at Berlin. Carrying forward
the church–state logic of idealism, Rothe came to the conclusion that ‘the
church’ was becoming superannuated in the modern age. The state therefore
possessed a historical mandate to subsume the church and its moral function
for society. In Rothe’s view, the goal of Christianity was not a church
perpetually embattled against ‘the world’ (contra mundum as the church of
antiquity had understood itself), but a progressively Christianized modern
world. To this end, Rothe reasoned that the modern state, ‘the absolute form
of the ethical community’, was better historically situated than the church to
Historical Essays by Hajo Holborn, 14 V. Similarly, Paul Lakeland notes that, for Hegel, ‘religion
lies in the anthropological structures of human beings much more crucially and genuinely than
in churches’. See Paul Lakeland, The Politics of Salvation: The Hegelian Idea of the State (Albany:
State University of New York, 1984), 93.
49 See Norman A. Graebner, ‘Christianity and Democracy: Tocqueville’s Views of Religion in
America’, JR 56 (1973): 263 V.
50 Nipperdey, Germany from Napoleon to Bismarck, 42.
realize Christianity’s own aims. Once this fact was realized, the church would
necessarily ‘vanish’.51
So-called Left Hegelians such as D. F. Strauss and Bruno Bauer went further
still. Strauss argued that the evolution of modern consciousness mandated
that the traditional moral tasks of the church be appropriated by the secular
state: ‘No peace will be found until eternity is fully absorbed into time, piety
has been completely taken up in morality, and the church has been absorbed
into the state.’52 Similarly, Bruno Bauer argued that the modern state repre-
sented ‘that form of spiritual life in which the form of the visible church had
been dissolved’. The state was ‘the only form in which . . . Reason and Free-
dom, the highest goods of the human spirit, exist in reality’. Accordingly, the
church had become historically superXuous, a mere empty form or ‘ghost’
(Gespenst), which nonetheless anachronistically haunted the state.53
The Prussian reform era coincided with the Xowering of German idealism;
idealism was ‘the rock on which the reform program was built’.54 While most
Prussian ministers after 1806 were, to be sure, a far cry from the politically
radical and anti-Christian views of the Hegelian Left, one could not say that
they were overly concerned about maintaining the church as an independent
social and moral force apart from the state’s own identity and mission. To the
contrary: while convinced of the truth and necessity of ‘the Christian religion’,
they too, in a manner not unlike idealist thinkers and, later, Left Hegelians,
sought to absorb the ethical capacities of the church into the machinery of the
modern state.55 In Stein’s view, for example, religion was primarily an ‘inner
source of life’, something basic to the human spirit and standing above all
confessions, ‘from whose strength arises all obligations of man and citizen’.56
51 Rothe’s views on church and state are expressed, inter alia, in his Theologische Ethik
(Wittenberg, 1845), i. 423 V., ii. 120–56. In this work, he writes: ‘Denn wenn die allgemeine
menschliche Gemeinschaft [the state] als religiös-sittliche vollständig herstellt, so fällt das
Bedürfniß einer lediglich religiösen Gemeinschaft neben der religiös-sittlichen hinweg, welches
ja nur darauf beruhte, daß der Umfang der lediglich religiösen Gemeinschaft (der religiösen
Gemeinschafte rein als solcher) weiter reichte als der der religiös-sittlichen. In diesem Punkte
der Entwicklung verschwindet also die Kirche.’ See Theologische Ethik, i. 424 V. On Rothe
generally, see RGG v. 1197–99.
52 D. F. Strauss, Die christliche Glaubenslehre in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung und im
Kampfe mit der modernen Wissenschaft (Tübingen, 1841), ii. 618.
53 Bruno Bauer, Die evangelische Landeskirche Preußens und die Wissenschaft (Leipzig, 1840),
65, 104. Also see the discussion of Strauss’s and Bauer’s views on church and state in John Toews,
Hegelianism: The Path toward Dialectical Humanism, 1805–1841 (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1980), 255 V.
55 Bauer in fact later argued that the early nineteenth-century Prussian reforms had accom-
plished precisely this: destroyed the church as an independent force and absorbed its functions
into the state. See Bauer, Die evangelische Landeskirche Preußens, 135 V.
56 Quoted in Hafter, Der Freiherr vom Stein in seinem Verhältnis zu Religion und Kirche
(Berlin, 1932), 35–6.
For Prussia’s political health, he felt that ‘the religious feeling of the nation
must be enlivened again’ and that ‘the government must take seriously this
important task’.57 Similarly, Hardenberg, who tended to regard religion as ‘a
special form of general human education,’ noted in his Riga Memorandum of
1807 that ‘the state, which has the great moral purpose . . . of ennobling
humankind, has the duty doubly laid on it to encourage religiosity and
thereby to lead its subjects towards the highest good’. ‘That the present
moment,’ he added, ‘is favourable for the Prussian state to improve religion
is incontrovertible.’58 Or, in the words of Minister Altenstein: ‘If the state
recognizes the idea of guiding humanity to its highest joy as its leading
principle, then it will view the promotion of religiosity as the highest goal
and from [this] lofty standpoint . . . esteem the true worth of religion.’59
Friedrich Wilhelm III’s views resonated with those of his ministers. While
the king was no student of idealist philosophy, his conception of religion, for
both pious, personal, and pragmatic reasons, nonetheless mirrored that of
idealism in certain respects. Above all, he shared idealism’s anti- or supra-
confessional bent, preferring to focus instead on Christianity’s general truths
and social beneWts. Furthermore, the king was greatly disturbed by the
encroachments of rationalism and liberalism in the eighteenth century, as
well as by the explicit dechristianization witnessed during the French Revo-
lution. He thus generally supported what he perceived to be the religiously
restorative policies of his ministers.60
Borne then by an idealistic conception of the state as a moral and pedagogic
force, and thus by its legitimately heavy-handed involvement in ecclesiastical
aVairs, the situation in the eighteenth century of relative religious freedom
and continued corporative privileges changed dramatically during the Prus-
sian Reform Era. However, for a brief period at the beginning of Stein’s
ministry (October 1807), it appeared as if the future of Prussia’s Protestant
ecclesiastical polity was up for grabs. Stein himself gave consideration to more
congregational autonomy in church aVairs, soliciting proposals for change
from a number of leading clergymen and theologians. At Stein’s request, for
example, Schleiermacher penned an outline for church reform, in which he,
57 Both quotes are from Foerster, Die Entstehung der preussischen Landeskirche, i. 129.
58 See statements from Riga Memorandum in Winter (ed.), Die Reorganisation des Preus-
sischen Staates unter Stein und Hardenberg, i. 353–4. See also Karl-Heinz Manegold, ‘Das
‘Ministerium des Geistes’: Zur Organisation des ehemaligen preußischen Kultusministeriums’,
Die deutsche Berufs- und Fachschule 63 (1967): 512–24.
59 Altenstein, ‘Riga Memorandum’ (1807), in Müsebeck, Das preussische Kultusministerium,
251.
60 On the king’s religious views, see Walter Wendland, Die Religiosität und die kirchenpoli-
tischen Grundsätze Friedrich Wilhelms des Dritten in ihrer Bedeutung für die Geschichte der
kirchlichen Restauration (Gießen, 1905).
quite radically, called for the complete independence of the church from the
state, criticizing the status quo for allowing the church to function as ‘a mere
instrument of the state’.61
However, the tide of the reform movement ran in a contrary direction, away
from Schleiermacher’s liberal sentiment towards even greater state control of
the churches.62 The key reforms that altered church–state relations began in
the autumn of 1808. These reforms, in the words of John Groh, represented ‘a
state-imposed revolution in church polity’ whereby ‘the church practically
ceased to be an independent organism’.63 Fritz Fischer has described the
process as ‘the absorption of the church by the state’ (Verstaatlichung des
Kirchenwesens).64 The reforms in ecclesiastical polity were facilitated by a
transformation in the upper ranks of the Prussian ministry eVected by
Stein. Hitherto, ministers had operated in three main ministerial depart-
ments—foreign aVairs, war, and justice (the latter housed the aforementioned
Geistliche Departement). While this system had achieved a degree of central-
ization in the course of the eighteenth century, much political power still
remained in Prussia’s ten regional provinces. Provincial governors, city may-
ors, and feudal lords wielded considerable authority, while a measure of
ecclesiastical control resided in consistories, patrons, and (among Reformed
communities) in synods and individual congregations.
The 1808 reforms abrogated the older absolutist cabinet government and
diminished provincial and feudal powers by establishing a centralized state
bureaucracy modelled in part on that of Napoleonic France.65 An order of 16
December 1808, drafted largely by Stein, but also bearing the stamp of
Hardenberg and Altenstein, called into existence Wve departmental minis-
tries—of the interior, foreign aVairs, Wnance, justice, and war. The former
bureaucratic organs responsible for churches, along with those responsible for
education66—both previously part of the Ministry of Justice’s portfolio—
were dissolved and reconstituted as a single subdepartment under the new
Ministry of the Interior, which was to be directed by Stein’s appointee,
Alexander von Dohna.67 The new subdepartment was called straightforwardly
61 Schleiermacher, ‘Vorschlag zu einer neuen Verfaßung der protestantischen Kirche für den
preußischen Staat’ (1808), in KGA I. ix. 3–18. Schleiermacher would maintain these views, often
to the consternation of state oYcials.
62 Beyschlag, ‘Welche Entwicklung hat das Verhältniß von Staat und Kirche in Preußen im
19.Jahrhundert genommen . . .’ (Halle, 1891), BTFG, 7263/110.
63 John Groh, Nineteenth-Century German Protestantism: The Church as Social Model
(Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1982), 2, 16–17.
64 Fritz Fischer, Ludwig Nicolovius: Rokoko, Reform, Restauration (Stuttgart, 1939), 307, 309.
65 Meinecke, The Age of German Liberation, 72.
66 On the rather complicated Staatsverwaltung of universities in pre-1806 Prussia, see Conrad
Bornhak, Geschichte der preussischen Universitätsverwaltung bis 1810 (Berlin, 1900), 174–89.
67 On von Dohna, see ADB v. 299–302.
the Department of Ecclesiastical AVairs and Public Education (Sektion des
Kultus und des öVentlichen Unterrichts). As indicated earlier, Wilhelm von
Humboldt received a call from his diplomatic post in Rome to head this new
department, helping found the University of Berlin during his short tenure
(1809–10). Humboldt received assistance from Johann Wilhelm Süvern
(1775–1829), formerly a classics professor at the University of Königberg
and a devotee of Fichte, and from Ludwig Nicolovius (1767–1839), a bur-
eaucrat from East Prussia who had been inXuenced by the idealism of Kant,
the religious thought of J. G. Hamann, and the educational philosophy of
Pestalozzi.68 While Humboldt, Nicolovius, and Süvern diVered in many
respects, they shared a high-minded view of their role as educators of the
nation and a belief that their new bureaucratic apparatus had the potential to
reinvigorate Prussia’s religious and intellectual life, so long as the parochial
and anachronistic elements of the Old Regime were suYciently curtailed.
After Humboldt’s departure from the Ministry in 1810, Nicolovius and
Süvern continued the reform process under the direction of Friedrich Schuck-
mann, who was in turn replaced by Altenstein in 1817, the year the depart-
ment was elevated to its own governmental ministry.
The Erastian reforms eVected through this department, shortly after 1808,
were carried out with the sincere faith that religion (understood in supra-
confessional, idealist terms) would gain a more prominent and inXuential
role in the state and among a people dispirited by the Napoleonic yoke. Yet
the putative gains for religion simultaneously entailed the state acquiring
extensive powers over the administration of churches. The transformation
did not happen overnight, but in the course of a decade after the adminis-
trative reorganization churches were subordinated to the Prussian govern-
ment. The new arrangements would have a long legacy in the nineteenth
century. They were made possible by the abolition of traditional church
consistories, the establishment of new government organs of ecclesiastical
oversight, the secularization of church properties, the curtailment of patron-
age rights, and the state’s assumption of the upkeep of clergymen and
parishes.69 In the Protestant Church Union of 1817 and the subsequent
‘rites controversy’ (Agendenstreit), the state’s powers were even extended
to worship and liturgical matters, the jus in sacra. With respect to theology,
68 For the order that established the Department of Ecclesiastical AVairs and Public
Education, see Huber and Huber (eds.), Staat und Kirche i. 54–5. For a fuller description
of the administrative reforms of 1808, see Gerhard Ritter, Stein: eine politische Biographie
(Stuttgart, 1931), i. 316 V.; Müsebeck, Das preussische Kultusministerium, 31 V.; and Eduard
Spranger, Wilhelm von Humboldt und die Reform des Bildungswesen (Tübingen: M. Niemeyer,
1960), 78–80.
69 Gwendolyn E. Jensen, ‘A Comparative Study of Prussian and Anglican Church-State
Reform in the Nineteenth Century’, JCS 23 (1981): 445–63.
the state’s inXuence was felt through active measures to diminish confession-
alism, greater centralized control of universities, and more regulation and
supervision of theology students en route to acquiring their own parishes as
ministers.
Among the Wrst tasks pursued by the Department of Ecclesiastical AVairs
and Public Education was the dissolution of the long-established consistories
of the three main Protestant bodies in Prussia—the Lutheran, the German
Reformed, and the French Reformed churches. This process started in late
December of 1808. In the place of self-regulating, confessionally deWned
consistories, Stein’s reforms created state-appointed provincial boards of
religion and education (Geistliche und Schuldeputationen) to oversee local
activities and, as an order of 26 December 1808 put it, ‘to promote religiosity
and morality, fortitude, harmony between the various confessions, civic
spirit, participation in public aVairs, and devotion to the fatherland’.70
These boards were placed under the direct supervision of a general superin-
tendent, who in turn answered to the leadership in the Department of
Ecclesiastical AVairs and Public Education.
Although the term ‘consistory’ later reappeared in an edict of 30 April
1815, it was applied to new provincial consistories, which were a far cry from
the old consistories that had been organized along confessional, not provin-
cial, lines. Replacing the provincial boards of religion and education, the new
consistories were also wholly state authorities with no trace of any independ-
ence for the church in running its aVairs.71 What is more, the general
superintendents, who became the directors of these new consistories, were
required to answer to the Prussian provincial governors (Oberpräsidenten),
the highest regional political oYcer after the administrative reconWgurations
occasioned by the Congress of Vienna (1815). As the superintendents regu-
larly reported clerical and consistorial activities to higher echelons, they
earned Schleiermacher’s memorable description of them as the ‘spiritual
prefects’ (geistliche Präfecten) of the government.72
From its inception the Erastian system that arose at this time incurred
criticism, especially from the older confessional consistories, which did not go
under without a show of disapproval. After the changes of 1808 were man-
dated, consistory councillors protested what they perceived to be the state’s
illegitimate encroachment in church aVairs. French-speaking Reformed cler-
gymen, for example, pleaded for the continuance of their cherished consistoire
supérieur. The government Xatly rejected their request, but agreed to respect
70 Huber and Huber (eds.), Staat und Kirche, i. 57.

71 Ibid. 118–19.
72 W. Gaß (ed.), Schleiermachers Briefwechsel mit J. Chr. Gaß (Berlin, 1852), 137. Cf. Foerster,
Die Entstehung der preussischen Landeskirche, i. 226 V.
local presbyteries so long as outright deWance of the state was not encouraged.
More vociferous complaints were voiced by members of the Lutheran High
Consistory whose council members in Berlin had been summarily dismissed
by the government. On 13 April 1809 councillor Gottfried Hanstein com-
plained to the king that the new subordination of churchly aVairs to the state
appeared ‘more harmful than helpful to religion’. ‘We are not convinced’, he
opined, ‘that religion, especially in the eyes of the people and the church,
comes out ahead.’ He thus asked the king to listen to his ‘urgent request’ and
allow the direction of the church to be placed in the hands of ‘an independent
high consistory and independent provincial consistories’. Other council
members voiced similar misgivings, but while some concessions were made
(such as the agreement to employ a number of dismissed council members in
the new ministry), no substantive structural changes took place. In a cabinet
order of 6 May 1809, which sought to reassure the dissolved consistory of the
government’s good intentions, the king, following the advice of Humboldt
and von Dohna, responded that ‘the establishment of the new authority and
the dissolution of the former ones was done by myself . . . [and] no one can
regard religion and religiosity as more valuable than myself ’. Still distraught
by the new arrangement, the president of the dissolved High Consistory
issued a Wnal complaint in a letter of 8 June 1809. This time he received the
curt reply from von Dohna, Minister of the Interior, that his standpoint was
simply mistaken and that the task of the former High Consistory, ‘promoting
true religiosity’, had not ended, but was being continued as part of the
government.73
During the reform period, the traditional rights of patrons (Patronatsrechte)
were curtailed as the state gained greater control over ecclesiastical aVairs.74
Already in May of 1808 Stein had made clear in a letter to a fellow minister his
negative view of patronage rights. ‘Patronage rights,’ he wrote, ‘amount to the
same reproachable anomaly as patrimonial jurisdiction [in political aVairs]; in
no case are they to be allowed to spread, but are to co-opted by the proper,
future purposes of the Ministry of Ecclesiastical AVairs.’75
In practice, this occurred in two ways. First, regulations for the training and
qualiWcation of clergymen were standardized in all Prussian provinces, mak-
ing it clear that from the standpoint of the centralized administration only the
73 See the exchanges between consistory councillors and the government excerpted in
Foerster, Die Entstehung der preussischen Landeskirche, i. 143 V.
74 I emphasize the word ‘curtailed’, because patronage rights were not legally abolished in
Prussia until after the November Revolution of 1918.
75 Quoted in Foerster, Die Entstehung der preussischen Landeskirche i. 147. Stein also desired
that congregations gain greater say-so in their aVairs, but the bureaucratizing, centralizing
imperatives of the reform era worked against this sentiment.
passing of examinations allowed one to become an eligible (wahlfähig) can-
didate for an ecclesiastical appointment. To this end, the Department of
Ecclesiastical AVairs and Public Education set up an examination commission
(Examenskommission) to implement a rigorous examination system for cler-
gymen, mandating that all future pastors pass two examinations (an examen
pro facultate concionandi and an examen pro ministerio) after completing their
university studies.76 Promulgated through an order of 15 August 1810, this
measure restricted the privileges of aristocratic patrons, who in the past
exerted considerable inXuence over the appointment of local clergymen.
Patrons could still make suggestions from a pool of successfully examined
candidates, but the state reserved the right of making Wnal appointments.77 In
this new system, the traditional religious ceremony of ordination came to
appear to some as ‘a supplement to the scientiWc examinations’ (ein Anhang
wissenschaftlichen Examina).78 The new regulations also increased the grow-
ing sense among sceptics that the clergy was simply another arm of the
government bureaucracy. Furthermore, since the nature of the required
examinations regularly placed emphasis on scholarly, not doctrinal or pas-
toral, criteria, these measures contributed to the new meritocratic-scientiWc
ethos of theological faculties, typiWed by the recently founded university in
Berlin.79
The state’s assumption of greater responsibility for clergymen’s salaries and
for the upkeep of parishes also curtailed patronage rights. The initiative to
provide clerical salaries coincided with a general Prussian Wnancial crisis,
brought on by the burden of indemnity payments to France after 1806.
Hardenberg, chancellor during the most acute phases of the crisis, concluded
76 Ludwig von Rönne (ed.), Die Verfassung und Verwaltung des preußischen Staates: Das
Unterrichtswesen des preußischen Staates, pt. 8 (Berlin, 1855), i. 260. State examinations for
clergy did not originate during the Prussian reform era; they have earlier roots. The system of
examinations mandated at this time was based on reforms in 1799 that had overturned the
exams implemented under the conservative regime of minister Wöllner. See Fischer, Nicolovius,
322–33, 356–8. The exams in Prussia had the reputation of being among the most demanding.
See Paul Drews, Der evangelische Geistliche in der deutschen Vergangenheit (Jena, 1905), 135–6.
Max Weber lists ‘a system of special examinations’ to ensure ‘trained expertise’ as a key
component of the modern state apparatus and ‘indispensable for modern bureaucracy’. See
H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (eds.), From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1946), 198–204, 240–4.
77 Foerster, Die Entstehung der preussischen Landeskirche, i. 180 and Fischer, Nicolovius, 358.
78 Fischer, Nicolovius, 320.
79 The new examination system also ceased to make distinctions between Reformed and
Lutheran candidates, foreshadowing the Church Union of 1817. See Fischer, Nicolovius, 328,
356 V. Cf. Robert M. Bigler, ‘The Rise of Political Protestantism in Nineteenth-Century Ger-
many’, CH 34 (1965): 436 V. For an outsider’s criticism of the examination system in Prussia, see
Edward Robinson, ‘Theological Education in Germany. Part III. Examinations. Ministerial
Standing, etc.’, Biblical Repository 3 (July 1831): 416.
that the practical solution would be to secularize church properties in Prussia,
extending the logic of the Reichdeputationshauptschluß (1803). The state’s
increased means would be used not only to pay France, but to provide
sinecures for clergymen and maintain religious and cultural institutions.80
While some clergymen complained that the state was simply robbing the
church of her properties, many others, fearful of the prospect of penury,
welcomed the state’s Wnancial assistance.81 Foerster rightly notes, however,
that during this era the government’s new powers over the clergy’s purse
strings signiWed ‘a fundamentally altered position of the state in relation to
the church’.82
Through dissolving the traditional consistories, reconstituting the ecclesi-
astical polity,83 curtailing patronage rights, secularizing church properties,
and assuming greater Wnancial responsibility for the clergy, the Prussian
government, indeed, stood in an altered relationship to the church. The
extent of the state’s expanded authority was made particularly clear in an
edict of 23 October 1817, outlining the responsibilities of the new provincial
consistories. The consistories were broadly charged to care for ‘the general
direction of the Protestant church and educational matters in the provinces’.
More speciWcally, they were to provide ‘oversight of worship services in
general, especially in dogmatic and liturgical matters, so that they are main-
tained in purity and dignity’; to provide ‘oversight of the moral and oYcial
conduct of the clergy’; ‘to censor writings pertaining to the church,’ and ‘to
regulate church ceremonies . . . according to the stipulations of the ministry of
ecclesiastical aVairs and public education’. In addition, consistories had
the mandate to test candidates preparing for the ministry, discipline
wayward clergymen, and attend to all matters pertaining to education in
the provinces—with the exception of the universities, which, notably,
80 See the secularization edict of 30 October 1810 in Huber and Huber (eds.), Staat und
Kirche, i. 57–8.
81 Foerster, Die Entstehung der preussischen Landeskirche, i. 192 V.
82 Ibid. 148.
83 In addition to aforementioned measures, the king allowed for the establishment of synods
through an edict of 27 May 1816. These local provincial synods amounted to little more,
however, than pastors’ conferences without genuine authority over the Protestant ecclesiastical
polity. Actual authority resided in the consistories, superintendents, and the Department of
Ecclesiastical AVairs and Public Education. Later, in an edict of 31 December 1825, consistories
were divided into two sections, one overseeing church aVairs, the other educational aVairs. It
was this latter section, the so-called Provinzial Schulkollegium, that administered exams to
prospective clergymen. See von Rönne (ed.), Die Verfassung und Verwaltung des preußischen
Staates, pt. 8 (Berlin, 1855), i. 259; Huber and Huber (eds.), Staat und Kirche, i. 125–6, 574–6;
and von Thadden, Prussia, 100–1. On the Catholic church polity in Prussia at this time, see
Huber and Huber (eds.), Staat und Kirche, i. 199 V. The bull De salute animarum (16 July 1821)
came to regulate aVairs between Prussia and Rome in the post-Napoleonic era.
were to be ‘directly subject to the Ministry of Ecclesiastical AVairs and Public
Education’.84
These measures provide important context for the landmark step in 1817
to unite Lutheran and Reformed congregations into one Prussian united
Evangelical Church or Unionskirche.85 In part, the drive towards union
arose from king’s personal, religious motivations. In the years preceding the
union, Friedrich Wilhelm III had taken an interest in the episcopal structure
of the Church of England and in the liturgies of the Orthodox and Catholic
churches. In comparison, his churches in Prussia seemed poorly organized
and liturgically too variegated. What is more, the Reformed king had married
a Lutheran wife from Mecklenburg, and he found it frustrating that they
could not share communion together. Yet the decision for union did not
emanate from the king’s whims alone; other intellectual and political exigen-
cies come into play. To a number of ministers, the Church Union represented
a welcome opportunity to overcome confessionalism and thus achieve a more
progressive understanding of religion, one more in line with the outlook of
German idealism. Furthermore, the union was recognized as a matter of
raison d’état, of bringing religion ‘into harmony with the direction of the
state’, as Altenstein put it. It would help achieve national unity after the Treaty
of Vienna (1815), which had greatly increased Prussia’s size, population, and
religious diversity. In particular, government oYcials thought that a centrally
administered, confessionally united state church would foster greater under-
standing between Prussia’s eastern Lutheran provinces and the newly acquired
provinces of the Rhineland and Westphalia, which contained numerous
Reformed communities.86 In turn, a single Protestant church organically
connected to the state would present a ‘united front’ against the sizeable
Catholic minority.
The dual goals of diminishing intra-Protestant confessionalism and con-
solidating national unity nourished Erastian tendencies already afoot. The
process of church union got fully underway in September of 1817. In antici-
pation of the tercentenary celebration of the Reformation in October, the king
issued a proclamation, in which he deplored Protestant divisions, argued that
only externals still divided the two churches, and commended reuniWcation as
an act of deep Christian signiWcance.87 The king made clear that the Reformed
did not have to become Lutheran, nor Lutheran Reformed, but that from
84 Huber and Huber (eds.), Staat und Kirche, i. 120–4 (emphasis added).
85 For an overview, see ‘Union’ in RGG vi. 1138 V., and Walter Elliger, Die evangelische Kirche
der Union. Ihre Vorgeschichte und Geschichte (Witten: Luther, 1967).
86 Bigler, ‘The Rise of Political Protestantism in Nineteenth-Century Germany’, CH 34
(1965): 435.
87 Foerster Die Entstehung der preussischen Landeskirche, i. 267 V.
their separate identities a new ‘evangelical’ church would develop. The king
then set an example for his subjects: on 31 October he celebrated the Refor-
mation by attending a service that combined Lutheran and Reformed elem-
ents. During the communion, he received the bread from the Reformed court
preacher, the cup from a Lutheran pastor. Shortly afterwards the king issued a
medal to commemorate the event: Luther and Calvin graced one side, and on
the other a symbol of Mother Church appeared clutching her two sons to her
bosom.
In the following months, despite some opposition, other churches in
Prussia followed suit and soon the drive towards union spread beyond
Prussia’s borders, receiving support from important Wgures in church, state,
and education—including Schleiermacher.88 Yet the movement began to
sputter in the early 1820s, triggered by the king’s decision, in 1821, to publish
a new, uniform liturgical book (Agende), which he encouraged every Protest-
ant church in Prussia to adopt. In 1822 the new liturgical book was made
mandatory for all institutions connected directly to the state—in court,
prison, military, and hospital services. The new liturgical book’s introduction
stated that its purpose was to unite all citizens by promoting ‘Christian fear of
God, true virtue, and love of the fatherland’.89 By 1825 roughly two-thirds of
Prussia’s Protestant churches had adopted the new service book.90 The king
hoped that the remaining congregations would adopt it of their own free will
and thus achieve a state-sanctioned, standardized liturgy throughout Prot-
estant Prussia.
This did not happen. Pressure to use the new service book aroused a storm
of controversy from some quarters, leading to the ‘rites controversy’ (Agen-
denstreit). The controversy played itself out in the 1820s and 1830s, resulting
in several church secessionist movements. Reformed churches in the western
provinces and some orthodox Lutherans and pietists in Silesia oVered the
strongest opposition, arguing that the new liturgy overlooked crucial theo-
logical diVerences and that its forced imposition violated the Protestant
principle of freedom of conscience. Many clergymen, moreover, made the
legal argument that the state only had rights over external ecclesiastical aVairs
and not over internal ones, jus circa sacra not jus in sacra.
But the king and his ministers refused to listen. In fact, in a demonstration
of direct political power, the government resorted to coercion. In 1830
Altenstein, who had become Minister of Culture in 1817, advised the king
88 The most outspoken early critic of the union was the Lutheran pastor, Claus Harms, who
published 95 theses against the union on 31 October 1817. See RGG iii. 76.
89 Quoted in Groh, Nineteenth-Century German Protestantism, 38.
90 Elliger, Die evangelische Kirche der Union, 48–53.
that a propitious moment had arrived to step up measures of achieving the
union. The king heeded his advice and between 1830 and 1834 many critics of
the Agende were either suspended from their duties or imprisoned; the army
even occupied some of the most recalcitrant churches! In 1834 the king
announced that the book of services was compulsory for all Protestant
churches.91 This precipitated more defections and opposition, which in turn
led to more coercive measures. In Silesia a number of congregations rallied
around Johannes G. Scheibel (1783–1843) from Breslau, who emerged as the
leader of the Old Lutherans, a group that rejected the union in favour of more
traditional Lutheranism. Altenstein persecuted this group with great energy,
imprisoning some pastors and enforcing union services in the presence of
government troops. By the late 1830s Old Lutherans and other religious
malcontents began to see their situation as hopeless and many resorted to
emigration—to Australia, Canada, and the United States.92
The rites controvery left a lasting impact on Prussian church life and
society. Through it, the king, although desirous of promoting religion, iron-
ically ended up alienating some of nation’s most pious elements. For our
purposes, what is particularly important is the extent to which the govern-
ment used coercion to realize a religious agenda. The attempted state-im-
posed liturgy of the 1820s and 1830s, one scholar has written, represents ‘the
culmination of statism and the authority of the state over the church’.93 Such
Erastian measures would have been unlikely, however, apart from the Prussian
reforms after 1806, which gave centralized government organs expanded
powers over religious matters. Furthermore, it is important to underscore
that the policies of the king were strongly ratiWed by leading ministers, even if
they did not exactly share the king’s own pious motivations. The idealist view
that ‘religion’ extracted from confessional-institutional particularities was
necessary for Nationalerziehung in the Fichtean sense appears to have been a
decisive factor motivating such Wgures as Nicolovius and Altenstein in the
Ministry of Culture. It followed that those ecclesiastical bodies that obstructed
the realization of this greater religious good administered by the state were
appropriately regarded as ‘dangerous sectarians’ in need of correction and
punishment.94
91 At this time, the king also made clear that the union was to be a confederation of
evangelical churches, in which individual congregations could maintain Reformed or Lutheran
accents if they so desired. This was more moderate than the initial union proposal of 1817. See
Huber and Huber (eds.), Staat und Kirche, i. 578 V.
92 On the Old Lutheran emigration, see Wilhelm Iwan, Die altlutherische Auswanderung um
die Mitte des 19.Jahrhundert, 2 vols. (Ludwigsburg, 1943).
94 Werner Vogel, ‘Altenstein’, in Wolfgang Treue and Karlfried Gründer (eds.), Wissenschaft-
spolitik in Berlin: Minister, Beamte, Ratgeber (Berlin: Colloquium, 1987), 104.
The historian Friedrich Meinecke observed in 1905 that the Prussian reform
period ‘nurtured all of Prussian-German history in the nineteenth century.
In this creative epoch originated the institutions and impulses which
today still have living consequences.’95 While certainly not valid in every
respect, Meinecke’s words ring true for Prussian ecclesiastical aVairs and
church–state relations. The arrangements set down during the reform era,
although continually modiWed throughout the century, persisted until the
Weimar Republic. Indeed, the extensive subordination of the church to the
state and the concomitant weakening of independent church government are
among the most important facts of Prussian/German history in the nine-
teenth century. While greater independence of the churches was gained later
in the nineteenth century—largely through the organization of church coun-
cils and synods—Protestant churches did not gain full independence from
the state.96
To be sure, many deplored this situation. As one pastor put it at the Wrst
Prussian nationwide general synod in 1846, ‘Our church, as is now stands,
cannot be called an institution; we have only spiritual aVairs (Kultus) but no
church (Kirche). . . . Our church is constructed like a police establishment and
cannot come to life.’97 Although this synod called for church independence,
the king and the bureaucracy largely ignored its wishes. Prussia would not
gain synods at the national level until the 1870s, but even these were only
95 Meinecke, The Age of German Liberation, 70 (trans. modiWed).

96 For accessible summaries of church–state developments in the mid- and late nineteenth
century, see Groh, Nineteenth-Century German Protestantism, 171 V. and Daniel R. Borg, The
Old-Prussian Church and the Weimar Republic (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England,
1984). Degrees of ecclesiastical independence were achieved through a national synod meeting
of 1846, through the organization of the Evangelischer Oberkirchenrat (1850), and through a
statewide synodical system brought about by ordinances in 1873 and 1876. (Although voices of
church–state separation were present during the revolutionary events of 1848–9, the failure of
this revolution greatly hampered this cause.) The system that emerged in the later nineteenth
century has sometimes been described as an ecclesiastical dyarchy, a system in which power is
divested in two structures of authority. On the one hand, consistorial organs derived their
authority from the summus episcopus and organized from the Evangelischer Oberkirchenrat
downwards. On the other hand, the synods, the organs of self-administration, organized
upwards–from the congregational level to a territorial or general synod. Yet a balance of
power did not exist between the two structures; the preponderance of authority resided in the
bureaucratic apparatus of the state—in the king qua summus episcopus, the Kultusministerium,
superintendents, and consistories. It is also relevant to this discussion that the Prussian
Constitution of 1850 brought greater civil rights to all confessions of faith. Still, it upheld the
state’s support of established Christian institutions, including theological faculties. As Article 14
expressed it: ‘Die christliche Religion wird bei denjenigen Einrichtungen des Staats, welche mit
der Religionsübungen im Zusammenhange stehen, unbeschadet, der im Art. 12 gewährleisteten
Religionsfreiheit, zum Grunde gelegt.’ See Huber and Huber (eds.), Staat und Kirche, ii. 34 V.,
314 V., 929 V.
97 The pastor was Adolf Sydow of Berlin. Quoted in Verhandlungen der evangelischen
General-Synode zu Berlin vom. 2.Juni bis zum 19.August 1846 (Berlin, 1846), 414.
relatively independent and still allowed the state considerable powers. The
Erastian past weighed heavily on the present. As John Groh has summed up:
‘The Prussian reform movement . . . deprived the churches of the initiative of
self-government, and made them a department of the state. Their relations
with the state determined their role in society, since the state imposed on
them an administrative structure that regulated church–state relations.’98
Rudolf von Thadden has similarly remarked that the main legacy of the
Prussian Reform Era was ‘the absence of any independent . . . element within
the structure of the church.’99 Hajo Holborn reached a similar conclusion:
Enlightened despotism had tended to treat the schools and churches as mere institu-
tions of the state. The reforms brought about after 1806 perfected this policy. There
are no examples of replacing the state governments of the churches by popular
ecclesiastical constitutions. It is astounding that what occurred was the expansion of
the government controlled [ecclesiastical organization]. . . . Almost everywhere, au-
tonomous ecclesiastical authorities disappeared as the churches became organs of the
state bureaucracy. . . . The introduction of councils and synods in the second half of
the century was a case of too little, too late.100
My own analysis follows a similar line. However, the post-1806 reforms did not
simply ‘perfect’ the policies of enlightened despotism, as Holborn claims, nor,
as I have indicated earlier, was the Prussian state-church of the nineteenth
century a return to the Reformation model, as Erich Foerster has suggested.
Rather, the more recent historical forces of state centralization, inspired by
Napoleon, and the political implications of idealist philosophy contributed to
a new doctrine of the state in Prussia, the state as a pedagogic-moral force, a
Erziehungsstaat or Kulturstaat.101 This new doctrine helped justify direct, often
extensive government control over ecclesiastical aVairs in Prussia.
And what was true of churches, as we shall see by proWling Minister of Culture
Altenstein, was also true of educational aVairs, universities in particular.
4. ‘A REALM OF THE INTELLIGENCE’: MINISTER

A LTEN S T E I N A ND HI S L E G AC Y
On 3 November 1817 Prussia’s highest bureaucracy underwent another major

reorganization. The Department of Ecclesiastical AVairs and Public Education,
98 Groh, Nineteenth-Century German Protestantism, 22.
99 von Thadden, Prussia, 100.
100 Holborn, ‘German Idealism in the Light of Social History’, in Germany and Europe:
Historical Essays by Hajo Holborn, 17–18.
101 Levinger, Enlightened Nationalism, 37.
established in 1808, joined with a Section of Medical AVairs, became an
independent ministry, no longer a subsection of the Ministry of the Interior.
Often referred to simply as the Kultusministerium, the new Ministry bore the
lengthier oYcial title of the Ministerium der geistlichen, Unterrichts- und
Medizinalangelegenheiten (the Ministry of Ecclesiastical, Educational, and
Medical AVairs). Friedrich Schuckmann, who had replaced Humboldt in
1810, was passed over to become the director of the Ministry. Instead, Chan-
cellor Hardenberg turned to his old friend and ally, Karl Sigmund Franz von
Altenstein. Holding the powerful oYce of Prussian Kultusminister from 1817
until his death in 1840, Altenstein provided important leadership during a
time of great signiWcance for German academic and ecclesiastical life.102
Stepping into a magniWed state apparatus and personally committed to an
ideology of pedagogic nationalism, Altenstein possessed both a clear sense of
purpose and the administrative prudence necessary for his new role. Sign-
iWcantly, he was among the few leading lights of the reform period to survive
the political reaction that set in after the Wartburg Festival (1817) and the
Karlsbad Decrees (1819). Although he faced conservative opposition from a
number of quarters and liberal opposition from others, he commanded the
diplomatic and rhetorical skills necessary to operate in unfavourable circum-
stances and thereby realize many of his objectives, in church aVairs and
education.103 ‘He took a lofty view of his new oYce,’ Heinrich von Treitschke
once remarked, ‘and laid before himself the task of transforming the Prussian
state in Hegel’s sense, in order to make it a realm of the intelligence’ (Reich der
BegriVe). Under Altenstein’s leadership, churches were moved away from the
‘realm of the imagination’, Treitschke continued ‘[and] . . . subordinated to the
state, the realm of the intelligence. . . . [He] manipulated his system warily in
the honorable intention of ensuring that the church should herself feel
contented under the benevolent tutelage of the state, and [he] did in fact
succeed in circumstances of exceptional diYculty.’104
Whether or not one agrees with Treitschke’s Hegelian interpretation of
Altenstein’s leadership, the fact that Altenstein steadily sought to extend the
logic of the Kulturstaat in the spheres of education and religion is hard to
102 On the bureaucratic reorganization and Altenstein’s call to become Kultusminister, see
Müsebeck, Das preussische Kultusministerium, 33 V., 55 V., 153 V., and Max Lenz, Geschichte der
königlichen Friedrich-Wilhelms-Unversität zu Berlin (Halle, 1910), ii(1). 3–34.
103 Curiously, there is no major biography on Altenstein. Instead, see Müsebeck, Das
preussische Kultusministerium, 153 V.; Ella Kuhl, Der erste Kultusminister Karl von Altenstein
und seine Leistungen auf den Gebiete der Sozialpädagogik (Cologne, 1924); Werner Vogel,
‘Altenstein’, in Treue and Gründer (eds.), Wissenschaftspolitik in Berlin, 89–105; ADB xxxv.
652 V.; and RGG i. 291–2.
104 Heinrich von Treitschke, Germany in the Nineteenth Century, trans. Eden and Cedar Paul
(New York: AMS, 1969), ii. 509–10.
deny. Arguably more than any other political Wgure in Vormärz Prussia,
Altenstein continued the spirit of the reform period, albeit working closely
with his staV, particularly Nicolovius and Süvern, who between 1810 and
1817 had quietly kept alive Humboldt’s ethos under the less inspiring leader-
ship of Friedrich Schuckmann. These ministers were joined in 1817 by
another kindred spirit, Johannes Schulze (1786–1870), who brought to his
oYce a determination and scholarly spirit beWtting the company he had
joined.105 Although working in a politically constrained environment after
1817–19, these men helped carry forward the steady scientization and pro-
fessionalization of Prussian universities, while simultaneously pursuing Eras-
tian measures in church–state relations.
Not surprisingly, therefore, the inXuence of the new Kultusministerium on
academic theology was considerable.106 During Altenstein’s tenure in oYce
several trends became apparent that would only grow as the nineteenth
century progressed. First, in fostering scientiWc and professional criteria of
excellence in higher education, in lieu of older confessional and collegial ones,
the new Ministry assisting in transforming universities into instruments of
research and specialization—a development of great consequence for the-
ology in so far as it too sought to be considered a modern university science.
Second, the basis for a new relationship between academic theology and the
state was adumbrated at this time. To a degree, this basis resembled the
symbiosis between university theologians and territorial princes during the
early modern era, when the former beneWted from the latter’s support and
protection, and the latter from the former’s articulation of the confessional
line. However, the new basis, while certainly Protestant, was not rigidly
confessional, but rather that of a general intellectualized Protestantism (Kul-
turprotestantismus as its critics would call it). This became particularly ap-
parent after the founding of the German Empire in 1871 in the ‘public
theologies’ of such Wgures as Albrecht Ritschl, Martin Rade, and Adolf von
Harnack. The new basis also served as a bulwark of statist interests against
various forms of perceived obscurantism (reactionary Lutherans, Catholics,
Jews) and irreligious radicals (Social Democrats and Communists).107 Finally,
105 Schulze had studied philosophy and philology at the University of Halle. He had
particularly been captivated by F. A. Wolf while attending this scholar’s famous philological
seminar. After 1806, Schulze, like many others, became committed to German nationalism
under Prussian leadership. On Schulze generally, see Conrad Varrentrapp, Johannes Schulze und
das höhere preussische Unterrichtswesen in seiner Zeit (Leipzig, 1889), and Rudolf Köpke, ‘Zum
Andenken an Dr. J. Schulze’, Zeitschrift für das Gymnasialwesen 23 (Berlin 1869): 245–56.
106 H. George Anderson, ‘Challenge and Change within German Theological Education in
the Nineteenth Century’, CH 39 (March 1970): 44.
107 On this theme, see Friedrich Wilhelm Graf, ‘Protestantische Theologie in der Gesellschaft
des Kaiserreich’, in Graf (ed.), ProWle des neuzeitlichen Protestantismus (Gütersloh: Gütersloher
Verlagshaus, 1992), ii. 12–117.
Altenstein’s tenure witnessed signs of a widening rift between (liberal) aca-
demic theology and (conservative) ecclesiastical concerns. Although during
the so-called Demagogenverfolgung after 1819, Altenstein often acted, of
political necessity, on behalf of clerical-conservative interests (as was the
case in the dismissal of the theologian de Wette from Berlin in 1819), he
nonetheless contributed in his university policies to some of the dynamics
that produced tension and mutual suspicion between churchmen and the-
ology professors.108 Partly obscured by the conservative ascendency during
Altenstein’s lifetime, this stand-oV between ‘wissenschaftliche Theologie’ and
‘kirchliche Theologie’, as it was often expressed, hardened in the mid- and
late-nineteenth century, summed up in Ernst Troelstsch’s remark that a
‘frightful gulf ’ had developed between theological faculties and churches in
the course of the nineteenth century.109
Descended from a noble family in Ansbach, Altenstein had studied law and
philosophy at the universities of Erlangen, Göttingen, and Jena.110 At the
request of Hardenberg, he entered the Prussian ministry and in 1799 moved to
Berlin, where he laboured in various oYcial capacities. While in Berlin he met the
philosopher Fichte and became an enthusiastic supporter of his philosophy,
inspired by Fichte’s high-minded views of the scholarly vocation and its role
in national education and also by Fichte’s assertion that human religious
advancement was not dependent on the mediation of prescriptive doctrinal
formulas or established institutions.111 The political crisis of 1806 provided an
opportunity for Altenstein to move to the center of the political stage, bringing
with him an idealist vision of a Kulturstaat as the vehicle for German national
rejuvenation and Prussia’s political and intellectual modernization.
Altenstein expressed this vision in his Riga Memorandum of 1807, a
document noteworthy for its grand style imitative of idealism as well as its
substance.112 In the memorandum, Altenstein called for the wholesale trans-
108 The Demagogenverfolgung or ‘persecution of demagogues’ refers to an intense period of

political witch-hunts against proponents of liberalism; it began as a reaction to the murder of
the playwright August von Kotzebue by the young theology student, Karl Sand. See Nipperdey,
Germany from Napoleon to Bismarck, 246 V. On de Wette’s dismissal, see Lenz, Universität
Berlin, ii (1). 61–100.
ZWT 51 (1908): 97.
110 Ansbach became integrated into Prussia only in 1791.
111 Frank Schuurmans, ‘Economic Liberalization, Honour, and Perfectibility: Karl Sigmund
Altenstein and the Spiritualization of Liberalism’, GH 16 (1998): 177. On Fichte’s early circle of
inXuence in Berlin, see Reinhard Lauth, ‘Über Fichtes Lehrtätigkeit in Berlin von Mitte 1799 bis
Anfang 1805 und seine Zuhörerschaft’, Hegel Studien 15 (1980): 9–50.
112 The memorandum is partially reprinted in Müsebeck, Das preussische Kultusministerium,
241–63. On the inXuence of idealist philosophy in general and Fichte in particular on Altenstein,
see Eduard Spranger, ‘Altensteins Denkschrift von 1807 und ihre Beziehung zur Philosophie’,
formation of the state on the basis of the government’s robust promotion of
science, art, education, and religion. Among the noblest expressions of hu-
mankind, he averred, was ‘genuine science’ (echte Wissenschaft), which along
with pure religion should be recognized as ‘the highest idea of the state’. The
state should therefore not shrink from its duties of embracing true science and
true religion. It could accomplish this by removing obstacles to their expres-
sion; in the universities this involved establishing conditions conducive to
academic freedom (Lehrfreiheit). In the religious sphere, it meant not pre-
scribing ‘positive’ or ‘literal’ views of religion, but rather emphasizing what he
called ‘the essential nature of religion’ (das Wesentliche der Religion). With
respect to academic theology, which straddled the educational and religious
domains, the principle of freedom also applied: ‘The state must limit the
teacher of religion, whether in doctrine or instruction, as little as possible.’
Instead, the religious spirit should be allowed to mix with the modern age, for
‘everything that promotes the progress of spirit (Geist), more or less, leads to
the promotion of religion’.113
A paradox lies at the heart of Altenstein’s memorandum, albeit one that
helps illumine the Kulturstaat notion and its attempted execution in the early
nineteenth century. On the one hand, Altenstein sought to deWne the state as a
passive force, meaning that the state should simply place itself in accord with
true science and true religion while not interfering with their free expression.
On the other hand, the state, conWdent of its powers as a positive moral force,
should also directly and actively champion true science and true religion. As
Altenstein expressed the matter concerning religion: ‘If the state is assured
that its direction is salutary, then it should not fear harm to itself from
spreading genuine religiosity; rather, it should be convinced that its own
purpose is one with this goal.’ To achieve harmony between the state, science,
and religion, Altenstein held, following Fichte, that the state must possess
thorough supervisory, regulatory, and Wnancial control over all institutions of
education and religion. Furthermore, the state should attend with great care
to the selection of government oYcials, university personnel, and clergymen,
because these individuals represented the future ‘rudders of the state’. Those
who possess skills in and love of Wissenschaft should be eagerly sought out
and, once appointed, encouraged through awards, honours, salaries, prestige,
and other forms of government-devised incentives, including elevation to
nobility (as was the case later with Adolf von Harnack). Religious leaders,
Altenstein indicated, were especially vital to the state, but science should
FBPG 18 (1906): 107–58. Altenstein memorandum was penned in Riga as a response to the
political collapse of Prussia at the hands of Napoleon in 1806.
113 Altenstein, ‘Riga Memorandum’, in Müsebeck, Das preussische Kultusministerium, 242–3,
250–7.
never be sacriWced for piety: ‘a religious man with an accomplished scientiWc
education’ (ein religiöser Mann mit vollendeter wissenschaftlicher Bildung) was
therefore the ideal choice as a future civil servant.114
In order to nuture future ‘rudders of the state’, education at all levels was of
capital importance. What is more, attentiveness to education by the govern-
ment promised to ameliorate problems caused by those social elements
deemed prone to divisive and obscurantist passions (i.e. Catholics, Jews,
and sectarian Protestants). While Altenstein supported freedom of conscience
and civil rights, he made clear that increased exposure to scientiWc education
by such groups would discourage unenlightened religious views and encour-
age their identiWcation with the state. Altenstein’s reasoning about the Jews on
this matter oVers more general insight into his understanding of the relation-
ship between education, religion, and the state:
A completely important undertaking is the instruction and education of the Jews. All
eVorts to make them less of a liability to the state are worthless if the state refuses to
support a considerable aspect of their instruction and education. If the Jew is
uneducated, then all arrangements to make him a useful citizen of the state are for
naught. . . . The only way to eVect a reform is through the establishment of educational
institutions, in which the Jew is so occupied that he cannot corrupt his education
through [study of] the Talmud.115
Likewise, he wrote, ‘the most important means of securing the power of the
state over the Catholic church is through the improved education of the
clergy’.116 A similar reasoning applied to Protestants who insisted too rigidly
on doctrinal particularism and/or who pitted the church against the state.
A case in point here was that of the Old Lutherans, whom Altenstein accused
of promoting a sectarian spirit inimical to the integrity of Prussia as a
‘Protestant State’. While he promoted coercive measures against such ‘sects’
in a number of cases, he felt that education ultimately provided the key to
establishing his goal for Protestantism: a ‘uniWed ecclesiastical organism’
under the protection and direction of the state.117
Not surprisingly, Altenstein regarded universities as indispensable for
Prussia’s intellectual and religious strength.118 ‘Promoting and developing
114 Altenstein, ‘Riga Memorandum’, in Müsebeck, Das preussische Kultusministerium, 245–57

(emphasis added). Cf. Altenstein’s memorandum of 1837, ‘Den Entwurf eines Regulatives über
die Befähigung zu den höheren Aemter der Verwaltung betreVend’, repr. in Hans Joachim
Schoeps, ‘Ein Gutachten des Kultusministers Altenstein’, ZP 12 (1966): 259–68.
115 Altenstein, ‘Riga Memorandum,’ in Müsebeck, Das preussische Kultusministerium, 246.
116 Ibid. 284. He wrote of Catholicism in Prussia: ‘The Prussian state is a Protestant state
[but] one-third of its subjects are Catholic. The relationship is diYcult’ (281).
118 ibid. 177.
scientiWc life in the universities and through them in the Prussian state and
throughout Germany’, wrote his colleague Johannes Schulze, was one of
Altenstein’s highest priorities.119 For ‘the actualization of science’ and for
more general ‘intellectual development’, Altenstein reasoned, ‘the universities
require a thorough reform,’ a task to which the state should apply its utmost
energies.120 Altenstein of course shared this view with many others after the
crisis of 1806; although it was undoubtedly Fichte who had inXuenced him
the most. Indeed, the university stood at the centre of the Kulturstaat idea in
the early nineteenth century: the intellectual excellence of a nation was held to
Wnd its supreme expression in universities. The state therefore must serve and
support its universities, symbols of national unity and intellectual accom-
plishment, defending the universal imperatives of science and academic
freedom against forces of particularism and obscurantism. In return for
state protection and succour, universities must fulWl their obligation to
honour the state and provide it with scientiWcally trained civil servants.
Expressed in the writings occasioned by the founding of the University of
Berlin, and also in Altenstein’s memorandum of 1807, this understanding of
state–university symbiosis functioned as a social contract of sorts between the
university professoriate and the Prussian state through much of the nine-
teenth century.121
Because of the course of events after 1807, Altenstein did not gain imme-
diate inXuence over educational or religious aVairs, even if some of his ideas
were taken up by others.122 Instead, he was asked by Hardenberg in 1808 to
serve as the Prussian Wnance minister. The Wnancial crisis of the Prussian state
at the time proved to be too much for him to master and he was forced from
oYce in 1810, thereafter becoming a provincial governor in Silesia and later a
diplomat in post-Napoleonic Paris. The establishment of the Kultusminister-
ium in 1817 and his selection to serve as its chief provided Altenstein with a
new window of opportunity to pursue his educational and religious policies
on a grand national scale. Forced to operate in a milieu inhospitable to his
liberal (if not his statist) proclivities, Altenstein nonetheless used his new post
to continue the transformation of the Prussian universities begun under
Humboldt’s leadership. The nature of Altenstein’s decisions and actions, by
necessity, aVected both theological faculties and the general direction of
119 Johannes Schulze, ‘Beiträge zur Geschichte des Ministeriums der Unterrichtsangelegen-
heiten von 1818 bis 1840 und zur Charakteristik des verewigten Ministers Freiherrn v. Altenstein’,
ibid. 301–2.
120 Altenstein, ‘Riga Memorandum’, ibid. 243–7.
121 R. Steven Turner, ‘The Prussian Universities and the Research Imperative, 1806–1848’,
Ph.D diss. (Princeton University, 1972), 429–30.
122 Altenstein, for example, was perhaps the Wrst to suggest that Wilhelm von Humboldt
oversee educational reform in Prussia. See Müsebeck, Das preussische Kultusministerium, 51.
theology in Prussia and, because of Prussia’s inXuence, in other German uni-
versities as well. Among his most important concerns, Müsebeck has noted, was
ensuring ‘the thorough, theological-scientiWc education of the Protestant
clergy’.123 As Altenstein himself expressed it in a memorandum of 1819:
The most important thing is the [state’s] care for competent clergy. To this end, one
must provide a proWcient education not merely [to produce] a pastor but a theologian
(nicht bloß als Seelsorger, sondern als Theologe). A learned education is deeply embed-
ded in the character of Protestantism. It is the surest means of maintaining an able
clergyman; only serious intellectual activity keeps one vital and protects against
indolence. It is inestimable in promoting the general education of the nation (Volks-
bildung), important as well in the Wght against Catholicism and the sectarian spirit.
It is the surest means against a regrettable development in the Zeitgeist. . . . The
modern age has paved the way for this education, although much, much more
remains to be done.124
While myriad tasks occupied Altenstein while in oYce, the objective of
improving and raising the scholarly standards of theological education
never remained far from his sights.
Among the Wrst undertakings of the reorganized Kultusministerium under
Altenstein’s leadership was the founding of the University of Bonn (1818) in
the recently annexed Rhineland. Intended as a westward extension of the
spirit of the University of Berlin, the University of Bonn also represented a
forceful assertion of Prussian power in a heavily populated and predomin-
antly Catholic region. Schuckmann, Nicolovius, Süvern, before Altenstein,
had all nurtured high hopes that such an institution would serve as a
counterweight to Cologne, a stronghold of Catholic clericalism and anti-
Prussian sentiment, and as compensation for a number of regional institu-
tions of learning closed during Napoleon’s hegemony. To temper Catholic
opinion, Bonn was to be a ‘parity university’ and therefore, like the University
of Breslau in Silesia, include both Protestant and Catholic theological facul-
ties. In Wlling out the new faculties with professors, Altenstein pushed the
powers of his oYce to their limits, often provoking the criticism of heavy-
handedness.125 In outWtting the Catholic theological faculty, he faced consid-
erable diYculty and opposition from the church hierarchy. Nonetheless, due
in large part to the acquisition of Georg Hermes (1775–1831), a Catholic
dogmatician inXuenced by Kant and Fichte, Bonn showed promise as a centre

124 Altenstein, ‘Denkschrift über den Zusammenhang des Kultusministeriums mit der
gesamten Staatsverwaltung’ (May 1819), repr. ibid. 282.
125 Friedrich von Bezold, Geschichte der rheinischen Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität von der
Gründung bis zum Jahr 1870 (Bonn, 1920), i. 92–3.
of liberal Catholic thought—until the untimely death of Hermes in 1831 and
the papal condemnation of what had come to be known as ‘Hermesianism’,
the attempted marriage of Catholic doctrine and idealist philosophy.126
Appointing to the Protestant theological faculty had its own challenges.
Many candidates did not want to move to the Rhineland because of the
politically precarious situation there. But eventually Altenstein succeeded in
putting together a body of theologians that delicately balanced his own
intellectual predilections and the demands of the times, exemplifying robust
Wissenschaftlichkeit on the one hand, but also a spirit of moderation and a
commitment to the new Protestant Church Union. These latter qualities were
especially needful given the rising reactionary political mood occasioned by
liberal student agitation among university-based student fraternities
(Burschenschaften).127
Among Altenstein’s initial appointments at Bonn, two theologians, Frie-
drich Lücke (1791–1855) and Karl Immanuel Nitzsch (1787–1868), deserve
particular credit for rapidly advancing Bonn’s reputation in the theological
world. Born near the city of Magdeburg, Lücke had studied at Göttingen and
Halle before coming to Berlin to complete his studies and teach as a Privat-
dozent. During his time in Berlin, Lücke had developed close friendships with
Neander, de Wette, and Schleiermacher, helping the latter two found the
short-lived Theologische Zeitschrift around the time of his departure to
Bonn in 1818. At Bonn Lücke taught primarily in the Welds of New Testament
and church history. In 1819 he helped found a theological seminar at Bonn,
modelled on Berlin’s, for ‘the nurture and promotion of theological science’.
In 1828, he participated in the founding of another journal, Theologische
Studien und Kritiken, which quickly emerged as the leading organ of ‘medi-
ating theology’ (Vermittlungstheologie), a theological school that sought ‘a
true living middle ground’, preserving the legacy of traditional Protestantism
while embracing scientiWc and historical criticism.128
Descending from a long line of theologians and pastors in Wittenberg, Karl
Immanuel Nitzsch was persuaded by Altenstein to join Bonn’s faculty in 1822.
126 The papal bull Dum acerbissimas (26 September 1835) condemned Hermesianism and
placed Hermes’s works on the Index. On the career of Hermes and on ‘Hermesianism’, see RGG
iii. 262–4, and ODCC 761. Hermes received his theological doctorate from the Prussian
university of Breslau.
127 On the student movement and the volatile political climate around the time of the
founding of the University of Bonn, see George S. Williamson, ‘What Killed August von
Kotzebue?: The Temptations of Virtue and the Political Theology of German Nationalism,
1789–1819’, JMH 72 (December 2000): 890–943.
128 Alf Christophersen, Friedrich Lücke (1791–1855) (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1999), i.
121 V., 159 V. In 1827 Lücke accepted an oVer from the University of Göttingen, where he
Wnished his career.
Nitzsch had studied and brieXy taught at the University of Wittenberg before
its closure in 1813; he received his doctorate in theology from Berlin. After the
reopening of Wittenberg as a seminary in 1817,129 he taught and pastored
there until receiving the call to Bonn, where Altenstein asked him to teach
dogmatics and practical theology and to lead the academic worship services.
Similar to Lücke in some respects, Nitzsch became a key supporter and
activist on behalf of the Prussian Church Union and a leading representative
of Vermittlungstheologie, writing one of its deWnitive theological expressions
in his System der christlichen Lehre (1829).130 Because of his general outlook
and theological emphases, he became known to many as ‘the Schleiermacher
of the Rhineland’. He would return to teach at Berlin in 1847.131
Joining Lücke and Nitzsch on the theological faculty were three others:
Johann Christian Wilhelm Augusti, formerly of the University of Breslau; Karl
Ludwig Gieseler, once a pupil at Halle; and Karl Heinrich Sack, an erstwhile
student at Göttingen and another devotee of Schleiermacher. Together these
men made up an impressive new faculty, combining Lutheran and Reformed,
conservative and liberal elements into a moderate but intellectually vibrant
mix. With the exception of Augusti, it was a relatively young group. The
majority had been inXuenced by Berlin’s theological faculty, by Schleierma-
cher in particular. The reputation of Bonn’s Protestant theological faculty by
the 1830s as a bastion of theological mediation, critical inquiry, and commit-
ment to the Prussian Church Union bears witness to Altenstein’s savvy
‘Berufungspolitik’, his ability to employ the power and purse-strings of his
oYce in calling professors.132 Bonn’s faculty, one scholar has summed up,
‘reXected the wish of the government to have men of a conciliatory and
cooperative spirit in the Rhineland and Westphalia and thus facilitate the
incorporation of those areas into the Prussian state after 1815’.133
Filling out Bonn’s faculty was of course not all that occupied Altenstein
after 1817. An eVort to bring the philosopher Hegel to Berlin to assume
Fichte’s former chair was another major and, in hindsight, consequential
endeavour. The success of this eVort, one hardly need underscore, carried
enormous implications for the theological and intellectual worlds in Germany
and far beyond, for a prestigious chair in the Prussian capital provided Hegel
with a position of academic authority with few rivals throughout Europe.
129 On the transition of Wittenberg from university to seminary, see Otto Debelius, Das
königliche Predigerseminar zu Wittenberg, 1817–1917 (Berlin, 1917).
130 RGG iv. 1499–500.
131 See Willibald Beyschlag, Carl Immanuel Nitzsch: Eine Lichtgestalt der neueren deutsch-
evangelichen Kirchengeschichte, 2nd edn. (Berlin, 1882), 182 V.
132 Even so, there were many contingencies involved in the early stages of selection. For
details, see von Bezold, Geschichte der rheinischen Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, i. 93–117.
133 Bigler, The Politics of German Protestantism, 122.
Hegel’s inXuence on the Tübingen School in biblical criticism of the mid-
nineteenth century, and on Left Hegelianism, which attracted the attention of
the young Karl Marx, are but two well-known examples of Hegel’s far-
reaching intellectual potency.
Since 1814, Fichte’s chair at Berlin had remained conspicuously vacant.
Shortly after assuming oYce, Altenstein informed the king of the negative
implications of this state of aVairs. ‘Because every scientiWc education, to
some degree, requires a Wrm philosophical basis,’ he wrote, ‘the occupation of
this academic chair is not only highly important for the entire university, but
also of decisive inXuence for its reputation both in the nation and abroad.’134
With the king’s approval, on 26 December 1817, Altenstein wrote to Hegel,
who had only recently accepted a position at the University of Heidelberg.
OVering to double his present salary, Altenstein sought to persuade Hegel that
only a chair in the Prussian capital would truly accord with his intellectual
signiWcance. ‘You yourself have still greater responsibilities for Wissenschaft,
for which a more comprehensive and more important sphere of inXuence
opens itself here. In this regard, you know what Berlin can provide for you.’135
In January of 1818 Hegel accepted the oVer and his legendary tenure at Berlin
began, during which students from across Germany and Europe came with
quasi-religious enthusiasm to hear lectures from ‘the Master’.136
Whether Hegel can be regarded as ‘the Prussian state philosopher’, as some
have suggested, during this time is a matter of uncertainty that still invites
debate.137 What is perhaps more certain is the fact that Altenstein saw in
Hegel the intellectual embodiment of at least some of his own aspirations for
the Prussian state as he had expressed them in his 1807 Riga Memorandum.
For Altenstein and no less for his colleague Johannes Schulze, Hegel repre-
sented a Fichte redivivus, a living intellectual titan, educating the nation by
reconciling Christianity with modern scientiWc consciousness and balancing
political liberalism with the obligations of power—something Prussia felt
acutely after 1815. In this light, it is perhaps less important to consider how
Hegel understood his own philosophy vis-à-vis the Prussian state than how
the state understood his philosophy, which for Altenstein and Schulze
amounted to an intellectual magisterium of the highest order, carrying
implications for the entirety of human knowledge, not least for theological
study and scholarship.
134 See Altenstein’s letter to the king in Lenz, Unversität Berlin, iv. 334.
135 Quoted ibid. 333.
136 See Günther Nicolin (ed.), Hegel in Berichten seiner Zeitgenossen (Hamburg: F. Meiner,
1970).
137 See Horst Althaus, Hegel: An Intellectual Biography, trans. Michael Tarsh (Oxford: Black-
well, 2000), 155–66.
This fact was not lost on Schleiermacher, who often worried that Altenstein
had accorded an importance to the ‘Hegelian Party,’ as he derogatively put it,
that would ultimately prove deleterious for theology. Schleiermacher’s view
was based on Altenstein’s warm support of his colleague Marheineke, an
enthusiast for Hegel, and by the support given to the young Hegelian upstart,
Bruno Bauer, who had matriculated in Berlin’s theological faculty in 1828.138
What is more, it would have certainly galled Schleiermacher had he known
that upon his death Altenstein and Schulze attempted to Wll his chair with the
Tübingen theologian and biblical critic Ferdinand Christian Baur because the
ministers perceived Baur a worthy legatee not of Schleiermacher, but of
Hegel!139 Schleiermacher was not alone in worrying about Altenstein’s fond-
ness for Hegel; like-minded liberals, such as the jurist Friedrich Karl von
Savigny, worried too, while conservatives (with good reason) doubted Hegel’s
religious orthodoxy. In the Wnal analysis, Altenstein seems to have interpreted
Hegel’s thought—at least what he understood of it—as an elevated expression
of his own sentiment from the reform era, a non-credal Protestant moral and
intellectual progressivism, nourishing the state and nourished by it. Perhaps
Goethe divined the matter accurately, when, upon hearing of Hegel’s ap-
pointment, laconically averred: ‘Minister Altenstein would seem to want to
provide himself with a learned bodyguard.’140
Although of considerable importance, Hegel’s appointment to Berlin did
not constitute Altenstein’s most far-reaching contribution to Prussia’s
university system. Rather, this contribution came in the form of his deliberate
eVorts, spearheaded in close collaboration with Johannes Schulze, to expand
opportunities and incentives for scholars to develop individual scientiWc
expertise, the sine qua non of the modern research university. While the
lion’s share of Altenstein and Schulze’s attention in this respect focused on
the philosophical faculty, which witnessed increased growth and specializa-
tion at this time, their eVorts had implications for the higher faculties as well.
Working cautiously in a politically reactionary period, Altenstein and Schulze
managed to lay the institutional groundwork for a research ethos and a
dynamic conception of professorial scholarship, which established the condi-
tions of possibility that, in the course of the nineteenth century, helped the
German university system rise to the heights of international recognition.
138 Schleiermacher regularly conWded to his friend J. C. Gaß in Breslau his misgivings about
Hegel and Altenstein. ‘Ich bin mit Altenstein’, Schleiermacher wrote, ‘in gar keiner Verbindung.
Er sucht mich nicht auf, und ich werde mich gewiß nicht an ihn andrängen.’ See W. Gaß (ed.),
Schleiermachers Briefwechsel mit J. Chr. Gaß, 150, 209.
139 Eventually the appointment of Baur did not work out and the theologian August Twesten
was selected instead. See Walter Elliger, 150 Jahre Theologische Fakultät Berlin (Berlin: Walter de
Gruyter, 1960), 29 V.
140 Goethe’s letter of 1 May 1818 to Sulpiz Boisserée; quoted in Althaus, Hegel, 148.
Increased funding for higher education, if modest, served as the backbone
of the Kultusministerium’s eVorts. ‘A state like Prussia ought not and cannot
lack the means to this purpose of expanding higher education,’ Altenstein
wrote his superior Hardenberg in 1818, requesting a budget of 300,000 thaler
for his Ministry. ‘A rigorous [Wnancial] eVort will be rewarded more than in
any other area. The intellectual [sphere] cannot be too highly valued. It is the
basis of all that on which the strength of the state can eternally rest.’141
Statistical Wgures from the next few decades indicate that Altenstein’s plea
was heard, even if Altenstein himself often complained that his Ministry did
not receive enough support. In 1820 Prussia’s total government outlay for
universities stood at 396,019 thaler. By 1835 the amount had risen to 451,175,
and by 1853 to 580,345 thaler. For the University of Berlin, the budget stood
at 80,011 thaler in 1820. This increased by 24.6 per cent to 99,721 thaler by the
end of Altenstein’s administration in 1840. By 1850 it had grown to 171,460
thaler or 114 per cent. Although growth was often unsteady, declining for a
period in the 1830s and not aVecting all universities equally, the broader
patterns suggest a sustained commitment by the Prussian government to the
upkeep and expansion of its university system. Indices of growth became
more pronounced in the late nineteenth century, reXecting the government’s
response to the dynamics of population growth, industrialization, and the
pace of scientiWc and technological developments.
Perhaps more important though was how the money was spent. Altenstein
and Schulze concentrated their eVorts on expanding the professoriate, which
grew in Prussia by 147 per cent between 1800 and 1834, or from 195 to 482
professors. Although growth tapered oV in the 1830s, it still grew at a rate of
10 per cent, from a teaching staV of 482 in 1834 to one of 531 in 1853. This
growth is all the more impressive when one considers that student enrolment
declined by almost 20 per cent during the same period. Between 1800 and
1853, 131 new full professorships (Ordinarien) were created. Since many of
these posts indicated the government’s recognition of a new academic Weld,
this may be taken as a harbinger of disciplinary diVerentiation and special-
ization that became more pronounced after 1850.142 Equally revealing is the
fact that the preponderance of growth relative to student enrolment occurred
in the philosophical and medical faculties. Following Kant, Fichte, and others,
Altenstein believed that the philosophical faculty represented the true nerve
centre of the modern university, and with the faculty of medicine it consti-
tuted the logical arena of expansion for the ‘natural sciences,’ which began to
141 Quoted in Varrentrapp, Johannes Schulze und das höhere preussische Unterrichtswesen in
seiner Zeit, 279.
142 The Wgures are taken from Turner, ‘Prussian Universities’, 442 V.
gain ground on humanistic studies by the 1830s.143 At the University of
Berlin, for example, the number of full professorships in the philosophical
and medical faculties grew by 187 per cent and 50 per cent respectively
between 1820 and 1840, far exceeding the increase in student enrolment in
these faculties (113% and 21.5% respectively). Exactly the opposite took place
in the faculties of theology and law, where student increases between 1820 and
1840 grew by 146 per cent and 81 per cent while the number of full profes-
sorships grew by 66 per cent in theology and remained static in law.144 Since
the philosophical and medical faculties witnessed more specialization, these
Wgures suggest that the development of the discipline and the promise of
scientiWc progress that these Welds oVered were becoming important criteria
of faculty expansion. In other words, the Prussian state willingly Wnanced
specializing, progressive Welds, irrespective of actual student demand. This
trend too would continue in the latter half of the nineteenth century as
disciplines such as philology, history, physics, chemistry, and various theor-
etical and clinical branches of medicine underwent the greatest enlargement
and diVerentiation, even as their student enrolment increases were smaller in
relative terms.145 One hardly need underscore that these trends contributed
greatly to theological faculty’s diminished clout within the overall structure of
the university.
Enabled by increased state expenditure on higher education, Altenstein and
Schulze sought to appoint and promote ‘star’ scholars, while increasing the
pressures on the entire professoriate to publish serious scholarly works.
Consistent with his belief that appropriate appointments provided the key
to a university’s success, and uninhibitedly using his appointive powers,
Altenstein brought the best and brightest to Prussian universities, regularly
seeking them out beyond Prussia’s borders. Schulze opined that professorial
appointments ‘are the Wrst and most diYcult task in the German univer-
sity’.146 Besides Hegel, the historian Leopold von Ranke, the jurist F. K. von
Savigny, the physiologist Johannes Müller, among many other luminaries,
were lured to teach in Prussia’s universities.147 Altenstein and Schulze dimin-
143 It is relevant to note that Altenstein had a semi-professional interest in botany and even
published material in scientiWc journals.
144 Turner, ‘Prussian Universities’, 444–5 and Lenz, Universität Berlin, iii. 493–7.
145 See Christian von Ferber, Die Entwicklung des Lehrkörpers der deutschen Universitäten und
Hochschulen, 1864–1954 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1956), 57–60.
146 Quoted inVarrentrapp, Johannes Schulze und das höhere preussische Unterrichtswesen in
seiner Zeit, 486.
147 See the list of prominent professorial appointments provided in Schulze, ‘Beiträge zur
Geschichte des Ministeriums der Unterrichtsangelegenheiten von 1818 bis 1840 und zur
Charakteristik des verewigten Ministers Freiherrn v. Altenstein’, in Müsebeck, Das preussische
Kultusministerium, 302 f.
ished the importance of fraternal or collegial concerns (how well an individ-
ual would Wt with his colleagues or with a particular university’s ethos) and
turned instead to disciplinary criteria in making decisions about whom to
appoint. In part, this was the natural consequence of the centralization of
higher education during the reform era. Unlike local faculties or curators in
the premodern university, the Kultusministerium had little reason to attach
great importance to collegial values that locally determined appointments had
stressed. Instead, the Ministry resorted to the publications and scholarly
reputation of a given professor or the promise of a newcomer based on peer
evaluation. In emphasizing scholarly renown and academic plaudits, however,
the Ministry gave precedence to purely wissenschaftlich criteria in making
academic appointments and it strengthened the role of disciplinary over
collegial values in determining the merit of a particular candidate.148
This approach to making appointments gained ground in theological
faculties too. However, in the reactionary and politically volatile climate
after 1819 theological appointments often generated greater controversy
than those in other Welds. Openings in theological faculties were therefore
closely monitored and candidates heavily scrutinized. Such scrutiny had
many sources from academic and ecclesiastical ranks, but it was particularly
acute from a group of powerful pietist aristocrats who came to exert inXuence
over the royal court in the 1820s and 1830s, a period often referred to as the
‘Awakening’ or Erweckungsbewegung because it witnessed a resurgence of
pietist religiosity.149 Thus despite the powers of his oYce, Altenstein did not
have a completely free hand in appointing theologians. Even so, with great
circumspection, he and his colleagues worked to elevate the role of scientiWc
and disciplinary criteria in appointing and promoting theology professors,
downplaying if not eliminating collegial and doctrinal considerations.150 As
indicated earlier, Altenstein gave warm support to Hegelian theologians,
including Philipp Marheineke, Wilhelm Vatke, Ferdinand Benary, and
Bruno Bauer, despite criticisms from both liberal and conservative camps
that Hegelianism only obfuscated and/or vitiated Christian theology. When
pressed by Neander about his apparent predilection for Hegelians, Altenstein
148 Turner, ‘Prussian Universities’, 446 V., and Timothy Lenoir, ‘Revolution from Above: The
Role of the State in Creating the German Research System, 1810–1910’, American Economic
Review 88 (1998): 22–3.
149 On the Erweckungsbewegung in Prussia, see RGG ii. 621–9. The inXuence of pietist
aristocrats at this time is spelled out clearly in Bigler, The Politics of German Protestantism,
125–55. Cf. Graf, ‘Protestantische Theologie und die Formierung der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft’,
in Graf (ed.), ProWle des neuzeitlichen Protestantismus, i. 11 V.
150 Schulze, ‘Beiträge zur Geschichte des Ministeriums der Unterrichtsangelegenheiten von
1818 bis 1840 und zur Charakteristik des verewigten Ministers Freiherrn v. Altenstein’, in
Müsebeck, Das preussische Kultusministerium, 301–2.
oVered what amounted to a philosophy of appointing to theology, noting that
his responsibility was not to promote a particular point of view but to provide
‘support for a genuine scientiWc freedom within the foundations on which the
Protestant church in the state is based’. Johannes Schulze added that the
Ministry oVered ‘equal support’ for ‘all genuinely pious and scientiWc
views’.151
To a considerable degree, Altenstein’s record of selection bears out this
claim; he supported ‘a parity of theological directions’, according to one
scholar, even if scientiWc accomplishment remained the guiding principle.
As indicated, he placed a number of Schleiermacher’s disciples—Lücke,
Nitzsch, Sack—on Bonn’s new theological faculty after 1818. He supported
pietists too, so long as they demonstrated suYcient scholarly rigour, promot-
ing, for example, the career of F. A. G. Tholuck, who emerged as Germany’s
leading pietist theologian during the mid-nineteenth century. A lecturer at
Berlin since 1823, Tholuck was transferred to Halle by Altenstein in 1826 to
take the edge oV the rationalist ethos there, represented by the theologians J. A.
Wegscheider and F. W. Gesenius, both of whom loudly but unsuccessfully
protested Tholuck’s appointment—a view seconded by the university’s rector,
the ageing theologian A. H. Niemeyer.152
Altenstein’s greatest frustrations involved dealing with candidates backed
by those powerful conservative aristocrats inXuenced by the resurgent piet-
ism.153 He lobbied the king unsuccessfully, for example, against the appoint-
ment of the conservative August Hahn to the University of Königsberg. He
questioned the appointment of Otto von Gerlach as a lecturer at Berlin in
1829 on the grounds that piety alone should not qualify a man for an
academic position and that the university should uphold the highest scholarly
standards. Prior to Gerlach’s appointment, Altenstein suVered a major set-
back with the appointment of E. W. Hengstenberg to Wll de Wette’s former
chair on Berlin’s theological faculty. Again, this was a case of behind-the-
scences support by inXuential pietist aristocrats and their allies, who saw in
the young Hengstenberg a gifted champion of the conservative cause. While
Altenstein consented to the appointment, he long considered Hengstenberg a
source of grief for his outspoken political views and ‘unwissenschaftlich’
tendencies.154 When Hengstenberg founded the conservative Evangelische
151 For the quotations and the context of this exchange, see Varrentrapp, Johannes Schulze
und das höhere preussische Unterrichtswesen in seiner Zeit, 474–5, and Lenz, Universität Berlin, ii
(1). 348 V. (emphasis added).
152 Bigler, The Politics of German Protestantism, 100. See Niemeyer’s letter of protest in
Leopold Witte, Das Leben D. Friedrich August Gotttreu Tholucks (Bielefeld, 1884), i. 419–23.
153 Robert M. Berdahl, The Politics of the Prussian Nobility: The Development of a Conservative
Ideology, 1770–1848 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 249.
154 See Lenz, Universität Berlin, ii (1). 313 V.
Kirchenzeitung in 1827, Altenstein admonished him, requesting that the new
journal resist engaging in personal polemics and promote ‘a spirit of judicious
scholarship’.155
The tercentennial celebration of the Augsburg Confession in 1830 occa-
sioned one of the most revealing episodes in Altenstein’s career vis-à-vis his
relationship to Prussia’s theological faculties. In that year Hengstenberg’s
Evangelische Kirchenzeitung, contrary to Altenstein’s wishes, did in fact engage
in personal polemics. Several articles penned by the conservative jurist, Ernst
Ludwig von Gerlach (1795–1877), condemned and requested the dismissal of
Halle’s rationalist theologians Wegscheider and Gesenius on the grounds that
their lectures contradicted the Augsburg Confession. As Gerlach put it, these
men teach ‘as erroneous what the Protestant church in her confessional texts
recognizes as truth’ and thereby they commit ‘decisive inWdelity to the
fundamental doctrines and to the miracles in Scripture’. Hengstenberg and
Gerlach found it scandalous, moreover, that Halle, the former seat of August
Hermann Franke, was promoting rationalist doctrines to what then consti-
tuted the largest body of theological students in Germany.156
The condemnation by the Evangelische Kirchenzeitung caused an immediate
sensation that became the talk of clergy and professors throughout Germany.
It brought to a head the crucial issue of how one should deWne the relation-
ship between academic freedom and acceptable doctrine, as well as how the
state should act in monitoring theological positions within the universities.
When the matter was brought before the king, he pointedly asked ‘whether
for theologians [there are] no limits to their academic freedom?’ In a reply,
Altenstein equivocated: he recognized the king’s legitimate concern about
university theology, especially given its inXuence on church life, but he
nonetheless defended the right of Wegscheider and Gesenius to express
their views. ‘A suitable mixture of diVerent theological directions’ at the
universities, Altenstein opined, was not necessarily a bad thing, because it
allowed young men to arrive at ‘independent judgment’ based on ‘thorough
and complete knowledge’.157 In a memorandum of 10 August 1830 he elab-
orated his point, expressing the view that the state should not prematurely
intervene in dogmatic discussions, but rather allow open debate to be carried
out among theologians; for this was the very purpose of ‘the scientiWc
155 Varrentrapp, Johannes Schulze und das höhere preussische Unterrichtswesen in seiner
Zeit, 476.
156 GStA PK Rep. 76 va. Sekt. 8 Tit. 7 Nr. 6. The 1830 EKZ article, ‘Rationalismus auf der
Universität Halle’, is repr. in Johannes Bachmann, Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg. Sein Leben und
Wirken nach gedruckten und ungedruckten Quellen (Berlin, 1880), ii. 183 V.
157 Varrentrapp, Johannes Schulze und das höhere preussische Unterrichtswesen in seiner
Zeit, 477.
treatment of theology within the universities’, as he phrased it. Furthermore,
in words reminiscent of Schleiermacher’s, Altenstein made clear that ‘it
cannot be an issue of whether students are provided with the Christian faith
for the Wrst time at the university. That is not the purpose of the university.
Rather, it is a matter of them obtaining there a scientiWc, theological educa-
tion, which service to the church demands.’158
While the king did not fully accept Altenstein’s reasoning and even had a
memorandum issued requiring that in the future theology professors were
expected to adhere to the Augsburg Confession, Altenstein did in fact per-
suade the king not to dismiss Wegscheider and Gesenius, as the Evangelische
Kirchenzeitung had called for.159 Although this might appear only a minor
victory for Altenstein, it holds signiWcance for at least two reasons. First, in an
era of reaction, and speaking from the highest echelons of the government,
Altenstein successfully articulated the principle that academic freedom ap-
plied to theologians as well as other members of the university. This position
quietly gained strength in the years to come, gaining the protection of law in
Prussia’s constitution of 1850: ‘Die Wissenschaft und ihre Lehre ist frei’ (§20).
Second, and equally signiWcant, Altenstein drew a sharp distinction between
the vocation of the university and that of the church, contending that the
former had a mandate to handle articles of belief ‘purely as a matter of
scientiWc inquiry’ (bloß als wissenschaftliche Aufgabe) and not as an ‘ascer-
tainment of dogma in the church’ (Feststellung des Dogma in der Kirche).160
With these words, Altenstein gave expression to an emerging reality in
academic life and made clear the contours of a debate that would preoccupy
the academic and ecclesiastical communities in the decades to come.161 His
158 See Altenstein, ‘Einige Betrachtungen über den Zustand der evang. Kirche in dem Preuß.
Staate, in Beziehung auf Rechtgläubigkeit der Geistlichen und vorzüglich über die wegen der
Bildung dieser Geistlichen auf den Universitäten angeregten Bedenklichkeiten (10 August
1830)’, repr. (with the king’s marginal notes) in Foerster, Die Entstehung der preussischen Land-
eskirche, ii. 491, 495–6. The original document is located at GStA PK VI NL Altenstein A VIa Nr.
18.
159 On the king’s response to Altenstein, see the memoranda reprinted in Bachmann,
Hengstenberg (Gütersloh, 1880), ii. 230 V. Cf. Huber and Huber (eds.), Kirche und Staat, i.
583–5.
160 Altenstein, ‘Einige Betrachtungen. . . .’, in Foerster, Die Entstehung der preussischen Land-
eskirche, ii. 487–8.
161 It was not just Altenstein that sought to defend Wegscheider and Gesenius; several
rationalist theologians also came to their aid; e.g. see Daniel von Coelln and David Schulze,
Über die theologische Lehrfreiheit auf den evangelischen Universitäten und deren Beschränkung
durch symbolische Bücher (Breslau, 1830). Coelln and Schulze, who taught at Breslau, made the
interesting case that after the Church Union of 1817 it was unclear what confessional documents
were still binding on university theologians. Without such clarity, the principle of academic
freedom should hold sway and theologians’ views should not be restricted.
more conservative successor, Minister Friedrich Eichhorn (1779–1856), paid
indirect tribute to Altenstein’s inXuence, when in 1847 he circulated a memo-
randum to leading Prussian theologians, reminding them of their obligations
to the church. ‘Many teachers of theology’, Eichhorn wrote, ‘now seem . . . to
hold the opinion that it is their task to engage in theological science without
consideration of the interests of the church.’162
The eVorts of Altenstein and Schulze to improve the quality and quantity of
scholarly production in the universities shaped institutional structures and
incentives for intellectual exertion that impacted the development of aca-
demic theology. Put diVerently, the Prussian Kultusministerium in the 1820s
and 1830s successfully promoted policies that fostered among professors (of
all faculties) what Max Weber later referred to as an ‘inward calling for
science’ that attached importance to a ‘progress that goes on ad inWnitum’.163
To these ends, the Ministry recognized the importance of competition,
especially among young, ambitious scholars. Thus, they allowed for a degree
of intentional overcrowding at the junior professorial level—that is, among
the lecturers (Privatdozenten) and extraordinary professors (Extraordinar-
ien)—in the hope that this would give rise to a competitive, meritocratic
ethos conducive to the production of Wrst-rate scholarship. Faced with a large
pool of peers eager for advancement and promotion to the rank of full
professorship (Ordinarien), young scholars were compelled to demonstrate
scholarly excellence, originality, and productivity. From the state’s standpoint,
this policy also made Wnancial sense, for the pay scale at the junior level was
far below that for full professorships. The rank of Privatdozenten in fact
entailed no salary whatsoever since these instructors were normally remuner-
ated exclusively from fees by students who attended their courses.
Statistical evidence from the early nineteenth century attests to the Minis-
try’s tactic. An incremental rise took place in the number of Privatdozenten
and extraordinary professorships, measured both in absolute numbers and in
the ratio of those at the junior rank to full professorships. Prussia led the way
in this shift, but it was mirrored in other German states as well. Thus, for
example, while in 1796 the ratio of ordinary to extraordinary professors was
100 to 37, it had shifted to 100 to 90 by 1864: extraordinary professors, in
short, were coming close to overtaking full professorships in terms of absolute
numbers. The growth of Privatdozenten as a percentage of all university
faculty rivalled that of extraordinary professors; by 1864 this rank of lecturer
162 Memorandum of 8 April 1847; GStA PK I Rep. 76 Sekt. 1 Tit. 3 Nr. 7 Bd. I. On Eichhorn,
see Reinhard Lüdicke, Die preußischen Kultusminister und ihre Beamten im ersten Jahrhundert des
Ministeriums, 1817–1917 (Stuttgart, 1918), 4–5.
163 Max Weber, ‘Science as a Vocation’, in Gerth and Mills (eds.), From Max Weber: Essays in
Sociology, 129 V.
constituted roughly 20 per cent of a university’s teaching staV, having arisen
from negligible Wgures earlier in the century.164 The University of Berlin’s
theological faculty between 1820 and 1840 conWrms more general trends.
After de Wette’s dismissal from the faculty in 1819, there were three full
professorships in a teaching staV of Wve. In 1840 the staV had grown to eleven
with Wve full professorships, thus a 120 per cent increase at the junior level,
compared to 66 per cent at the level of full professorship.165
Prussia’s faculty policy entailed two consequential side eVects: greater
specialization and the raising of standards for promotion. In attracting
students, junior professors were forced to compete directly with more estab-
lished seniors, who often commanded large student followings and who
monopolized many of the introductory and standard courses. Thus, to attract
students, extraordinary professors and lecturers often turned to less conven-
tional, advanced, or more narrowly focused topics. In turn, senior faculty
were forced to match the wits of ambitious junior faculty or else face an
exodus of students.166 This highly competitive climate often prompted peda-
gogical diVerentiation, which emerged, alongside scholarly specialization, as
one of the deWning characteristics of the research-oriented university.167
Because of the growing inXux of eager, young scholars in the 1820s and
1830s, senior faculty often complained to the government that certain limits
should be set on their admission. Friction between scholars of diVerent
generations, in turn, led to a tug-of-war between the faculties and the state
over policies governing the entrance of younger faculty. SigniWcantly, Alten-
stein’s ministry resisted eVorts by the faculty to set limits arbitrarily, judging
such requests anachronistic guild-like behaviour that worked against compe-
tition and academic freedom. For example, when Berlin’s philosophical fac-
ulty requested in 1829 that a limitation be placed on the number
Privatdozenten at the university, Schulze replied that
the Ministry cannot agree with the proposal of the faculty to limit the number of
Privatdozenten. . . . The aim sought by the faculty . . . can be more Wttingly realized if
the faculty raises in an appropriate manner the requirements placed on those who
164 See Alexander Busch, Geschichte des Privatdozenten (Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke, 1959),
75 V.; Charles E. McClelland, State, Society, and University in Germany, 1700–1914 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1980), 166–8; and Turner, ‘Prussian Universities’, 461–70. On the
broader demographic context and on the political and social ramiWcations of Prussia’s policies
toward its university faculty, see Lenore O’Boyle, ‘The Problem of an Excess of Educated Men in
Western Europe, 1815–1850’, JMH 42 (1970): 471–95.
165 Lenz, Universität Berlin, iii. 490.
166 A classic, if unsuccessful, case of a junior lecturer challenging a senior faculty occurred
when the young Arthur Schopenhauer scheduled his lectures at the same hour as Hegel’s.
announce themselves for Habilitation, and admits no one as a Privatdozent who has
not completely satisWed those requirements in an outstanding manner.168
A similar edict was sent to Berlin’s medical faculty in 1833 and to the
University of Bonn in 1838, making clear the government’s intention of
linking the reduction of Privatdozenten to the raising of overall faculty
standards, especially regarding scholarship.
While the inXux of Privatdozenten did not decrease as signiWcantly as some
senior faculty would have liked, the requirements for Habilitation became
increasingly demanding from roughly the 1820s onward, as Altenstein and
Schulze enforced and extended the stringent requirements for the venia
legendi (the oYcial right to teach) laid down in Berlin’s statutes of 1817.169
One index for this was the incremental rise in the age of Habilitation and the
widening gap between the year of entering the university as a student and that
of entering the faculty as a lecturer.170 During Altenstein’s tenure it was not
uncommon for an aspiring scholar to receive the venia legendi only in his
thirties, and even at this late age a secure academic appointment was by no
means guaranteed. The strong emphasis on producing ‘an independent
scholarly accomplishment’ for Habilitation became expected in practically
every Prussian university by the middle of the nineteenth century. While at
Wrst the dissertation often served as evidence of one’s scholarly potential, the
necessity of a second work—later called a Habilitationsschrift—gradually
assumed greater importance. The statutes of Berlin’s theological faculty
from 1838, for example, indicate that the dissertation alone was insuYcient
evidence of scholarly production; an additional learned treatise was required.
In a decree of 1845 the Kultusministerium made such a treatise obligatory for
all who desired to teach and obtain advancement in the theological faculty.171
These developments occurred too in other faculties, earlier in the case of the
philosophical faculty. In sum, the process of Habilitation was transformed
into a kind of second academic degree, raising overall scholarly standards and
socializing the aspiring professor into a lifelong pattern of intense and
Verordnungen, welche die Verfassung und Verwaltung dieser Anstalten betreVen (Berlin, 1840), iii.
9–10; quoted in Turner, ‘Prussian Universities’, 462 (trans. modiWed).
169 On the requirements of Habilitation in Berlin’s statutes, see Koch (ed.), Die preussischen
Universitäten, iii. 41 V. On the pivotal importance of Berlin’s statutes for transforming the
requirements of the venia legendi and hence the role of Privatdozenten in the universities, see
Busch, Geschichte des Privatdozenten, 20–3.
171 See ‘Die Statuten der theologischen Fakultät’, in D. Daude (ed.), Die königl. Friedrich-
Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin: Systematische Zusammenstellung der für dieselbe bestehenden
gesetzlichen, statutarischen und regelmentarischen Bestimmungen (Berlin, 1887), 62.
sustained wissenschaftlich activity—behaviour in his maturity he came to
expect from his younger colleagues.
Altenstein and Schulze took particular pride in appointing and advancing
topnotch scholars. No one shall be made professor, Schulze was fond of
saying, ‘[until] he has written a solid book, a work which one can display
and reap honour from, a work one can stand on’.172 Once a professor was
appointed, a semi-oYcial policy of state favouritism came into play: Wnancial
support, awards, and honours were regularly meted out to those cultivating
high scholarly proWles and engaged in ambitious research projects. While
Altenstein was more personally inclined to support work in humanistic and
natural scientiWc Welds, the Ministry also supported scholarship by theolo-
gians. A noteworthy case in point was the Corpus Reformatorum, a large
collection of the works of Philip Melanchthon, edited by the theologian
Karl Gottlieb Bretschneider (1776–1848).173 Presumably, the choice of Mel-
anchthon was not incidental, as this sixteeenth-century university reformer,
the ‘teacher of Germany’, symbolized the scholarly ethos and spirit of theo-
logical moderation that the Ministry hoped to encourage.
Of course, not everyone was pleased with Altenstein and Schulze’s ap-
proach to theology and their criteria for making appointments in theological
faculties. Those attentive to more traditionalist dimensions of Christianity felt
that the Ministry’s high regard for Wissenschaft was a mixed blessing for
theology, bringing gains in some respects, losses in others. A pious visitor to
Prussia in the 1830s noted with some alarm that ‘a [scholarly] diligence which
can know neither remission nor rest’ resulted from ‘the direct power of the
government over all places of honor [in the universities]’.174 A number of
pietist aristocrats also voiced concerns that Altenstein’s university policies
lacked suYcient regard for the piety and orthodoxy of candidates; on these
grounds, some even sought Altenstein’s expulsion from his oYce, albeit
unsuccessfully.175 After Altenstein’s death, an article on him by the pietist
theologian Tholuck appeared in J. J. Herzog’s Realencyclopädie, in which
Tholuck opined that all that mattered for Altenstein was ‘scientiWc excellence
irrespective of theological colour or party’.176
172 Quoted in Varrentrapp, Johannes Schulze und das höhere preussische Unterrichtswesen in
seiner Zeit, 488.
173 A brief list of some of the major scholarly undertakings supported by Altenstein’s
Ministry appears in Schulze, ‘Beiträge zur Geschichte des Ministeriums der Unterrichtsangele-
genheiten von 1818 bis 1840 und zur Charakteristik des verewigten Ministers Freiherrn v.
Altenstein’, in Müsebeck, Das preussische Kultusministerium, 305.
174 Edward Robinson, ‘Theological Education in Germany’, Biblical Repository 1 (January
1831): 45.
175 Bigler, The Politics of German Protestantism, 76 V.
176 Tholuck, ‘Altenstein’, in Realencylopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche, i.
(1868): 318.
To see that Prussia acquired its share of scientiWcally prominent scholars,
Altenstein’s Ministry placed special signiWcance on the founding and funding
of seminars and institutes. Designed to encourage focused, methodologically
rigorous research on various topics, these institutions (spanning various
Welds) became one of the signature features of Altenstein’s tenure and the
special project of his aide, Schulze, who himself had studied in F. A. Wolf ’s
famous philological seminar at Halle. Abbetted by Schulze’s inXuence, the
critical, philological method associated with Wolf became the intellectual
cornerstone of many of these institutions, at least for those operating in
humanistic Welds of inquiry. Upon Altenstein assuming oYce in 1817, several
well-established philological seminars already existed, notably at Halle and
Berlin. The Kultusministerium oversaw several additions: Bonn in 1818,
Königsberg and Greifswald in 1822, and Münster in 1824. Halle’s famous
seminar was reorganized in 1829 to raise scholarly standards and ban from
participation all but those who expected to pursue a professional career in
philology.177 History seminars too were supported by the Ministry, with
Leopold von Ranke’s seminar at Berlin, established in 1833, soon leading
the way. ‘The seminar system’, an American visitor would write in 1891, ‘has
been carried to greater perfection in Germany than in any other land.’178
While philology in particular and the philosophical faculty in general
witnessed much of Altenstein and Schulze’s attention, the Ministry also strove
to place the higher faculties on a Wrmer scientiWc and professional basis
through the agency of seminars. In Altenstein’s view theological seminars
(ten of which arose in Prussia between 1812 and 1838) were particularly
salutary because by encouraging wissenschaftlich habits of mind among future
clergymen and scholars they thwarted sectarian and obscurantist forces,
which only detracted from the vitality and the Kulturstaat ideal. Diminishing
these forces in turn contributed to the unity of the Prussian state church and
to the more general reform-era goal of ‘national education’. In Altenstein’s
own vocabulary, theological seminars helped produce theologians (Theolo-
gen) and not merely pastors (Seelsorger).179
177 See Wilhelm Erben, ‘Die Entstehung der Universitäts-Seminare’, Internationale Monatss-
chrift für Wissenschaft, Kunst, und Technik 7 (1913), 1247 V.; Varrentrapp, Johannes Schulze und
das höhere preussische Unterrichtswesen in seiner Zeit, 392 f., 500 f.; and Turner, ‘Prussian
Universities’, 438.
178 Mattoon M. Curtis, ‘The Present Condition of German Universities’, ER 2 (1891): 38.
179 Memorandum of May 1819, in Müsebeck, Das preussische Kultusministerium, 282. On
this point, Altenstein and Schleiermacher were of one mind. Schleiermacher once argued
that ‘a homiletic or preacher-seminar obviously has no place at the university’; quoted in
Leopold Zscharnack, ‘Das erste Jahrhundert der theologischen Fakultät Berlin’, Chronik der
christlichen Welt 20 (October 1910): 413. Nonetheless, in the course of the nineteenth century
homiletic seminars did take their place alongside more scholarly oriented seminars. The
University of Heidelberg established one in 1838; Berlin’s was not established until 1876. See
The seminar established in Berlin (1812) under Schleiermacher’s leader-
ship, already discussed in Ch. 3, became the inspiration and model for later
institutions. While pastoral concerns were not completely abandoned, the
government-approved regulations for seminars stressed scientiWc rigour, es-
pecially as deWned by the philological and historical sciences. In fact, most
theological seminars were regularly divided into two branches, a philological
branch that dealt with critical studies of Hebrew, Greek, and other ancient
languages; and a historical branch that focused on the history of the church,
theology, and doctrine. Only the brightest students gained admission to the
seminars and entrance requirements could be demanding. To enter Bonn’s
theological seminar, for example, the regulations from 1819 indicate that,
among other things, a student ‘must demonstrate speciWc approval from the
relevant professors in the philosophical faculty that he possesses the necessary
philological and historical preparatory knowledge.’180
Almost invariably, the seminar’s main goal was for students, under the
direction of an accomplished professor, to deepen their scholarly aptitude by
producing a work of individual expertise. Because of the philological-
historical slant of the seminars, students were discouraged from pursuing
topics in dogmatics and ethics. Since the 1837 regulations for the theological
seminar at the University of Königsberg were fairly typical of others, their Wrst
two articles merit generous quotation:
1. The theological seminar at the University of Königsberg has the goal of provid-
ing the opportunity and support for those theology students who distinguish them-
selves above others through a particular ability in their disposition of mind and in
their scholarly eVorts, so that they can produce their own scholarly work. . . . Through
such eVorts and research, they will be aVorded guidance in obtaining a deeper and
more thorough theological education . . .
2. Since this institute in regard to its scientiWc objective is intended to encourage
and disseminate a thorough theological learnedness, its activities are not directed to
the subjects of Christian dogmatics and ethics, where learned enquiry must recede in
favour of speculation. Rather, the focus of this institute is on the philological and
historical (exegetical-critical) aspects of theological study. Dogmatics and ethics are
considered only in so far as these disciplines also require or admit a philological or
historical treatment.181
Additionally, the regulations for Berlin’s theological seminar, which were
revised in 1828, stated as the seminar’s goal the ‘lead[ing of] outstanding
‘Predigerseminar’ in RGG v. 514–16. Homiletic seminars within universities should not be

confused with actual seminaries, such as the one established at Wittenberg in 1817. Cf. the entry
on ‘Pfarrervorbildung’ in RGG v. 293–301.
180 Koch (ed.), Die preussischen Universitäten: Eine Sammlung der Verordnungen, iii. 618.
theological students into their own learned work and research’ for the pur-
pose of ‘disseminating theological knowledge’, while Bonn’s regulations indi-
cated the aim of furthering the ‘scientiWc education’ of students by allowing
them to produce ‘their own learned works and inquiries’.182 Again, in nearly
every case, strong accent was placed on the philological and historical aspects
of theology, presumably because these, unlike dogmatics, ethics, or practical
theology, could be rendered more demonstrably wissenschaftlich.
While the theological seminars stood under the direction of the theological
faculties, faculties were regularly expected to submit an annual report to the
Kultusministerium. As the regulations for Berlin’s seminar indicated:
The theological faculty is to submit an annual report to the Ministry. . . . This annual
report is to contain from each division of the seminar two examples of the partici-
pants’ most successful work. The Ministry expects from the seminar, acting as a
seedbed of theological learnedness (PXanzschule theologischer Gelehrsamkeit), the
best fruit for church and science. . . . In the hope that this is fulWlled, [the Ministry]
regards the seminar as the object of its most urgent concern.183
Ample evidence suggests that Altenstein took this requirement quite seriously,
personally reading and even make corrections on some of the seminar papers
submitted to his oYce!184
The regulations of the Prussian theological seminars obviously point to a
peculiarly close relationship between academic theology and the state; state
support played an essential role in the maintenance and Xourishing of these
institutions.185 In accord with Altenstein and Schulze’s wishes, the Prussian
seminar system proved quite eVective at assisting gifted students to com-
mence a life of scientiWc, professional study. The Prussian example was often
imitated, albeit with variations, at numerous other universities in the course
of the nineteenth century.186 Practically every major German theologian,
biblical critic, and church historian of the nineteenth century cut his scholarly
182 Ibid. 555, 618.

183 Ibid. 559.
184 See Otto Ritschl, Die evangelisch-theologische Fakultät Bonn in dem ersten Jahrhundert
ihrer Geschichte (Bonn, 1919), 41. Clark writes the following about seminar reports sent to
government oYcials: ‘In Prussia the format of reporting eventually become regulated and
standardized. Through these techniques of regular reporting, the bureaucratic mentality, so
essential for the transformation of academic labor into ‘‘research science’’, would slowly take
shape in and through the seminar directors.’ See William Clark, ‘The Dialectical Origins of the
Research Seminar’, History of Science 27 (1989): 120.
185 Erben, ‘Die Entstehung der Universitäts-Seminare’, 1260.
186 Clark, ‘The Dialectical Origins of the Research Seminar’, 120 V. The ‘German seminar’,
albeit with modiWcations, proved inXuential in the United States as well. See Hugh Hawkins,
Pioneer: A History of the Johns Hopkins University, 1874–1889 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 1960), 224–34.
teeth in these institutions; they served as the institutional locus, the social
space, where ‘science as vocation’ was initiated and nourished, where a
student’s specimen of original research was produced. Given the historical-
critical, scientiWc orientation of most theological seminars, it is all the more
noteworthy that they emerged during the Vormärz period. This should make
us think twice, however, about interpretations of this era that focus predom-
inantly on its conservative aspects. In theology, the 1815–48 period was not
simply one of reaction, the era of Hengstenberg, Tholuck, and the Erweck-
ungsbewegung, as some scholars have suggested. It was rather a profoundly
conXicted and Xuid era, one that admitted a diversity of theological view-
points and directions, and indeed one that allowed liberal-minded ministers,
such as Altenstein and Schulze, to support institutional structures that fos-
tered the scientization and professionalization of academic theology and the
continuing modernization of the university system. The policies of the Kul-
tusministerium in selection, preferment, and funding, alongside its enthusi-
astic support for the seminar method, would tend to support this claim.
Furthermore, Altenstein’s championing of ‘Theologie als Wissenschaft’
sheds more general light on Prussia’s Erastian modernity. This was an Eras-
tianism with decidedly progressive aspects, one that sought to use the power-
ful leverage of the state to diminish confessionalism, as evidenced by the
support given to the Prussian Union Church and its theologians. Altenstein
also sought to promote a general academic freedom applicable to theology,
despite the repressive measures of the Karlsbad Decrees after 1819. In this
regard, he represents a continuation of reform-era goals, albeit in a less
reform-inclined era. A pronounced and conWdent statism, however, links
Altenstein to both epochs; he did not believe that academic freedom had
autonomous value apart from the political aims of ‘national education’ and
the revitalization of the state. It was presumed rather that scientiWc inquiry
and freedom coincided with, and even expressed, the state’s moral and
rational mission.187 On this point, as Joseph Ben-David has trenchantly
written, the Prussian state’s support of science ‘was not tantamount to the
acceptance of free inquiry as an independent and socially valuable function.
Rather, there was a presumption of preestablished harmony between the new
[scientiWc] philosophy and the interests of the state, somewhat in the same
manner as there had been an assumption of such harmony between the
church and the state.’188 Similarly, R. Steven Turner has spoken of the ‘state-
187 In one memorandum, Altenstein wrote that university-educated clergymen should ex-
hibit ‘harmony with the direction of the state’ (Einklang mit dem Gang des Staates). See Schoeps,
‘Ein Gutachten des Kultusministers Altenstein’, ZP 12 (1966): 265.
188 Joseph Ben-David, The Scientist’s Role in Society: A Comparative Study (Chicago: Univer-
sity of Chicago Press, 1971), 117.
imposed principle of Lehrfreiheit’ pursued by the Altenstein ministry.189 In
the same vein, the German constitutional historian E. R. Huber’s reXections
on higher education generally in the nineteenth century are particularly
incisive when applied to Altenstein’s ministerial tenure and legacy:
It is an apparent paradox that precisely the century which achieved freedom of
education, research and doctrine created at the same time the greatest extreme in
state direction and administration of school organization. But one can note the
identical duality of nineteenth-century institutions in almost all areas; the epoch of
the individual’s highest freedom from the state was simultaneously the epoch of
statism’s greatest eYciency.190
This paradoxical reality profoundly moulded academic theology in the
nineteenth century: between Staat and Wissenschaft theology took shape.
Yet theology’s proximity to these dual forces of modernity, in the eyes of
many, did not necessarily represent a net gain for theology. I have already
mentioned the well-known controversy over Strauss’s Das Leben Jesu (1835),
which brought to expression a growing uneasiness among traditionalists
about the scientiWc direction of theological faculties. Both the uneasiness
and scientiWc direction continued apace throughout the century. ‘It is a
question of the character of the theological faculties’, as one pastor
wrote, disquieted that in these institutions, given to ‘purely scientiWc consid-
erations’, the future clergymen of Germany must be educated.191 The Jena
theologian Heinrich Weinel recognized that ‘the diYculties arising for the
Church from the study of theology at our universities [have become] the most
felt and the most discussed’; he aYrmed as well the validity of a point often
made by churchmen: ‘the university is not a home of pure science, separated
from all human interests, but is a school, and above all a State school’.192
Indeed, it was more than Wissenschaft that elicited worry and criticism; the
state’s powerful position over church and theology, extended during and after
the reform era, also gave rise to controversy. As we have seen, Schleiermacher
had grave concerns about the Prussian-Erastian system that emerged in the
189 R. Steven Turner, ‘The Growth of Professorial Research in Prussia, 1818–1848—Causes

and Context’, in Russell McCormmach (ed.), Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences, (Phila-
delphia, 1971), iii. 181.
190 E. R. Huber, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte seit 1789 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1957), i.
265.
191 Martin von Nathusius, Wissenschaft und Kirche im Streit um die theologischen Fakultäten
(Heilbronn, 1886), 6–9.
192 Heinrich Weinel, ‘Theological Study and the Church’, from the Report of the Fifth
Universal Congress for Free Christianity and Religious Progress, Berlin 1910 (Berlin-Schönberg,
1911) (emphasis added). On clerical dissent to the liberalizing and scientizing direction of
theological faculties in the late nineteenth century, see Oliver Janz, Bürger besonderer Art:
evangelische Pfarrer in Preussen 1850–1914 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1994).
early nineteenth century, even if, against pietists and traditionalists, he en-
dorsed a rigorously scientiWc approach to theology. Others wondered if a
state-salaried Minister of Culture could or should eVectively exercise ‘the
rights of a bishop’ over theological education.193 Still others pointedly con-
sidered whether the pursuit of scientiWc theology in the institutions of a
modern state would ultimately prove injurious to the age-old relationship
of theology to piety and ecclesial praxis. As a scientiWc-oriented theology
within the universities gained momentum in the course of the nineteenth
century, this concern became acute among numerous churchmen, producing
champions of ‘church theology’ against purely ‘scientiWc theology’.194
An issue that created rival factions, it also led to internal conXicts for many
theologians, as they sought to make sense of their multiple loyalties to science,
the state, and the church. The Swiss-born theologian Philip SchaV, who had
studied at Prussian universities at the height of Altenstein’s inXuence, is an apt
case in point, and someone astute in sizing up the nature of his dilemma.
While he cherished the scholarly theological education he had gained in
Prussia, calling the University of Berlin the foremost university in the
world, he also harboured some doubts, which he candidly expressed in a
letter towards the end of his life:
In the German university a theological professor is appointed by the state . . . and
expected to teach and promote science. The state looks only at theoretical qualiWca-
tions, and cares little or nothing about the orthodoxy and piety of the candidate. The
church, as such, has nothing to say in the matter. The result is that a professor may
teach doctrines which are utterly subversive to the church, and disqualify the student
for his future work. This is an unnatural state of things. It may be favorable to the
freest development of theological science and speculation, but very dangerous to the
healthful and vigorous development of church life.195
193 Nathusius, Wissenschaft und Kirche, 6.

194 See Graf, ‘Protestantische Theologie in der Gesellschaft des Kaiserreich’, in Graf (ed.),
ProWle des neuzeitlichen Protestantismus, ii. 69 V.
195 Quoted in David SchaV, The Life of Philip SchaV (New York, 1897), 471.
5
Theologia between Science and the State
Like all other sciences, [theology] has concrete, comprehensible mater-

ial . . . as the objects of its investigation and representation. The unseen
God is not the direct reason for [theologians’] activity, but rather the idea
of God present among men, . . . [which] even the critical empiricist can-
not deny. Thus, it is not a religious science in speciWc contrast to a
profane one, not an ecclesiastical science in contrast to a non-ecclesias-
tical one. It is rather the particular science of religion and church; as such,
in manner and method, it is an aspect of science in general.
Martin Rade, 1900
[Theology] has tried too hard, especially in the nineteenth century, to
secure for itself at least a small but honorable place in the throne room of
general science. This attempt at self-justiWcation has been no help to its
own work. The fact is that it has . . . earned theology no more respect for
its achievements than a very modest tip of the hat.
Karl Barth, 1963
1. INTRODUCTION
From the period of Altenstein’s Ministry until the outbreak of the First World
War, immense changes took place in Prussia and other German lands. His-
torians regularly account for these changes as long-term consequences of the
‘double revolution’: the French Revolution, the importance of which has
already been made clear, but equally important, the Industrial Revolution,
which unleashed heretofore unknown forces of social and economic change.
The story of the German response to these new realities in the mid- and late
nineteenth century is fairly well known, even if interpretations vary widely.
Politically, the story focuses on the previously discussed Vormärz period
(1815–48), the unsuccessful liberal revolution of 1848, Prussia’s defeat of
Austria in 1866, and the consolidation of the Second German Empire in 1871
under the leadership of Otto von Bismarck’s Prussia. Economically, the story
268 Theologia between Science and the State
stresses the ‘founding era’ (Gründerzeit) after 1871, for only at this time did
industrialization fully take oV—a process that by century’s end transformed a
largely rural Germany into a highly industrialized, populous, and increasingly
urban nation.1 Not surprisingly, Germany’s development in the nineteenth
century, and the central role of Prussia in this process, carried implications for
the operations of universities and hence for the role and social location of
academic theology.
Unlike Chs. 3 and 4, which concentrated heavily on the early nineteenth
century, here I widen the lens to encompass the whole century, even if I must
necessarily sacriWce depth for breadth. The analyses that follow, however, are
premised on the view that the era of Humboldt, Schleiermacher, and Alten-
stein bears witness to the more creative reforming forces in higher education;
these were consolidated and extended later in the century, even as they were
often taken in unexpected directions and confronted with new realities such
as the growth of positivistic and empirical science, the exigencies of industri-
alization, and the centrifugal forces of greater academic specialization.2 Sign-
iWcantly, after the establishment of the Prussian University of Bonn in 1818 no
new university foundations occurred in Germany until the re-establishment
of the Alsatian University of Strasbourg (1872), a direct consequence of the
Franco-Prussian war and German uniWcation.3 While the founding of the
second German Reich brought about some changes for university norms and
conditions, its principal eVect was to extend Prussia’s already considerable
inXuence over other universities, either directly, as in the case of newly
acquired universities by Prussia (such as Göttingen, Marburg, and Kiel), or
indirectly, through the widespread emulation of Prussian universities, which
prior to 1871 were already widely regarded as Germany’s foremost institu-
tions of higher learning.4 At the same time, new post-1871 dynamics of
industrialization and population growth, the rise of social democracy, and
1 David Blackbourn, The Long Nineteenth Century: A History of Germany, 1780–1918 (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 1 V.
2 There were, however, many criticisms of the academic status quo and calls for reform in the
mid-nineteenth century. Most signiWcantly, see F. A. W. Diesterweg, Ueber das Verderben auf die
deutschen Universitäten (Essen, 1836), which among other things might be regarded as an early
critique of the ‘publish-or-perish’ mentality.
3 See John Craig, Scholarship and Nation Building: The Universities of Strasbourg and Alsatian
Society, 1870–1939 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984). Strasbourg’s case is excep-
tional; it was considered a Reich university, administered under the auspices of the new national
government, not the governments of the states, even if in practice this meant considerable
control by the Prussian Kultusministerium.
4 After the founding of the Reich, Prussia directly controlled half of all German universities.
In addition, Prussia exercised inXuence over German higher education by example and by
organizing many ministerial and university conferences to coordinate university policy in
Germany. For further details see Charles E. McClelland, State, Society, and University in
Germany 1700–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 235–6.
Theologia between Science and the State 269
the massive growth of the natural sciences and industry-driven applied
disciplines relentlessly made their presence felt in higher education.
As the university system expanded to accommodate new realities, the
presence and prestige of theology continued to be eroded. The statistical
evidence on this point is clear. Although the theological faculty, still regarded
by many as the ‘Wrst’ faculty, was never eliminated in the university, as
occurred in many other European countries, it became a shadow of its former
glory. By century’s end, Friedrich Paulsen could note that ‘theology is now
scarcely mentioned in the same breath with the sciences. . . . Numerous advo-
cates of a scientiWc radicalism are inclined to exclude it all together, or to
relegate it to the past.’5 After the collapse of the Empire in 1918, various
political and academic voices sought to expel theology from the university
altogether, arguing that its presence in state-funded higher education deWed
both the demands of positivistic science and the liberal-democratic principle
of church–state separation. As shall be shown, this eVort proved surprisingly
unsuccessful, and theological faculties, if diminished, have persisted in Ger-
man universities until the present.
Paradoxically, some of the same forces that contributed to theology’s
decline in the university also assured its renown, both within Germany and
internationally. The scientiWc research impulse, for example, promoted by
Altenstein, Schulze, and others, impacted all disciplines, and invigorated
many branches of theology, particularly those closely connected to philo-
logical and historical study. Accordingly, by the late nineteenth century
German academic theology had acquired a reputation of excellence and
rigour without national rival. Names such as Albrecht Ritschl, Otto PXeiderer,
Martin Rade, Wilhelm Hermann, Julius Wellhausen, Adolf von Harnack,
Ernst Troelstch, and others set the terms for theological discussions far
beyond Germany’s borders. All modern theology, Harvard’s Francis G. Pea-
body wrote in 1879, expressing a view common among American Unitarians,
‘is a child of almost pure German blood’.6 The British theologian Lawrence
Pearsall Jacks noted in 1915 that the period before the Great War would go
down as ‘the age of German footnotes’.7
To be sure, the lustre of German academic theology during the Second
Empire had its sceptical detractors, among them some strange bedfellows.
Representatives of confessional theology and pietism, as I have already indi-
cated, regularly excoriated the scientizing, modernizing tendencies of what
William W. Elwang (New York, 1906), 384.
6 Francis G. Peabody, ‘The New Theology’, Unitarian Review 11 (April 1879): 352.
7 Noted in William R. Hutchison, The Modernist Impulse in American Protestantism (Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976), 228.
some branded ‘cultural Protestantism’ (Kulturprotestantismus).8 Pietists and
confessionalists, however, could be joined by such extreme secularists
as Friedrich Nietzsche, who scoVed at the very possibility of ‘wissenschaftliche
Theologie’—a position later echoed by many ‘dialectical’ or ‘crisis’ theolo-
gians, Karl Barth foremost. SigniWcantly then, a pietist divine in rural
Württemberg and Nietzsche circa 1875 could issue similar critiques of lib-
eral-scientiWc theology, each arguing (albeit for diVerent reasons) that its
headlong quest for cultural accommodation and academic legitimacy had
compromised the ecclesial and eschatological nature of Christianity.
Nietzsche put the matter straightforwardly when he opined that modern
liberal theology had not only failed to reconcile Christianity with
modern science, but had ‘resolved [Christianity] into pure knowledge of
Christianity, [which] ceases to live when it is dissected completely and lives
a painful and moribund life when one begins to practice historical dissection
upon it.’9
In the remainder of the book, I puzzle over the conXicted renown of
nineteenth-century German academic theology, even as I chart the theological
faculty’s steady diminution as a component of the overall university system.
Five principal lines of inquiry contribute to this broader task.
First, I call attention to how dominant intellectual, political, and social
trends of the mid- and late nineteenth century aVected university develop-
ment. What implications for theology, for example, came with the extension
of the ideal of Wissenschaft from a few innovative universities, Berlin most
prominently, to become the leading principle of nearly all German univer-
sities? Relatedly, how did the continuing ascendency and expansion of the
philosophical faculty—both in its humanistic, historical-philological aspects
and its positivistic, natural scientiWc ones—aVect university theology and
its relations to other branches of knowledge, the political order, and ecclesi-
astical life?
Second, in an eVort to penetrate the internal dynamics of university
theology, I turn my attention to Protestant theological education, that is, to
what young theology students actually were supposed to learn during their
university years. Here I draw from a rich and largely untapped source in the
genre of theological encyclopedia (theologische Enzyklopädie), a subject I have
already broached in the discussion of Schleiermacher. The most widely used
encyclopedia of the century was written by the now neglected Swiss-German
theologian and church historian, Karl Rudolf Hagenbach (1801–74), who in
8 F. W. Graf, ‘Kulturprotestantismus. Zur BegriVsgeschichte einer theologischen ChiVre’,

Archiv für BegriVsgeschichte 28 (1984): 214–68.
9 Friedrich Nietzsche, ‘The Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life’, in Untimely Medi-
tations, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 96–7.
the 1820s had studied at Berlin.10 His Encyklopädie und Methodologie der
theologischen Wissenschaften, Wrst published in 1833, went through no less
than twelve editions by 1889 and was translated into several foreign languages.
While not neglecting other examples of the genre, I single out Hagenbach’s
work and its inXuence for particular consideration.
Third, since the nineteenth century was, after all, an age of ‘historicism’, a
century of increasing belief in the historically constructed nature of human
ideas and institutions, it should come as no surprise that this new historical
sense was often applied to understanding the evolution of the university in
the modern period.11 I thus examine a number of histories of universities
written in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, along with various
documents from university commemorative celebrations and from inter-
national exhibitions on German higher education. These types of source,
rich in historical consciousness, provide valuable insight into the place,
possibilities, and problems of academic theology as it encountered various
modernizing forces.
An age of historicism, the nineteenth century was also one of increased
travel and cross-cultural academic exchange. I examine then, fourthly, the
reactions of a number of foreigners to German universities, broaching also the
broader international inXuence of German theology. While responses to
university theology ranged from accusations of ‘inWdelity’ and ‘rationalism’
to gushing praise, few visitors—whether students, scholars, or simply curious
travellers—failed to note the degree of its intellectual rigour and the context
of academic freedom and state patronage in which it took place. In fact
numerous visitors attributed the intellectualizing tendencies of German the-
ology to its university environment, and the two were regularly commented
on together. What is more, no small number of foreign theologians and
religious leaders came to the conclusion that contemporary Protestant the-
ology led by Germany represented something of a watershed in the history of
Christianity: it was either pioneering brave new possibilities for the progress
of Christian thought or else it was leading the faithful down a destructive path
of restless innovation and hubristic erudition. At issue, various parties felt,
was nothing less that the future of the Christian faith.
Finally, I focus my attention on several issues that precipitated a crisis of
identity for theology in the late nineteenth century. The genesis of the crisis is
complex, but it is traceable to at least three overlapping issues. The Wrst was an
increasingly strident insistence by proponents of positivistic science that the
10 On Hagenbach, see Andreas Staehelin, Professoren der Universität Basel aus fünf Jahrhun-
derten (Basle: F. Reinhardt, 1960), 132–3.
11 On ‘historicism’ generally in the nineteenth century, see Georg Iggers, ‘Historicism: The
History and Meaning of the Term’, JHI 56 (Spring 1995): 129–52.
theological faculty was simply illegitimate, an alien body (Fremdkörper) in the
modern university. Second, the emergence in the 1860s and 1870s, at Wrst
largely outside Germany, of what was alternately called ‘the history of reli-
gions’, ‘the comparative study of religion’, or the ‘science of religion’ (Reli-
gionswissenschaft) led many to censure theology, despite its scientiWc
aspirations, for its preoccupation with Christianity at the expense of other
world religions. Third, the growing presence of liberal and social democratic
political forces in the late nineteenth century led to more open criticism of
church–state relations in Germany and Prussia; part of this criticism faulted
theological faculties in publicly funded universities for violating the liberal
doctrine, championed at Frankfurt 1848, of the separation of church and
state.12
Such issues confronted academic theology with altogether new challenges.
Not only shall I explore the sources of these challenges in greater depth, I
shall also examine how several leading theologians contributed and/or
responded to them, focusing in particular on three Wgures. Two were out-
spoken critics of contemporary theology: Paul Anton de Lagarde of Göttingen
and Franz Overbeck of Basle. The latter, a close friend and kindred spirit of
Friedrich Nietzsche, arrived at the subversive view that ‘wissenschaftliche
Theologie’ far from making faith relevant to the modern world, had in fact
undermined the Christian faith and, as a consequence, the viability of his own
profession.
However, Protestant university theology gained arguably its greatest
modern champion in Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930), Schleiermacher’s
truest, late nineteenth-century heir at Berlin. Harnack’s eVorts to defend
theology’s wissenschaftlich ambitions against a host of sceptical critics,
political and intellectual, reactionary and progressive, helped secure for
theology a new dispensation within the hallowed universitas litterarum—in
fact, explicit legal protection as expressed in the Weimar Constitution
(1919). Ironically, however, Harnack’s defence, successful and inXuential
though it was, corresponded to a period—inaugurated by the Great War,
the ominous chaos of the early Weimar Republic, and the beginnings
of Barthian ‘dialectical theology’—that witnessed the breakdown of the
optimistic, progressive world that Harnack embodied and in which
theology had so earnestly sought acknowledgement as a modern scientiWc
enterprise.
12 The sources of theology’s crisis are succinctly presented in August Dillmann’s 1875
rectorial address at Berlin, Über die Theologie als Universitätswissenschaft (Berlin, 1875). Cf. E.
H. Haenssler, Die Krisis der theologischen Fakultäten (Leipzig, 1929).
2. GENERAL TRENDS AND D EV E LOP MENTS, 1810–1918
Those were the days in which the familiar type of German scholar was
generated . . . the man who spent thirty years on one volume, the man
who wrote on Homer in 1806 and who still wrote on Homer in 1870.
Lord Acton
Confessionalism is the mortal enemy of the university.
Theodor Mommsen
The ideals articulated at the founding of the University of Berlin enjoyed a
long, fruitful life after 1810, helping establish a fairly homogenous rhetorical
environment within the system of German higher education.13 The words of
Fichte, Schleiermacher, and Humboldt, the language of Bildung, Wissenschaft,
and Lehrfreiheit, were invoked ritualistically in academic addresses and cere-
monies during the century as German universities steadily scaled the heights
of international esteem.14 But although the founders’ words were far from
mere rhetoric, they should not be taken as mirrors of the actual functioning of
universities in the mid- and late nineteenth century. The ideal of Wissenschaft,
as is often noted, became increasingly disassociated from the pedagogy of
Bildung and from the synthetic and monistic tendencies of idealism. Instead,
it became closely tied to growing positivist assumptions, empirical research,
and the seemingly inexorable forces of academic specialization, diVerentia-
tion, and professionalization. Already during the time of Altenstein, as we
have already glimpsed, Max Weber’s conception of academic work as the
unremitting accretion of value-neutral scientiWc knowledge had begun to
make its reality felt.15 As one might conjecture, a number of theologians
13 In the survey section that follows I recognize debts to Peter Baumgart (ed.), Bildungspolitik
in Preußen zur Zeit des Kaiserreichs (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1980); R. Steven Turner, ‘Prussian
Universities and the Research Imperative, 1806–1848’, Ph.D. diss. (Princeton University, 1972);
Rudolf Stichweh, Zur Entstehung des modernen Systems wissenschaftlicher Disziplinen: Physik in
Deutschland 1746–1890 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1984); Charles E. McClelland, State,
Society, and University in Germany, 1700–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980);
and Fritz Ringer, The Decline of the German Mandarins: The German Academic Community,
1890–1933 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969).
14 Typical in this regard were the words of Heinrich von Sybel from 1874: ‘The essential
characteristics of our universities, as they were deWned at the beginning of this century by
Schleiermacher, Friedrich August Wolf, von Süvern, Fichte, Wilhelm Humboldt, and Altenstein,
have in their main points been preserved until the present.’ See Heinrich von Sybel, Die
deutschen Universitäten (Bonn, 1874), 22. Cf. the rectorial address by Emil du Bois-Reymond,
Über Universitäts-Einrichtungen (Berlin, 1869).
15 R. Steven Turner, ‘The Great Transition and the Social Patterns of German Science’,
Minerva 25 (1987): 56–76. On professionalization and the university, see Charles E. McClelland,
and clergymen demurred, doubtful that the age-old sapiential, dogmatic tasks
of theology could be reconciled with a research ethic that placed a premium
on critical rigour and interminable innovation. Nonetheless, by mid-century,
this ethic permeated theological faculties as well, precipitating numerous
debates about the advantages and disadvantages of ‘scientiWc theology’.
Pinpointing exactly when and why this shift in Wissenschaft took place is
hard to say. Clearly, in Prussia, the role of the state Wgured importantly,
especially with respect to policies of appointment, preferment, and the
founding of seminars and other specialized institutes. The ethos of idealism
too, as earlier suggested, possessed not only a unitary but a dynamic under-
standing of knowledge, conducive to establishing a drive towards scholarly
innovation and individual expertise. However, with respect to speciWc aca-
demic disciplines, two Welds in particular led the way in the early nineteenth
century: classical philology and history—Welds traditionally considered ‘help-
ing sciences’ (Hilfswissenschaften or Vorbereitungswissenschaften) for the
higher faculties.16 While already gaining signiWcant momentum during the
eighteenth century, as previously indicated, these disciplines witnessed explo-
sive growth and heightened prestige in the nineteenth century, largely because
of their ability to develop seemingly certain critical methods and procedures
and in turn hold these up as the regulative models for all respectable profes-
sional scholarship.
The philologist Friedrich August Wolf—who ‘freed his profession from the
bonds of theology’ according to Nietzsche17—is deservedly recognized as one
of the most inXuential scholars of the era, even if his genius resided less in
orginality than in an ability to express systematically key ideas of pioneering
eighteenth-century savants.18 His philological seminar at Halle (founded in
1787) achieved a formidable reputation of rigour and professionalism. Sign-
iWcantly, he refused to admit theology students into its ranks, insisting on a
clear separation between those training to be teachers and scholars
(Schulstand) and future pastors (Predigerstand).19 In his seminar, Wolf raised
up a number of disciples, including August Boeckh, Immanuel Bekker, Karl
The German Experience of Professionalization: Modern Learned Professions from the Early Nine-
teenth Century to the Hitler Era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
16 See the discussion of the relationship of philology and history to theology in G. J. Planck,
Einleitung in die theologische Wissenschaften (Leipzig, 1794), 149 V.
17 Quoted in Carl Diehl, Americans and German Scholarship, 1770–1870 (New Haven: Yale
18 Anthony Grafton, Defenders of the Text: The Traditions of Scholarship in an Age of Science,
1450–1800 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991), 214–43.
19 Noted in Wilhelm Erben, ‘Die Entstehung der Universitäts-Seminare’, Internationale
Monatsschrift für Wissenschaft, Kunst, und Technik 7 (1913): 1255.
Lachmann, Theodor Mommsen, and, not least, Altenstein’s future aide in the
Kultusministerium, Johannes Schulze. The work of these scholars improved
upon Wolf ’s own and spread its rigorous methodology to other German
universities. Diligence, thoroughness, precision, and, above all, criticism
(Kritik) sum up the ethos of the new philology, an ethos that found virtuoso
expression in Wolf ’s own Prolegomena ad Homerum (1795). In this work,
Wolf argued that philologists, in carrying out the critical recension of ancient
texts, had a professional, indeed ethical, obligation to consult every known
manuscript and meticulously compare them line by line, from beginning to
end. This precept, Wolf held, was the only certain philological method, and
the Prolegomena served as an applied example. Although the work itself
contained a number of questionable conclusions, its methodological aspir-
ations laid the basis for the professionalization of the discipline.20
Given the signiWcance of philology for shaping academic theology, it is
important to consider that WolWan Kritik, in tandem with the publishing
incentives advanced by Altenstein and Schulze, produced the curious situ-
ation whereby a scholar could best establish his reputation by rejecting the
authenticity of parts or all of a given manuscript. As various commentators
have noted, this new critical imperative often contradicted the goals of
neohumanism, in so far as neohumanism as a movement sought to draw
broad moral inspiration from antiquity. Criticism began to ride roughshod
over inspiration. When applied to sacred texts, however, the results were often
more alarming. ‘It is not inaccurate to describe [the new philology]’, Anthony
Grafton has summed up, ‘as a preference for error over truth’, for the
detection of error legitimized the social role of the philologist. ‘[E]ntering
on the path of historical [criticism] proved to be like entering on a Weld of
quicksand. Once one began to detect errors and inconsistencies in one text,
they appeared in all texts. Any manuscript could be eliminated or restored to
favor, any work shown to be genuine or forged, any event revealed to be
mythical or proved to be historical.’21
Despite such occupational hazards, historians were quick to take up the
methods and standards of the philologists. Already in 1811, the historian
Barthold Georg Niebuhr, then busy on his acclaimed Römische Geschichte,
wrote a letter to Minister Schuckmann, Humboldt’s successor, in which he
expressed that ‘in Germany during recent times philological studies have
taken on a dynamism which the most famous philologists and schools of
20 See F. A Wolf, Prolegomena to Homer, 1795, trans. with an intro. by Anthony Grafton,
Glenn W. Most, and James E. G. Zetzel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985); Anthony
Grafton, ‘Polyhistor into Philolog: Notes on the Transformation of German Classical Scholar-
ship, 1780–1850’, HU 3 (1983): 159–92; and Turner, ‘Prussian Universities’, 294–5.
21 Grafton, ‘Polyhistor into Philolog’, 181–3.
earlier times never experienced. Rigorous interpretation [and] precise gram-
matical analysis link up with exploratory research into collective scientiWc
knowledge and opinions, as with the history and institutions of antiquity.’
Niebuhr also remarked that the University of Berlin was uniquely suited to
cultivate the new critical scholarship.22
While Niebuhr was no second-rate scholar, it was his colleague and suc-
cessor at Berlin, Leopold von Ranke, who became for historical studies the
prophetic fulWlment of Niebuhr’s words. Preoccupied mainly with philology
and theology during his student years at Leipzig, Ranke later turned his
attention to history, in part because of the impression made on him by
Niebuhr’s work on Roman history. On the strength of Ranke’s Wrst major
book, Geschichten der romanischen und germanischen Völker von 1494 bis 1535
(1824), minister Schulze invited Ranke to accept a position at Berlin, where he
taught and wrote with great energy for the better part of the century.
Establishing a historical seminar in the Prussian capital in 1833, Ranke
elevated disciplinary standards by emphasizing the importance of construct-
ing the past not on the basis of a priori principles but on that of Wrst-hand
accounts and rigorous archival research conducted in original languages.
Only this constituted history ‘as it actually was’ (wie es eigentlich gewesen)
in his famous phrase; all else fell short of bone Wde professional historiog-
raphy. Ranke’s students went on to occupy practically every important chair
in history throughout Germany, thus guaranteeing Rankean methodology as
the profession’s standard.23
The achievements of Wolf and his disciples, Niebuhr, Ranke, and others in
philology and history would have been impressive enough even if achieved in
isolation. But what made them truly consequential was that through their
demonstrable thoroughness, critical rigour, and the oYcial support given by
the Prussian Ministry of Culture, they laid down methods of scholarly
legitimacy that soon became normative throughout German universities,
cutting across disciplinary boundaries. Accomplished mainly through volu-
minous productions, the institutional authority of Berlin, and the work of
their loyal if dutifully critical students, these scholars emerged as a new high
priesthood of disciplinary standards. Scholars who failed to measure up began
to hear accusations of ‘Dilettantismus’ or, worse, ‘Unwissenschaftlichkeit’.
22 Georg Barthold Niebuhr, Briefe, ed. Dietrich Gerhard and William Norvin (Berlin, 1926),
ii. 205.
23 See Georg Iggers, The German Conception of History: The National Tradition of Historical
Thought from Herder to the Present, rev. edn. (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press,
1983), 665–89, and Georg Iggers and George Powell (eds.), Leopold von Ranke and the Shaping of
the Historical Discipline (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1990).
Accordingly, the desire for peer recognition and the fear of mediocrity proved
powerful incentives for Wrst-order scholarly accomplishment.
The new critical scholarship of the early and mid-nineteenth century
tended to narrow the expected readership. Unlike the scholarship of prior
generations, often geared to a broad educated audience, the new scholarship
measured its worth by its specialized and elitist nature. Already with Wolf one
may observe an ambivalence towards a large public readership. In a letter to
Heyne at Göttingen, Wolf admitted that with ‘which one calls the public I
have nothing to do. It is too genteel, too spacious, too vast. . . . It was always
my wish to be accompanied merely by quiet, scholarly researchers.’24 Writing
for a self-conscious, elite group—a ‘disciplinary community’—placed a high
premium on critical originality and on a progressive and collaborative, if
nonetheless competitive, understanding of scholarship. To gain acceptance in
the inner sanctum of one’s Weld, one had to demonstrate that one’s work had
both mastered previous scholarship and superseded it—a skill that the sem-
inar system exquisitely fostered. This logic accelerated tendencies of special-
ization. ‘Due to the enormous expansion of Wissenschaft ’, wrote the young
Jacob Burckhardt in 1840 while a student of Ranke’s in Berlin, ‘one is obliged
to limit oneself to some deWnite subject and pursue it single-mindedly.’25
Similarly, Wolf ’s student August Boeckh noted in 1850 that ‘this division and
splintering [of scholarship] has incontestably taken a decisive upper hand in
our age, in which the celebrated principle of the division of labour has come
into widespread currency in learning. This has given birth to a mass, indeed a
Xood, of monographic treatises . . . which have certainly contributed very
much to the extension of our knowledge.’26 Besides narrowly focused mono-
graphs, increasingly specialized journals and professional societies cropped
up throughout the century, becoming a deWning feature of the academic
landscape. Between 1830 and 1870, roughly 600 German-language periodicals
came into existence dedicated to theological and religious topics.27
By 1880 the Berlin chemistry professor A. W. Hofmann could describe the
German scholarly ethos as follows: ‘The investigator of the present seeks his
salvation, as a rule, in devotion to one science, nay, often to only a part of one
science. He looks neither to the right nor to the left, so that what is going on
in his neighbor’s Weld may not prevent him from burying himself in his
24 Quoted in Turner, ‘Prussian Universities’, 313.

25 Jacob Burckhardt, Briefe, ed. Max Burckhardt (Basle: Benno Schwabe, 1949), i. 233–4.
26 August Boeckh, ‘Von der Philologie besonders der klassischen in Beziehung zur morgen-
ländischen, zum Unterricht und zur Gegenwart’, in Gesammelte kleine Schriften (Leipzig, 1859),
ii. 190–1.
27 To be sure, the majority of these were not dedicated to academic theology as such. See
Joachim Kirchner, Bibliographie der Zeitschriften des deutschen Sprachgebietes bis 1900 (Stuttgart:
Hiersemann, 1977), ii. 88–127.
specialty to his heart’s content.’28 Some years later, Adolf Harnack would
famously write of the ‘large-scale industry of science’ (Groabetrieb der Wis-
senschaft), resulting from the specialization of knowledge.29
The tendency toward specialization compromised the organic, unitary
ideal of Wissenschaft, as postulated by German idealist philosophy. Gradually,
this led to the ideal’s reformulation, but a reformulation nonetheless consist-
ent with its original meaning. At the time of the founding of the University of
Berlin, as we have seen, theorists articulated a conception of knowledge that
aspired to unity and synthesis; some, like Fichte, even held that one individual
might embody this unity in his own person. Specialization of course greatly
complicated this vision, but it did not lead to its wholesale rejection, for even
among the earlier theorists of Wissenschaft one Wnds an acknowledgement of
the striving, progressing, or unfolding character of knowledge. Later practi-
tioners of the new critical research tended to emphasize this aspect of Wis-
senschaft, relocating the idea of unity from the individual scholar to the
scholarly community and from the actual present to a hypothetical, inWnite
future; perpetual striving for unity came to matter most, not unity itself,
which receded as quickly as scholars approached it. As August Boeckh put it
in 1855: ‘So is our philology an inWnite task whose completion we can only
approach. . . . For this [reason] it will never founder and stop, because it can
never be exhausted and closed. Obviously, therefore, it cannot be completed
in one individual mind in its full expanse. . . . [I]t is realized only ideally, in the
totality of its followers.’30
As the foregoing suggests, the relationship between specialized research and
idealist philosophy is a complicated matter. It is sometimes argued that the
synthetic and monistic qualities of idealism, typiWed by Hegel, actually
impeded the development of a research ethic and specialization. This claim
is not entirely without merit. The well-known hostility, for example, between
the so-called Historical School at Berlin (represented by Savigny, Boeckh, and
Ranke) and Hegel and his followers lends credence to this view. In broad
strokes, one in fact might characterize the 1820s–1840s, in the German human
sciences, as one of intellectual warfare between seemingly incommensurate
modes of historical thought—the Rankean pursuit of the particular, on the
one hand, versus the Hegelian search for the a priori and the synthetic, on the
other.31 In so far as these broad intellectual currents impinged upon theology,
however, one should guard against overemphasizing incommensurability,
28 A. W. Hofmann, ‘The Question of the Division of the Philosophical Faculty’, trans. John
Williams White (Boston, 1883), 22.
29 Adolf Harnack, ‘Vom Großbetrieb der Wissenschaft’, PJ 119 (1905): 193–201.
30 Quoted in Turner, ‘Prussian Universities’, 339–40.
31 Iggers, The German Conception of History, 65 V.
recognizing instead (as is perhaps true of many academic debates) that heated
preoccupation with particular diVerences easily obscures deeper commonal-
ties. The facility with which such high-proWle theologians and biblical scholars
as F. C. Baur and D. F. Strauss blended detailed historical-critical research with
idealist philosophical assumptions points towards this conclusion.32 Indeed,
precisely such a blending constituted the heart of the Protestant Tübingen
School, among the most important mid-century movements of biblical inter-
pretation and church history.33 Thus, one need not read Hegelian thought as
an obstacle to the emerging research imperative; both in fact, albeit in diVerent
ways, embodied the historicizing, progressive ethos of the early nineteenth
century and hence proved conducive to the establishment of a research ethic in
the universities and in theological scholarship.
It is the category of history, especially, where one observes a link between
the emerging research ethic and Hegelian-idealist thought. As is well known,
Hegel’s attentiveness to the historical process was far more capacious and
developed than his idealist predecessors. His intellectual system admitted
elements of ‘Xux’ and ‘development’ unprecedented in the history of philoso-
phy. These elements reXected but also contributed to an academic milieu
allowing for the redeWnition of scholarship as an inWnite progression towards
an ever-receding goal of unity. One of Hegel’s signature ideas, ‘sublation’
(Aufhebung), in fact, resonated remarkably well with the actual, workaday
process of scholarly discovery and writing: researchers constantly superseding
one another in critical, original scholarship while still incorporating the
insights of their predecessors. Furthermore, the Hegelian conviction that
intellectual development was not capricious but advanced in a discernible
teleological direction was often expressed by practitioners of the new critical
research and adopted by many theologians as well. In 1858, for example, the
philologist Boeckh wrote,
Even when [scholarly discoveries] appear to have been made by accident one can
claim that this accident would not have been able to occur had not learning advanced
to the point it had reached at the time this accident took place. In this manner chance
ceases to be chance because it is conditioned by that which has gone before it. . . . By
such views we do not wish to impugn the merit of the discoverer. It is a great
thing . . . to be the tool of collective humanity in the production of a new truth.34
32 This point is elaborated in Franz Schnabel, Deutsche Geschichte im neunzehnten Jahrhun-

dert (Freiburg: Verlag Herder, 1951), iv. 508 V.
33 The hallmark of this school was an eVort to apply Hegelian conceptions of development to
the interpretation of primitive Christianity. The intellectual organ of this school was the
Tübingener Theologische Jahrbücher, published from 1842 to 1857 by Eduard Zeller. See RGG
vi. 1064–71, and Horton Harris, The Tübingen School (Oxford: Clarendon, 1975).
34 Quoted in Turner, ‘Prussian Universities’, 321–2 (emphasis added).
Perhaps the mid-nineteenth-century theologian who best typiWes a dual
commitment to the new critical scholarship and to Hegelian sensibilities
was F. C. Baur, the leading Wgure in the Tübingen School.35 This commitment
is evident not only in his groundbreaking works in New Testament scholar-
ship and early church history, but also in his general understanding of the
relationship between modern Wissenschaft and the Christian faith. He
regarded this relationship neither as one of antagonism nor harmony, but
of fruitful conXict, whereby the thesis of Christianity beneWted from the
antithesis of science, resulting in an intellectually puriWed and ever more
consistently ‘Protestant’ conception of the faith. Accordingly, Christianity
should not recoil from but rather embrace modern critical scholarship, even
when it appeared to threaten Christianity itself. ‘The chief endeavors of the
present age in the higher realms of science’, Baur wrote, ‘are critical and
historical. Everything which is to have value for the present is asked for its
historical justiWcation; everything found existing is examined down to the
roots of its existence.’36 This form of inquiry, he elaborated, was no arbitrary
development but ‘the necessary spiritual process’ of human knowledge in the
present age. ‘No matter how inimical science appears to position itself with
respect to faith, . . . [it brings] the greatest service to faith. For the question is
not how much one believes but only what and how one believes. . . . True faith
is satisWed with a little, so long as what it has remains Wrm and a certain
possession.’37 And such certainty was not obtainable apart from close union
with the advancing spirit of modern Wissenschaft.38
Baur and like-minded critical theologians faced a grave challenge after the
publication of Strauss’s Das Leben Jesu (1835), a book that many read as
nothing short of a full-scale assault on Christianity’s central beliefs. A former
mentor of Strauss and a kindred spirit in many respects, Baur himself came
under close scrutiny. As indicated, his candidacy for Schleiermacher’s chair at
Berlin was scuttled by Altenstein and Schulze, as opposition mounted against
Baur on account of his relation to Strauss.39 Baur’s own response to the crisis,
35 On the inXuence of Hegelian thought on Baur, see Harris, The Tübingen School, 25–7,
155–8.
36 From Baur’s Paulus, der Apostel Jesu Christi (1842); quoted in Hodges, The Formation of
Historical Theology: A Study of Ferdinand Christian Baur (New York: Harper & Row, 1966),
86–7.
37 Quoted in Hodges, The Formation of Historical Theology, 180.
38 For more on Baur’s conception of the relationship between Christian faith and ‘new
developments in the realm of Wissenschaft’, see his letter of 1835 to the Evangelisches Verein
in Tübingen. F. C. Baur, Die frühen Briefe (1814–1835), ed. Carl E. Hester (Sigmaringen:
J. Thorbecke, 1993), 129–44.
39 Hodges, The Formation of Historical Theology, 17.
however, is quite revealing for the light it sheds on the peaceful coexistence of
idealist philosophy and critical scholarship in Baur’s own mind, as well as on the
liberal theological mood in the middle decades of the century. To a friend, Baur
oVered mild esteem of Strauss’s work, despite its excessive ‘negative criticism’.
But he added in overtly Hegelian language that ‘[Strauss’s] result does not strike
me as so revolutionary as it will seem to you. In my view all history can be
regarded only as . . . the development of Spirit, as the external but necessary
impulse to bring to the Spirit’s consciousness the eternal truths which lie within
it. For this reason the whole history of development ever aims . . . to tear the
Spirit free from external and given things, from the letter and from tradition.’
Strauss’s book and its historical-critical methodology had—so runs Baur’s
implication—only aided ‘Spirit’ in emancipating itself from ecclesiastical trad-
itionalism and biblical literalism. Such acts of emancipation accomplished
through criticism were for Baur the necessary theological programme of the
future: only through ‘the critical conception of history . . . does one ever learn to
separate correctly the essential and less essential elements of Christianity and
religion’.40 This method, Baur noted elsewhere, represented the ‘highest prin-
ciple of Protestantism’ and the only sure defence against ‘the authority principle
of Catholicism’.41 The association of Protestant principles with advances in
critical scholarship, and the invoked foil of Catholicism, served as a common
trope among progressive Protestant theologians throughout the century.
The growth of a research ethic, the methodological achievements in philology
and history, the spread of seminars, and the climate of Hegelian thought left
an imprint on theological faculties throughout Germany. These same forces
also invigorated an already ascendant philosophical faculty, which by mid-
century had long ceased to be regarded as theology’s handmaid. Indeed, the
dynamism and continued growth of the erstwhile facultas artium throughout
the nineteenth century, its accelerated diversiWcation and transformation
from subordination to institutional leadership, ranks as a hallmark develop-
ment of the era and a key factor in understanding theology’s diminished
prestige and institutional clout.
Besides advances in philology and history, the growth of the natural or
empirical sciences, which only fully took oV in the 1830s and 1840s, consti-
tuted another major source of the philosophical faculty’s lustre. Prior to this
time, inquiry into the natural world in Germany had been largely, if not
exclusively, dominated by the philosophical, a priori concerns of Naturphilo-
sophie, a highly speculative approach to nature closely associated with the
40 Quoted in Harris, David Friedrich Strauss and his Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge
41 Baur, Die frühen Briefe, 134.
writings of Goethe, Schelling, and Heinrich SteVens.42 But mounting criti-
cism of this philosophy within Germany and the successes of more empiric-
ally oriented, experimental sciences in France and Great Britain diminished
the inXuence of Naturphilosophie, creating space for the emergence of the
natural sciences (Naturwissenschaften) or what some called the ‘exact sciences’
(exacte Wissenschaften).
In his rectorial address at Berlin in 1893 the renowned pathologist Rudolf
Virchow claimed that the return of the naturalist Alexander von Humboldt
(1769–1859), the brother of Wilhelm, from his researches in Paris to Berlin in
1828 ‘deWnitely marked the transition to the time of the natural sciences’. It
was a period, Virchow elaborated, ‘in which philosophic systems were pushed
into the background [and] sober observation and common sense asserted
themselves’.43 While a transition of this magnitude cannot be reduced to one
person or one date, Virchow’s claim does not entirely miss the mark; for
roughly from this time German universities witnessed an explosion of activity
in empirical Welds such as physics, astronomy, biology, chemistry, pathology,
and zoology, as well as a similar growth of supporting institutions: labora-
tories, observatories, museums, collections, clinics, institutes, and more.44
Leading scientists, such as the chemist Justus Liebig (1803–73) at Gießen
and the physiologist Johannes Müller (1801–58) at Berlin, began to assume
more prominent and inXuential social roles.
Natural scientists eagerly embraced the same demanding, progressive re-
search ethic that earlier had characterized the activity of philologists and
historians.45 Publications in specialized scientiWc journals skyrocketed in the
middle decades of the century.46 Looking back over nearly a century of
scientiWc endeavour, Virchow could thus charge his colleagues: ‘Surely the
retrospect upon the career of our university [Berlin], viewed from the height
of the present stage of development, is elevating—we may tell ourselves that
43 See Rudolf Virchow, Die Gründung der Berliner Universität und der Uebergang aus dem
44 See J. H. Mertz, A History of European ScientiWc Thought in the Nineteenth Century (New
York, 1965, repr. of 1904 edn.), i. 157–225. Medicine also beneWted from the rise of natural
science. See Edwald Harndt, ‘Die Stellung der medizinischen Fakultät an der preussischen
Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin als Beispiel für den Wandel des Geisteslebens im
19.Jahrhundert’, Jahrbuch für die Geistesleben Mittel- und Ostdeutschlands 20 (1971): 134–60.
45 This point merits underscoring because it is often assumed that the humanistic sciences
looked to the natural sciences for inspiration and methodological rigour; but countervailing
evidence suggests the priority of the philological-historical disciplines in many, if not all,
respects. This point is nicely made by James Turner, ‘Philology and the Generation of New
Disciplines, 1825–1900’ (unpublished paper).
46 For speciWc data see the tables of scientiWc publications in R. Steven Turner, ‘The Great
Transition’, 472 V.
eighty years is enough to produce a complete revolution in science and
instruction. He who has contributed even a mite to this consummation
may look back upon his work with deep satisfaction. But it would be folly
to believe that we have nothing more to investigate.’47 Natural science had
come a long way, in other words, but the goal, as the demands of research
stipulated, lay in the inWnite future, and only a restless, perpetually self-critical
community of scholars—a new ‘priesthood’ as Virchow phrased it—was
worthy of pursuing it.48
Yet another reason for the staggering growth of the philosophical faculty in
the nineteenth century, especially when measured in terms of the quality and
quantity of its students, can be attributed to actions of the Prussian state: the
reorganization of the relationship of the Gymnasium or secondary school to
the university. The Wrst stage of this process goes back to Humboldt’s activity
at the Department of Ecclesiastical AVairs and Public Education. When he
assumed oYce, a wide variety of standards and types existed among second-
ary schools, reXected in the various names for these institutions: Gymnasium,
Lyceum, Pädagogium, Collegium, and Lateinische Schule. Because the philo-
sophical faculty had not yet attained a high status at this time, teachers at
these schools, if they had university training, were regularly drawn from the
higher faculties, especially from theology graduates waiting for their own
parishes or else from pastors seeking supplemental income. Before the nine-
teenth century, in other words, one could not say that the position of
secondary schoolteacher (Gymnasial-Lehrer) had become a self-standing pro-
fession with standardized criteria of merit and recognized social status.49
During Humboldt’s tenure this was changed in two important respects.
First, state certiWcation by comprehensive examination of all secondary
schoolteachers became mandatory, a measure that assured that only persons
who had studied at a university would be permitted to teach at these institu-
tions. This eVectively eliminated large numbers of poorly qualiWed teachers
and greatly boosted the status and prestige of an instructor at a Gymnasium—
a term which became more or less universally adopted at this time. Second,
Humboldt’s Ministry expanded and placed under state control the Wnal
examination upon completion of the Gymnasium: the Abitur. Every student
who successfully completed this examination gained the unequivocal right to
47 Virchow, Die Gründung der Berliner Universität.

48 It is of course beyond my intention to oVer a full account of the development of natural
science in German universities. See Joseph Ben-David, The Scientist’s Role in Society: A Com-
parative Study (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 108–38. On theologians’ reactions
to advances in natural science, see Frederick Gregory’s excellent study, Nature Lost? Natural
Science and the German Theological Traditions of the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1992).
49 McClelland, The German Experience of Professionalization, 45–7.
study at a Prussian university.50 For several decades, the Abitur coexisted with
several other university-administered tests and application processes that
could also allow one entrance into a university. However, in 1834, under the
leadership of Altenstein, the Prussian government abolished all separate
university tests; thereafter, passing the state-administered Abitur became the
exclusive path into a university.51 This action completed a symbiotic devel-
opment of the two institutions—Gymnasium and university—by tying them
unconditionally to one another. It also expanded the state’s control of higher
education.
By boosting the prestige of secondary schoolteachers through certiWcation,
Prussia assured itself a continual supply of well-motivated instructors. This
accentuated the importance of the philosophical faculty, transforming it,
despite its persistent rhetoric of pure learning, into something of a profes-
sional faculty as well, the purpose of which was to produce teachers. With
stable careers obtainable with a degree from the philosophical faculty, the
career-minded student was no longer bound to matriculate in one of the
higher faculties. As one might imagine, this development diminished the
allure of the theological faculty for many students, especially since its gradu-
ates had hitherto predominated as teachers in the secondary school system. As
one scholar has noted, ‘Many a youth who would formerly have followed a
theological course of studies now heeded the call of science and humanities.’52
The phenomenal growth of the philosophical faculty in the nineteenth
century did not occur without certain problems and dilemmas. Increases in
student matriculation, the diversiWcation of scholarship, and expansion of the
curriculum prompted the question of whether the faculty should be subdiv-
ided. Already a much-discussed topic by mid-century, in 1880 it became the
subject of a noted rectorial address, ‘The Question of the Division of the
Philosophical Faculty’, delivered by the chemist A. W. Hofmann at the
University of Berlin. Hofmann recognized that the ‘exceptional position’ of
the philosophical faculty with its ‘daily increasing membership’ had made the
question of the faculty’s subdivision a pressing issue, ‘awaken[ing] a certain
commotion in academic circles’. The commotion speciWcally centered on the
question of whether the natural sciences, distinguished by their methodology
50 Eduard Spranger, Wilhelm von Humboldt und die Reform des Bildungswesen (Tübingen: M.
Niemeyer, 1960), 226–40. On Schleiermacher’s role in the reform of secondary education at this
time, see Kurt Nowak, Schleiermacher: Leben, Werk und Wirkung (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 2001), 215–20.
51 See the ‘Abiturientenprüfung. Regelment von 4 Juni 1834’, in Ludwig von Rönne (ed.), Das
Unterrichtswesen des preussichen Staates (Berlin, 1855), ii. 257.
52 McClelland, State, Society, and University in Germany, 156. Cf. Anthony J. La Vopa,
Prussian Schoolteachers. Profession and OYce, 1763–1848 (Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1980), 14 V.
and accelerated growth, should be given a faculty of their own. Although a
chemist, Hofmann came down against division, arguing that the humanistic
and natural-scientiWc sides of the philosophical faculty complemented one
another and should not be sundered. Such a conservative stance (which
harked back to the idealist notion of the unity of all knowledge) by and
large became the rule in the nineteenth century, especially at Prussian uni-
versities. However, most universities came to recognize various academic
branches, even if from the standpoint of university administration they
were lumped under the general rubric of ‘philosophical faculty’. Still, excep-
tions took place. In 1863 Tübingen created a separate faculty for its natural
scientists, followed by Strasbourg (1872), Munich (1873), Heidelberg (1890),
and Freiburg (1909).53 The controversy over this issue, one should note,
provides important institutional context for understanding the spirited the-
oretical debates of the late nineteenth century concerning the methodologies
of the Geisteswissenschaften and Naturwissenschaften.54
The contrasting fortunes of the philosophical and theological faculties are
made especially clear by statistical information from the nineteenth century.
Pointing out this contrast amounted to a virtual refrain in the work of the
Halle political scientist Johannes Conrad, who published a major statistical
survey of German universities in 1884.55 ‘If the theological faculty has in
course of time lost in importance the philosophical faculty has correspond-
ingly gained.’ According to Conrad’s Wgures, in 1830–1 students and profes-
sors in the Protestant theological faculties accounted for 26.8 per cent of the
entire population of German universities. By 1881–2, this Wgure had dropped
to 12.5 per cent. The Catholic theological faculties witnessed a proportional
drop, from 11.4 per cent in 1830–1 to 3.1 per cent Wfty years later.56 In the
1870s the paucity of students matriculating in theology became so alarming
that a series of church conferences was held on ‘the decline of the study
of theology’. ‘The number of students is so insuYcient’, one distressed obser-
ver noted with telling hyperbole, ‘that the clergy will shortly become
extinct and most posts remain vacant if a change for the better does not
53 A. W. Hofmann, ‘The Question of the Division of the Philosophical Faculty’, trans. John
Williams White (Boston, 1883), 10–14, and Frank R. Pfetsch, Zur Entwicklung der Wissenschaft-
spolitik in Deutschland, 1750–1914 (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1974), 177.
54 The locus classicus on this issue was Wilhelm Dilthey’s Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaf-
ten, Versuch einer Grundlegung für das Studium der Gesellschaft und der Geschichte (Leipzig,
1883).
55 Johannes Conrad, Das Universitätsstudium in Deutschland während der letzten 50 Jahre
(Jena, 1884). This work was translated into English and became a major source of information
on German universities in the Anglo-American world. See Johannes Conrad, The German
Universities for the Last Fifty Years, trans. John Hutchison (Glasgow, 1885).
56 Conrad, Universitätsstudium in Deutschland, 60 V.
occur soon.’57 By contrast, the philosophical faculty witnessed ‘an enormous
increase, not only absolutely, but even relatively to the other faculties.’ As a
percentage of the entire university system, members of the philosophical
faculty increased from 17.7 per cent in 1830–1 to 40.3 per cent, in 1881–2,
more than doubling the size of the faculty in Wfty years.58
The University of Berlin was more or less typical of broader patterns.
Students in its philosophical faculty averaged 20.6 per cent of the whole
student body between 1810 and 1815, whereas between 1905 and 1910 they
averaged 51.08 per cent. During the same period, theology students dropped
from 19.7 per cent (1810–15) to just over 4 per cent (1905–10). In absolute
numbers, 283 students matriculated in the theological faculty at Berlin be-
tween 1810 and 1815, rising to 2,974 between 1905 and 1910. Students
matriculating in the philosophical faculty, by sharp contrast, grew from 296
(1810–15) to 37,507 (1905–10).59
Alongside the growth of the philosophical faculty and the rise of specialized
research, external political forces made their reality felt in mid-nineteenth-
century German universities. In some cases, these forces boosted the academic
and social proWle of theologians, but they also introduced currents of change
that ultimately diminished the prominence of the theological faculty.
Although the heady days of revolutionary and reforming zeal of the early
nineteenth century were ended by the reactionary climate after 1815–19,
awakened political consciousness proved to be a lingering consequence of
this era, something acutely felt by many intellectual elites in society, theolo-
gians and clergymen included. The exhilarating and conXict-ridden experi-
ence of 1789–1815 could not simply be wiped from memory: the ideologies of
liberalism and nationalism, although putatively suppressed by the Congress
of Vienna and the Karlsbad Decrees, became potent, irrepressible forces in
German university life. Consequently, the Vormärz period, while oYcially
repressive, witnessed an increasing politicization of academic life throughout
57 Quoted in Harmut Titze, ‘Enrollment Expansion and Academic Overcrowding in Ger-

many’, in Konrad Jaraush (ed.), The Transformation of Higher Learning, 1860–1930 (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1983), 75. There were also several books published to address the
situation, including G. Schlosser, Über die Abnahme des Studiums der Theologie (Leipzig, 1873)
and L. Ernesti, Über die Abnahme der Theologie-Studierenden (Stuttgart, 1875). In the 1880s and
1890s the number of theological students recovered enough to diminish the sense of crisis.
Nonetheless, the ratio of theology students to the German population as a whole declined
steadily throughout the century. According to Conrad, there were 15.6 Protestant theology
students for every 100,000 Protestants between 1830 and 1836, whereas during 1881–2 there
were only 10.4. See Conrad, Universitätsstudium in Deutschland, 67.
58 Ibid. 60.
59 Max Lenz, Geschichte der königlichen Friedrich-Wilhelms-Unversität zu Berlin (Halle,
1910), v. 517.
Germany and a new awareness of the relationship between political and
theological points of view.60
An often overlooked fact, Schleiermacher proved to be the prototype of a
new, politicized theologian and clergyman. The founder of Berlin’s theo-
logical faculty represents a signiWcant departure from past norms in his
outspoken embrace of political liberalism and pan-German nationalism and
in his attacks on hereditary priveleges. His Wery sermons and publications
against Napoleon and against Prussia’s alliance with France after the 1812
Russian campaign bespeaks a novum in Prussian-German religious history.
‘By using the pulpit and the press as forums to inXuence ‘‘public opinion,’’
and even as instruments to bring political pressure on the government,
Schleiermacher created an important precedent for the future.’61
But the risks involved by such actions soon became clear once political
reaction set in. Despite his high proWle as professor and pastor, in the1820s
Schleiermacher became suspect to reactionary elements in the government.
His dismissal from the university was even considered on the basis of the
discovery of several letters he had written, in which he had questioned the
government’s post-1819 repressive measures. Only the timely diplomatic
manœuvering of Minister Altenstein prevented this from happening. Even
so, oYcial surveillance of Schleiermacher continued for several years before
his name was Wnally cleared, allowing for a more conciliatory relationship
with the government in his later years.62
Although Schleiermacher was ultimately spared political humiliation, such
good fortune eluded other Vormärz theologians who veered too far from what
the government regarded as religiously or politically acceptable behaviour.
Among the most sensational episodes of the era concerned that of Schleier-
macher’s colleague, de Wette. After the murder of the reactionary playwright
August von Kotzebue in 1819 by the politically liberal theology student Karl
Sand, universities throughout the newly created German Confederation were
placed under tight surveillance and supervision. De Wette made the mistake
of writing a letter of consolation to Sand’s mother, not condoning her son’s
act but expressing the view that he felt the young man acted from pure
motives and that his liberal views, which de Wette shared, could be read as
a ‘beautiful sign of the times’.63 Unfortunately for de Wette, Prussian censors
60 F. W. Graf, ‘Protestantische Theologie und die Formierung der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft’,

in Graf (ed.), ProWle des neutzeitlichen Protestantismus (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus,
1990), i. 11–44.
61 Robert M. Bigler, The Politics of German Protestantism: The Rise of the Protestant Church
Elite in Prussia, 1815–1848 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1972), 31–2.
62 On this episode, see Lenz, Universität Berlin, ii (1). 84 V. and Nowak, Schleiermacher, 378–85.
63 Letter of 31 March 1819 in Ernst Staehelin (ed.), Dewettiana: Forschungen und Texte zu
Wilhelm Martin Leberecht de Wettes Leben und Werke (Basle: Helbing & Lichtenhahn, 1956), 86.
intercepted his letter and revealed its contents to higher oYcials. Despite his
pleas for clemency, seconded by members of Berlin’s faculty, de Wette was
dismissed from his teaching post and banned from teaching at any other
Prussian university. Bereft of a position for several years, de Wette eventually
accepted a call from the Swiss University of Basle in 1822. To add insult to
injury, the Prussian government issued a decree in 1824 forbidding its
students from studying at Basle, characterizing its university as a refuge for
demagogues.64
If de Wette’s case reveals the limits of freedom of expression in the Vormärz
era, the case of the theologian Bruno Bauer (1809–82) suggests the steady
acceptance of the related ideal of academic freedom among theological
faculties, even if it too attests to the abiding power of the state over university
aVairs. What is more, Bauer’s intellectual development bears witness to how
forces unleashed by the new Wissenschaftsideologie could be enlisted in intel-
lectually and politically radical causes. As Bauer came to see things, modern
Wissenschaft and traditional theology, indeed all theology, were on an inex-
orable collision course; yet only the former was true and justiWed, and the
honest theologian should simply accept this fact. ‘Wissenschaft’, he told his
friend and intellectual ally Arnold Ruge, ‘must make sure that its categories
and evolution are kept free of any infection from earlier representations. The
break must be clean and absolute.’65
Bauer arrived at such a position only gradually however. In 1828 he
matriculated in Berlin’s theological faculty, gaining the right to instruct as a
Privatdozent in 1834. Due to his considerable native talent and Hegelian
sympathies, Marheinecke hailed him as among Berlin’s most promising
young theologians. Minister Altenstein was also impressed and oVered gen-
erous support and encouragement to the talented upstart. However, Bauer’s
increasing association with left-leaning ‘Young Hegelians’ at Berlin began to
exert a powerful inXuence on his thinking. By the late 1830s it had become
clear that he had moved in a radical direction, theologically and politically.
This shift in his thought was made clear by increasingly vituperative attacks
against the state-church system in Prussia and against the theological conser-
vatism of colleagues such as Hengstenberg.
When a position on Bonn’s theological faculty opened in 1839, Altenstein
decided that the bright, potential troublemaker be removed from Berlin,
placing him in the new Rhineland university, despite strong protests from its
64 De Wette was allowed to publish all documents and memoranda pertaining to his
dismissal in an eVort to help clear his name. See de Wette, Aktensammlung über die Entlassung
des Professors D. de Wette vom theologischen Lehramt zu Berlin: Zur Berichtigung des öVentlichen
Urteils von ihm selbst herausgegeben (Leipzig, 1820).
65 Quoted in James Sheehan, German History, 1770–1866 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989), 565.
theological faculty. At Bonn, the young ‘Robespierre of theology’, as some
dubbed him, accelerated his radical course, eventually mounting a relentless
assault on all forms of ‘apologetic’ theology, whether pietist, confessional, or
Hegelian. In an anonymously published essay, Die evangelische Landeskirche
Preussens und die Wissenschaft (1840), Bauer held out the hope that Prussia
would recapture the enlightened spirit of Friedrich the Great and the Stein
reforms, transforming the state into a progressive vanguard of modern ration-
ality and scientiWc progress against theological forces of backwardness. He also
opined that a decisive confrontation was at hand between ‘theological con-
sciousness’ and ‘scientiWc consciousness’ and that the state had better side with
the latter. Interestingly, Bauer never considered abandoning his theological
vocation for a secular career. He came to feel that the dissolution of theology at
the hands of a practising theologian—transforming theology into critical
philosophy, faith into Wissenschaft—constituted a historically necessary and
urgent task. Theology was simply the hell through which he had to pass, he
once wrote, before he could enjoy the pure heavenly air of Wissenschaft.66
In 1841–2 Bauer published a three-volume study of the Gospels, Kritik der
evangelischen Geschichte der Synoptiker, a work in the spirit of D. F. Strauss
that contradicted traditional church doctrine at almost every point and
proved an important milestone in Bauer’s developing anti-Christian human-
ism and outspoken revolutionary politics. Alarmed after the publication of
volume one, minister Friedrich Eichhorn, Altenstein’s more conservative
successor, asked Bonn’s theological faculty, and then the rest of Prussia’s
Protestant theological faculties, to submit their opinion about Bauer’s con-
troversial book. Eichhorn posed two questions: (1) ‘What standpoint does the
author take towards Christianity in this book?’ and (2) ‘Can [Bauer] still be
permitted to teach according to the regulations of our universities and
especially our theological faculties?’ Practically all twenty-seven theologians
who responded believed that Bauer’s views were in conXict with accepted
doctrine. Quite revealingly though, a marked majority (sixteen to eleven)
believed that such a conXict was not necessarily grounds for dismissal; many
cited the principles of ‘Lehrfreiheit’ to back up their position. The univer-
sities, one theologian responded, should be protected by the state as a sphere
for ‘free inquiry in the area of scientiWc theology’.67
66 Bruno Bauer, Briefwechsel zwischen Bruno Bauer und Edgar Bauer während der Jahre 1839
bis 1842 (Leipzig, 1844), 37, and John E. Toews, Hegelianism: The Path toward Dialectical
Humanism, 1805–1841 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 310 f.
67 See Otto Ritschl, Die evangelisch-theologische Fakultät zu Bonn in dem ersten Jahrhundert
ihrer Geschichte, 1818–1919 (Bonn, 1919), 23–9. The theologians’ opinions and other relevant
documents concerning Bauer were collected and published as Gutachten der evangelisch-theo-
logischen Facultäten der königlich Preussischen Universitäten über den Licentiaten Bruno Bauer in
Beziehung auf dessen Kritik der evangelischen Geschichte der Synoptiker (Berlin, 1842).
Exercising the prerogative of his oYce, however, Eichhorn placed more
emphasis on the response to the Wrst question and decided in 1842 to revoke
Bauer’s venia legendi. Nonetheless, the episode testiWes to the growing ascen-
dency of academic freedom over apologetic or doctrinal concerns as a prin-
ciple for teaching in theological faculties. At the same time, Eichhorn’s Wnal
decision exhibited the power of the state to intervene in university matters.
But this power in diVerent hands could be utilized, as we shall see, for non-
conservative causes as well.
In so far as he sought to protect the status quo, Eichhorn’s actions against
Bauer reXected prudential judgement. Bauer represented both an aVront to
orthodox Christianity and a challenge to the Vormärz political order, to what
the new king, Friedrich Wilhelm IV (r. 1840–61), championed as a ‘Christian
state’. But the 1840s would witness not only the intensiWcation of Bauer’s well-
known political radicalism but also to that of a more general liberal spirit and
climate of discontent in Prussian and German universities, a factor that
contributed signiWcantly to the revolutionary tide of 1848 and 1849. Waxing
liberalism among the professoriate and university-educated classes, as one
scholar has noted, ‘was perhaps the most important ingredient in the general
sentiment that eventually led to the Revolution’.68 Here is not the place to
discuss the proverbial ‘complexity of 1848’, but it merits bearing in mind the
considerable role that academically trained individuals and professors played
in the events culminating in the Frankfurt Assembly of 1848, which resulted
in Germany’s near uniWcation and in its Wrst drafted, if unimplemented,
national constitution. Of the deputies that gathered in Frankfurt, roughly
80 per cent held university degrees. Almost 20 per cent were professors,
scholars, or secondary schoolteachers, while 13 per cent were theologians or
clergymen.69 In other words, the commonplace quip that the Frankfurt
Assembly was a ‘parliament of professors’ is by no means beside the point.
However, from the standpoint of the later nineteenth century, the
liberal political agitation of the professoriate of the late 1840s stands out as
atypical academic behaviour. This is especially true when the revolutionary
upheaval of the 1840s is compared to the more conservative milieu of
the 1850s and 1860s and to the post-1871 national period, which witnessed
a greater coincidence between the interests of the university and those of
the state. In fact, the principal lesson of the ‘failed revolution’ for many
educated elites was an increased disdain of the unruly forces of popular
democracy, which during the Revolution had often conXicted with the
more moderate goals of national uniWcation and establishing a constitutional
68 Ringer, The Decline of the German Mandarins, 125.

69 Ibid. 44, and Sheehan, German History, 676–8.
system.70 For many in the learned classes, as Heinrich HeVter has written, ‘the
experiences of the unsuccessful revolution spurred the reaction against rad-
icalism and, despite all opposition against a reactionary government, in-
creased the inclination to compromise with the monarchic-bureaucratic
powers’.71 The Bismarckian promise of law, order, and nationhood, Fritz
Ringer has noted, moved the ‘mandarin’ university elites, despite holding
progressive views in the scientiWc realm, ‘toward an ever more unquestioning
support of the existing regime. Before the end of the century, the German
academic community as a whole had fallen into the role of . . . [a] decidedly
oYcial establishment.’72
Yet despite the manifold failures of the Revolution, those who met at
Paulskirche in Frankfurt in 1848 did advance the standing of certain ideas
and intellectual currents that would aVect the future development of univer-
sities and academic theology. For example, an attempted eVort to separate
church and state following the Western constitutional model (and the related
issue of decreasing clerical inXuence in state education) proved an inXuential,
if unrealized, article of politics after 1848. It was kept alive during the imperial
period especially by the Social Democratic Party (SPD). Such a separation
only became a reality, however, with the Weimar Constitution in 1919, at
which time the fate of theological faculties in state-funded universities, as we
shall see, became a subject of heated controversy and debate.
Furthermore, the ‘spirit of 1848’ helped advance the rights of those such as
Bauer who held unorthodox viewpoints. Academic freedom enjoyed clear
support in the constitution drafted in Frankfurt: ‘Die Wissenschaft and ihre
Lehre ist frei’ (VI§152). The same article made its way into the Prussian
Constitution of 1850, eVectively undermining the legal basis for confession-
alism in the universities.73 This point is particularly relevant for theological
faculties, whose members were still regularly required to swear a doctrinal
oath. Some of these oaths, such as Berlin’s, could be quite broad and ecu-
menical, while others remained pointedly confessional in the seventeenth-
century sense. The 1850 provision of academic freedom watered down the
70 The universities and the Revolution of 1848 is a large and important topic in its own right.
For starters, see Erich J. Hahn, ‘The Junior Faculty in ‘‘Revolt’’: Reform Plans for Berlin
University in 1848’, AHR 82 (1977): 875–95, and Karl Griewank, Deutsche Studenten und
Universitäten in der Revolution von 1848 (Weimar, 1949).
71 Heinrich HeVter, Die deutsche Selbstverwaltung im 19.Jahrhundert: Geschichte der Ideen
und Institutionen (Stuttgart: K. F. Köhler, 1950), 351–2.
72 Ringer, The Decline of the German Mandarins, 127.
73 E. R. Huber and W. Huber (eds.), Staat und Kirche im 19. und 20.Jahrhundert: Dokumente
zur Geschichte des Staatskirchenrecht (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1976), ii. 32–8. Cf. Georg
Kaufmann, Die Lehrfreiheit an den deutschen Universitäten im neunzehnten Jahrhundert (Leipzig,
1898).
signiWcance of the oath, creating an ambiguous legal environment conducive
to greater Xexibility in theological teaching and scholarship. Already though,
many theologians regarded these oaths as historically conditioned phenom-
ena, relics of Protestantism from an earlier stage of development.74
The world-historical events of 1866–71 that ushered into being the Second
German Empire were not without consequences for universities and theo-
logical faculties. With few exceptions, Protestant theologians passed judgment
on these events favourably, as did most of the professoriate. Even theologians
inclined to political liberalism, once hostile to Bismarck for his antiparlia-
mentary actions, came to regard him as a national hero after 1866, as a
defender of progressive German-Protestant principles.75 The wars against
Catholic Austria and France were regarded as ‘just wars’ by the majority of
Protestant theologians and Prussia’s victories leading to the Reich founding
were interpreted in providential, triumphalist, and often highly emotional
terms.76 As one young theologian wrote in 1870 from his remote post in
Berne, Switzerland: ‘[What] irreparable loss of not being able to live in the
great Xood, the ocean of enthusiasm and of the deepest stirring of all the
noblest human feelings that presently Xow toward Germany.’77 In a letter to
Austria’s only Protestant theological faculty (founded in 1821 at the Univer-
sity of Vienna) on the occasion of its Wftieth anniversary, members of Kiel’s
theological faculty equated Prussia’s recent successes with the triumph of
‘Protestant Wissenschaft’ over the intellectually regressive inXuence of Cath-
olicism.78
74 Günther Holstein, ‘Theologische Fakultäten und Lehrversprechen (formula sponsionis)’, in
Festschrift für Max Pappenheim zum 50.Jahrestag seiner Doktorpromotion (Breslau, 1930), 190–7.
75 On the establishment of the Prussian parliament and Bismarck’s relations to it, see Black-
bourn, The Long Nineteenth Century, 225 V.
76 Graf, ‘Protestantische Theologie in der Gesellschaft des Kaiserreichs’, in Graf (ed.), ProWle
des neutzeitlichen Protestantismus, ii. 12–22, and Thomas Nipperdey, Religion im Umbruch:
Deutschland, 1870–1918 (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1988), 92 V.
77 Letter of Carl Holstein to Franz Overbeck, 12 September 1870, in Ernst Staehelin (ed.),
Overbeckiana: Übersicht über den Franz-Overbeck Nachlaß der Universitätsbibliothek Basel (Basle:
Helbing & Lichtenhahn, 1962), i. 93.
78 Not only Kiel but many northern German Protestant theological faculties sent letters of
congratulations and encouragement to the faculty in Vienna. SigniWcant insight into the
attitudes of German Protestant theologians towards Bismarck’s actions can be inferred from
these letters. For example, Berlin’s faculty wrote: ‘Halten Sie fest im Kampfe. Hüten sie treu das
anvertraute Kleinoid evangelischer Wahrheit! Die Kraft des Protestantismus muß sich noch
weiter bewähren.’ And from Göttingen: ‘[Vienna’s Protestant faculty is] eine Leuchte der
evangelisch-theologischen Wissenschaft in dem weiten Umkreis der unter Oesterreichs Sceptor
vereinigten Länder . . .’ These letters are gathered as ‘Beilagen’ in Albrecht Vogel, Die semisae-
cularfeier der K. K. evangelisch-theologischen Facultät in Wien (Vienna, 1872), 37 V., HUA Theol.
Fak. 83. Vienna’s Protestant faculty actually began as a separate school of theology in 1821, only
gaining faculty status in 1850. Today, it is the only Protestant theological faculty in Austria. See
RGG vi. 1703–7.
What is more, the Bismarckian Empire of the 1870s and 1880s, in making
concessions to the German middle class, eliminated many causes of friction
between university and government that had characterized earlier periods. In
return, the universities developed a more conciliatory relationship with the
state. The oppositional tendencies of professors and students, with some
exceptions, diminished considerably. By the late nineteenth century, univer-
sity professors across all faculties were at the forefront of beating the national
drum.79
The student body grew enormously during the late nineteenth century,
boosted by rapid population growth, improved literacy and secondary edu-
cation, and by the fact that universities had become increasingly attractive to
sons of the middle classes as avenues of social mobility. Between 1830 and
1860, the number of students at all German universities had Xuctuated in a
range between 12,000 and 13,000. By 1870 it had reached 14,000, and it
continued to grow at an astonishing pace until the First World War. By
1900 total enrolment stood at 34,000; in 1914 it had crested 61,000.80 That
many of these students were bright, ambitious foreigners and that a number
of foreign countries—such as the United States, Great Britain, and Japan—
had begun to emulate German universities during this period only added to a
sense of national pride and accomplishment felt by professors and govern-
ment oYcials alike. In 1905 Adolf Harnack boasted that 1,150 of Berlin’s 7,700
students were foreigners eager for tutelage in German Wissenschaft.81 In sum,
the post-1871 period was characterized by general satisfaction and rapid
expansion of the university system, not by criticism and innovation, as was
the case in the 1789–1815 period. Once a potential victim of modernity, the
university in the imperial era emerged, astoundingly, as one of modernity’s
quintessential expressions.
But all was not smooth sailing. The swift industrialization, urbanization,
and population growth that characterized the period confronted the univer-
sities with new pressures and problems. As the industrial-economic bloc
grew in strength in society, it increasingly made its interests known in
the political arena, and there was relatively little done to achieve a clear
separation of economic and political power. In turn, economically
motivated political interests often put pressures on the universities and
helped promote and fund various industry-friendly forms of research and
79 McClelland, State, Society, and University, 234, and Blackbourn, The Long Nineteenth
Century, 426–37.
80 Franz Eulenberg, ‘Die Frequenz der deutschen Universitäten von ihrer Gründung bis zur
Gegenwart’, in Abhandlung der philologisch-historischen Klasse der königlich sächsischen
Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften 24 (Leipzig, 1906), 255.
81 Harnack, ‘Vom Großbetrieb der Wissenschaft’, PJ 119 (1905): 197.
teaching.82 Not surprisingly, the areas that beneWted most from these pres-
sures were the philosophical faculties (especially in the natural sciences) and
also the medical faculties. In 1840 the entire professoriate (Ordinarien, Extra-
ordinarien, and Privatdozenten) in German philosophical faculties stood at
536, rising to 1491 in 1905, with most growth in the later decades of the
century—a rate of growth approaching 200 per cent. Similarly impressive,
medical faculties’ teaching staV jumped from 316 in 1840 to 971 in 1905. By
contrast, the professoriate in Protestant theological faculties in Germany
witnessed a growth from 146 in 1840 to only 196 in 1905.83
One observes a similar trend with respect to the types of seminars, insti-
tutes, and other auxiliary institutions founded in the late nineteenth century.
After 1871 Prussia developed an extraordinarily rapid pace of founding
seminars and institutes, particularly under the leadership of Friedrich AlthoV
(1839–1908), the strong-willed, inXuential chief of higher education within
the Kultusministerium from 1882 to 1907. During his time in oYce, AlthoV
helped found in Prussia no less than eighty-six medical institutes, laborator-
ies, and clinics and seventy-seven institutes and seminars in the philosophical
faculties. By contrast, just four theological seminars arose in the same
period.84 A 1914 guide to the University of Berlin for foreign students,
likewise, showcased three institutions (Anstalten) in the theological faculty,
three in law, but thirty-two in medicine and thirty-one in philosophy.85
While the existence of many such ‘Anstalten’ can be interpreted as a
response to the imperatives of industrialization and the burgeoning of the
empirical sciences in the late nineteenth century, other considerations are also
important. Usually funded directly by the government, and often designed to
address speciWc social, medical, or technological needs, these institutions
often existed outside the statutory mandate of the universities, even as they
thrived on university aYliation. The directors were selected because they
represented the most accomplished scholars in their Weld, and they were
regularly enticed to accept appointments by the promise of gaining their
own seminar or institute. In eVect then, the granting of such an institution
to a professor regularly functioned as a form of government patronage, and it
82 McClelland, State, Society, and University, 300–1.

83 Less impressive growth was true of Catholic theological faculties as well as of law faculties.
Following trends witnessed during the era of Altenstein, the most explosive growth in medical
and philosophical faculties was at the rank of junior faculty (Extraordinarien and Privatdozen-
ten). See McClelland, State, Society, and University, 259–60.
84 A list of AlthoV ’s ‘umfangreiche Schöpfungen’ is found in Arnold Sachse, Friedrich AlthoV
und sein Werk (Berlin, 1928), 237–44.
85 Berlin und seine Universität: ein Führer für Studierende mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der
Ausländer (Berlin, 1914), HUB, Ay46248.
customarily established a loyal and symbiotic bond between the elite profes-
soriate and the state.86
These institutions often abetted forces of specialization. Practically speak-
ing, institutes, seminars, clinics, and research laboratories necessitated space,
oYces, and often new buildings, and their establishment, in a literal physical
sense, separated colleagues who hitherto might have worked in relatively close
proximity. Their founding thus expedited already strong trends towards
intellectual diVerentiation and specialization: collegial interaction with a
diversely skilled faculty increasingly gave way to more exclusive association
with those who shared one’s particular expertise and research interests. As the
state aggressively funded seminars and institutes, their buildings and oYces
became ‘mute representatives of the walls between disciplines, even within the
same faculty’.87
Besides seminars and institutes, another set of institutions, also friendly to
the demands of modern science and industry, emerged in the late nineteenth
century, challenging the primacy of the Gymnasium-university system estab-
lished during the time of Humboldt and Schleiermacher. I refer here to the
growth of practical high schools or Realschulen as alternatives to the Gymna-
sien and technical universities or Technische Hochschulen as alternatives to the
universities. While many of these more practically oriented schools traced
their origins to the Wrst half of the nineteenth century, or earlier in some cases,
they only became well-funded, well-attended, and more distinguished ‘prac-
tical’ alternatives to the ‘theoretical’ Gymnasium and university after mid-
century, borne as they were by the social forces of rapid industrialization.
Although one could not say that these institutions directly challenged the
primacy and prestige of the universities, on account of their diVering ap-
proach to instruction and scholarship, many university-seated professors
regarded them with contempt, looking down on their utilitarian emphases.
One result of all this was a prolonged public debate that often had the eVect of
calling attention to the shortcomings of the traditional universities in the
modernizing, industrializing world of Wilhelmine Germany.88
86 Sachse, Friedrich AlthoV und seine Werke, 173 V., and McClelland, State, Society, and
University, 280 V. A classic case of this symbiosis is seen in the career of the physicist Hermann
von Helmholz. During his lifetime, he directed no fewer than four major scientiWc institutes, in
Königsberg, Bonn, Heidelberg, and Berlin. He also helped plan and direct the inXuential
Physikalisch-Technische Reichanstalt in Berlin. See David Cahan, An Institute for an Empire: the
Physikalisch-Technische Reichanstalt in Berlin, 1871–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1989).
88 Ibid. 236–7. On the founding of Technische Hochschulen and their inXuence on education
and society, see Karl-Heinz Manegold, Universität, Technische Hochschule und Industrie (Berlin:
Duncker & Humblot, 1970). All together, there were nine major Technische Hochschulen in
The debate sometimes gave birth to speciWc changes. In Prussia in 1870, to
oVer one revealing example, the government decided to allow students of the
Realschulen to qualify for university admittance along with their peers in the
classical, humanistic Gymnasien.89 The Kultusministerium preceded this de-
cree in 1869 by circulating a letter to the philosophical faculties of Prussia,
asking for their opinion on the matter. Interestingly, the faculties (including
professors in the natural-scientiWc Welds) largely regarded the government’s
measure as inappropriate, for only the classical Gymnasien, they argued, could
provide the ‘liberal and many-sided culture’ necessary for success at the
university, whereas the Realschulen should stick with the more practical task
of preparing its students to serve ‘the great commercial houses and industrial
institutions’.90 Exercising its prerogative, however, the government decided to
stand by its original intention: by a decree of 7 December 1870 the right of
matriculating at a university was granted to any student who had completed
the full course of study at a Realschule, and thus ‘a new element was intro-
duced into the universities’.91 Besides Prussia, other states acted similarly or
followed suit.92
The government’s heavy-handed action to admit students from Realschulen
to the universities despite faculty opposition calls attention to another im-
portant trend of the late nineteenth century: continued activism of the state in
university aVairs. Indeed, the legacy of Altenstein and Schulze came home to
roost during this period as any lingering medieval sense of the university as an
autonomous, privileged corporation was eVectively eroded (in practice if not
in rhetoric). Universities became creatures of the state par excellence.93 This
was mainly achieved not through confrontational measures, as had often been
the case, for instance, under the earlier Karlsbad Decrees, but rather through a
gradual Xow of decision-making authority from universities into the hands of
central state educational bureaucracies—a process though in which professors
Germany in the late nineteenth century. They were located at Berlin-Charlottenberg, Hanover,
Aachen, Brunswick, Dresden, Darmstadt, Karlsruhe, Stuttgart, and Munich. In contrast to the
universities, these institutions focused on Welds such as agriculture, civil engineering, mechan-
ical engineering, chemistry, geology, metallurgy, and architecture. With the universities, these
institutions also witnessed rapid numerical growth of students and faculty in the late nineteenth
century. See Paulsen, German Universities, 112.
89 On the contrasting curricula of Realschulen and Gymnasien, see Conrad, The German
Universities, 324. Generally, the former gave more attention to modern languages than classical
ones and provided more instruction in mathematics and natural science.
90 The letter of Berlin’s philosophical faculty is printed in A. W. Hofmann, ‘The Question of
the Division of the Philosophical Faculty’, 39–43.
91 Ibid. p. iv, passim. Some limitations often applied to students of Realschulen.
93 See Brocke, ‘Hochschule- und Wissenschaftspolitik in Preußen’, 46.
were often accepting and uncritical. So intertwined appeared the interests of
the state and university by 1914 that the professor Emil du Bois-Reymond
once remarked that the Prussian professoriate had become the ‘spiritual
bodyguard’ (geistige Leibregiment) of the Hohenzollern house—an exagger-
ated claim certainly but one that is quite revealing.94
Of all the German ministries, the Prussian Kultusministerium remained the
most crucial in educational matters by virtue of the scope of its power and
inXuence after 1871. The key occupants of its highest oYces in the late
nineteenth century—such as Adalbert Falk (1872–9), Gustav von Gossler
(1881–91), Friedrich AlthoV (1882–1907), J. R. Bosse (1892–9), and Konrad
von Studt (1899–1907), among others—eVectively determined the relation-
ship between the state and university in Prussia and set the agenda for this
relationship throughout other German states as well.95 The non-Prussian
educational bureaucracies, Max Weber once wrote, often appeared as ‘vassals
of the Prussian university administration’.96 For our purposes, several things
in particular are noteworthy about late nineteenth-century ministers. First,
they no longer presided over a cash-strapped, recently defeated power, as was
Prussia after 1806, but rather over a rapidly industrializing political heavy-
weight that possessed considerably more funds to spend on its intellectual and
cultural well-being. Overall, spending on universities in Prussia, for instance,
increased from 2 million marks in 1866 to 27 million (36 million counting
Technische Hochschulen) in 1914, with the lion’s share going to technical,
medical, and natural-scientiWc development.97
Second, as legatees of Altenstein and Schulze, ministers in various capaci-
ties sought to carry forward the Kulturstaat ideal, eager to distinguish Prussia,
and Germany, by its scientiWc and scholarly accomplishments and by the
international renown of its university system. The German Empire, as some
phrased it, sought to become a ‘Wissenschaftsstaat’, in which science both
expressed national vigour and provided a symbolic language of international
intellectual cooperation.98 With respect to religious matters, late nineteenth-
century ministers were inclined to deWne Protestantism not in a rigid doc-
trinal or pietistic manner; rather, Protestantism was associated with the
94 S. D. Stirk, German Universities through English Eyes (London, 1946), 18, and McClelland,
State, Society, and University, 235, 289.
95 Huber, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte, iv. 869. This ministry underwent several reorgan-
izations in the mid- and late nineteenth century. On these and on various oYce holders, see
Reinhard Lüdicke, Die preußischen Kultusminister und ihre Beamten im ersten Jahrhundert des
Ministeriums, 1817–1917 (Stuttgart, 1918).
96 Max Weber, ‘The Power of the State and the Dignity of the Academic Calling: The Writings
of Max Weber on University Problems’, Minerva 4 (1973): 596.
97 Pfetsch, Zur Entwicklung der Wissenschaftspolitik in Deutschland, 71–2.
98 See Brocke, ‘Hochschule- und Wissenschaftspolitik in Preußen’, 15, 30 V.
very principles of the modern world: freedom, progress, and scientiWc
inquiry—principles regularly contrasted to the ‘medieval’ and ‘authoritarian’
character of Roman Catholicism. Progressive elements of the German pro-
fessoriate increasingly came to assume such an association as a matter of
course; it dovetailed with and supported the legitimacy of their own scholarly
enterprise. And if the Ministry of Culture appeared to waZe, it might well
receive a pointed reminder from the faculty.
Such was the case with the celebrated ‘Spahn aVair’, among the most
extensively discussed university conXicts of the Wilhelmine era. In 1901
Minister AlthoV decided to allow for a speciWcally Catholic chair on the
University of Strasbourg’s philosophical faculty, oVering it to the Catholic
historian Martin Spahn (1875–1945). Such an action, AlthoV reasoned,
would help win more support for the University of Strasbourg as a ‘mission
for German learning’ from the predominantly Catholic population in Alsace,
still uneasy about its recent annexation to Germany. What AlthoV did not
anticipate was the Werce opposition he encountered from both secular
and liberal-Protestant scholars, spearheaded by the distinguished historian
Theodor Mommsen. In a widely discussed article in the Münchener Neuesten
Nachrichten, Mommsen argued that making adherence to dogma (Konfes-
sionsgebundenheit) the prerequisite of a professorial chair in the philosophical
faculty contradicted the principles of unbiased research and academic
freedom. ‘Confessionalism is the mortal enemy of the university,’ as he
summed up.
Mommsen’s viewpoint was echoed by Adolf Harnack, who, in a letter to the
National Zeitung, praised AlthoV ’s many accomplishments, but, invoking the
Kulturstaat ideal, also gently reminded the government of its obligation to
serve as ‘caretaker’ of intellectual inquiry, ‘protect[ing] the sanctuary of
scholarship from the disturbing encroachment of confessional and related
forces’.99 In the end, Spahn held his appointment, but government-supported
confessional appointments proved a limited undertaking.100 What is more,
government appointments in the late nineteenth century could as easily work
against confessional interests.
Either way, the government’s role in making appointments was extensive.
What Max Lenz wrote of the University of Berlin in the mid-nineteenth
99 Mommsen’s article originally appeared in the Münchener Neuesten Nachrichten (15

November 1901). Harnack’s letter appeared in the National Zeitung (28 November 1901). The
quotations from these sources are taken from Craig, Scholarship and Nation Building, 154–5. Cf.
Huber, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte, iv. 960 V.
100 The Spahn case is treated extensively in Christoph Weber, Der ‘Fall Spahn’ (1901): Ein
Beitrag zur Wissenschafts- und Kulturdiskussion im ausgehenden 19.Jahrhundert (Rome: Herder,
1980).
century, while far from universally valid, points to a more general reality: ‘The
faculties had hardly anything to say about appointments, [for] very few
instructors were appointed with their consultation. Most were procured
directly by the minister. . . . The minister alone became the source of all
grace; whoever desired advancement was forced to turn to him.’101 Although
faculties across Germany possessed the right to nominate candidates for
vacant positions (Vorschlagsrecht), state educational ministries retained the
right to make Wnal appointments (Oktroyierungsrecht), and it was a right
frequently exercised. An enterprising article by the Norddeutsche Allgemeine
Zeitung published a set of Wgures in December 1901, which indicated in the
years between 1817 and 1900 a signiWcantly large number of professors in
Prussia had received positions in disregard to the proposals of the faculties. In
the medical faculty, the government went against the faculties’ choices 134
times out of a total of 612 appointments. In law, 86 government appoint-
ments were made out of 436 altogether. Finally, theology had the highest
percentage of government appointments; of 311, 102 were made by the
government against faculty recommendations—thus roughly one-third of
all theology appointments during this period.102
Between 1882 and 1912, to provide an example, the University of Marburg
(Prussian only after national uniWcation) witnessed seven new appointments.
Of the seven, four went against the wishes of the faculty, one of which took
place even without its consultation. Some members of Marburg’s faculty felt
frustrated enough by the situation to complain that their ability to function as
a faculty had been ‘incapacitated’ by the government.103 Earlier, in 1875, to
oVer another example, Minister Adalbert Falk, a committed liberal and key
prosecutor of the Kulturkampf against Catholics, appointed the Kantian and
critically minded theologian Otto PXeiderer (1839–1908) to Berlin’s theo-
logical faculty without eliciting a single vote from PXeiderer’s future col-
leagues. In so acting, Falk eVectively contravened conservative-confessional
interests and helped paved the way for Berlin to emerge from lingering
Vormärz reaction to become a centre point of liberal Protestantism in the
late nineteenth century.104
In 1888 Minister AlthoV accelerated this trend by bringing the talented
young Adolf Harnack from Marburg to Berlin. Although faculty opposition
101 Lenz, Universität Berlin, ii. (1). 407.

102 Noted in Brocke, ‘Hochschule- und Wissenschaftspolitik in Preußen’, 89–90.
103 Adolf Jülicher, Die Entmündigung einer preußischen theologischen Fakultät in zeitgeschich-
tlichem Zusammenhange (Tübingen, 1913).
104 On PXeiderer’s appointment, see Walter Elliger, 150 Jahre theologische Fakultät Berlin:
Eine Darstellung ihrer Geschichte von 1810 bis 1960 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1960), 65–7. On
PXeiderer’s general theological outlook, see his ‘Die Aufgabe der wissenschaftlichen Theologie
für die Kirche der Gegenwart’, in Reden und Aufsätze (Munich, 1909), 202–16.
proved negligible in this case, worries over Harnack’s orthodoxy elicited cries
of protest against his appointment from several leading clergymen and from
members of Prussia’s highest Protestant church authority, the Evangelische
Oberkirchenrat. Since 1855 this body alongside relevant faculties possessed
the right to make suggestions and voice concerns about theological positions
in the universities of Prussia’s ‘old provinces’, those under the Prussian crown
prior to the nineteenth century.105 Unsuccessfully, however, church leaders
advocated that Harnack’s candidacy be dismissed, complaining that his
Lerhrbuch der Dogmengeschichte (1886–7) fundamentally contradicted accept-
able evangelical doctrine.106 Impressed by Harnack’s scholarly reputation,
however, AlthoV won over to his side both Chancellor Bismarck and the
new Kaiser, Wilhelm II. In an artful letter to Bismarck, AlthoV made the case
that clerical opposition to Harnack signiWed a much broader issue: whether
the state or conservative elements in the church would determine the future of
Prussian universities. If clerical powers prevailed, AlthoV averred, then ‘the
freedom of scientiWc inquiry would be undermined and the standing of
theological faculties diminished’. To the Kaiser, he similarly argued that
freedom of theological inquiry would be damaged if the clergymen’s opinions
won the day.107
Knowing he had the government to thank, in 1888 Harnack accepted his
new post and moved to Berlin, where he developed a tremendous sphere of
inXuence, not only as a theologian and church historian, but also as one of
Prussia’s leading public intellectuals. His coming to Berlin, according to one
critic, Wnally put to rest the lingering notion that doctrine was as important as
Wissenschaft, and the church as relevant as the state, in making appointments
to the theological faculty.108 But for conservative churchmen Harnack’s case
remained a source of great dismay, which surfaced again 1892 in a rancorous
105 On the 1855 cabinet order making this provision, see Hermann Mulert, Evangelische
Kirchen und theologische Fakultäten (Tübingen, 1930), 10–11.
106 In particular, three charges were levelled against Harnack: (1) that he questioned the
canonical authority of several New Testament books, (2) that he doubted the validity of
important miracles in the Gospels, and (3) that he did not believe that Jesus instituted the
sacrament of Baptism. See Agnes von Zahn-Harnack, Adolf von Harnack (Berlin: Walter de
Gruyter, 1951), 119.
107 AlthoV’s letter to Bismarck and other key documents concerning Harnack’s appointment
to Berlin are reprinted in Zahn-Harnack, Harnack, 121 V. To appease conservative opposition,
the government did decide later to appoint a so-called Gegenprofessor, one more sympathetic to
traditional orthodoxy. This appointment fell to Adolf Schlatter (1852–1938), called to Berlin in
1893. See Werner Neuer, Adolf Schlatter, trans. Robert W. Yarbrough (Grand Rapids: Baker
Books, 1995), 95–106.
108 Huber, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte, iv. 870. Bismarck was awarded an honorary doc-
torate in theology from the University of Gießen for his support of Harnack and heralded by the
theological faculty there as ‘the friend of all German universities’. See Zahn-Harnack, Harnack,
127.
debate—known as the Apostolikumstreit—over Harnack’s incredulity toward
certain doctrinal formulations in the Apostle’s Creed.109
It was cases such as Harnack’s that inspired a special Prussian church
conference in 1895 to discuss ‘the unholy alienation between theology and
church’. Throughout Germany, conservative clergy discussed this issue, often
laying blame on the heavy-handed role of the state and the ethos of scientiWc
criticism at the universities. ‘Theological faculties’, one pastor wrote, ‘under-
mine the authority of God’s word because they portray the doctrine of
inspiration as untenable.’110 In his history of the German university, Friedrich
Paulsen summarized a view prevalent among conservative churchmen, writ-
ing: ‘The evil to be removed is that the state is altogether too liberal in the
matter of doctrine. [Government oYcials] . . . are too much inclined to over-
look aberrations of doctrine [in making appointments] if they are promul-
gated by men of recognized scientiWc standing.’111
The increased involvement of the state in university aVairs, the close
personal ties between the elite faculty and the government, the growth of
specialized seminars and institutes, and the tremendous funding of industry-
friendly and often politically motivated initiatives were characteristics of what
came to be known as the ‘AlthoV System’, a system associated with a man who,
according to one commentator, was simultaneously ‘the most enlightened but
also the most dictatorial Minister of Education Prussia has ever had’.112 Under
his leadership, the Kulturstaat of Fichte, Hegel, and Altenstein was indeed
pushed in the direction of a Wissenschaftsstaat, a state that eagerly looked to
the epic of modern science as a rich source of national legitimation and
purpose. But the ‘system’ was not without its critics. Max Weber, for example,
was a formidable voice of opposition, valuing science, to be sure, but charging
that AlthoV ’s approach to state patronage weakened ‘the proud tradition of
academic solidarity and independence’, and he feared that this would ultim-
ately render the faculties incapable of oVering any resistance to the directives
of the government.113 After the Second World War, the archaeologist Ludwig
109 On this episode and on Harnack’s general relationship to the church, see Karl H. Neufeld,
Adolf Harnacks KonXikt mit der Kirche (Innsbruck: Tyrolia, 1979), 114 V. Cf. Heinz-Dietrich
Wendland, ‘Die Berufung Adolf Harnacks nach Berlin im Jahre 1888’, JBK 29 (1934): 103 V.
110 ‘Die theologische Fakultäten und die preußische Landeskirche’, National Zeitung (16 May
1895), GStA PK VI NL AlthoV AI Nr. 34. The topic of theological professorial appointments, as
an instance of ‘the tension between theological science and the church’, was a fairly frequent one
at synodal meetings in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. For example, see the
discussions in Verhandlungen der fünften ordentlichen Generalsynode der evangelischen Land-
eskirchen Preußens, 15.Oktober 1903–4.November 1903 (Berlin, 1904), i. 97–122, 629 V.
111 Paulsen, German Universities, 138–9.
112 William H. Dawson, The German Empire, 1867–1914, and the Unity Movement (London,
1919), ii. 393.
113 Weber, ‘The Power of the State’, 575 V.
Curtius went a step further, even attributing the weak opposition to National
Socialism among academic classes to a pervasive political docility fostered
earlier in the century by AlthoV.114
Although AlthoV was undoubtedly an exceptional and inXuential person-
ality, Curtius’s charge does not ring entirely true. One should bear in mind
that AlthoV stepped into a ministerial apparatus that already gave the state
extensive powers over higher education. As Weber opined, ‘The powers which
were available to the Prussian Ministry of Education were the most thorough
imaginable.’115 Knowledge then of the establishment of this Ministry during
the Prussian Reform Era; the pioneering role of past ministers like Altenstein,
Schulze, Falk, and others; as well as the steady erosion of the university’s
priveleged, corporative status—i.e. its Verstaatlichung—throughout the nine-
teenth century, should forestall laying such exclusive blame on AlthoV.116
Perhaps more to the point was Werner Sombart’s charge that the ‘AlthoV
system’ was ‘not a cause, but an eVect’ of the state bureaucracy’s prior
evolution. AlthoV ’s Wissenschaftspolitik, in other words, magniWed trends
already underway as he fully exploited pre-existing institutional arrangements
and possibilities.117
What is more, blaming AlthoV for the servility to the state among academic
elites in the twentieth century does not adequately take into account the well-
documented support of the German Empire among the professoriate in the
late nineteenth century—before AlthoV came to power. Such widespread
loyalty could only come about in a gradual and voluntary fashion, the causes
for which should be sought in systemic changes in the nineteenth century. In
particular, emphasis here should be placed on the Bismarckian solution to the
question of German nation and statehood, which endeared many scientiWc
elites to the state despite its residually illiberal characteristics.
Precisely this pre-existing upholding of the status quo helps one under-
stand the overwhelming support among German professors, including theo-
logical faculties, for Germany’s war aims in 1914. Indeed, it was a common
assumption among the academic classes, as Fritz Ringer has persuasively
argued, that Germany was Wghting for nothing less than the sacred energies
of German civilization (Kultur), which had received magisterial expression in
the German university system.118 This interpretation of the war informed the
114 Brocke, ‘Hochschule- und Wissenschaftspolitik in Preußen’, 15.

115 Weber, ‘The Power of the State’, 597.
116 On the legacy of statism in educational matters from the early nineteenth, see esp.
Winfried Speitkamp, ‘Educational Reforms in Germany between Revolution and Restoration’,
GH 10 (1992): 1–23.
117 Brocke, ‘Hochschule- und Wissenschaftspolitik in Preußen’, 14.
118 Ringer, The Decline of the German Mandarins, 190–9.
Christmas letter sent in 1915 by Berlin’s theological faculty to its student
soldiers in the Weld. The letter included a picture of the artist Arthur Kampf ’s
painting, ‘Fichte als Redner an die deutsche Nation’, which depicted an
idealized Fichte standing on a large rock in Berlin with the Brandenburg
Gate in the background. In the painting, he is delivering his well-known
address of 1807 to an assembly that included Friedrich Schleiermacher and
other founders of the University of Berlin. The letter included passages from
Fichte’s address, suggesting to the students that they were defending ‘the spirit
that . . . was realized in the founding of our University of Berlin’. The impli-
cation was straightforward: the young men in the trenches, in the eyes of
Berlin’s theological faculty, including Harnack, were defending and dying for
the German spirit embodied in the university system, which had been iden-
tiWed with the war aims and political ambitions of the German Kaiserreich
under Wilhelm II.119
3. THE RISE AND FALL OF

‘ T H E O LO G I C A L E N C YC LO P E D I A’
The First World War has come to signify the abrupt and Wery terminus for
many nineteenth-century intellectual assumptions and forms of thought,
especially those that had conWdently invested human knowledge with a
progressive and unitary character. In Protestant thought, the experience of
the Great War, along with the early writings of Karl Barth and his ‘neo-
orthodox’ associates, is generally regarded as a transition from the reign of
liberal Protestantism to a new period of ‘crisis’, characterized by an eschato-
logical accent in theology and a neo-Augustinian pessimism towards human
knowledge and history.120 In theological education, the war also coincided
with the waning of an important pedagogical literature that had Xourished in
German-speaking universities from roughly the late eighteenth century.
119 ‘Zweiter Weihnachtsgruß der Berliner theologischen Universitätslehrer an ihre Studenten

im Feld’ (Berlin, 1915), HUB, Ay46250. Of course, there were exceptions to theologians’ support
of the war. As is well known, the Swiss-German Karl Barth was aghast to discover the degree of
support among German theologians. As a result, Barth began to doubt ‘the teaching of all my
theological masters in Germany. To me they seemed to have been hopelessly compromised by
what I regarded as their failure in the face of the ideology of war.’ From Barth’s ‘Lebenslauf ’ as
quoted in Eberhard Busch, Karl Barth: His Life from Letters and Autobiographical Texts, trans.
John Bowden (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975), 81.
120 F. W. Graf, ‘Die antihistorischen Revolution in der protestantischen Theologie der
zwanziger Jahre’, in Jan Rohls and Gunther Wenz (eds.), Vernunft des Glaubens: wissenschaftliche
Theologie und kirchliche Lehre (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1988), 377–405.
I make reference here to the copious literature of theological encyclopedia,
already brieXy encountered in the previous discussion of Schleiermacher’s
Kurze Darstellung des theologischen Studiums (1811). Although Schleierma-
cher’s work was among the more important examples of the genre, it did not
stand alone but was preceded by a handful of other signiWcant works and
succeeded by the age of theological encyclopedia par excellence.121 In this age,
no work proved more popular than the Encyklopädie und Methodologie der
theologischen Wissenschaften by Karl Rudolf Hagenbach, a one-time student of
Schleiermacher at Berlin and professor of theology and church history at the
Swiss-German University of Basle from 1823 to 1874. Although not a work of
original theologizing, it was among the most widely read theological books of
the nineteenth century and it thus makes for an invaluable source in the
history of theological pedagogy.122
The genre of theological encyclopedia should not be confused with refer-
ence, alphabetically arranged encyclopedias, which, coincidentally, also came
into their own during the nineteenth century.123 Rather, theological encyclo-
pedias were encyclopedic to the degree that they deWned the nature and scope
of theology, schematized the interrelations of its various subdisciplines, and
outlined the practical implications of theoretical positions. In other words,
theological encyclopedias were largely exercises in methodology and organ-
ization, which not only identiWed and explored the branches of theology but
also provided an integrative perspective on theology’s unity. Their principal
use was pedagogical, to familiarize beginning students with the discipline of
theology; they were regularly derived from and used in conjunction with a
Wrst-year course designated variously as ‘theological encyclopedia’, ‘encyclo-
pedia of the theological sciences’, or simply ‘introduction to theology’. Stu-
dents were regularly advised to begin with this course before moving on to
advanced topics. As an 1825 guidebook for theology students at Halle recom-
mended: ‘A complete overview [of theology] including the concept, content,
extent, and purpose of each individual discipline and their interrelationship is
to be had in the theological encyclopedia. . . . Everyone should begin his
studies with this.’124 In addition, they often served as bibliographic resources
121 On the background to the nineteenth-century theological encyclopedia, see Leonhard

Hell, Entstehung und Entfaltung der theologischen Enzyklopädie (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern,
1999).
123 On the history of encyclopedias generally, see ‘Philosophical Dictionaries and Encyclo-
pedias’, in EP 170–99.
124 Anweisung für angehende Theologen zur Uebersicht ihres Studiums . . . auf der königl. pre-
ußischen vereinigten Halle- und Wittenbergischen Friedrichsuniversität (Halle, 1825), 6, GStA PK
I Rep. 76 Va Sek. 8 Tit. 7 Nr. 4. A Study Plan at the University of Jena from 1860 described the
purpose of introductory encyclopedias thus: ‘Die Encyklopädie einer Wissenschaft verhält sich
to direct both beginning and advanced students in their research, as well as
review guides for students preparing for their state examinations.
The Xourishing of this genre in the nineteenth century, as well as its decline
in the early twentieth century, has much to tell us about modern German
academic theology, especially its relationship to evolving university norms
and broader intellectual and cultural currents. The very existence of this
literature, for a start, bears witness to the dominance of the historical-critical
and scientiWc orientation of theological pedagogy. With few exceptions,
authors of this genre, theological encyclopedists, sought to convey to a rising
generation of students the necessity of a highly intellectualized, highly sys-
tematized approach to theology—a theology worthy of being ranked among
other university Wissenschaften. Toward century’s end, divines and theolo-
gians in other countries, many of whom had studied in Germany, regularly
came to the conclusion that the distinctively high calibre of German theology
resided in this pedagogical commitment. Unlike in Germany, a group of
American clergymen lamented in 1844, ‘we have no treatise, which can
serve as the purpose of an encyclopedia, or general introduction to the science
of theology; no comprehensive outline of the science’.125 Not surprisingly,
therefore, a number of translations were undertaken, as well as attempts to
produce indigenous theological encyclopedia based on German models.126
zu den einzelnen Zweigen derselben wie eine geographische Generalcharte zu den Specialchar-
ten. Sie eröVnet daher passenderweise das Studium der einzelnen Zweige einer Wissenschaft
insofern, als sie die Orientirung im ganzen Gebiete derselben erleichtert.’ Akademische Studien-
Pläne (Jena, 1860), 3, NStUBG, H. lit. part. II 9465.
125 See Bibliotheca sacra 1 (1844): 739.
126 Schleiermacher’s encyclopedia (the 1830 edition) was translated into English as Brief
Outline of the Study of Theology in 1850 by William Farrer; Hagenbach’s was translated in 1884
by George Richard Crooks and John F. Hurst. J. F. Raebiger’s Encyklopädie der Theologie (1880)
came into English in 1884. Portions of August Tholuck’s lectures on theological encyclopedia
were translated into English and appeared in the journal Bibliotheca sacra (1844) under the title
‘Theological Encyclopedia and Methodology’. In their preface to the 1894 revised edition of
Hagenbach’s work, translators Crooks and Hurst claimed that American and English theology
had been ‘singularly destitute’ of the type of encyclopedic orientation provided in German
universities. This sentiment was widespread among many elite, non-German theologians. On
the European continent, the most important Dutch encyclopedia was produced in 1894 by
Abraham Kuyper, Encyklopedie der heilige godgeleerdheit, 3 vols. (Amsterdam, 1894), although it
had been preceded by several others in the nineteenth century. The Wrst volume of Kuyper’s
work contains a thorough history of the development of theological encyclopedias. In France,
the theological encyclopedia tradition was carried on by H. G. Kienel, Encyclopédie . . . de la
theologie chrétienne (Strasbourg, 1845), and E. Martin, Introduction à l’étude de la théologie
protestante (Geneva, 1883). Two important English examples were James Drummond’s Intro-
duction to the Study of Theology (London, 1884) and Alfred Cave’s An Introduction to Theology,
its Principles, its Branches, its Results, and its Literature (Edinburgh, 1896). The most important
American encyclopedia in the nineteenth century was Philip SchaV ’s Theological Propaedeutic,
a General Introduction to the Study of Theology (New York, 1893). See Georg Heinrici,
Despite their success and inXuence, German examples often presented
theology as anxiously obeisant before the new Wissenschaftsideologie, a pos-
ture betrayed by the overweening earnestness with which encyclopedists
sought to convince students, and presumably sceptical faculty as well, of the
scientiWc credentials of theology.127 Finally, the literature demonstrates the
impact of increasing specialization on theology, which since the early nine-
teenth century had been informed by the idealist belief in the unity of
knowledge. But as the century progressed, paeans to this unity, frequently
found in theological encyclopedias, began to ring increasingly hollow as
theology’s various branches developed scholarly agendas and modes of in-
quiry apart from any coordinating sense of what constituted theology per se.
With other factors, this dispersion of ‘theologia’ into specialized and discrete
Welds and subWelds contributed to the gradual demise of the literature of
theological encyclopedia in the early twentieth century.128
While Schleiermacher’s short work of 1811 represents a turning point in the
literature, it did not originate sui generis; rather, it assumed a place in a
distinguished line of previous eVorts. Nineteenth-century encyclopedists
often included a short overview of the history of the genre, Wnding early
harbingers of their eVorts in ancient times. To distinguish their work from
alphabetic encyclopedias, authors regularly discoursed on the original Greek
meaning of ‘enkyklios paideia’ or the ‘circle of learning’, which had the more
speciWc meaning, since the time of Aristotle, of describing the necessary course
of studies a young man had to pass through before taking up specialized study
or entering public life.129 After the Greeks, the genealogy of encyclopedia was
traced back to the Church Fathers, then up through the Middle Ages and
Reformation, ending in discussions of works from the eighteenth and nine-
teenth centuries. Works frequently mentioned in these prefatory histories
included Augustine’s De doctrina christiana; Nicholas of Clemange’s De studio
theologico; Erasmus’s Ratio seu methodus compendio perveniendi ad veram
theologiam; Melanchthon’s Brevis ratio discendae theologiae, and the works of
several post-Reformation Protestant scholastics, particularly Andreas Hyper-
ius and Johann Gerhard. Additionally, works of German pietism were fre-
quently mentioned, including Spener’s well-known Pia desideria and several of
A. H. Francke’s short works on the study of theology.130
‘Encyclopedia, Theological’, New SchaV-Herzog Encyclopedia (New York, 1909), iv. 125–8, and
Gert Hummel, ‘Enzyklopädie, theologische’, in TRE ix. 716–42.
127 J. F. Raebiger, Zur theologischen Encyklopädie: Kritische Betrachtungen (Breslau, 1882), 82.
128 Farley, Theologia, 105.
130 See e.g. J. T. L. Danz, Encyklopädie und Methodologie der theologischen Wissenschaften
(Weimar, 1832), 127 V.
As important as these and other works might have been as forerunners of
the genre, the shape of the nineteenth-century encyclopedia did not begin to
emerge until the German Enlightenment was in full swing, shortly after the
founding of the University of Halle. The little-known Halle professor Samuel
Mursinna, in his Primae lineae encyclopediae theologicae of 1764 (2nd edn.,
1784), is believed to be the Wrst theologian to have used the actual term
‘encyclopedia’ in his title—something he borrowed from legal and medical
textbooks of his day.131 In substance and organization, Mursinna’s work,
however, compared poorly to other texts, which, while not including ‘en-
cyclopedia’ in the title, were nonetheless more inXuential, and regularly
recognized as such by nineteenth-century encyclopedists. Among these, par-
ticular signiWcance should be accorded to N. H. Gundling’s Die Geschichte der
übrigen Wissenschaften, fürnehmlich der Gottesgelahrtheit (1742); J. G. Walch’s
Einleitung in die theologischen Wissenschaften (1753); J. S. Semler’s Versuch
einer nähern Anleitung zu nützlichem Fleisse in der ganzen Gottesgelehrsamkeit
(1757); J. L. von Mosheim’s Kurze Anweisung die Gottesgelahrtheit, vernünftig
zu erlernen (1763); J. G. Herder’s Briefe das Studium der Theologie betreVend
(1780);132 J. A. Nösselt’s Anweisung zur Bildung angehender Theologen (1786);
and G. J. Planck’s Einleitung in die theologischen Wissenschaften (1794). (The
works of Nösselt and Planck, as mentioned in Ch. 3, were used by Schleier-
macher in his course on theological encyclopedia at Halle before he published
his own work on the subject.)133
Although the eighteenth-century literature exhibits great heterogeneity,
certain common themes are apparent. Above all, one notes a decisive, if
gradual, movement away from a sapiential, hortatory understanding of theo-
logical education, which in the post-Reformation era had privileged ediWca-
tion, piety, salvation, and glorifying God as central components of theological
131 Before Mursinna, the Catholic theologian Martin Gerbert had entitled one chapter of
his Apparatus ad eruditionem theologicam (1754) ‘theological encyclopedia’. Farley, Theologia, 69
n. 18.
132 This short work of Herder’s was especially inXuential in the early nineteenth century. In
particular, young theologians followed Herder’s suggestion to pay attention to the ‘human’ and
‘cultural’ dimensions of Scripture, such as language and history, and not just to the supernatural
elements. As the Wrst line in the book expressed it: ‘Daß man die Bibel menschlich lesen müsse,
als ein Buch von menschliche Schrift und Sprache.’ See Johann Gottfried Herder, Sämtliche
Werke (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1967), x. 5, passim. For a clear example of Herder’s inXuence,
see the youthful essay of W. M. L. de Wette, Eine Idee über das Studium der Theologie (Leipzig,
1850).
133 Besides these works, another important literature of the eighteenth century was that of
theological bibliographies, typiWed by J. A. Nösselt’s Anweisung zur Kenntniß der besten allge-
meinern Bücher in allen Theilen der Theologie (Leipzig, 1779). For a list of other important
bibliographical guidebooks, see Danz’s chapter on ‘Büchererkenntniß beim Studium der Theo-
logie’, in Encyklopädie und Methodologie der theologischen Wissenschaften, 137–43.
study. While these elements were by no means eliminated, and they even
gained new life in pietist literature, one nonetheless observes a marked shift in
the direction of a more scientiWc, critical theological pedagogy. Both Nösselt
and Planck, for instance, regarded theology as ‘the scholarly knowledge of
religion’ (gelehrte Erkenntniß der Religion) and divided this knowledge into
various ‘sciences’ (Wissenschaften).134 Anticipating nineteenth-century en-
cyclopedias, these ‘sciences’ were often organized into a recognizably fourfold
schema of biblical exegesis, historical theology, systematic theology, and
practical theology.135
The causes of theology’s incipient scientization are impossible to grasp
apart from the broader currents of the German Enlightenment, which had
introduced, particularly at forward-looking universities such as Halle and
Göttingen, a new emphasis on reason in religion and historical understanding
in biblical interpretation. Writers committed to the new rationalism and
historical-critical outlook, such as Semler, Ernesti, Griesbach, and Michaelis,
as well as the towering Wgures of Lessing and Kant, began to assume increasing
importance in theological education, if not directly in the curriculum, then at
least in students’ general knowledge and in the ‘intellectual gossip’ of the time.
Hagenbach’s later evaluation of Semler thus applies more generally to the
theological climate of the mid- and late eighteenth century: ‘[He] introduced
a new element, the critical, into theological science, and . . . thereby put new
life into [the theological] encyclopedia, which might otherwise have become a
dead aggregate of bibliographical knowledge.’136 In his encyclopedia of 1794,
Planck expressed a similar idea, noting that ‘the transformation of Wis-
senschaft has also made necessary the transformation of the manner and
method of [theological] study’.137
A consequence of eighteenth-century rationalism and the historical
method, however, as Edward Farley more critically assesses, was the nascence
of ‘a hermeneutics of destruction, a de-supernaturalizing of canon, authority,
and Scripture’, which displaced a unitative, praxis-oriented theology with one
devoted to ‘discrete eVorts of inquiry and scholarship, each applying rational
and historical principles’.138 In fact, one could argue that the dispersion of
134 Nösselt, Anweisung zur Bildung angehender Theologen, 3, and Planck, Einleitung in die
theologische Wissenschaften, 1 V., 22, 31.
135 e.g. see Nösselt, Anweisung zur Bildung angehender Theologen, ii. 82 V.
136 Hagenbach, Theological Encyclopedia and Methodology, trans. George R. Crooks and John
F. Hust (New York, 1894), 129. For Wrst-hand insight into some of the experiences of a late
eighteenth-century theology student, see W. M. L. de Wette’s novel, Theodor, oder das ZweiXers
Weihe: Bildungsgeschichte eines evangelischen Geistlichen, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1822).
137 Planck, Einleitung in die theologische Wissenschaften, 3.
138 Farley, Theologia, 65. Cf. Hans Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative: A Study in Eighteenth
and Nineteenth-Century Hermeneutics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), 51–65.
theology by specialization into a complex of Welds and subWelds, the hallmark
of the nineteenth century, was already a looming reality in the late eighteenth
century. Yet at Wrst this only strengthened the call for encyclopedic presenta-
tion and understanding; for without older certainties, two pressing, related
questions arose: (1) how does one provide a synoptic overview for the student
of the nature and purpose of theology in its relations to other sciences, and
(2) how does one conceive of the internal unity and interrelationships of the
various theological sciences? Writers and instructors of theological encyclo-
pedia vigorously tackled both questions.139
The epochal historical events of the late eighteenth century, particularly the
French Revolution, along with the rise of German idealism and the new
Wissenschaftsideologie, proved decisive for the development not only of theo-
logical encyclopedias but of the encyclopedic genre generally. ‘A new
epoch . . . has dawned in the realm of science just as it has in politics,’ wrote
Hegel in the early nineteenth century, and he and contemporaries were quick
to attempt to Wll in the content and form of this new epoch with ‘encyclope-
dic’ and ‘systematic’ presentations of human knowledge. Hegel’s own Encyk-
lopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften (1817) set the benchmark for
philosophical encyclopedias throughout the nineteenth century. In his view,
the new epoch demanded that knowledge be given comprehensive, ‘objective’
treatment, which he distinguished from knowledge arising from ‘personal
moods’ or ‘caprice’. ‘Philosophy’, he wrote in the introduction to his Encylo-
pädie, ‘is essentially encyclopedic, that is encompassing or encircling. In
distinguishing as well as connecting its own self-distinctions, the whole is
both the necessity of its parts as well as its own freedom. The Truth can only
exist as such a totality systematically developed; only the whole is the truth.’
Knowledge incapable of holistic, ordered presentation, he elaborated, cannot
be deemed scientiWc, but only ‘accidental and contingent’.140
Prior to Hegel’s Encylopädie, both Schelling and Fichte, as I have
previously indicated, had discoursed on the appropriateness of encyclopedic
comprehension for the new post-revolutionary, scientiWc era. In his Vorlesun-
gen über die Methode des akademischen Studiums, Schelling had argued
that only a student who had gained insight into the total scope and order
of human knowledge was capable of pursuing speciWc studies: ‘The
recognition of the organic whole of the sciences must precede the deWnite
pursuit of a specialty. The scholar who devotes himself to a particular
139 Farley, Theologia, 65–6.

140 Hegel, The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, trans. Gustav Emil Mueller (New York: Philosoph-
ical Library, 1959), 54–72. Cf. Terry Pinkard, Hegel (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2000), 374–7.
study must become acquainted with the position that it occupies in relation
to the whole.’141
Even more emphatically, Fichte in his Deduzierter Plan had advocated that
an encyclopedic approach to pedagogy should characterize ‘the new academy
to be established in Berlin’. ‘In the Academy,’ he wrote, ‘all scientiWc material
must be comprehended in its organic unity and interpreted in [a] philosoph-
ical spirit.’ The content of all human knowledge could be conceptualized
under what he called ‘the general encyclopedia’, a task best left to a philoso-
pher such as himself. But this still left room aplenty for subject-speciWc
encyclopedias. Instruction in all branches of learning, he wrote, ‘must begin
with the encyclopedia of that subject, which must be the Wrst lecture of every
teacher appointed by us and which must be the Wrst lecture attended by every
student’. Any scholar incapable of giving his subject encyclopedic expression
posed a problem: ‘He who cannot or will not give such an encyclopedia of his
subject is not only useless to us but even destructive, because his inXuence
destroys the spirit of our institution at the very beginning.’142 Immediately
thereafter Fichte expressed his doubts about the scientiWc merits of theology!
Schleiermacher, however, accepted Fichte’s challenge. His Kurze Darstellung
(1811), as indicated in Ch. 3, was the Wrst of its genre fully to embrace the new
Wissenschaftsideologie, providing theology with an encyclopedia that approxi-
mated Fichte’s own standards.143 Although idiosyncratic in several respects,
Schleiermacher’s work nonetheless proved inXuential, as I shall recapitulate
here, for at least four reasons. First it made the idealist conception of a
unitary, progressive Wissenschaft central to theology’s self-understanding;
apart from a vital connection to the ‘scientiWc spirit’, no modern theologian
or clergyman could responsibly fulWl his calling.144 Second, although Schleier-
macher conceded that theology did not constitute a pure science such as, say,
philology, he held that it was nonetheless a ‘positive science’, one based on a
given historical reality (the Christian faith) and necessary for practical activity
and the social good; most nineteenth-century encyclopedists followed him on
this point.145 Third, because of theology’s stature as a positive science,
Schleiermacher placed great weight on practical theology; without the goal
of shaping future church leaders, Schleiermacher admitted that theological
141 Schelling, ‘Vorlesungen über die Methode des akademischen Studiums’ in Ernst Anrich
(ed.), Die Idee der deutschen Universität. Die fünf Grundschriften aus der Zeit ihrer Neubegrün-
dung durch klassischen Idealismus und romantischen Realismus (Darmstadt: Gentner, 1956), 4.
142 Fichte, The Educational Theory of J. G. Fichte, trans. G. H. Turnbull (London, 1926), 194–
8 (trans. modiWed).
143 Admittedly, one can Wnd works prior to Schleiermacher’s, notably Planck’s Einleitung in
der theologische Wissenschaften (1794), which contain elements of the new Wissenschaftideologie.
144 KGA I. vi. 329–30.
145 Raebiger, Zur theologischen Encyklopädie, 42.
knowledge could readily be subsumed under disciplines in the philosophical
faculty. Finally, because of the importance he attributed to ‘historical the-
ology’, ‘the actual body of theology’ as he called it, Schleiermacher encouraged
the historicization of theology and theological education. Schleiermacher’s
encyclopedia, as John E. Thiel has summed up, ‘elevated the historical di-
mension of theology to a level of importance previously unknown in the
history of this discipline’.146
Despite the important content of Kurze Darstellung, Schleiermacher’s con-
densed style and his idiosyncratic threefold organization147 prevented the
work from becoming a popular pedagogical tool in universities. Still, it was
widely read and cited in practically every major encyclopedia produced in the
nineteenth century. What is more, its inXuence reached beyond Protestant to
Catholic circles as well. Most notably, it made a considerable impact on the
Catholic theologian Johann Sebastian Drey (1777–1853) of Tübingen, whose
own encyclopedia—Kurze Einleitung in das Studium der Theologie mit Rück-
sicht auf den wissenschaftlichen Standpunkt und das katholische System
(1819)—still stands out as a landmark of modern Catholic thought. Philip
SchaV perhaps summed up the legacy of Schleiermacher’s Kurze Darstellung
best when he wrote that ‘the whole scheme is wrong; but, nevertheless, the
book is full of stimulating suggestions. Schleiermacher [is] the Origen of
German Protestantism, neither orthodox nor heretical, but independent,
original, emancipating, and stimulating in diVerent directions.’148
In Protestant theological education, the inXuence of Schleiermacher lived
on most prominently in Hagenbach’s Encyklopädie und Methodologie der
theologischen Wissenschaft. First published in 1833, it went through twelve
editions until 1889 and was translated into several foreign languages. Wolfhart
Pannenberg has judged it to be perhaps the most widely read theological text
of the nineteenth century.149 Georg Heinrici, who published his own encyclo-
pedia in 1893, referred to Hagenbach’s text simply as ‘the work which long
remained the standard’.150 In terms of pedagogical success, one is tempted to
compare it to Peter Lombard’s Sentences of the Middle Ages.
That Hagenbach would emerge as a leading theological preceptor to gen-
erations of German students would, at Wrst glance, seem unlikely. He hailed
not from Germany proper, but from the provincial German-speaking Swiss
146 John E. Thiel, ‘Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy in Schleiermacher’s Theological Encyclopedia:

Doctrinal Development and Theological Creativity’, HJ 25 (1984): 146.
147 As mentioned earlier, Schleiermacher’s work was divided into historical, philosophical,
and practical theology. This diVered from the standard fourfold pattern of exegetical, historical,
systematic, and practical theology.
148 SchaV, Theological Propaedeutic, 13.
149 Pannenberg, Theology and the Philosophy of Science, 17, 250.
150 Heinrici, ‘Encyclopedia, Theological’, in The New SchaV-Herzog Encyclopedia, 127.
university town of Basle. Although once a great centre of humanism and
printing in the sixteenth century, early nineteenth-century Basle could boast
of only a modest intellectual life. Culturally German but politically isolated
from the great forces of nationalism and state-building, it was dubbed by
Heinrich von Treitschke as the ‘sulking corner’ of Europe. Born in Basle 1801,
the son of a medical doctor, Hagenbach undertook his preparatory studies in
his hometown before completing his studies at Berlin and Bonn. At these
leading Prussian universities, he was smitten by the rigours of German
Wissenschaft and by the theological outlooks of his principal professors,
who included Schleiermacher, Neander, Nitzsch, and Friedrich Lücke. Not
surprisingly, he came to regard his own theology as ‘scientiWc’ and soon
described his life’s purpose as bringing the eternal truths of Christianity
into harmony with a modern, humanistic education.151
Hagenbach accepted a call back to Basle in 1823 by Schleiermacher’s former
colleague W. M. L. de Wette, who, as previously recounted, had taken a
position at Basle after his dismissal from Berlin in 1819. Hagenbach was
elevated to the rank of extraordinary professor in 1824 and ‘full professor of
the history of the church and dogma’ in 1829. Alongside de Wette, Hagenbach
laboured until his death in 1874 to transform the University of Basle, Switzer-
land’s oldest university but in major decline at the beginning of the century,
into one of Europe’s premier universities, whose future luminaries would
include Jacob Burckhardt, Friedrich Nietzsche, Franz Overbeck, Wilhelm
Dilthey, Karl Barth, and Karl Jaspers, among others.152 A short work of
Hagenbach’s on the history of Basle’s theological faculty reveals that he did
not regard the University of Basle in possession of ‘Wissenschaft in the
German sense of the word and method’ until the acquisition of de Wette
(and presumably himself too) in the 1820s.153 Another short address of 1830,
‘Ueber den BegriV und Bedeutung der Wissenschaftlichkeit im Gebiete der
Theologie’, conWrms Hagenbach’s profound commitment to the new Wis-
senschaftsideologie emanating from Prussian universities and to the necessity
of importing it into theology, despite admitted diYculties and opposition
from local conservative clergymen in Basle.154
151 Andreas Staehelin (ed.), Professoren der Universität Basel aus fünf Jahrhunderten (Basle: F.
Reinhardt, 1960), 132–3. Cf. C. F. Eppler, Karl Rudolf Hagenbach: eine Friedensgestalt aus der
streitenden Kirche der Gegenwart (Gütersloh, 1875).
152 On Basle’s nineteenth-century intellectual life generally, see Lionel Gossman’s impressive
Basel in the Age of Burckhardt: A Study in Unseasonable Ideas (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2000). On the university and theological faculty reforms eVected by de Wette and
Hagenbach, see Andreas Staehelin, Geschichte der Universität Basel, 1818–1835 (Basle: Helbing
& Lichtenhahn, 1959).
153 Hagenbach, Die theologische Schule Basels und ihre Lehrer von Stiftung bis zu de Wettes Tod
1849 (Basle, 1860), 56.
154 Hagenbach, Ueber den BegriV und Bedeutung der Wissenschaftlichkeit im Gebiete der
Theologie (Basle, 1830).
Hagenbach began lecturing on theological encyclopedia in the late 1820s;
the Wrst edition of his own encyclopedia was published in 1833. Dedicated to
de Wette and Schleiermacher, the work particularly attests to the inXuence of
the latter’s Kurze Darstellung, which Hagenbach characterized as ‘the key to
Schleiermacher’s entire theology’ and the Wrst work of its kind to show
conclusively that theology possessed ‘scientiWc autonomy’ (wissenschaftliche
Selbstständigkeit). At the same time, Hagenbach charged that Schleierma-
cher’s work was at times too ‘epigrammatic’ and ‘enigmatic’, and he found
himself having to ‘guess and intuit’ Schleiermacher’s true meaning instead of
knowing it plainly. For this reason, a more straightforward, comprehensive
encyclopedia was called for, one more geared to the needs and concerns of
‘beginning students of theology’.155 Based on the success of Hagenbach’s work,
one can retrospectively judge that he achieved this goal. Indeed, it was neither
the originality nor the brilliance of Hagenbach’s work that accounted for its
signiWcance, but rather the fact that ‘it oVered the beginner a pedagogically
oriented introduction to the study of theology and the contemporary stage of
discussion in individual branches of theology’.156 This is true of all editions of
the work, which changed little in general shape throughout the century, even
if Hagenbach continually modiWed them to accommodate new theological
currents and growing bibliographies in increasingly specialized Welds.
Three components of Hagenbach’s work are relevant for present concerns.
First, his encyclopedia reveals a tension between the idealist quest for the
unity of knowledge, pronounced at the beginning of the century, and the
research-driven reality of specialization and fragmentation, which, as succes-
sive editions of Hagenbach’s work attest, became apparent toward the end of
the century. Second, diverging from Schleiermacher’s threefold scheme,
Hagenbach helped establish the supremacy of the fourfold division in theo-
logical education—exegetical theology, historical theology, systematic the-
ology, and practical theology—which became ‘virtually universal for
Protestant schools throughout the nineteenth century and for theological
education in Europe and America’.157 Third, although by no means an
extreme historical critic (Hagenbach is generally regarded as a minor repre-
sentative of Vermittlungstheologie or ‘mediating theology’), Hagenbach’s work
reinforced a broader trend towards the thoroughgoing historicization of
theology—a trend that subsequent encyclopedias would take much further
than Hagenbach’s.
155 Hagenbach, Encyklopädie und Methodologie der theologischen Wissenschaften (Basle,

1833), 1 V.
In his introduction, Hagenbach oVered a straightforward deWnition of
theological encyclopedia, one that echoed the idealist ‘organic and compre-
hensive’ view of knowledge promoted, mutatis mutandis, by Schleiermacher,
Hegel, and Fichte, all of whom Hagenbach cited in his footnotes.
Theological encyclopedia is a part of the general encyclopedia. . . . Its goal is not to
unite within itself the substance of all that deserves to be known, but rather to
comprehend the further development of the science as conditioned by its historical
character. . . . While the theological encyclopedia represents and introduces one to the
organism of the theological sciences, it itself has no position with this organism; it
stands either outside or above it. But again, theological encyclopedia is a member of
the great general organism of science and as such forms a bridge to encyclopedia in
general.158
Following Schleiermacher, Hagenbach regarded theology not as a pure sci-
ence, such as philology or physics, but as a ‘positive science’, whose scientiWc
character was not determined by anything within itself, but by an existent and
historically conditioned fact, namely the Christian faith and its manifestations
over time. Practical service to the church then, Hagenbach elaborated quoting
Schleiermacher quite liberally, was what gave theology its purpose and place
in the university.159
Emphasis on the integrated character of theology as a component of an
integrated and unitary science informed each edition of Hagenbach’s work.
But one also notices a countervailing emphasis on the progressive or devel-
opmental character of both theological science and science generally. Put
diVerently, one notes a tension between the static and the dynamic, between
the avowed completeness and universality of science on the one hand and the
recognition of perpetual development on the other. Thus, the task of the
theological encyclopedia was not only to acquaint the student with a ‘com-
plete’ view of theology, but also to ‘keep pace with science’, taking into
account the latest research, discoveries, and schools of thought.160 What is
more, students were enjoined not just to know about the latest scholarly
developments, but to contribute to them as well. The painstaking eVort of
individual scholarship, Hagenbach reasoned, best prepared the mind to
fathom the totality of human knowledge. In his own words:
[E]very student should subject himself . . . [to] the thorough investigation of some
specialty, [even] if his aim is to prepare for the simplest duties in the Church rather
than for the work of theological scholarship. They who have themselves untied knots
158 Hagenbach, Encyklopädie, 1. Unless otherwise stated, my quotations are from the 1874
edition (published in Leipzig by S. Hirzel), the last to appear before Hagenbach’s death.
159 Ibid. 50 V.
160 Ibid. 4.
are alone able to appeciate the labours of others, and only they who have the patience
and the courage to go to the bottom of the individual . . . can attain the power to
comprehend the universal.161
Precisely this tension between the individual and the universal threads all
Hagenbach’s editions, as well as other encyclopedias of the era. However, the
mushrooming bibliographies of the late nineteenth-century editions (as well
as the steadily increasing space devoted to discussing developments in more
specialized subWelds) attest to the strength of the ‘individual,’ the growth of
which often came at the expense of comprehending the ‘universal’ character
of theology. Put diVerently, whether the pursuit of the individual actually
qualiWed one to grasp the universal, as Hagenbach believed, became an
increasingly questionable proposition by the end of the nineteenth century.
Hagenbach himself never forsook this view, but the sheer weight of special-
ized research gradually called into question the rationale of theological en-
cyclopedias as agents of intellectual unity and coherence.162
While the fourfold division of theology did not originate with Hagenbach,
he popularized it throughout the century, breaking down theology into the
categories of exegesis, historical theology, systematic theology, and practical
theology. He felt that this division was expressive of the very ‘nature’ of
theology. It followed that the order in which each discipline should be taken
up was not arbitrary, but demonstrated a certain logic, with which students
should comply. As he formulated this logic,
[Theology] must be found in the documents relating to . . . revelation [Exegesis].
Starting from the sources, it traces the progress of historical development down to
our own time and then combines into a mental picture of the present what history has
furnished [Historical Theology]. It obtains by this process a clear idea of the coher-
ence running through the whole [Systematic Theology], and thus deduces the neces-
sary principles for converting theory into practice [Practical Theology].163
Like Schleiermacher, Hagenbach placed great emphasis on practical the-
ology, which he regarded as the Wnal aim of theological knowledge, and there-
fore it should be the discipline taken up last during one’s university studies.
Quoting Schleiermacher directly, he called practical theology the ‘crown’ of
theological education, because in it theory was translated into practice—in
homilies, catechesis, liturgy, pastoral counselling, and church administration—
for the ediWcation of the church. Nonetheless, only an individual Wrst trained in
the other three more scientiWc branches qualiWed to engage in the tasks of

162 Farley, Theologia, 105. Cf. H. G. Anderson, ‘Challenge and Change within German
Protestant Theological Education in the Nineteenth Century’, CH 39 (March 1970): 38.
163 Hagenbach, Encycklopädie, 111–12.
practical theology: ‘Only that theologian who has passed through a prelim-
inary scientiWc training . . . is qualiWed to dispose of and utilize the possession
he has acquired.’164
This scientiWc training should begin with exegesis: study of the Old and
New Testament in the original languages, biblical archaeology, biblical criti-
cism, hermeneutics, and the history of the formation of the canon, among
other subWelds. That theology should start with the biblical texts seemed only
appropriate to Hagenbach, as to most Protestant theologians, on the basis of
the doctrine of sola scriptura: ‘But the Protestant Church justly insists that as a
primary qualiWcation every theologian shall be thoroughly familiar with the
Bible.’165 Along with the course on theological encyclopedia, students across
Germany were therefore advised to begin their studies with courses in the Old
and New Testaments.166
If the logical starting point of theology was biblical exegesis and the logical
ending point practical theology, ‘the only question that remains concerns the
relative positions of systematic and historical theology’. For Hagenbach these
were the two most scientiWc branches of theology and their placement
mattered greatly for the entire modern theological enterprise.167 In arguing
that history should come Wrst, Hagenbach took sides in an important nine-
teenth-century debate, one which pitted theologians, such as Hagenbach,
inclined to historical scholarship and inquiry, against speculative (often
Hegelian) theologians and those with pronounced confessional sensibilities.
The latter asserted the priority of dogmatics, whether established from human
ratiocination or historical creeds, over historical criticism. By contrast, in
coming down strongly in favour of history before dogmatics, Hagenbach both
reXected and contributed to a more dominant trend towards theological
historicism—a trend that regarded historical criticism as prior to dogma
and the latter based on its independent Wndings. As Hagenbach put it,
Not until the mind has developed its powers by historical studies . . . will it be Wtted to
attempt the study of dogmatics, which demands a robust intellect. The mind that, on
the contrary, begins the study of theology with dogmatics, may be likened to the bird
which tries to Xy before its wings have grown or the architect who attempts the
erection of a building before its foundations have been laid.168
164 Hagenbach, Encycklopädie, 363–4.

165 Ibid. 114.
166 See e.g. ‘Studien-Plan für die Studierenden der Theologie’, Akademische Studien-Pläne
(Jena, 1860), 3, NStUBG, H. lit. part. II 9465.
167 Hagenbach called exegesis and practical theology ‘mixed sciences’ because they were
‘related not only to learning, but also to practical skills’. Hagenbach, Encyklopädie, 114.
168 Ibid. 116.
The surest foundation of theological study then was history. For Hagen-
bach, this claim in no way minimized the importance of systematic theology,
for dogmatics, he held, contained ‘the very centre of the theological sanctuary
and the heart of theological life’. But an appropriate formulation of dogma
must derive from historical-critical methods and a detailed understanding of
church history. Dogmatics, in other words, was rooted in ‘the soil of history’
and therefore must be ‘brought into the light of objective history’.169 To soft-
pedal history and associate theology primarily with dogmatics would be to
‘plant theology on its head’.170
As a theologian sensitive to ‘mediation’, however, Hagenbach realized that
the historicizing impulse could be taken too far with destructive results—
results typiWed in D. F. Strauss’s assertion that ‘the true criticism of dogma is
its history’ (die wahre Kritik des Dogmas ist seine Geschichte).171 Eager to
distance himself from this position, Hagenbach argued that dogmatics,
while it must ‘grow out of a living apprehension of history’ must also result
from ‘[the] intellectual mediation between the past and present’. In elaborat-
ing this point, Hagenbach quoted Schleiermacher extensively, in a highly
nuanced eVort to convey the simultaneous necessity and potential peril of
historical study as a prerequisite for the formulation of dogma.172
A further issue Hagenbach broached in his discussion of the organization
of theology concerned the proper relationship between historical theology
and exegesis. The boundary between these two disciplines presented a prob-
lem for most nineteenth-century encyclopedists, in signiWcant measure be-
cause Schleiermacher’s inXuential text, as we have seen, collapsed the
boundary between the two by simply placing exegesis under the general
category of historical theology.173 By insisting on a fourfold organizational
scheme, Hagenbach obviously resisted Schleiermacher’s inXuence on this
point, arguing that exegesis, like practical theology, was a ‘mixed science’,
oriented in part towards the interests of science and in part towards the
interests of ecclesiastical life and practice. Holy Scriptures merit their own
branch, he opined, because they ‘are not of historical importance to us in the
same way as the other monuments of Christianity. As the deeds of our
foundation, the deeds of revelation, they make quite a diVerent claim on
our study than other historical sources.’ Nonetheless, Hagenbach conceded
that any exegesis performed without the appropriate historical sense and
169 Ibid. 300 V.

170 Ibid. 116.
171 Strauss, Die christliche Glaubenslehre, in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung und im Kampfe
mit der modernen Wissenschaft (Tübingen, 1840), 71.
172 Hagenbach, Encyklopädie, 304 V.
173 Schleiermacher, KGA I. 6. 365 V.
methodology amounted to an unscientiWc enterprise. ‘It cannot be denied’, he
wrote, ‘that in the broad sense exegetical theology may be properly included
under historical theology, inasmuch as it is the work of exegesis to determine
conditions essentially historical, and even to elucidate the primitive history of
Christianity itself.’174
In sum, Hagenbach, in a manner not unlike Schleiermacher and with
persistent eVorts to avoid slipping into an overly historicized, and hence
negative, theology, oVered the beginning student an overview of theology
that gave tremendous authority to historical understanding. While not con-
Xating historical theology and exegesis, Hagenbach admitted the crucial and
extensive role historical modes of knowing played in the elucidation and
interpretation of biblical texts. Historical theology also necessarily preceded
dogmatics, in his view, and hence formed the intellectual backbone of both
systematic and practical theology.
In the Wrst edition of his encyclopedia (1833), Hagenbach had praised the
emergence of ‘the historical’ (das Geschichtliche) in contemporary under-
standing, noting that ‘we can only really know something, when we know
how it has developed’.175 This sentence, in the Wnal analysis, resonated over all
subsequent editions of his encyclopedia, marking them as documents reXec-
tive of the emergence of theological historicism, a hallmark of nineteenth-
century German Protestant thought.
While among the most widely used and consulted encyclopedias of the
nineteenth century, Hagenbach’s work did not stand alone, but occupied a
prominent position in a crowded pedagogical Weld. At roughly the time of the
Wrst edition’s publication, two other noteworthy encyclopedias appeared. J. T.
L. Danz’s Encyklopädie und Methodologie der theologischen Wissenschaften was
published in 1832, proving moderately popular. A year earlier, Karl Rosenk-
ranz published his Encyklopädie der theologischen Wissenschaften, perhaps the
most prominent theological encyclopedia of the century written from an
explicitly Hegelian perspective. In sharp contrast to Hagenbach, Rosenkranz
sought to demonstrate the primacy of systematic theology—or ‘speculative
theology’—over historical theology. Only through speculative reasoning,
Rosenkranz asserted, can the ‘rational character’ of Christianity be demon-
strated and ‘the reconciliation of Christian theology and philosophy’ take
place. ‘The totality of world history remains shut oV from understanding
without the key of a fully developed world view, which history is unable
to produce by its own means.’ This Hegelian-speculative tendency was
continued, most notably, later in the century by Richard Rothe in his
174 Hagenbach, Encyklopädie, 111 V. Cf. Pannenberg, Theology and the Philosophy of Science,
374–5.
175 Hagenbach, Encyklopädie (1833), 5.
Encyklopädie der Theologie (1880), a work that also bears evidence of the
extensive inXuence of Schleiermacher.176
Theological encyclopedias were not the exclusive project of speculative,
liberal, or critically minded theologians. G. C. Adolf von Harless (1806–79)
produced perhaps the most important confessionalist encyclopedia of the
century: Theologische Encyklopädie und Methodologie vom Standpunkte der
protestantischen Kirche (1837). Harless had studied under the pietist Tholuck
at Halle, where he underwent a conversion that led him to forsake idealist
philosophy in favour of the Bible and the traditional creeds and confessions of
the Reformation. He came to Erlangen in 1833, hitherto an outpost of
theological rationalism, and become a leading voice of a sophisticated, com-
bative conservative school of theology generally known as ‘Erlangen The-
ology’.177 In his encyclopedia, Harless followed Schleiermacher’s emphasis on
the importance of practical theology, but he understood this not so much as
theology’s attentiveness to the present needs and purposes of the church, but
its submission to ecclesiastical authority and to historic creeds and confes-
sions—hence a theology, as the subtitle has it, ‘from the standpoint of the
Protestant church’. Against the ‘so-called objective Wissenschaftlichkeit ’ of
other encyclopedias, Harless opined, it was time that someone ‘met the
needs of the Protestant church’ using the tools of Wissenschaft as well.178
Harless was succeeded at Erlangen by another devout confessionalist, J. C. K.
von Hofmann, whose Theologische Encyklopädie of 1879 also enjoyed a strong
following in conservative theological circles.179
While by no means isolated voices, Harless and Hofmann generally repre-
sent exceptions among encyclopedists in their explicit confessionalist stances.
Most encyclopedias were produced by what we might call centre-left theolo-
gians, motivated by a desire to reconcile theology with modern forms of
consciousness, whether speculative, historical, or scientiWc. In fact, the genre
itself is best understood as a means of accomplishing this function: demon-
strating to critics and students alike that theology was a tried-and-true
modern Wissenschaft with its own methods, skills, and internal organiza-
tion—and hence deserving of ongoing university membership.
176 Karl Rosenkranz, Encyklopädie der theologischen Wissenschaften (Halle, 1831; 2nd edn.,
1841), and Richard Rothe, Theologische Encyklopädie (Wittenberg, 1880). I quote from the 2nd
edn. of Rosenkranz, 10–11.
177 On ‘Erlangen Theology’, which sought to formulate a theological agenda on the basis of
experience, Scripture, and historic confessions, see F. W. Katzenbach, Die Erlanger Theologie,
Grundlinien ihrer Entwicklung im Rahmen der Geschichte der theologischen Fakultät, 1743–1877
(Munich: Evangelische Pressverband, 1960), 179 V. and Welch, Protestant Thought in the
Nineteenth Century, i. 218–27.
178 Harless, Theologische Encyklopädie und Methodologie (Nuremberg, 1837), pp. xi–xii.
179 On Hofmann, see Raebiger, Zur theologischen Encyklopädie, 6–41.
But as the century wore on, mounting problems complicated this basic
objective. Coping with increasing specialization, as I have suggested, was
certainly one of them. But two other issues confronted encyclopedists with
equal gravity. The Wrst had to do with clarifying the relationship of academic
theology to the church (broadly understood) and to particular ecclesiastical
bodies. In the eyes of numerous critics, the trend of theology in universities,
far from realizing Schleiermacher’s ideal of achieving harmony between the
tasks of science and church service, suggested that the goals of theological
scholarship and pastoral work were growing apart. The literature on this issue
in the late nineteenth century is legion.180 The second problem facing en-
cyclopedists involved deWning the diVerence between Christian theological
knowledge proper and a more general philosophical and historical under-
standing of ‘religion.’ This problem took on particular importance in the late
nineteenth century as a consequence of the growth of a new discipline, ‘the
science of religion’ or Religionswissenschaft.181 (I shall treat this issue in more
detail at a later point.)
The scope of these problems, to be sure, extended well beyond the literature
of theological encyclopedia, but they assumed acute signiWcance in it because
of the crucial role played by encyclopedias in forming the opinions of future
clergymen and theologians. To address these problems, encyclopedists in-
creasingly adopted a sharp distinction between the theoretical or scientiWc
aspects of theology, on the one hand, and the practical or ecclesiastical aspects
on the other. The former components, it was argued, should be indistinguish-
able from any other form of scientiWc inquiry. Church history undertaken in
the theological faculty, for instance, must unreservedly submit to the same
canons of evidence and causality that guided professional historians in the
philosophical faculty. In this situation, the more practical or churchly com-
ponents of theology, while still valued, became gradually isolated from the
more demonstrably wissenschaftlich components. By the end of the century in
fact, one could even argue that practical theology did not appear so much as
the ‘crown’ of theology, to use Schleiermacher’s term, but as theology’s Wfth
wheel—more Wtting in a seminary, critics argued, than a university.
The Theologische Encyklopädie (1893) of Georg Heinrici, a student of
Albrecht Ritschl’s inXuential school of theology, illustrates well the prob-
lem.182 While Heinrici recognized that its ‘historically-given relationship to
180 Graf, ‘Protestantische Theologie in der Gesellschaft des Kaiserreichs’, in Graf (ed.), ProWle
des neutzeitlichen Protestantismus, ii. 69 V.
181 Welch, Protestant Thought in the Nineteenth Century, ii. 123 V. On the growth of the study
of the ‘science of religion’ or ‘comparative religion’ in the nineteenth century, see Louis H.
Jordon, Comparative Religion: Its Genesis and Growth (New York, 1905), 580–604.
182 On Ritschl and his ‘school’, see Welch, Protestant Thought in the Nineteenth Century, ii.
1–30.
the church’ had traditionally provided theology with academic justiWcation,
he argued that under modern conditions theology should be understood by
and large as a purely historical and scientiWc enterprise. In his view, theology
still served the church, but its service was chieXy that of a detached scientiWc
watchdog, useful mainly to help guard churchmen against ‘intellectual atro-
phy’ (intellektuelle Verkümmerung). Under no circumstance should theology
allow its agenda to be set by the church, for this would compromise theology’s
scientiWc character. ‘The only authority’ that theology should recognize was
‘the historical and inner truth’ (die geschichtliche und die innere Wahrheit).
Towards this end alone, theology should ‘direct its critical, historical, inter-
pretative, and meticulous research and inquiry’.183
Heinrici’s emphasis on history led him—returning to Schleiermacher’s
threefold scheme—to abolish exegetical theology altogether as an independ-
ent subWeld and lump it instead under historical theology.184 No special
period or text of the past should be privileged and exempted from histor-
ical-critical inquiry, he claimed, because ‘history itself is the content of
theology’.185 Accordingly, the nature of a theological encyclopedia, in Heinri-
ci’s view, was essentially historical or what he called ‘genetic’. Likening the
genre to a geological map, he claimed that its principal aim was to describe
not necessarily how things are or how they should be, but how they became
what they are: ‘it must explain the becoming of things in order to understand
their being’.186
A knowledgeable student of church history, Heinrici was well aware of how
far this distinctly historicist deWnition of theology was from traditional deWni-
tions, which had privileged matters of credal Wdelity, salvation, personal piety,
and the like. Indeed, Heinrici’s contention that theology should scientiWcally
censure, instead of emanate from, the church would have profoundly puzzled
an Augustine, Luther, or Francke. Nevertheless, Heinrici believed that theol-
ogy’s contemporary vocation was primarily in the sphere of Wissenschaft and
the ‘tension’ (Spannung) that this created between theology and the church
was both unavoidable and salutary. Thus understood, theology’s task was not
‘to manufacture piety’, as he opined, but rather ‘to research what Christianity
is and how [it] . . . operates. One becomes a Christian [by contrast] through
experience and struggle, through conviction and action. The question ‘‘What
is your only comfort in life and in death?’’ is not answered by Wissenschaft.’187
183 Georg Heinrici, Theologische Encyklopädie (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1893), 6 V.

184 Heinrici placed exegesis and church history under ‘historical theology’. He placed sys-
tematic and practical theology under what he called ‘normative theology’.
185 Heinrici, Theologische Encyklopädie, 10.
186 ‘Sie hat das Werden der Dinge zu erklären, um ihr Sein verständlich zu machen’. Ibid. 23.
187 Ibid. 9–10. Heinrici refers here to the Wrst question from the Heidelberg Confession.
A similar cleft between academic theology and the tasks of the church
appeared in C. A. Bernoulli’s Die wissenschaftliche und die kirchliche Methode
in der Theologie (1897). Unlike Heinrici, Bernoulli kept Hagenbach’s fourfold
division of theology, but he made an exceedingly sharp distinction between
exegetical and historical theology, on the one hand, and dogmatic and
practical theology, on the other. The Wrst two were essentially historical and
thus based on surer scientiWc principles; it was expected of them to speak ‘the
language of Wissenschaft ’ and attempt nothing more than the ‘objective
investigation of religion’ (sachliche Erforschung der Religion).188 The dogmatic
and practical branches of theology, by contrast, were ‘ecclesial’ in nature and
hence inherently unscientiWc. ‘The purpose of Bernoulli’s distinction,’ one
scholar has noted, ‘was to free theology from all practical connection with the
interests of the Church by giving it a new basis as a science investigating the
history of religion.’189
By the time that Bernoulli had taught his last course on theological
encyclopedia in 1933, however, the grand era of the genre had essentially
expired.190 While lecture rosters in German universities continued to list the
course for some time, no major encyclopedia was published after 1918. In
their place, other forms of pedagogical and introductory literature appeared,
as well as summaries of and symposium-style collections of essays on devel-
opments in individual Welds. Few of these reXected the idealist assumptions of
system, synthesis, and foundational explanation characteristic of the nine-
teenth-century genre.191
Explaining precisely why the genre declined when it did is a diYcult task.
The increasing specialization and fragmentation of theology—a phenomenon
extensively and often worrisomely commented on by encyclopedists them-
selves—certainly played a role, as did the aforementioned conXicts between
academic and ecclesiastical theology. More generally, one might point to the
Wssuring of idealist and progressivist assumptions about science, the very
ecology of the genre, brought about by sceptical currents in late nineteenth-
century thought and by the experience of the First World War. Finally, one
should take into consideration the emergence of dialectical theology and the
sea change it brought to German academic theology in the 1920s. Revealingly,
in his Einführung in die evangelische Theologie, a short work of his later years,
Karl Barth scoVed at the expression ‘theological encyclopedia’, arguing that
188 Bernoulli, Die wissenschaftliche und die kirchliche Methode in der Theologie (1897), pp. v V.
190 Bernoulli, Theologie und Wissenschaft: Schlussvortrag einer Vorlesung über ‘Theologische
Enzyklopädie’ (Basle, 1933).
theology was no normal science in need of legitimation ‘but a very special
science, whose task is to apprehend, understand and speak of ‘‘God’’ ’.192 He
then elaborated with characteristic forcefulness:
What concerns us here is not the place, right, and possibility of theology within the
domain and limits of general culture; especially not with the boundaries of the
universitas litterarum, or what is otherwise known as general humanistic studies!
Ever since the fading of its illusory splendor as a leading academic power in the
Middle Ages, theology has taken too many pains to justify its own existence. It has
tried too hard, especially in the nineteenth century, to secure for itself at least a small
but honorable place in the throne room of general science. This attempt at self-
justiWcation has been no help to its own work. The fact is that it has made theology, to
a great extent, hesitant and halfhearted; moreover, this uncertainty has earned the-
ology no more respect for its achievements than a very modest tip of the hat. . . .
Theology had Wrst to renounce all apologetics or external guarantees of its position
within the environment of other sciences, for it will always stand on the Wrmest
ground when it simply acts according to the law of its own being. . . . [T]heology has
by no means done this vigorously and untiringly enough. On the other hand, what are
‘culture’ and ‘general science,’ after all? Have these concepts not become strangely
unstable within the last Wfty years?193
Additionally, already in the Wrst volume of his Church Dogmatics, Barth had
questioned the encyclopedists’ concern to demonstrate theology’s scientiWc
status. While not rejecting the association of theology with ‘science’ out of
hand, he made it clear that theology, whatever else, was ‘a function of the
church’. Explaining theology therefore exclusively in terms of modern scien-
tiWc inquiry and university norms, in Barth’s view, was simply a misguided
enterprise:
Against the attempts of scientiWc encyclopedia to include theology as a science, as
they have ever and anon been made since the time of Schleiermacher, the general
objection may be raised that the abnormality of the peculiar status of theology is
thereby overlooked and something fundamentally impossible undertaken. The actual
result of all such attempts was and will be the disturbing, in fact destructive, surrender
of theology to the general concept of science, and the mild inattention with which
non-theological science—possibly with a better nose for actualities than theologians
who thirst for synthesis—is wont to reply to this particular mode of justifying
theology.194
192 Karl Barth, Evangelical Theology: An Introduction, trans. Grover Foley (New York: Holt,
Rhinehart, & Winston, 1963), 3 V.
193 Ibid. 15–16.
194 See the section entitled ‘The Church, Theology, and Science’, in Karl Barth, Church
Dogmatics, i. 1, trans. G. T. Thomson (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1969), 1–11.
4. HISTO RY, COMMEMORATION, AND THE UNIVERSITY
If students of modern German intellectual history could agree on the import-

ance of any single theme, it might well be that the nineteenth century was an
age of ‘historicism’, a term I have already frequently employed. Admittedly,
the term has attracted no universally accepted deWnition, but most scholars
could at least agree with Jacob Burckhardt’s remark from the late nineteenth
century that ‘history and the historical observation of the world and time has
generally began to penetrate our entire education and culture’.195 How this
phenomenon aVected theological encyclopedias, as just shown, is then but
one example of a larger reality. It is also borne out in the diverse range of
historical inquiries undertaken during the century and by numerous eVorts to
commemorate past events, individuals, and institutions. As David Lowenthal
has pointed out, the nineteenth century was an age of ‘retrospection’ and
‘heritage’ par excellence.196
Not surprisingly, universities, leading seats of historical scholarship, be-
came themselves the subjects of historical inquiry and the objects of frequent
commemoration. Until the late eighteenth century, no established body of
historiography existed, in Germany or elsewhere, on the development of
universities. This began to change around the time of the French Revolution.
Between 1802 and 1805, Göttingen’s Christoph Meiners published his four-
volume Geschichte der Entstehung und Entwicklung der hohen Schulen unsers
Erdtheils, not only an epochal undertaking in its own right but one that
almost single-handedly inaugurated modern university historiography.197
Meiners’s eVort preceded a trickle and then a Xood of histories of universities.
Although some were general and wide ranging, the majority focused on
individual institutions or those within a speciWc region or state. The century’s
end witnessed the publication of several monumental and still useful histor-
ies, including Georg Kaufmann’s two-volume Die Geschichte der deutschen
Universitäten (1888, 1896), Friedrich Paulsen’s Die deutschen Universitäten
und das Universitätsstudium (1902), and Max Lenz’s massive, multivolume
history of the University of Berlin (1910).198
195 From Burckhardt’s Weltgeschichtliche Betrachtungen; quoted in John R. Hinde, Jacob
Burckhardt and the Crisis of Modernity (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000), 142.
196 David Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1985), 96 V.
197 HUE, i. pp. xxii–xxiii. See also Meiners, Kurze Darstellung der Entwicklung der hohen
Schulen des protestantischen Deutschlandes, besonders der hohen Schule zu Göttingen (Göttingen,
1808). A noteworthy harbinger to Meiners’s work was J. D. Michaelis, Raisonnement über die
protestantischen Universitäten in Deutschland (Frankfurt am Main, 1768).
198 Also, shortly after the turn of the century, the Prussian Ministry of Culture commissioned
an extensive bibliographic survey of German universities, past and present. See Wilhelm Erman
While not uncommon prior to the nineteenth century, memorial and
anniversary ceremonies (Jubelfeier, Jahrhundertfeier) of universities became
signature features of the century. The impetus to commemorate stemmed
from at least three sources. The Wrst owed to a fresh sense of historical mission
gripping those universities that had successfully weathered the revolutionary-
Napoleonic upheaval. The achievements and expansion of universities
throughout the century, as well as their growing international esteem,
added reason to mark one’s progress. Finally, the pervasive inXuence of
nationalism played a role: universities, Prussian ones arguably foremost,
emerged as powerful symbols of national unity and purpose, inviting lavish,
public commemoration.
Commemorative celebrations followed a similar pattern. Regularly mark-
ing the centennial or semi-centennial of a university’s founding, these events
involved processions; solemn chapel services; addresses by distinguished
faculty, government oYcials, and guests; banquets and toasts; the publication
of a previously commissioned university history; and the awarding of hon-
orary degrees and titles. For our purposes, the University of Berlin’s semi-
centennial and centennial celebrations of 1860 and 1910 are particularly
noteworthy. Because of Berlin’s symbolic role as Prussia’s Xagship university,
these ceremonies amounted to overtly nationalistic celebrations, exuberant
expressions of the Kulturstaat ideal.199
In addition to the 1860 and 1910 celebrations, in what follows I shall also
comment on two relevant international events: the Chicago and St Louis
world fairs of 1893 and 1904. Both included exhibitions on German univer-
sities, Wnanced by the government, designed to communicate to an inter-
national audience the development and recent scientiWc achievements of the
German university system. While admittedly these exhibitions functioned
more as exercises in public presentation than commemoration, they, too,
bespeak an eVort to narrate the university’s recent past and thereby they
disclose revealing assumptions about it.
What then do university histories, commemorative events, and the two
world fairs tell us about the state of theological study and the theological
faculty in Germany in the mid- and late nineteenth century? The picture is
Janus-faced. On the one hand, theological faculties, particularly (but not
exclusively) Protestant ones, were often depicted as dynamic, scientiWc enter-
prises, increasingly in step with progressive intellectual forces, casting aside
and Ewald Horn (eds.), Bibliographie der deutschen Universitäten: systematisch geordnetes Ver-
zeichnis der bis Ende 1899 gedruckten Bücher und Aufsätze über das deutsche Universitätswesen
(Leipzig, 1904–5).
199 Konrad H. Jarausch, ‘Gebrochene Traditionen: Wandlungen des Selbstverständisses der
Berliner Universität’, JUG 2 (1999): 121–35.
older confessional and dogmatic tendencies. On the other hand, theology was
often viewed, especially in more critical histories, as beleaguered and dimin-
ished, overshadowed by the very forces otherwise held to have fostered its
modernization. Only rarely does one Wnd the charge of outright illegitimacy,
that theology no longer belonged in the modern university. More often,
scholars commented on the somewhat peculiar status that theological facul-
ties occupied in research-intensive, publicly funded institutions, but few
questioned the arrangement outright, accepting it as a distinctive feature of
German academic culture.
A particularly insightful short history of universities, Die Universitäten
sonst und jetzt, was published in 1867 by Munich’s renowned historian J. J.
Ignaz von Döllinger; it was based on an address he had given in 1866, the
fateful year of Prussia’s defeat of Austria.200 A formidable historical mind and
a Catholic with liberal sympathies, Döllinger oVers evidence of a more
widespread (non-Prussian, non-Protestant) enthusiasm for recent university
developments. He was especially struck by the rapidity with which German
universities, widely criticized at the beginning of the century, had become
invigorating forces in German intellectual life:
Now if we contrast [the eighteenth-century university] with . . . the honorable position
held by the German universities at present, if we consider that they are the places
where all the better and higher movements of German intellectual life often origina-
te . . . and then remember how short the time has been—roughly Wfty years—in which
this transformation has taken place, in which this astounding fertility in all Welds of
knowledge has developed—we must confess that there is scarcely a parallel to be
found in the whole course of world history.201
Döllinger identiWed what he called the ‘German historical sense’ as the key to
the university’s modern transformation. He associated this sense with ‘restless
eVort’ and ‘unwearied research’ that did not content itself with superWcial,
secondary knowledge of the past, but plumbed ‘the very core and bottom of
things’ to achieve ‘independent and original research’.202
The fact that such a mentality had increasingly found a home in theological
faculties, Döllinger noted, had given Germany an international edge in theo-
logical scholarship. ‘[T]he German historical sense Wnds rich nourishment in
theology, which, as Christianity is a fact, a history, possesses a preeminently
historical character, and accordingly requires to be investigated. . . . Hence,
200 Döllinger, Die Universitäten sonst und jetzt (Munich, 1867). Cf. his ‘Festrede zur 400
jahrigen stiftungsfeier der k. Ludwig-Maximilians-universitat Munchen gehalten am 1. August
1872’. On Döllinger’s life, see ODCC 496.
201 Döllinger, Die Universitäten sonst und jetzt, 25.
202 Ibid. 37 V.
too, Germany has become the classical land of theology, from whose treasures
the eVorts of other countries, like England and America, derive strength and
sustenance.’203
However, Döllinger also recognized that the relationship between theology
and modern critical scholarship could be complex: the exigencies of Wis-
senschaft presented new challenges, opportunities, and perils to theological
students. Döllinger thus concluded his work with a ‘word to the students of
theology’, in which he made several noteworthy observations. On the one
hand, he was convinced, like Schleiermacher and most liberal Protestant
theologians, that the future of theology depended on its ability to interact
robustly and creatively with scientiWc developments in non-theological Welds.
Theology, he insisted, must ‘make use of the sister sciences’ and ‘pluck the
best fruits from all branches of the tree of knowledge’. ‘Her very existence,’ he
elaborated, ‘depends on the steady maintenance, by teacher and pupil alike, of
the ‘‘historical sense’’ in its greatest purity. . . . [I]t depends upon the estima-
tion of new truths in other Welds of knowledge at their just value. The
question is one of life or death.’204
But Döllinger also maintained that theology, were it to maintain a vestige of
its ‘queenly dignity’, must somehow rise above and master developments in
other Welds. It could not simply gape in uncritical awe as the spectacle of
modern scientiWc progress unfolded; for theology, he noted, in language more
at home in an earlier era, is ‘the foundation, the keystone of all others’.205 But
mastering the dynamism, growth, and specialization of modern science was
no simple task. Döllinger thus made an appeal to antiquity, noting how the
Church Fathers, wrestling with a similar issue, neither ignored nor rejected
but sought to understand and judiciously appropriate Greek philosophy and
science. Nonetheless, the contemporary situation presented for Döllinger an
even more formidable challenge. In his own formulation:
Our task is more diYcult, because the material with which we deal is immeasurable
and daily increasing (Uns freilich ist eine noch viel schwierigere Aufgabe bei dem
unermeßlichen und noch täglich sich mehrenden Material gestellt). The whole history
of humankind in all its departments—philology, antiquities, anthropology, the com-
parative history of religions, the science of law, philosophy, and the history of
203 Ibid. 44. See also Döllinger’s 1863 address, ‘Die Vergangenheit und Gegenwart der
katholischen Theologie’, in which he called ‘the German nation’ the ‘leading bearer and curator
of the theological disciplines’. The address is reprinted in Heinrich Fries and Johann Finsterhölzl
(eds.), Ignaz von Döllinger: Wegbereiter heutiger Theologie (Graz: Styria, 1969), 227–63. Cf. in the
same volume his ‘Für theologische Fakultäten—gegen bischöXiche Seminare’, a robost defence
of the place of theological faculties in German universities against ultramontane sceptics.
204 Döllinger, Die Universitäten sonst und jetzt, 53.
205 Cf. John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1996), 25–40.
philosophy—all these come before us with the demand that we should subdue
(bewältigen) them with the power of thought.
Döllinger acknowledged that no theologian could accomplish this task single-
handedly. He thus appealed to the power of pooled labour, suggesting that it
‘may be approximately possible . . . [with] the eVorts of many men with a
single purpose’.206 Developing a theological perspective on the enterprise of
modern Wissenschaft was, in the Wnal analysis, achievable, albeit only if
undertaken collectively and deliberately with a sober understanding of the
risks and rewards involved.
A less sanguine picture of theology’s late nineteenth-century fortunes was
oVered by the political scientist Johannes Conrad, whose work, Das Universi-
tätsstudium in Deutschland während der letzten 50 Jahren (1884), I have
already referred to. Whereas Döllinger’s insights derived from personal ex-
perience and his liberal-theological proclivities, Conrad wrote as a social
scientist, attempting a historical and comparative statistical survey of German
universities since the 1830s. In much of his work, Conrad presented and
analysed empirical data on a wide array of matters, ranging from students’
social and religious backgrounds to the Wnancial proWles of various institu-
tions to professorial salaries. However, he also regularly commented on the
decline of the theological faculty and the rise of the philosophical faculty. As a
reality made clear to him by the respective downward and upward numerical
shifts in students, graduates, and professors in these two faculties, he held this
as one of the most consequential trends of the century.207
To account for this ‘extraordinary’ turn of events, Conrad identiWed both
material and intellectual causes. With respect to the former, he pointed to a
decrease in salaries for clergymen; diminished funds to support theology
students (especially when compared to that which had become available for
students in natural scientiWc and medical Welds); and greater employment
opportunities, especially in secondary education, for those who matriculated
in the philosophical faculty. These factors stimulated the growth of the
philosophical faculty at the expense of the theological:
Last century the theological faculty was unquestionably the premier faculty, not only
by precedence, but also by reason of the number and the higher salaries of its
professors. It was reckoned a special honour to belong to this faculty, and even
those who had no intention of working in a parish . . . entered the theological facul-
ty. . . . Almost all the great names in philosophy were originally, it should be remem-
bered, theological students. All this has been changed during the last Wve decades to
the disadvantage of theology. For the oYce of teacher now requires a purely
206 Döllinger, Die Universitäten sonst und jetzt, 54 V.

207 Conrad, Universitätsstudium in Deutschland, 60 V.
philosophical training. . . . There is no denying the fact . . . that students no longer
regard it as an advantage to belong to the theological faculty. From this cause alone
the number of theological students was bound to go down in the course of the [last]
Wfty years as members of the philosophical faculty increased.208
Intellectual factors for Conrad were perhaps even more important in
explaining theology’s dwindled status. Chief among these, he held, was ‘the
generally diminished interest in church aVairs’ brought about by the ‘sceptical
Zeitgeist ’. He traced these secularizing forces, in language anticipating Max
Weber’s on ‘disenchantment’, to the dynamism and popularization of modern
scientiWc research: ‘It is undeniable that the rapid development of science has
done much to bring about this state of things. Its results appeared irrecon-
cilable to many with Christian dogma, and dazzled the people. The eVect of
this was heightened by the deprecatory attacks which were repeatedly made by
the leaders of science upon the church, and these . . . reached deep down
among the people.’209
In his Die deutschen Universitäten und das Universitätsstudium (1902),
Berlin’s Friedrich Paulsen oVered a general history and overview of the
German university system, justifying his eVort on the basis of ‘the widespread
interest in our universities’. What distinguished German universities from
their counterparts elsewhere, Paulsen argued (freely blurring the boundary
between ideals and actual practices), was an anti-utilitarian commitment to
scientiWc investigation. The German professor embodied a dual role: a
teacher, but more importantly, someone engaged in original research; and
only this latter role gave him his credentials as a worthy teacher. The import-
ant thing for students was not their ‘practical calling, but [their] introduction
into scientiWc knowledge and research’, which fostered in young minds ‘[a]
spirit which rejoices in knowledge for the sake of knowledge’. These ideals,
Paulsen opined, had shaped the academic culture of the nation and attracted
to Germany ‘young disciples of science from all over the world’, just as
German scholars in the Middle Ages once journeyed to Paris and Italy for
their studies.210
In Paulsen’s interpretation, the distinctly ‘modern’ German university came
into its own in the early nineteenth century. Historical events after 1806, the
rise of the University of Berlin in particular, were of decisive importance: ‘the
fate of the German university was decided in those days’. But Paulsen noted
an intriguing similarity between the medieval and the modern institution:
208 Conrad, Universitätsstudium in Deutschland, 80–1.

209 Ibid. 97–8.
210 Paulsen, German Universities, 3–8. I cite from the 1906 English translation by Frank Thilly
and William W. Elwang.
[T]he German universities of the nineteenth century have again achieved something
of the old universal characteristic of the Wrst universities; not, however upon the basis
of medieval church unity, but rather upon the basis of the unity of human civilization
and scientiWc work, the unity based on the modern ideal of humanity. The confes-
sional character of the old territorial university was completely repudiated . . . and the
university became an institution for the free inquiry after truth, unhampered by
restriction.
But interestingly (in rhetoric akin to Fichte’s Reden an die deutsche Nation),
Paulsen regarded the new universal discourse of ‘humanity’ and ‘science’ as a
particular expression of ‘the good genius of the [German] nation’.211 Put
diVerently (in a comparison that Paulsen would probably disapprove of),
just as the confessional-territorial universities, in an age of religious division,
still believed themselves to dispense universal Christianity, so too Paulsen
thought that the new national university, in an age of competing national-
isms, could dispense a universal vision of science and humanitarian brother-
hood. The modern German university, in brief, had a global mission, but one
bequeathed to it by a distinctively national aptitude.
Removed from the context of confessionalism and plunged headlong into
an age that had witnessed ‘the emancipation of the spirit of the times from
theology’, theological faculties were bound to change or face extinction. In the
nineteenth century, change took two directions, according to Paulsen. One
was defensive, an intellectual alliance with ‘the great political reaction against
the revolutionary period’. The other direction, more consequential in Paul-
sen’s view, was ‘historical-critical theology’. This direction, Paulsen summed
up, witnessed a more ‘strictly scientiWc treatment’ of Scripture, church his-
tory, and theology. Additionally, it redeWned theology’s purpose: ‘During the
eighteenth century, the essential thing was a dogmatic-practical course, which
bore directly upon the calling of a pastor. . . . But at present training in
historical studies [and] . . . scientiWc research including investigation and criti-
cism of sources are considered most important.’212
Exhibiting a commonplace prejudice against Catholicism, Paulsen opined
that the modern scientiWc impulse was most naturally at home in Protestant
theological faculties. Unlike their peers in Catholic theological faculties, who
must adhere to an ‘external authority’, Protestant theologians possessed a
historic mandate to pursue truth wherever it might lead, even if it led to
unsettling conclusions. To be sure, Protestant theologians still had an ‘indis-
soluble relation to the church’, but their mode of service to the church diVered
from the Catholic model.213 ‘The teachers in the Protestant theological faculties
assume a fundamentally diVerent attitude: they do not aim to be servants of the
211 Paulsen, German Universities, 51–4. 212 Ibid. 59, 64. 213 Ibid. 137.
church, but Wrst of all servants of Wissenschaft, servants of the church only through
Wissenschaft.’214
Paulsen also indicated ways in which Protestant and Catholic theological
faculties diVered in their relationship to the state. The seven Catholic theo-
logical faculties in the German Empire—Bonn, Breslau, Münster, Munich,
Würzburg, Tübingen, and Freiburg—were similar to Protestant faculties by
virtue of the fact that they were both ‘state institutions’, whose members were
appointed and paid by the government. They diVered however in that Cath-
olic bishops possessed the right to reject a candidate ‘because of serious
doubts concerning his orthodoxy or his conduct’.215 What is more, bishops
enjoyed certain rights of visitation, the ability to review the content of
lectures, and the privilege to grant or withhold ‘missio canonica’, i.e. the
oYcial recognition that a given theologian represented the church.216 These
rights, which in Prussia trace their roots to the eighteenth century, were
curtailed during the Kulturkampf, but returned after this episode of church–
state conXict had passed.217
Because of the more pronounced ecclesiastical control over Catholic theo-
logical faculties, Paulsen judged them decidedly inferior to Protestant ones.
While he granted that one might question the merits of state control over
universities, he deemed this ultimately salutary for theological science, as
ecclesiastical bodies represented a greater threat to freedom of thought:
Protestant theology especially would suVer both in power and signiWcance if it were
placed under the control of the church and her organs. What it is and does is as a free
self-developing science and only as such, only in constant interaction with the other

215 This phrasing comes from the statutes of the University of Breslau. Such language was
typical of the statutes of Catholic theological faculties. See J. F. W. Koch, Die preussischen
Universitäten (Berlin, 1840), i. 233.
216 On the often strained relationship between Rome and the Prussian state over the control
of Catholic theological faculties, see Wilhelm Kahl, Die Missio Canonica: Zum Religionsunter-
richt und zur Lehre der Theologie an Schulen bezw. Universitäten nach dem Rechte der katholischen
Kirche und dem staatlichen Rechte in Preußen (Stolp, 1907), and Ernst-Lüder Solte, Theologie an
der Universität: staats- und kirchenrechtliche Probleme der theologischen Fakultäten (Munich:
Claudius, 1971), 142 V.
217 During the Kulturkampf, the ‘May Law’ promulgated on 11 May 1873 required that all
candidates for ministry, Protestant and Catholic, have at least three credentials: (1) pass the
Gymnasium Abitur, (2) complete three years of courses at a German university, and (3) pass
necessary state examinations. Study at a Catholic seminary could be substituted for study at a
state university, but the relevant minister of education had to review the content of the courses.
Because Catholic bishops protested against these measures, enrolments in Catholic faculties
greatly declined, only to rise again once the government modiWed these requirements after the
passing of the Kulturkampf. See Paulsen, German Universities, 144–6. Cf. Erich Kleineidam, Die
katholisch-theologische Fakultät der Universität Breslau, 1811–1945 (Cologne: Wienand, 1961),
74–81.
sciences, with philosophical and philological-historical investigation, can theology
really live and prosper. A Protestant theology based merely upon the authority of the
church would have no value at all.
If Protestantism was to remain faithful to its innermost principles, Paulsen
reiterated, ‘she requires a scientiWc theology as a pathWnder for a developing
understanding of the word of God in the Bible and the ways of God in
history’.218 This understanding of Protestantism, he concluded, had laid the
basis for the intellectual rigour and international esteem of Germany’s Prot-
estant theological faculties.
International esteem notwithstanding, Paulsen made clear that both Prot-
estant and Catholic theological faculties faced mounting criticism toward
century’s end. ‘[Theology] is a science of things of which we know nothing,’
he noted, repeating arguments advanced by secularists and adovocates of
positivistic science, ‘and the theological faculty is a bald anachronism.’219
Against such charges, Paulsen defended theology’s place in the university.
The nature of his defence, however, reveals the extent to which theology’s
legitimation had come to rest on accommodation to reigning deWnitions of
Wissenschaft. Appealing immediately to ‘history’, he argued that Christianity
was an undeniable ‘historical fact in human life’, and not just any historical
fact, but the most important religious inXuence on the Occident, the world’s
‘mightiest civilization’. Christianity should therefore remain an ‘object . . . of
historical study surpassed by none in importance’. Dogmatic theology was
also admissible in a scientiWc age, he reasoned, because some form of inquiry
was necessary to help humanity ‘transcend . . . a highly fragmentary scientiWc
knowledge with a complete worldview’. But the burden lay with dogma to
accommodate to the modern world, not vice versa: ‘There will always be the
problem to conceive of faith and its objects in such a way that they can be
harmonized with the scientiWc conception of nature and historical facts.’ This
was a worthwhile task and it warranted theology’s place in the university. In
the Wnal analysis though, Paulsen admitted that contemporary intellectual
conditions had rendered this eVort extremely diYcult: ‘This task is doubtless
more diYcult today than ever before. It cannot be denied that since the
beginning of modern times, advancing scientiWc knowledge has more and
more deprived the objects of faith of the forms in which they were formerly
conceived, yes, of the very possibility of their representation at all.’220
Among myriad late nineteenth-century exercises in university commemor-
ation and retrospection, the semi-centennial and centennial anniversary
218 Paulsen, German Universities, 139–40 (emphasis added; trans. modiWed). Cf. Paulsen, Die
deutschen Universitäten, 174.
220 Ibid. 384–5.
celebrations of the University of Berlin (1860, 1910) and the Chicago and St
Louis World Fairs (1893, 1904) stand out in signiWcance. In direct and
indirect ways, through symbol and substance, these events took stock of,
celebrated, and narrated to German society and the world the meteoric rise
of German universities. Given the times, they not surprisingly evinced a
powerful nationalist sentiment and a devotion to the nineteenth-century
cult of progress.
Indeed, the intellectual climate surrounding these events oVers a stark
contrast with that of the late eighteenth century, when many elites lamented
universities as anachronistic impediments to modernity. By contrast, in the
late nineteenth century, universities were widely lionized as the institutions
par excellence to realize the Baconian anthem, ‘conquer nature, relieve man’s
estate’. Hatcheries of scientiWc facts, pioneers of new academic Welds, oVering
up ‘value-free’ knowledge to the needs of society and industry, German
universities, many concluded, stood at the forefront of international higher
education. In less than a century, institutions once derided as guilds and
cloisters, remarkably, were championed as the ablest engines of modern
progress.
Given the widespread nature of these sentiments, traditional aspects of the
university could be seen in a diVerent, non-threatening light. No longer were
medieval traditions such as academic dress, processions, insignia, and the
customary ordering of the faculties disdained as signs of decay and ‘monastic’
backwardness, as eighteenth-century critics had often charged; rather they
were regarded as benign historical reminders of a venerable and ongoing, if
transformed, tradition. In the words of Lowenthal, they helped ‘render the
present familiar’ by symbolically aYliating it with the past.221 It is in this light
that one should interpret the place of theology in the symbology of university
commemoration and exhibition; for by the late nineteenth century the
institutional clout of theology had diminished to the point where one could
no longer see it as a threat to modernization. More often, it was recognized as
an enduring and respectable, if marginal, Wxture of university life. Put diVer-
ently, no longer confronted with the prospect of potential modernization but
rather with the dizzying fact of actual modernization, the presence of the
theological faculty (even as it too clamoured for the mantle of modern
Wissenschaft) provided, at least for some, a reassuring sign of continuity in
an era marked by rapid change. One should thus not be surprised that in
commemoration rituals, theologians and religious language occupied a con-
spicuous place. All the same, one should not be misled. The subtext of these
rituals was not the perdurance of theology, but the celebration of a host of
221 Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country, 39.

more dynamic processes: the vitality of the Kulturstaat ideal (understood in
decidedly nationalist terms); the breathtaking rise of new disciplines and
specializations; the expanded philosophical faculty; and, not least, what
Eduard Spranger called ‘the endless waves of research’ emanating from the
universities.222
The 1860 semi-centennial of the University of Berlin (held on 15–17
October) was an extraordinary event, designed in part to compensate for
the meagre fanfare that had accompanied the actual opening of the university
in 1810. Nearly 3,000 guests attended, invited from universities, academies,
and governments throughout Europe. The opening of events was preceded by
a procession from the university building down Berlin’s Unter den Linden
boulevard to the Gothic St Nicholas Church, which had been bedecked with
Xags, Xowers, and candles. Before a distinguished crowd, which included the
Prince-Regent Wilhelm I, the ceremony opened with organ music and hymns.
The ensuing events included a sermon by the theology professor and univer-
sity chaplain, Karl Immanuel Nitzsch; an address by the rector and former
disciple of Schleiermacher, August Twesten; and shorter speeches by faculty
deans. Appropriately, the philologist August Boeckh, ‘the jewel of German
Wissenschaft’ as one newspaper reported, gave the keynote address.223
The 1860 celebration was timed to coincide with two important publica-
tions. The Wrst was Rudolf Köpke’s Die Gründung der Königlichen Friedrich-
Wilhelms-Universität Berlin (1860), a short history of the university and
collection of documents from its founding era. The other was a new academic
periodical, the Deutsche Academische Zeitung, whose editors proclaimed their
dedication to academic freedom, student virtue and industry, and bringing
the interests of two communities, the academic and the national, into closer
harmony.224 Köpke struck a similar nationalist chord in his book’s preface.
While he extolled the intellectual signiWcance of Berlin’s founding, he also
generously remarked on its ‘national meaning’, for the stirring of pan-German
nationalism and the rebirth of the Prussian state.225
Similar sentiments, often including references to Berlin’s students and
professors participating in the 1813 Wars of Liberation, characterized
other anniversary addresses, and were reXected in the press coverage of the
222 Eduard Spranger, Wandlungen im Wesen der Universität seit 100 Jahren (Leipzig, 1913), 25.
223 Other events included lavish banquets, balls, student speeches and presentations, and the
granting of honorary degrees. The Prince-Regent, as one newspaper reported, was pleased by the
festivities, especially by the ‘Vaterlandsliebe der Universität’ patently demonstrated. For further
details, see Ferdinand Ascherson (ed.), Urkunden zur Geschichte der Jubelfeier der Königlichen
Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität im October 1860 (Berlin, 1863).
224 Deutsche Academische Zeitung 1 (1860): 1–2.
225 Köpke, Die Gründung der Königlichen Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin (Berlin,
1860), p. iv.
celebration. Indeed, the association of the University of Berlin’s founding with
the awakening of German national consciousness emerged, arguably, as the
leitmotif of the whole event. The progress of the university since its founding,
August Boeckh reXected, had expressed ‘the persistent spirit of the Prussian
state, whose spirit is inseparably bound with the German spirit’.226 In the
following years, as nationalist passions quickened and took concrete political
shape, this association was intentionally cultivated and developed into a
potent aspect of academic and political mythology; it had the eVect of
cementing close connections between the Emperor, the universities, and the
new nation-state.227
A lavish and symbol-rich ceremony, the 1860 celebration was nonetheless
greatly superseded by the centennial celebration of 1910. At this time, Ger-
many was an empire, seeking its ‘place under the sun’ under the leadership of
the mercurial, militaristic Wilhelm II. Universities in the late Kaiserreich thus
no longer inhabited an ideal but a real national unity, one rife with colonial
ambitions and the pursuit of political grandeur. As we have seen, universities
had grown tremendously in size, scope, and international reputation between
1860 and 1910. As one of the Empire’s most accomplished universities and the
only one located in the capital city, the University of Berlin took on heigh-
tened signiWcance as the showpiece of German Wissenschaft. Celebrating its
hundredth birthday with great fanfare and ritual was therefore simply a
matter of course. ‘The underlying thought of the celebration’, an American
observer later wrote, ‘was to acclaim the high place of Wissenschaft in German
life and culture, and to sound praises of those great men and scholars who
had, in a short century, made Berlin one of the greatest intellectual capitals of
the world.’228
Planning had begun as early as 1900, supported by 80,000 Reichsmark from
the imperial government. SpeciWc steps of preparation were undertaken by
university personnel under the direction of the rector and the senate, but
oYcials in the Prussian Ministry of Culture and even the emperor took an
active interest in the details.229 As one of its Wrst steps, the senate commis-
sioned the historian Max Lenz to produce an exhaustive history of
the university. The completed work, Geschichte der königlichen Friedrich-
Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin, was later sent ‘by orders from his Majesty
226 August Boeckh, ‘Festrede zur Jubelfeier des fünfzigjährigen Bestehens’, in Boeckh, Gesam-
melte kleine Schriften (Leipzig, 1866), iii. 60–74.
227 Konrad Jarausch, Students, Society, and Politics in Imperial Germany: The Rise of Academic
Illiberalism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), 174 V.
228 The observer was Columbia University’s president, Nicholas Murray Butler. See Columbia
Alumni News (24 November 1919): 170–3.
229 Erich Schmidt (ed.), Jahrhundertfeier der Königlichen Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in
Berlin 10–12 October 1910. Bericht im Auftrag des Akademsichen Senats (Berlin, 1911), 3.
the Emperor’ as a sign of friendship (and presumably national pride) to other
universities and educational establishments throughout the world.
As the date of the event approached, letters of invitation were sent to
former professors, distinguished faculty at other German universities, and
foreign diplomats, as well as to prestigious universities, scientiWc academies,
and educational establishments the world over. In many cases, university
presidents and other high-ranking oYcials attended the event personally.
Their letters of acceptance regularly included eVusive praise for German
higher education generally and the University of Berlin in particular. The
letter from the University of Chicago’s President Harry Pratt Judson is fairly
typical:
The contributions of German thought to the progress of the world have been of the
utmost moment. Every civilized nation owes a debt to German scholarship. In the
progress of German education the famous University [of Berlin] in whose honour this
celebration is being held has been among the foremost agencies. Nearly every Ameri-
can institution of learning has on its faculty rolls the names of those who have been
students in Berlin. In American science, therefore, the name of this University is very
dear.230
Actual festivities began on 10 October and lasted for three days. Similar in
form and content to the 1860 celebration, events included a worship service;
the singing of hymns; a torchlit procession; and addresses by university and
governmental dignitaries, including one by the then Minister of Culture,
August von Trott zu Solz (1855–1938). In addition, the granting of honorary
degrees, banquets, various student gatherings, and a host of cultural activities
took place.231 University buildings and other key locations in the city were
elaborately decorated for the occasion; busts of former faculty members were
prominently and proudly displayed. Those in attendance included the em-
peror himself and the Reich chancellor, Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg.232
The principal event on the Wrst day was a university worship service held in
the imposing Berlin Cathedral. Julius Wilhelm Martin Kafton (1848–1926),
professor of systematic theology and a former rector of the university, deliv-
ered the sermon. A student of Albrecht Ritschl and an admirer of Schleier-
macher, Kafton preached a message beWtting the moment and one quite
telling of the contemporary interrelations among the university, the nation,
and science.233
230 A copy of the letter is found in Schmidt (ed.), Jahrhundertfeier, 248.

231 For the schedule of events, see ibid. pp. i–ii.
232 Jarausch, ‘Gebrochene Traditionen: Wandlungen des Selbstverständisses der Berliner
Universität’, JUG 2 (1999): 121–35.
233 On Kafton, see RGG iii. 1087–8.
As his biblical text, Kafton selected 1 Corinthians 12: 4–12, where St Paul
admonished Christians to remember that, though variously gifted, they
formed one body in Christ: ‘For just as the body is one and has many
members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so
it is with Christ.’234 Traditionally, exegetes have emphasized the ecclesiological
content of this text: the simultaneous diversity and unity of the Christian
church. Kafton however applied the text to the enterprise of modern science
in the context of the university. ‘Various gifts, but one spirit; many members
but one body,’ he stated; ‘one could not imagine a more appropriate descrip-
tion of the university.’235 He equated the ‘parts’ and ‘gifts’ mentioned by Paul
to the Welds and expertises of science; and the ‘body’, in idealist fashion, he
likened to the underlying unity of scientiWc knowledge.
Kafton admitted that achieving unity in an age of specialization, or even
recognizing unity as a desirable goal, could prove an elusive task. Just as it was
among the early Christians, he averred, ‘so it is with the university and the
organism of science on which it is founded. How diverse are the members, the
gifts, the strengths. How diYcult it often is to maintain or regain unity.’ But
unity was precisely the need of the moment: ‘Many abilities, but one spirit;
many members, but one body. And the present with its unceasing, progressive
splintering of the sciences (unaufhörlich fortschreitenden Verzweigung der
Wissenschaften) is certainly not a time, in which [St Paul’s] warning would
be beside the point.’ ‘If we do not pay heed [to the goal of unity],’ he
elaborated, ‘then the whole falls apart. A bundle of specialized schools will
replace the university. . . . But this should not come to pass. The German
University should be maintained in the coming centuries. And so it will
with God’s help.’236
Continuing with the Pauline metaphor, Kafton turned from an emphasis
on the unity of the sciences to the place of the university in the nation. ‘But
the image of the body has yet a further application,’ he stated, for ‘just as the
university in one sense is a many-membered whole, so it is, in another sense, a
single member of a greater whole. That whole is the life of the nation, which is
assembled in the order of the state.’ Not only should the university seek
scientiWc unity, but it must also seek external unity by ‘serving the nation
and the state.’ He identiWed two senses in which the university could serve the
nation-state, the greater whole. First, it should pursue knowledge apart from
overly practical considerations. Second, it must educate the nation’s young
people, remembering to raise up the youth and not merely instruct them
(nicht bloß unterrichten, auch erziehen). Educating the next generation and
234 New Oxford Annotated Bible, NT 242.
235 Schmidt (ed.), Jahrhundertfeier, 20.
236 Ibid. 20–1.
uninhibitedly pursuing science, were in fact intimately tied together, Kafton
reasoned, invoking the commonplace understanding of the professor’s dual
role, for ‘Wissenschaft itself is the incomparable means of teaching that lies in
our hand.’ If the university faithfully pursued these goals, its value to the life
of the nation remained of superlative importance: ‘No one can think of
German culture and German intellectual life without the German universities.
Their downfall would mean a collapse of the German nation—so important
are they for the whole.’237
Kafton concluded the sermon with a brief prayer, thanking God for raising
up such a mighty university from the darkest days of German history after the
defeat by Napoleon. Upon conclusion of the prayer, the choir broke into
Bach’s ‘Preis, Ehre, Macht und Herrlichkeit’. The august crowd then recited
the Lord’s prayer, received a blessing, and exited to inspiring organ perform-
ances.
The following days, 11 and 12 October, witnessed similar festive, if less
explicitly religious, events. On the second day the government occupied a
prominent role. Minister Trott zu Solz gave a speech, as did Emperor Wilhelm
II, who took the opportunity to announce a major new government grant for
scientiWc research. (Those in attendance stood respectfully during his entire
address.) On the following day, the emperor received an honorary law degree.
The events of the last day concluded with a lavish banquet at the royal
palace.238
The most intellectually substantive event of the Wnal day was an address by
Max Lenz, in which the esteemed historian surveyed the career of the Uni-
versity of Berlin and that of German universities generally over the past
century. The address is notable for its scientiWc triumphalism, its invocation
of the Kulturstaat ideology, and its sceptical assessment of university theology.
Although Berlin was among the youngest of European universities, it had
witnessed according to Lenz a century of dizzying scientiWc advance:
The University of Berlin can only look back over one century. But in this century so
many intellectual victories and achievements have taken place that those of previous
centuries have been overshadowed. We may speak in this manner without exaggerat-
ing, for we are only expressing what is true for all Welds of scientiWc research, the
representatives of which we have gathered with us today. From both hemispheres they
have come to take part in our celebration.239
237 Schmidt (ed.), Jahrhundertfeier, 22–4.

238 Ibid. pp. i–v, 1 V.
239 Max Lenz, Rede zur Jahrhundertfeier der Königlichen Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu
Berlin gehalten in der neuen Aula der Universität am 12 Oktober 1910 (Halle, 1910), 5, HUB,
Speziallesesaal, Bücher m. hs. Bern. 28.
In an age of ‘geopolitical tensions’, amid ‘the intensive development of the
principle of nationality’, Lenz extolled ‘the power of science to bring nations
together’. As a recognized global leader in science, Germany in general and the
University of Berlin in particular, therefore, had particular reason to feel
gratiWed by the accomplishments of the century. The esteem represented by
an audience of foreign dignitaries and scholars, Lenz implied, was richly
deserved, even if he believed that science was a human possession, not a
national one.
Still, the University of Berlin, in Lenz’s view, made up a pivotal chapter in
the story of modern science. Associating the university’s rise and the move-
ment towards German nationhood, Lenz praised the Prussian state and the
house of Hohenzollern. ‘If it is however admitted that our university enjoys
special fame, this is only so because none other is so tied with the history of
the ruling house, which today wears the crown of the Empire.’ From the
moment of its birth, ‘the darkest moment in Prussian history’, until the
present, Lenz elaborated, no other university could claim such a special
relationship to a national identity and to the monarchy, which recognized
the support of science as ‘[its] most sublime task’.240 Lenz admitted that the
relationship between science and the state in the nineteenth century was not
always a happy one, but what characterized the present moment, in Lenz’s
view, was a harmonious relationship maintained by the state’s recognition
that free science was in its own, and the German people’s, highest interest. The
symbiosis of Wissenschaft and Staat, advanced by Kulturstaat theorists earlier
in the century, had for Lenz become a reality in Wilhelmine Germany,
conferring upon the state a progressive, distinctly modern aura of legitimacy:
But we fear such conXicts [between science and the state] no longer . . . because the
genius of our state is on our side. And also our sovereigns know . . . that the freedom of
scientiWc inquiry is boundless, that knowledge has a world-conquering power. . . .
They do not fear the unravelling (auXösende) power of scientiWc enquiry, especially
the historical disciplines, which leave no stone unturned, but submit everything to
criticism, including state and church traditions and authority (as well as dogmas and
customs), examining them in light of [their] historical foundation and inner justiW-
cation. . . . For such reasons we are thankful to them [our rulers], in the conWdence
that the bond between our monarchy and university rests on such a bedrock . . . 241
Lenz depicted the post-1806 era as decisive for the development of both
German science and nationhood. The impulses of this era, however, were only
fully realized in post-1871 national uniWcation—a political boon to the
German people and a scientiWc boon to humanity, he claimed. ‘Everything
Wrst became possible in the new Empire. The development of science itself,
240 Ibid. 5–6. 241 Ibid. 29–30.
the uniWcation of its methods and its goals, the simultaneous advance in
which it goes forward today in all faculties—all of this stands in direct
relationship with the attainment of our national unity.’ Seeking to bolster
his point, Lenz catalogued recent achievements and statistics of the German
universities since 1871, emphasizing the transformation of Berlin from a
promising upstart to a ‘world university’.242
The theological faculty, however, presented an anomaly for Lenz. Most
other Welds, especially those in the philosophical and medical faculties, had
demonstrated impressive growth, but ‘compared to the other faculties, it
[theology] was far behind’.243 To explain this situation, Lenz pointed to the
character of modern science, which in his view encouraged inWnite develop-
ment and experimentation, whereas theology was ‘bound by systematic
principles’.244 He could still oVer theology faint praise, as it had ‘dug deep
shafts’ within its own world of thought and had established fruitful ties with
‘neighboring Welds of knowledge’. In the main though, theology compared
poorly to other university disciplines. For it to achieve similar results, he
advocated that it redeWne itself as ‘Religionsgeschichte’. On this point Lenz
made direct reference to the argument advanced by Fichte (who comes across
in the address as Lenz’s truest intellectual hero) that theology did not belong
in the university until it forsook its dogmatic and practical aspects. Further-
more, in classic Kantian-Fichtean fashion, Lenz argued that the philosophical
faculty was the surest foundation of the university, and, accordingly, all
genuine scientiWc knowledge must be either ‘historical’ or ‘natural’—
a division that would admit theology under the former heading. ‘Is it not
already expressed by theologians themselves’, Lenz then asked rhetorically,
‘that their discipline must develop into the comparative [historical] study of
religions (vergleichenden Religionswissenschaft), and in fact is it not true that
theology is already heading in this direction?’245
A further liability of theology, Lenz averred, was its inability to accord itself
with the ‘practical-material direction of our time’. This direction was condu-
cive to the ‘unceasing growth’ of such Welds as ‘chemistry, botany, zoology,
geology, anatomy, and physiology’, for a world of scientiWc advance and
industrial growth would always need scientists, doctors, engineers, and the
like, whereas theologians, presumably, it could do without or get by with only
a few. ‘The unprecedented ballooning of matriculations in the philosophical
242 Max Lenz, Rede zur Jahrhundertfeier der Königlichen Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu

Berlin gehalten in der neuen Aula der Universität am 12 Oktober 1910 (Halle, 1910), 5, HUB,
Speziallesesaal, Bücher m. hs. Bern. 12 V.
243 Ibid. 18.
244 He conceded that this was also the case with the law faculty as well.
245 Ibid. 21.
faculty’, Lenz therefore concluded, represented a salient example of a deeper
historical force at work, one that had aVected ‘all faculties with the exception
of theology’. This force was simply ‘the powerful economic development of
Germany . . . coming to expression’.246
In the decades leading up to the University of Berlin’s centenary in 1910, the
Chicago (1893) and St Louis (1904) world fairs had provided prior oppor-
tunities for Germany to showcase its universities. The general historical
conditions under which these fairs took place resembled the 1910 celebration.
All three events occurred during the reign of Wilhelm II, during the heyday of
German university expansion and prestige, and under the powerful inXuence
of Prussia’s Ministry of Culture.247 The global political backdrop for each,
moreover, was characterized by rising nationalism, transatlantic industrial-
ization, and extensive Western imperialism abroad.
The idea behind America’s world fairs bore witness to many of these
historical forces. Owing their precedent to London’s famous Crystal Palace
Exhibition of 1851, the Chicago and St Louis fairs were preceded and suc-
ceeded by several other American and European fairs, but none could com-
pare with these two in size, scope, and cost. After gaining the honour to hold
the 1893 fair, Chicago chose to celebrate the four-hundredth anniversary of
Columbus’s journey to America—hence the fair’s oYcial title: ‘the World’s
Columbian Exposition’. Extensive planning and investment ‘to celebrate the
greatest era of civilized progress the world had ever seen’, as one commentator
put it, made the Chicago fair ‘bigger and grander than anything before it’.248
Similar grandiose calculations and aspirations lay behind the 1904 St Louis
fair, designed to remember the one-hundredth anniversary of Thomas JeVer-
son’s Louisiana Purchase. Both fairs, it should be emphasized, celebrated ‘the
West’, the American frontier West and the more abstract ‘West’ of Western
civilization, which through industrialization and imperialism stood at the
apex of global supremacy. Despite myriad nationalist animosities among
Western countries (many provoked by imperialism), the fairs were also
designed as gestures of international brotherhood and cooperation. Finally,
both fairs extravagantly celebrated scientiWc inquiry and industrial growth as
engines of human progress. Perhaps the spirit of the fairs was summed up best
246 Ibid. 25.

247 Friedrich AlthoV was Minister of Education during the two world fairs. His oYce worked
closely with the Empire’s Ministry of the Interior in the planning stages. Incidentally, AlthoV
was so taken by the opportunity represented by America that he once wanted to found ‘a little
German university’ on American soil. He was also instrumental in organizing professor
exchanges between the two countries. See Bernhard vom Brocke, ‘Friedrich AlthoV’, in Treue
et al., Wissenschaftspolitik in Berlin, 211–13.
248 William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York: W. W.
Norton, 1991), 341–2.
by President William McKinley (prior to his death in 1901) in his invitation to
other nations on the occasion of the St Louis Fair: ‘I do hereby invite the
nations of the earth to appoint representatives and send such exhibits as will
most Wttingly and fully illustrate their resources, industries, and their progress
in civilization.’249 The world fairs, McKinley stated in another context, were to
be ‘timekeepers of progress’.250
Germany’s presence at both fairs was conspicuous. Championing science,
progress, technology, and industry, Germany’s exhibitions and guidebooks
rivalled or surpassed all others. At Chicago, this was true of both the general
exhibition on the German empire and the smaller, more speciWc exhibition
devoted to German universities. The general exhibition categories (agricul-
ture and forestry, mining, machinery, engineering, transportation, horticul-
ture, electricity, the chemical industry, and others) as conveyed by the ‘OYcial
Catalogue Exhibition of the German Empire’ make this point quite clear.251
Twenty-nine of the thirty-eight university displays at Chicago, moreover,
focused on the natural and medical sciences.252 The suggestion to the casual
onlooker was the extensive role of German universities in fostering material-
scientiWc and technological development. The universities did not come
across, in other words, as centres of humanistic, soul-enriching inquiry, as
Humboldt and others had envisioned, and certainly not as centres of corpor-
ate privilege, confessional identity, and theology’s supremacy.
Nonetheless, theology could still lay claim to a small place in the 1893
Chicago fair: in a two-volume book on German universities, which had been
commissioned for the occasion. Prepared and edited by Wilhelm Lexis of the
University of Göttingen ‘with the help of numerous university professors’,
entitled straightforwardly Die deutschen Universitäten, the work sought to
show the ‘the progress of science’ in various academic Welds in so far as
German scholarship had made signiWcant contributions.253 The work was
organized in accordance with the four faculties, although, notably, the entire
second volume was devoted to natural science alone.
But as custom would have it, theology, the ‘Wrst faculty’, came at the
beginning with Protestant and Catholic theology treated separately. Each
249 Quoted in Dorothy Daniels Birk, The World Came to St. Louis: A Visit to the 1904 World’s
Fair (St Louis: Bethany, 1979), 12.
250 Robert W. Rydell, ‘World’s Fairs’ in Eric Foner and John A. Garraty (eds.), The Reader’s
Companion to American History (Boston: Houghton-MiZin, 1991), 1168–70.
251 World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago: OYcial Catalogue Exhibition of the German
Empire (Berlin, 1893), 28 V.
252 Deutsche Unterrichts-Ausstellung in Chicago: Katalog der Universitäts-Austellung (Berlin,
1893), pp. vii–viii.
253 Wilhelm Lexis (ed.), Die deutschen Universitäten: Für die Universitätsaustellung in Chicago
unter Mitwirkung zahlreicher Universitätslehrer, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1893).
confession’s section contained an introductory essay followed by individual
essays in biblical exegesis, church history, systematic theology, and practical
theology. All essayists, but especially the Protestant ones, implied that the
progress-of-science motif applied to theology as it might to mineralogy or
botany.
Since the essays’ objective was to take stock of recent developments,
together they oVer an insightful vantage point on late nineteenth-century
academic theology as a whole. The informed reader could not help but note
the impressive range and depth of German theological scholarship; Protestant
scholarship, in particular, was touted as transforming virtually every area of
theological inquiry. Yet it would also have been apparent that theology, its
own scientiWc claims notwithstanding, stood isolated from the dominant
directions and energies of the contemporary university, even if the essayists
often attributed the progress of their Welds to university dynamics.
In his essay on Old Testament exegesis, for example, Emil Kautzsch of the
University of Halle noted that in so far as Old Testament scholarship evinced a
‘solid scientiWc character’ it was ‘almost exclusively a product of the univer-
sities’. Private scholars and clergymen could simply not attain the same results
given the ‘indispensability of the greatest scientiWc apparatus’, i.e. the univer-
sity.254 The companion essay on New Testament studies, written by Erich
Haupt of Halle, also trumpeted the indispensability of the university. Recent
scholarship had brought about a ‘transformation’ in the Weld, no small feat,
he held, given that the religiously sensitive material of the New Testament
made it nearly impossible ‘to operate without presuppositions’, the standard
of true science. Most signiWcantly, the transformation had enlarged ‘the
historical understanding of early Christianity’. In earlier eras, scholars ap-
proached New Testament texts as a matter of ‘divine inspiration’, Haupt
opined, whereas ‘nowadays . . . the main question is what the New Testament
author wanted to say to his time, and what contemporary assumptions led
him to express himself the way he did’.255
Haupt’s essay can also be read as a barometer of growing specialization. In
New Testament studies alone, he delineated seven distinct subWelds, including
textual criticism, grammatical studies, New Testament contemporary history
(N. T. Zeitgeschichte), the history of the development of New Testament books
(Entstehungsgeschichte der N. T. Bücher), Gospel criticism, the study of the life
of Jesus, and New Testament theology. Sensitive to the highly contentious
nature of much scholarship in these subWelds, but nonetheless intent to
square this situation with the idea of scientiWc progress, Haupt concluded
his essay on the following note:
254 Ibid. i. 181. 255 Ibid. 188–9.

[I]n large part the scientiWc movement among academic theologians is underway.
Certainly, conXicts and still unsolved problems are numerous, but there is also a
substantial and growing amount of consensually accepted results. And it may be
permitted to call progress the fact that theologians of diVerent schools and orienta-
tions are beginning to learn from one another and conducting their scientiWc struggles
with that respect and . . . propriety, which both science and Christianity demand.256
Church history was a vibrant and successful theological Weld, asserted
Friedrich Loofs (1858–1928) in his essay on the subject. ‘Closely bound
with the German universities’, its beginnings were traced by Loofs to J. L.
von Mosheim, who ‘can be named the originator of a scientiWc theology’
because like few others he ‘stood above the theological currents of [his] day’.
For Loofs, the impartial, objective vision of Mosheim remained the continu-
ing basis of church history: ‘He [Mosheim] was the Wrst to attempt to treat the
events of the church with the same pure historical interest and in the same
manner that others treated the events of a state in the best political and
provincial histories.’ This ‘pure historical discipline’ (rein historisch Disci-
plin)—presumably in contrast to older, more edifying approaches—had
demonstrated in recent years ‘decisive progress’, Loofs proudly asserted. As
evidence, he appealed to the historical works of Neander, Hagenbach, and,
more recently, Adolf Harnack.257
For systematic and practical theology, it proved trickier to demonstrate
progress, but nonetheless the essayists in these Welds, respectively Hermann
Hering and Martin Kähler, called attention to recent and ongoing advances in
both areas. SigniWcantly, both invoked Schleiermacher (his Kurze Darstellung
des theologischen Studiums in particular) as pivotal for setting the modern
agenda in these Welds.258 Hering referred to Schleiermacher’s work as ‘scien-
tiWc leaven’ (wissenschaftlicher Sauerteig) that exerted inXuence long after
eVorts of others had ceased to be relevant.259 In systematic theology, Kähler
contended that it was Schleiermacher’s legacy above others with which con-
temporary theologians were still forced to grapple. Elaborating his view,
Kähler indicated that Schleiermacher had rejected both the premise of ortho-
doxy, which had tied dogmatics to the biblical text, and the premise of ‘the
rationalists’, which had tied dogmatics to ‘natural religion’, and instead had
‘considered . . . dogmatics under historical theology’.260 This outlook and the
concurrent rise of ‘historical scholarship’ in the nineteenth century had
256 Wilhelm Lexis (ed.), Die deutschen Universitäten: Für die Universitätsaustellung in Chicago
unter Mitwirkung zahlreicher Universitätslehrer, 188–94.
257 Ibid. 197–208.
258 Ibid. 208, 218.
259 Ibid. 219.
260 Ibid. 209.
created diYcult questions for systematic theology, especially in regard to the
‘historicity of Christianity’. These diYculties were only compounded by
Schleiermacher’s simultaneous insistence, particularly in his Reden über die
Religion (1799), that Christianity was not only a historical phenomenon but
an aspect of ‘religion’, that is, an interior phenomenon ‘original and self-
standing [and] located in the personal life’. Questions about the historicity of
Christianity and the interior character of belief had in turn given rise to
thorny conceptual questions about the nature of revelation and even religion
itself. Systematic theologians of the late nineteenth century, Kähler summed
up, thus still faced a plethora of foundational questions bequeathed to them
largely by Schleiermacher. Providing satisfactory answers demanded nothing
less than a ‘thoroughgoing confrontation between the Christian world view
and the various sciences’. Kähler welcomed this state of aVairs, but conceded
that it required ‘ongoing work’.261
The diYculties and challenges of systematic theology, however, were part
and parcel of theology’s overall late nineteenth-century situation, which was
sketched in the introductory essay by Erich Haupt (who also wrote the
aforementioned essay on New Testament scholarship). In large measure,
Haupt’s introduction is straightforwardly descriptive: he comments on the
number of Protestant theological faculties in Germany (seventeen),262 the
nature of instruction, the granting of degrees, the process of examinations, the
transition from student to parish life, and the intellectual divisions of the
faculty. Interspersed among these more pedestrian observations, however, are
several noteworthy ones. He commented directly, for example, on the impact
of specialization: ‘As in all sciences, theology has experienced a steady increase
in individual disciplines, which has necessitated the division of labour.’ No
one at present, he elaborated, could achieve the feat of a Schleiermacher,
whose teaching covered practically all theological Welds and philosophy as
well. Specialization also had increased the time it took students to complete
their studies and diminished the time they had to devote to non-theological,
elective topics.263
Haupt sought to respond to traditionalists critical of ‘scientiWc theology’.
He defended theology’s place in the university and the indispensability of
academic freedom for the theological task. ‘[T]he free search after truth’, he
proclaimed, ‘Wnally must serve the truth, even if it leads through all kinds of
261 Ibid. 215 V.

262 The Protestant theological faculties of the German Empire c.1893 included nine Prussian
ones: Berlin, Bonn, Breslau, Göttingen, Greifswald, Halle, Kiel, Königsberg, and Marburg. The
remaining ones in other Länder included Erlangen, Leipzig, Tübingen, Heidelberg, Giessen,
Rostock, Jena, and Strasbourg.
263 Lexis (ed.), Die deutschen Universitäten, i. 172–3.
errors. The Christian evangelical faith steadily becomes more pure and more
sure-footed today through free inquiry.’ At the same time, Haupt recognized
that introducing pious young people to critical scholarship during their
university years regularly led to troublesome results: ‘Often in the beginning
of their student years, students easily experience a conXict between the faith of
their childhood Christian community and the results of Wissenschaft.’ For
Haupt this did not call into question the operations of academic theology
per se; it did suggest rather that professors should take a more personal
interest in their students, safeguarding them from outright unbelief, on the
one hand, but also encouraging them neither to fear nor forsake rigorous
scientiWc inquiry.264
On a related point, Haupt addressed the fairly common criticism that
academic theology had strayed too far from the needs of churches and that
it often encouraged hostility to simple piety. To such critics, Haupt pled for
patience, trusting that a necessary confrontation between scientiWc and reli-
gious interests would eventually resolve itself in favour of both Christian and
scientiWc truth. On this note of quasi-Hegelian optimism in the slow, sure
operations of history, he concluded his essay:
The theological faculties, although formally completely free, provide in fact service to
the evangelical church. If conXicts arise—and in our day they frequently do—between
their work and that of the practical ecclesiastical circles; if one complains that
intellectual criticism almost exclusively occupies [faculties], rendering students
thereby unprepared for actual parish service: academic theologians will certainly not
deny that many imperfections still adhere to their work. But they are convinced that
any one-sidedness will be overcome by the further scientiWc and religious education of
the students and especially by their work in the pastoral oYce. Indeed, we must have
patience, and must look for reconciliation between science and faith, in the individual
as well as in the whole church, from the steady cooperation of these two factors, and
see that such reconciliation can only be slowly and gradually brought about. Theo-
logical science is an integral part of the totality of science, and an integral aspect of
church life generally, and, Wnally, [it is] a means of creating in the holders of practical
church positions independence of judgement and clarity of action.265
Although occasioned by the 1893 world’s fair, Haupt’s essay and those of
others, it is safe to conclude, were surely lost on most visitors to Chicago.266
The essays on theology comprised but a brief section of Lexis’s book, which
represented a small aspect of the exhibition on German universities, which in
turn was yet one piece of a grandiose fair whose predominantly scientiWc,
264 Lexis (ed.), Die deutschen Universitäten, 172–6. 265 Ibid. 180.
266 The fact that all essays were presented untranslated bears witness to the reality that
German had become a leading lingua franca of academic discourse, but it also surely limited
the American readership.
technological, and industrial displays suggested, in the memorable words of
Henry Adams, ‘a step in evolution to startle Darwin’.267
Theology’s fortunes fared little better at the 1904 St Louis World Fair. As in
Chicago, the university exhibition in St Louis—located in close proximity to
the ‘Palace of Electricity’—focused predominantly on natural scientiWc and
medical Welds. To accompany the exhibition, Wilhelm Lexis produced a much
revised and expanded work of four volumes, Das Unterrichtswesen im
Deutschen Reich.268 Most of the expansion was due to the inclusion of material
on the technical universities (Technische Hochschulen) and the secondary
school system. In this work, the Protestant theological faculty received just
one small essay of sixteen pages written by D. G. Kawerau (1847–1918), who
appeared less bent on demonstrating the ‘progress’ of theology than in oVer-
ing a descriptive and frank overview of theological study.269 He was so frank
in fact that he admitted that treating religious material with the tools of
science—which he held as academic theology’s proper task—often gave rise
to problematic results. It led many students, for instance, to forsake clerical
careers, just as it had led others, who continued on to the parish, to look back
upon university theology as a ‘soul-endangering false path’ (seelengefährlichen
Irrweg). But the truly praiseworthy student persisted and matured, learning to
sort through conXicting bodies of opinion and his own doubts. Only through
such struggles, Kawerau concluded, could the student learn to achieve ‘har-
mony’ between academic theology and the tasks of the clerical oYce.270
But again it is safe to conclude that at St Louis, as at Chicago, few visitors
were terribly preoccupied with theology’s negligible lot among the sciences.
Those who did puzzle over Germany’s university exhibits were far more likely
to be captivated by the scientiWc, medical, and technological displays and
literature, which accorded more with the ethos of the fairs. This indeed was
the association made by the editor of the journal, The Monist, in a brief article,
‘The German Universities at the World’s Fair’, published during the Chicago
fair. ‘While the French and English universities are advanced schools, whose
business is to educate or to teach,’ the editor began, ‘the German university is
above all other things a temple of science.’ The author also admired the
academic freedom of German universities, which had been repeatedly and
eVusively extolled in Lexis’s work. Interestingly, the editor saw in this freedom
a kinship with the political ideals of the United States, and therefore
267 Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (Boston: Houghton MiZin, 1961), 340.
268 Wilhelm Lexis (ed.), Das Unterrichtswesen im Deutschen Reich: Aus Anlaß der Weltaus-
tellung in St. Louis unter Mitwirkung zahlreicher Fachmänner herausgegeben, 4 vols. (Berlin,
1904).
269 Ibid. i. 61–76.
270 Ibid. 74–6.
concluded that it was only right and good for Americans to follow the lead of
German universities—something American educators had already been doing
for some time. ‘Academic liberty’, the editor wrote,
makes the German university of kin to the constitution of our country. No wonder
that between the German university and the United States a deep sympathy obtains.
We Americans at least have . . . regarded the German university system as the best
realization of the noblest idea of all higher education. . . . [T]he spirit that animates the
German universities must and will Wnd and to some extent has already found a home
on this side of the Atlantic, in the country of political liberty and humanitarian
aspirations.271
5. ‘ THE AGE O F GE RMAN FOOTNOTES’:

VISITORS FROM ABROAD, ADMIRERS FROM AFAR
[A] generation that dreamed of nothing but the German University . . .

German scholarship was our master and guide.
Josiah Royce, 1891
Long before the world fairs, German universities had roused the interest of
American and other foreign students, scholars, and educators. In part this was
a consequence of expanded means of communication and publication, wide-
spread immigration, and a rising literate middle class smitten by prospects of
scientiWc progress and education as a means of social mobility. The increased
ability to travel, moreover, whether by steamship, train, or more traditional
means, also facilitated this interest, as it opened up new possibilities for cross-
cultural interaction and knowledge. Between 1870 and 1905 the number of
foreign students attending German universities increased by almost seventy
percent.272 From the United States alone in the nineteenth century came an
estimated nine to ten thousand students.273 An age of historicism, the nine-
teenth century was thus also one of increased international academic exchange.
This fact had great consequence not only for those who personally visited
German universities but also for educators the world over who found them-
selves increasingly confronted and often captivated by the ‘German model’.274
271 ‘The German Universities at the World’s Fair’, The Monist 4 (Chicago, 1893–4): 106–8.
272 Jarausch, Students, Society, and Politics in Imperial Germany, 38.
273 Diehl, Americans and German Scholarship, 1770–1870, 1.
274 In the following discussion I restrict my focus largely to French, British, and American
visitors to and admirers of German universities. However, the example of the German university
was also inXuential in Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, and as far away as Japan. See HUE iii. 163–230.
No doubt it would be a quixotic errand to survey here the vast literature left
by foreign visitors or second-hand commentators on German universities in
the nineteenth century.275 Even if I restricted my focus to those who remarked
directly on theology and theological faculties, it would remain a daunting
task, rendered more diYcult still by the fact that observations made while
abroad under the inXuence of unfamiliar conditions are often exaggerated,
prejudiced, and/or based on partial knowledge. Nevertheless, if we keep in
mind these limitations, the body of opinion on German universities and
academic theology left by foreigners is suYciently insightful (even unanimous
in certain aspects) that it should not be passed over, even if we must proceed
here in a rather selective and sketchy manner. What is more, the perception of
outsiders can often exhibit a keen perceptiveness, inaccessible to insiders of
any given institution.
With respect to Protestant academic theology, outsiders’ insights are valu-
able for at least three reasons. First, the general shape of theological study
rarely failed to elicit extreme reactions. Students and scholars of a conserva-
tive religious bent often decried the innovative and unorthodox currents of
German theology; denunciations of German ‘inWdelity’ and ‘rationalism’
abound in the literature. Those of a more progressive outlook, conversely,
more often admired German theology for its critical, liberal spirit; some even
compared the work of German theologians to the Wrst Christians or to the
Reformers for eVecting a watershed in humanity’s religious and intellectual
emancipation.
Second, a signiWcant number of foreign observers commented, often rather
critically, on the relationship of university theology to the state. This was
particularly true of visitors from the United States, who tended to regard
Germany’s Erastian proclivities as inimical to heartfelt, voluntary faith. But,
Wnally, whether one reacted favourably or unfavourably, few failed to acknow-
ledge the intellectual rigor of theology in Germany and its ties to the ideals of
academic freedom and pioneering research. For whatever reasons and to
whatever future eVect, visitors and other interested parties abroad regularly
concluded that Germany was leading the way in reinvigorating the age-old
interplay between Athens and Jerusalem, knowledge and faith. And just as
statesmen in the nineteenth century had to reckon with the French Revolu-
tion, religious elites—scholars, clergymen, and knowledgeable laypeople
275 For helpful introductions to some of this literature, see Ronald L. Gougher, ‘Comparison
of English and American Views of the German University, 1840–1865: A Bibliography’, HEQ 9
(1969): 477–91; Lenore O’Boyle, ‘Learning for its Own Sake: The German University as
Nineteenth-Century Model’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 25 (January 1983): 3–
25; and Rainer Christoph Schwinges (ed.), Humboldt International: Der Export des deutschen
Universitätsmodells im 19. und 20.Jahrhundert (Basle: Schwabe, 2001).
alike—were regularly confronted by the peril and promise of German aca-
demic theology. Like the great Revolution itself, it divided individuals even as
it bound them by shared fascination.
Not surprisingly perhaps, among the Wrst major post-revolutionary, foreign
work to awaken interest in German universities and theology was Madame de
Staël’s De l’Allemagne. Based on her travels throughout Germany between
1803 and 1807, the work was Wrst published in 1810. Replete with question-
able generalizations and coloured by the author’s own sympathies, the work
nonetheless had the eVect of calling international attention, at a time of
French hegemony, to important aspects of German culture.276
While best known for her high regard for German literature, de Staël also
expressed admiration for Germany’s universities and devoted an entire chap-
ter to discussing their operations and merits. In her view the German
universities surpassed all others: ‘All the north of Germany is Wlled with the
most learned universities of Europe.’277 She regarded German professors as
both savants and pedagogues: ‘Not only are the professors men of astonishing
education, but what distinguishes them above all else is their extreme scru-
pulousness in the art of teaching.’278 For these and other reasons, she con-
cluded, the German universities had signiWcantly contributed to ‘the native
land of thought’ (la patrie de la pensées) as she termed Germany, where ‘the
genius of philosophy goes further than anywhere else’.279
Repeating a Protestant commonplace, de Staël held that the legacy of the
Reformation provided the key to understanding the achievements of German
higher education.280 Protestant thinkers and theologians, brought to promin-
ence ‘by means of the universities’, had exerted in her view an intellectual
presence unmatched by their Catholic counterparts in the predominantly
southern universities. ‘Since that epoch [of the Reformation],’ she wrote, ‘the
Protestant universities have been incontestably superior to the Catholic ones,
and the literary glory of Germany depends altogether on these institutions.’281
276 My citations are from the 1958–1960 edn.: De Staël, De’l’Allemagne, 5 vols. (Paris:
Hachette, 1958–60). Cf. the German and English translations: De Staël, Deutschland, 3 vols.
(Berlin, 1814), and De Staël, Germany, 3 vols. (London, 1813). On de Staël generally and her
inXuence, see John Claiborne Isbell, The Birth of European Romanticism: Truth and Propaganda
in Stäel’s De’l’Allemagne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). Also of relevance are
the letters of her English travel partner, Henry Crabb Robinson (1775–1867). See Edith J. Morley
(ed.), Henry Crabb Robinson in Germany, 1800–1805: Extracts from his Correspondence (Oxford,
1929).
277 De Staël, De l’Allemagne, i. 244.
278 Ibid. 258.
279 Ibid. 21, 245.
280 Cf. the book by her friend and correspondent, Charles de Viller, Essai sur l’esprit et
l’inXuence de la reformation de Luther (Paris, 1804).
281 De Staël, De l’Allemagne, v. 63.
The particular genius of German Protestantism, she elaborated, was its ability
to wed Wrst-order intellectual inquiry with committed piety. She thus idealized
‘Protestant leaders in Germany’ for achieving ‘the union of a lively faith with the
spirit of inquiry. Their reason did no injury to their belief, nor their belief to
their reason; and their moral faculties were always put into simultaneous
action.’
The fruit of Protestantism was borne out then most clearly in the northern
universities, where ‘theological questions have been most agitated’. ‘Among
German writers of the Protestant religion,’ she opined, subtly snubbing
France,
diVerent ways of thinking have prevailed, which have successively occupied attention.
Many learned men have made inquiries, unheard of before, into the Old and New
Testament. Michaelis [of Göttingen] has studied the languages, the antiquities, and
the natural history of Asia, to interpret the Bible; and while French philosophy was
making a jest of the Christian religion, they made it in Germany into the object of
erudition.
In the same vein, she praised ‘Schleiermacher and his disciples’ for simultan-
eously promoting piety and free inquiry and thereby achieving a truly ‘philo-
sophical theology’—something which she found neither in France, where
discord, she believed, prevailed between faith and reason, nor in the Catholic
church generally, which, she held, had placed dogma and authority above
knowledge and truth-seeking.282
Because of de Staël’s disparaging comments about her native country,
Napoleon banned and sought to destroy De l’Allemagne upon its initial
publication 1810. But this perhaps only contributed to its eventual success;
it was republished (in French) in London in 1813 and quickly translated into
English and German. Boosted by the popularity of this work, a greater interest
in German intellectual and cultural life came to preoccupy many European
thinkers, writers, and statesmen.283
While the revolutionary-Napoleonic period had witnessed the overhaul of
French education at all levels, the Restoration compromised or reversed many
changes. The Catholic Church, for example, regained many powers over
education lost during the Revolution. Not surprisingly, therefore, a fresh
impetus for educational reform swept liberal circles during the July Revolu-
tion of 1830.284 This took place at a time when Prussia, under the educational
leadership of Altenstein and Schulze, was gaining widespread attention for its
university and secondary systems of education. In the early 1830s the French
282 Ibid. 27 V.
283 Isbell, The Birth of European Romanticism, 1–10.
284 Theodore Zeldin, ‘Higher Education in France, 1848–1940’, JCH 2 (1967): 55.
government, therefore, decided to commission an oYcial study of education
in Prussia and other German states. The product of this commission, under-
taken by the philosopher and head of the École Normale, Victor Cousin
(1792–1867), resulted in his inXuential Rapport sur l’état de l’instruction
publique dans quelques pays de l’Allemagne, et particulièrement en Prusse
(1832). Based on Wrst-hand contact with educators and oYcials from across
the Rhine, the study focused heavily on the Prussian secondary schools and
the state’s administration of education, but it touched, glowingly, on univer-
sities as well. While in Berlin, Cousin met with Minister Schulze almost on a
daily basis, and he developed great respect for the University of Berlin.285 The
translation of his work into English by Sarah Austin in 1834 gave it a much
wider audience: through Cousin, numerous educational leaders in Great
Britain and the United States Wrst came to have a high regard for Prussian
educational institutions.286
SigniWcantly, Cousin believed that the role of the state acting through the
Ministry of Culture was of decisive importance for the successful shaping of
higher education in Prussia. The Ministry of Altenstein and Schulze, he wrote,
allowed for ‘complete unity in the central point, from which all emanates and
to which all is addressed’. Accordingly, ‘science assumes her proper place in
the state’—precisely what he thought France lacked, despite its own central-
ized system dating from the université impériale of 1808. Although Cousin did
not take a keen interest in theological education per se, he did Wnd it salutary
that ‘faculties of theology’—unlike in France where clerical education took
place largely in seminaries supervised by bishops—formed ‘an integral part of
public instruction.’287
Other Frenchmen took a stronger interest in German theology. Indeed,
despite confessional, linguistic, and institutional disparities between the two
nations, aspects of German theology regularly made their way into France
throughout the nineteenth century. Often this was a matter of individual
scholars familiarizing themselves with German scholarship, visiting univer-
sities across the Rhine, or corresponding with professors on topics of shared
interest. In 1858 a journal, La Revue germanique, was founded with the
explicit purpose of following the latest trends in German theological
285 Cousin had already spent time in Berlin in the 1820s. See Hermann Joseph Ody, Victor
Cousin: Ein Lebensbild im deutsch-franzöischen Kulturraum (Saarbrücken: West-Ost, 1953),
54–60.
286 On Cousin’s reception in the United States, see James Turner and Paul Bernard, ‘The
Prussian Road to University? German Models and the University of Michigan, 1837–c.1895’,
Rackham Reports (1989): 13–14, 41. Cf. Henry A. Pochman, German Culture in America 1600–
1900, (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1961), 102–8.
287 Cousin, ‘Report on the State of Public Instruction in Prussia’, trans. Sarah Austin, in Edgar
W. Knight (ed.), Reports on European Education (New York, 1930), 123–5 (emphasis added).
scholarship and spreading historical-critical methods. The editors hailed
Germany as the land of ‘critical study’ where ‘ideas are produced and con-
sumed prodigiously’.288 The frankness of this journal in expressing doubts
about orthodox doctrines regularly alarmed the Catholic clergy in France,
provoking numerous debates between orthodox churchmen and the journal’s
editors.289
Perhaps the best known (if not necessarily representative) example of a
French scholar looking to Germany for inspiration is that of Ernest Renan
(1823–92). Already in the 1840s he had become persuaded of the superiority
of German critical scholarship, even though it had led him to doubt the truths
of Christianity.290 In 1849 he published a short article, ‘Les Historiens critique
de Jesus’, which made clear his debt to German historical-critical scholar-
ship.291 This proved an important step towards his more signiWcant work of
1863, La Vie de Jésus, in which he portrayed Jesus as a purely historical
character, a humble Galilean preacher, devoid of any supernatural element.
Not unlike Strauss’s Leben Jesu earlier in the century, Renan’s book engen-
dered sensational controversy, conWrming in the minds of more orthodox
believers the perils of drinking too deeply from the wells of German the-
ology.292
Not only individuals but institutions played leading roles in transmitting
theological ideas across the Rhine. Dubbed a ‘hydra of Germanism’ by
revolutionaries in the 1790s, the University of Strasbourg played a unique
role in this respect throughout the century, both before and after Alsace was
annexed to a uniWed Germany.293 Chartered as a Protestant university in
1621, converted into an ‘academy’ in Napoleon’s université system after
1808, the Alsatian institution managed to keep alive its German heritage,
despite contrary eVorts by the French government. Members of Strasbourg’s
Protestant theological faculty (one of only two Protestant faculties in France,
the other being at Montauban) in particular maintained close contact with
ideas and peers across the Rhine, and regularly transmitted the fruit of
German scholarship to their colleagues in France.294 In this respect, Stras-
288 See the editors opening statement, ‘De l’esprit français et de l’esprit allemand’, La Revue
germanique 1 (1858): 1–20.
289 Claude Digeon, La crise allemande de la pensée française (Paris: Presses universitaires de
France 1959), 42.
290 ODCC 1383.
291 See Renan, Œuvres complètes, vii (Calmann-Lévy, 1955), 116–67.
292 Vytas Gaigalas, Ernest Renan and his French Catholic Critics (North Quincy, Mass.:
Christopher, 1972), 33 V.
293 Gustav Anrich, Die Kaiser-Wilhelms-Universität Straßburg in ihrer Bedeutung für die
Wissenschaft, 1872–1918 (Berlin, 1923).
294 The Strasbourg Protestant faculty was founded in 1818. See RGG vi. 413. On the
Reformed-Protestant theological faculty at Montauban, see RGG iv. 1119.
bourg’s Protestant theologians occupied a singular cultural niche in France, as
John Craig has noted; they ‘saw it as their mission to mediate between French
and German research or, more accurately, to introduce the French to the
methods and results of German research’.295 What is more, Alsatian students,
for evident linguistic reasons, were much more likely than other students in
France to spend several semesters studying at German universities, which they
regularly came to admire more than their own. ‘Of our students returning
from tours of the universities across the Rhine,’ a Strasbourg professor wrote
in 1870, ‘there is not one who fails to note . . . the relative inferiority of our
institutions.’296
As is well documented, French higher education after 1870 experienced a
major crisis, one that in many ways mirrored the crisis of Prussia after 1806—
a historical parallel not lost on contemporaries. France’s defeat at the hands
Bismarck’s Prussia strengthened the tendency among educational reformers,
already underway for several decades, to disparage French science and higher
learning and compare them unfavourably to ‘la science germanique’. Early
nineteenth-century eductional reforms under Napoleon had reached the end
of their line, many argued, and the new situation called for ‘research’ and the
‘university idea’ according to the German model.297 Drawing a direct histor-
ical analogy to Prussia in 1806, Renan called for the intellectual revitalization
of the nation and for scholars and intellectuals to lead the way. After 1806 ‘the
University of Berlin [became] the centre of the regeneration of Germany’, he
wrote, suggesting that a similar regeneration should occur in France, even if
Germany should by no means be imitated slavishly.298
Such reformist sentiments gained momentum in the late 1870s when a
small but inXuential group of scholars and scientists—including Ernest Renan
himself, Ernest Lavisse, Émile Boutmy, Paul Bert, Hippolyte Taine, Fustel de
Coulanges, Paul Gide, Louis Pasteur, and Marcellin Berthelot—formed the
Société de l’Enseignement Superéieur and founded the journal, Revue inter-
nationale de l’enseignement. Dedicated to helping France recapture its once
recognized leadership in science and scholarship, this society and its journal
became powerful forces of educational reform during the Third Republic.299
SigniWcantly, nearly all members of the society had cultivated close contacts
295 Craig, Scholarship and Nation Building, 11.

296 Charles Schützenberg, De la réform de l’enseignement supérieur et des libertés universitaires
(Strasbourg, 1870), 73; quoted in Craig, Scholarship and Nation Building, 19.
297 HUE iii. 639, and Louis Liard, L’Enseignement supérieur en France, 1789–1893 (Paris,
1894), ii. 335.
298 See H. W. Wardman, Ernest Renan: A Critical Biography (London: Athlone, 1964), 128.
299 On the stagnation and decline of French science after the 1820s, see Ben-David, The
Scientist’s Role in Society, 88–107, and The Sorcerer’s Apprentice: The French Scientist’s Image of
German Science, 1840–1919 (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1972).
with German universities, and German scholarship, while not above criticism,
was regularly commended for its methodological rigour and thoroughness.300
Major educational reform eventually did take place in France in the 1880s
and 1890s. In 1895–6, most notably, legislation was passed that allowed for
the re-establishment of universities with multiple faculties (something not
seen since the Revolution) in partial imitation of the German model. This
eVectively brought to an end the long reign of the Napoleonic université with
its network of academies and isolated faculties.301 While the reforms at
century’s end defy monocausal explanation, the persistent invocation of the
German example by reformers was everywhere apparent, spurring change if
not always in predictable directions. ‘If there was a single continuing thread in
this complex story,’ George Weisz has summed up, ‘it was the struggle to
expand the social role of higher studies in France, with German universities
serving as a model.’302
In contrast to Germany, however, theology had little place in late nine-
teenth-century French universities. Clerical education and training largely
remained, as it had since the 1801 Concordat between Napoleon and the
Pope, in the hands of diocesan seminaries. In 1905, the formal separation of
church and state in France drove a yet deeper wedge between theological
education and the public higher education, belatedly fulWlling some of the
original impulses of the 1789 Revolution.303
On this count, the situation across the Rhine diVered markedly.
As Napoleon’s empire rose and fell, English scholars and theologians,
whether through Wrst-hand experience or second-hand reports, had begun
to take a greater interest in German universities. Even prior to this time,
signiWcant academic connections existed between the two countries. This had
300 Between 1878 and 1890, the Revue internationale de l’enseignement published thirty
articles on German education, compared to nine on that of Britain, Wve on that of the United
States, and six on that of Belgium. See George Weisz, The Emergence of Modern Universities in
France, 1863–1914 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 66.
301 Weisz, The Emergence of Modern Universities in France, 135–61. On the design and
functioning of the l’université impériale, see F. A. Aulard, Napoléon et le monopole universitaire:
origines et fonctionnement de l’université impériale (Paris, 1911).
302 Weisz, The Emergence of Modern Universities in France, 368.
303 Article 11 of the 1801 Concordat stated that ‘the bishops can have a chapter in their
cathedrals and a seminary for their dioceses, without the Government being under obligation to
endow them’. While some theological faculties were part of Napoleon’s Imperial University, the
Catholic church actively opposed them because of their statist character. See John McManners,
Church and State in France, 1870–1914 (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), 140 V. For more
details on the social setting of theological education in France in the nineteenth century, see
Bruno Nevo, ‘L’Église, l’état et l’université: les facultés de theologie catholique en France au XIXe
siècle’, in Nigel Aston (ed.), Religious Change in Europe: Essays for John McManners (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1997), 325–44, and Bruno Nevo, L’Église et l’université de France: les facultés de
théologie catholique des academies (1808–1885) (Paris: Université de Paris II, 1998).
been mediated in part through the Scottish universities, which, lacking the
Anglican restrictions of Oxford and Cambridge, allowed for freer intercourse
with the Continent.304 It was also facilitated by way of the University of
Göttingen, which was administered until 1837 under the joined British and
Hanoverian crowns. In theology, the works of English deism had been
particularly inXuential at Göttingen and many were translated into Ger-
man.305 In biblical criticism, German scholars had attentively read the Oxford
scholar Robert Lowth (1710–87), particularly his De sacra poesi Hebraeorum
(1753).306 This work inXuenced Heyne, Michaelis, and Eichhorn of Göttingen
and, through them, laid the foundation for the ‘myth interpretation’ of
biblical miracles. In turn Michaelis’s commentary on the New Testament
was translated into English in 1793 by Herbert Marsh, Fellow at Oxford’s
St. John’s College, who claimed in his preface that German theology had
become the most learned in Europe.307 In 1798 Samuel Taylor Coleridge made
his famous travels to the Continent, further opening up to Anglo-American
thinkers the horizons of German theology, biblical scholarship, literature, and
philosophy.308 The translation of de Staël’s writings in 1813 had a similar
eVect.
Nonetheless, despite exceptions like Marsh and Coleridge, much ignorance
about German universities and theology still prevailed in Britain at the
beginning of the nineteenth century. Only a handful of scholars attempted
to explain what was going on in Germany, and their work was either ignored
or viewed suspiciously.309 This attitude manifested itself, for example, in
copious warnings by Anglican divines to be on guard against the seductions
of ‘German rationalism’ or the ‘infections of German divinity’. In some
quarters an interest in the German language could even arouse suspicions
of heresy. Cambridge’s Connop Thirlwall, the Wrst English translator of
Schleiermacher, could thus note in 1825 that
it would almost seem as if at Oxford the knowledge of German subjected a divine to
the same suspicion of heterodoxy which we know was attached some centuries back to
304 George Haines, German InXuence upon English Education and Science, 1800–1866 (New
London: Connecticut College, 1957), 3.
305 A. O. Doyson, ‘Theological Legacies of the Enlightenment: England and Germany’, in S.
W. Sykes (ed.), England and Germany: Studies in Theological Diplomacy (Frankfurt am Main:
Peter Lang, 1982), 55 V.
306 On Lowth, see ODCC 1000.
307 J. D. Michaelis, Introduction to the New Testament, trans. Herbert Marsh, 2nd edn.
(1802), 1.
308 On Coleridge in Germany, see F. W. Stokoe, German InXuence in the English Romantic
Period (New York: Russell & Russell, 1963), 89–143.
309 David Forrester, Young Doctor Pusey: A Study in Development (London: Mowbray, 1989),
33–4.
Greek; as if it was thought . . . that a German theologian is dangerous enough when he
writes in Latin, but that when he argues in his own language there can be no escaping
his venom.310
Such an attitude toward German theology coloured H. J. Rose’s Discourses on
the State of Protestant Religion in Germany (1826), Wrst given as a set of
sermons at Cambridge in 1825 on the biblical text: ‘thy wisdom and know-
ledge hath perverted thee’ (Isaiah 47: 10). Based on his own travels to the
Continent, Rose warned fellow Anglicans to take heed, for the scant inXuence
exercised by German churchman over universities had led to a dangerous
state of aVairs in Protestant theology, one in which unbelieving professors had
obtained ‘the greater number of divinity-professorships in the many univer-
sities of Germany’.311 Rose’s alarmist treatise set the tone, in the century’s
middle decades, for the reception of German theology among conservative
churchmen.
Nonetheless, the steady rise to pre-eminence of German universities and
scholarship worked to elicit greater English admiration and respect.312 This
was particularly the case among more progressive Anglicans, or ‘Broad
Churchmen’, as well as among Unitarians and freethinkers, who deplored
the Church of England’s tight grip over the universities (maintained by
mandatory religious tests). But it could also characterize more conservative
spirits, who, despite wariness toward German’s putative heterodoxy, admitted
that German theological scholarship could be neither ignored nor easily
refuted. One such conservative was the future Tractarian leader E. B. Pusey
(1800–82), who spent time at Göttingen and Berlin in the late 1820s and
afterwards published An Historical Enquiry into the Probable Causes of the
Rationalist Character Lately Predominant in the Theology of Germany (1828;
vol. ii, 1830). This work reXected the author’s personal encounters with
Schleiermacher, Neander, Nitzsch, Nösselt, Lücke, Tholuck, and other theo-
logians. Tholuck’s lectures on modern church history, in fact, provided the
basis for Pusey’s own work.313
310 See the translator’s introduction to Friedrich Schleiermacher, A Critical Essay on St. Luke’s
Gospel, trans. Connop Thirlwall (London, 1825), p. ix. On Schleiermacher’s reception in Britain
in the nineteenth century, see Ieuan Ellis, ‘Schleiermacher in Britain’, SJT 33 (1980): 417–52.
This article also touches on the reception of German theology more generally.
311 See H. J. Rose, The State of Protestantism in Germany Described, 2nd edn. (London,
1829), 1.
312 Haines, German InXuence upon English Science and Education, passim. One might con-
sider the translation of B. G. Niebuhr’s Römische Geschichte between 1828 and 1832 as an
important turning point; its display of historical source criticism (Quellenkritik) inXuenced
both theological and non-theological scholarship. See D. Andrews, ‘German InXuence on
English Religious Life in the Victorian Era’, Evangelical Quarterly 44 (1972): 226.
313 Forrester, Young Doctor Pusey, 211.
Pusey intended his Historical Enquiry as a critique of ‘German rationalism’
and, simultaneously, a rebuttal to the more categorical critique levelled by H.
J. Rose. Pusey traced German rationalism back to Protestant ‘orthodoxism’ in
the seventeenth century, which, he held, had overly intellectualized Chris-
tianity and separated it from personal experience and the human will. Pusey
praised the rejuvenating spirit of pietism at the University of Halle, which he
likened to ‘Geneva of old, the heart from which the impulse of the new
principles became felt in every part of the system’. But pietism too had its
negative element according to Pusey; it fostered an individualism that in men
less pious than Spener or Francke led to contempt for proper church author-
ity. Throughout his work, Pusey attempted evenhandedness, seeking to con-
vince a sceptical English readership that even Germany’s most critical
theologians often exhibited ‘an earnestness of mind and love of their God’.
The methods of German scholarship, he also made clear, were second to
none—‘much more solid than . . . among us’, he had written to his friend,
John Henry Newman. Finally, Pusey predicted that a new era in theology
would be dated from Schleiermacher’s writings.314
Perceiving, however, a worrisome ‘gentle tone’ towards German theolo-
gians, Pusey’s critics, who included the inXuential Bishop Charles BlomWeld,
responded to his work with particular severity. Pusey later wrote to Tholuck
that some had called him a ‘rash innovator’ while others charged that he had
denied the inspiration of the Scriptures. Ironically then, because of Pusey’s
qualiWed esteem for German academic rigour, a work intended to criticize its
subject was perceived as a subtle defence of German theology. Pusey later
regretted writing the work and requested in his will that it not be repub-
lished.315
The controversy over German theology quietened down in the 1830s, at
which time Pusey himself became caught up in the High-Church renewal
known as the Tractarian or Oxford Movement.316 However, the controversy
was powerfully aggravated in 1846 after Marian Evans (later George Eliot)
translated into English Strauss’s Life of Jesus, reproducing in Britain some of
the same passionate quarrels and worries that had raged on the Continent
after the book’s original publication in 1835.317 A decade and half later, in
314 Forrester, Young Doctor Pusey, 32–50, 211 V.

315 Noted in Ellis, ‘Schleiermacher in Britain’, SJT 33 (1980): 427.
316 R. William Franklin explores the impact of Pusey’s time in Germany on the Oxford
Movement. See Franklin, ‘The Impact of Germany on the Anglican Catholic Revival in Nine-
teenth-Century Britain’, Anglican and Episcopal Church History 61 (December 1992): 433–48.
On the Oxford Movement in general, see ODCC 1205–6.
317 On the Strauss reception in Britain, which actually predated Eliot’s translation, see
Timothy Larson, Contested Christianity: The Political and Social Contexts of Victorian Theology
(Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press, 43–58.
1860, doubts and debate about German academic tendencies reappeared in
the wake of the publication of Essays and Reviews, a collection of essays by
seven Oxford scholars, who, drawing inspiration from German precedents,
called for a more forthright historical examination of the Bible, treating it ‘like
any other book’ subject ‘to the same rules of evidence and the same canons of
criticism’.318
It should not surprise that two of the leading essayists, Mark Pattison
(1813–84) and Benjamin Jowett (1817–93), had emerged at mid-century as
the leading advocates of university reform in England, each appealing to the
German model. While their ideas diverged at numerous points and they often
saw one another as rivals, they could at least agree that theological education
needed reform. For Pattison, who had travelled extensively in Germany in the
1850s, the modernization of theology and the reform of the university in fact
went hand in hand. Calling for the ‘scientiWc treatment of theology’, he
lamented the control that the Church of England had exercised over univer-
sity life, noting that ‘science or knowledge cannot exist under such a system; it
requires for its growth the air of free discussion and contradiction’.319 Jowett,
who also commanded Wrst-hand knowledge of Germany, considered the
current university system ‘abominable’, noting in particular that it ‘makes
true theology or theological education impossible’.320
Pattison and Jowett were not alone. The 1850s through the 1870s represent
an extraordinary period of criticism, discussion, and reform of English higher
education. Until this time, the sway of the past remained strong: the domin-
ance of Oxford and Cambridge remained largely unchallenged; the grip of the
Anglican church was Wrm;321 extensive powers resided in well-endowed,
individual colleges (not in the universities per se); pride was taken in the
318 On the inXuence of German theology and biblical criticism on this publication, see Victor
Shea and William Whitla (eds.), Essays and Reviews: The 1860 Text and its Reading (Charlottes-
ville, Va.: University Press of Virginia, 2000), 109–18, 180, 263, 278–9, 542–3, passim.
319 Mark Pattison, Memoirs (London, 1885), 317. Cf. Pattison, Suggestions on Academical
Organization, with Special Reference to Oxford (Edinburgh, 1868), in which he upheld the
German universities as models of research, and John Sparrow, Mark Pattison and the Idea of a
University (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967).
320 Eveyn Abbot and Lewis Campbell (eds.), The Life and Letters of Benjamin Jowett (London,
1897), 275. I should reiterate that Pattison and Jowett often had very diVerent ideas of how the
German example should be applied in Britain, and neither were hesitant to criticize certain
aspects of German higher education. See George Haines, Essays on German InXuence upon
English Education and Science, 1850–1919 (Hamden, Conn.: Archon, 1969), 90 V.
321 The one institution that actually challenged the Oxbridge, Anglican establishment was the
University of London (1836), a non-confessional state institution, which oVered a more
practical curriculum. Incidentally, the chief originator of this institution, Thomas Campbell,
had visited Germany and had the highest regard for its universities. In fact, the idea for a
metropolitan university in London occurred to him after visiting the University of Bonn in
1820. See Negley Harte, The University of London, 1836–1986 (London: Athlone, 1986), 61.
elitist and classical character of higher learning; and gentlemanly ideas of the
professor as belle-lettrist took precedence over newfangled, ‘German’ notions
of innovative research and criticism. It was a staple of the conservative press,
in fact, to portray the German scholar as a humourless pedant preoccupied
with arcane minutiae.
The rapid economic growth and industrialization of Germany during
this time, however, and the military and political events of 1866–71 power-
fully jolted the English system, forcing more and more Englishmen to
look enviously (and anxiously) to the Continent for educational and
scientiWc leadership.322 ‘To the student of Science,’ as one scholar wrote in
1861, reXecting the new attitude, ‘familiarity with German is essential;
without it he is cut oV from . . . the most earnest and successful cultivators
of every part of this vast domain [of science]; and we know men who would
willingly make any sacriWce in their power to recover, through the mastery of
that language, a quarter of the time that was bestowed . . . upon classical
study.’323
The growth of such sentiments after 1850 (despite the persistence of
countervailing ones) helped create a self-critical climate conducive to re-
form.324 This in turn spawned numerous scholarly discussions on the uni-
versity’s purpose, parliamentary debates on the future of higher education,
and a host of educational commissions and reports. In 1865, to cite one
signiWcant example, the poet and literary critic Matthew Arnold was charged
by the British Schools Enquiry Commission with the task of investigating
education on the Continent to help obtain a better comparative perspective.
After seven months abroad, Arnold published Schools and Universities on the
Continent (1868). Especially impressed by Germany, the ‘country in which
intellectual life has been carried the farthest’ as he once wrote,325 he repub-
lished part of his report in 1874 under the title Higher Schools and Universities
in Germany. Both books bear an epigraph from Wilhelm von Humboldt: ‘The
thing is not to let the schools and universities go on in a drowsy and impotent
322 Haines, Essays on German InXuence, 47 V.

323 ‘The Universities and ScientiWc Education’, Westminster Review 75 (April 1861): 396.
324 To be sure, the period prior to 1850 is not bereft of calls for educational reform and
appeals to the German university. For example, Walter C. Perry, in a survey of the history and
organization of German universities, concluded that, despite the heavy hand of the state,
Germany had produced a culture ‘where it is necessary to be serious, industrious, and wise’,
and its universities were the ‘admiration and delight’ of Europe. Accordingly, he found English
universities wanting and advocated Germany as a model for reform. See Walter C. Perry,
German University Education; or the Professors and Students of Germany (London, 1846), 2–3.
325 Letter of 6 Janaury 1865; quoted in Paul Nash’s introduction to Matthew Arnold, Culture
and the State: Matthew Arnold and Continental Education (New York: Teachers College Press,
1966), 18.
routine; the thing is, to raise the culture of the nation ever higher and higher
by their means.’326
Arnold’s chapter on ‘Superior or University Instruction in Prussia’ is
marked by uncritical, idealizing admiration. ‘The paramount university aim
in Germany’, he opined, ‘is to encourage a love of study and science for their
own sakes.’ For this and other reasons, Arnold esteemed the German univer-
sities above all others and recommended that their example be followed in
England.
Such . . . is the system of the German universities. Lehrfreiheit and Lernfreiheit, liberty
for the teacher and for the learner; and Wissenschaft, science, knowledge systematically
pursued and prized in and for itself are the fundamental ideas of that system. . . . It is
in science that we most need to borrow from the German universities. The French
university has no liberty, and the English universities have no science; the German
universities have both.327
But, again, Arnold’s report was but one of many reform eVorts—some
explicitly invoking the German example, some inspired by it, but others
neither. Already in 1850 a Royal Commission had introduced a number of
reforms, opening up the universities to more students, elevating the import-
ance of academic merit, expanding the professoriate, and challenging the
Anglican monopoly—thus paving the way for the abolition of mandatory
religious tests by the Universities Tests Act in 1871.328 Further commissions
and reports followed in the 1860s and 1870s, laying the groundwork for a host
of additional reforms, which, among other things, accelerated patterns of
specialization and professionalization, expanded academic freedom, in-
creased state involvement (although the persistence of corporate powers at
English universities remained pronounced), abolished clerical restrictions on
fellowships and college headships, and diverted funds from individual col-
leges for the uses of the universities, often for the purpose of establishing
prestigious chairs in particular Welds.329
All the while, more and more students travelled to Germany in search of
inspiration and scholarly expertise. ‘If a man wishes to make himself a
thorough scholar,’ wrote Mark Pattison in 1876, ‘he must go to Germany
326 Noted in S. M. Stirk, German Universities (London, 1946), 13–14.
327 Matthew Arnold, Schools and Universities on the Continent, ed. R. H. Super (Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 1964), 263–4.
328 On these religious tests and their abolition in 1871, see David Bebbington, ‘The Secular-
ization of British Universities since the mid-Nineteenth Century’, in George Marsden and
Bradley J. Longfellow (eds.), The Secularization of the Academy (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1992), 259–77.
329 On the extensive reforms during this period, see Christopher Harvie, ‘Reform and
Expansion, 1854–1871’, in M. G. Brock and M. C. Curthoys (eds.), The History of the University
of Oxford, (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), iv. 1. 697–730.
and learn method there, and improve by his eVorts on what he has learned.’330
For the many more who stayed at home, more translations were becoming
available. ‘What strides have been made . . . by the great intellect of Germany,’
one scholar wrote; ‘all our deeper books in grammar, history, science, and
theology come from thence.’331 (In 1850, incidentally, Schleiermacher’s Kurz
Darstellung des theologischen Studiums had been translated into English by the
Congregationalist William Farrer.332) Furthermore, German scholars were no
strangers to English academic turf. Among several examples, two notable ones
include Friedrich Max Müller (more about him later) and Otto PXeiderer.
German by birth and education, Müller made his career at Oxford champion-
ing the comparative study of world religions.333 PXeiderer spent time in
both English and Scottish universities; in 1890 he published (in English)
The Development of Theology since Kant and its Progress in Great Britain
since 1825. GratiWed by what he perceived as the British appropriation of
German Kritik throughout the century, PXeiderer ended the book with the
grand assertion that ‘the days of a Newman and a Pusey are forever past for
Oxford and for England’.334
In sum, the modernization and reform of English universities in the second
half of the nineteenth century owes much to the German impetus and inXu-
ence, directly in some cases, but more often indirectly, a persistent external
goad, as it were, to pursue internal reforms. As in France, the nature of the
reforms deWes simple summary and monocausal explanation, and in no way
did they simply aim to reproduce the German system: criticism and attentive-
ness to indigenous traditions accompanied every new step. Nonetheless, a
common denominator in such projects during this whole period was the
catalysing eVect of German scholarship and university norms, particularly as
championed (and, admittedly, often idealized or misunderstood) by those
who themselves had studied or travelled in Germany. As George Haines has
nicely summed up, ‘[T]he widely and continuously cited German example, the
intensively fostered fear of German industrial competition, and the German
experience of many of the leading teachers played important roles in providing
an impulse [for university reform].’ Or, as Lord Acton laconically put it in
1886, ‘every branch of [our] knowledge has felt its [Germany’s] inXuence’.335
330 Mark Pattison et al. (eds.), Essays on the Endowment of Research (London, 1876), 259.
331 Quoted in Haines, Essays on German InXuence, 95.
332 Schleiermacher, Brief Outline of the Study of Theology, trans. William Farrer (London, 1850).
333 RGG iv. 1172.
334 PXeiderer, The Development of Theology since Kant and its Progress in Great Britain since
1825 (London, 1890), 401.
335 Lord Acton, ‘German Schools of History’, English Historical Review 1 (1886): 39. It is
worth noting that this essay on German scholarship was the lead article in the initial volume of
England’s Wrst major national journal of professional historiography.
As one might surmise, the build-up to and outbreak of war with Germany
in 1914 gave many British educators and scholars pause, prompting a critical
reassessment of German inXuences. But in many cases, such reassessments
only made clear, often worrisomely clear, the extent of the prior inXuence. In
theology this was particularly true. ‘For well nigh a century’, the Unitarian
minister Lawrence Pearsall Jacks wrote in 1915,
Germany has been the source, or the chief source, of the movements and ‘tendencies’
which have kept the theological mind of the world in a state of perpetual unrest. There
is no denying the immense contribution which German thinkers have made to
theological science in all its departments. But these contributions have been so
numerous, so disturbing, so various . . . that to follow them was to dance attendance
on a feather tossed by the wind. I am not in the least concerned to underestimate the
debts which so many of us owe to individual German thinkers; but I do not hesitate to
say that the net result on British theology of the paramount German inXuence has
been to produce a degree of confusion and unrest. . . . Nor can there be a doubt that
our habit of leaning on the German prop, and supporting our arguments by German
footnotes, has greatly restricted the range of our own originality. . . . And now, all of a
sudden, that prop has been knocked away from us.336
The country destined to absorb the most extensive inXuence from German
universities was neither Great Britain nor France, but the United States.
Lacking their own long-standing university traditions, Americans Xocked to
Germany in the mid- and late nineteenth century to complete their education
and take in the latest developments and techniques in a wide variety of
academic Welds.337 The list of distinguished Americans who spent time in
German universities reads like a survey course in nineteenth-century Ameri-
can intellectual history: George Ticknor, Edward Everett, Joseph Green Cogs-
well, George Bancroft, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Noah Porter, Edward
Robinson, Timothy Dwight, Daniel Coit Gilman, Andrew Dickson White,
Henry Adams, Herbert Baxter Adams, Nicholas Murray Butler, Henry E.
Dwight, and thousands more sought out and gained intellectual nourishment
in German institutions. Many went on to become leaders in their Welds and
sought to adapt what they had learned to American conditions. As President
336 Lawrence Pearsall Jacks, ‘A Theological Holiday—And After’, Hibbert Journal 14 (1915): 5.
Jacks characterized the pre-1914 period as ‘the age of German footnotes’ in this article. Cf.
Stuart Wallace, War and the Image of Germany: British Academics 1914–1918 (Edinburgh: John
Donald, 1988).
337 There had been limited American contact with German universities prior to the nine-
teenth century. Cotton Mather, for example, had corresponded with Francke at Halle, and the
fame of this university was known to many Puritan leaders. Benjamin Franklin had visited the
Royal Society of Science at Göttingen in 1766 and became acquainted with the university there
as well. A few students had also frequented Göttingen in the late eighteenth century. See Daniel
B. Shumway, ‘Göttingen’s American Students’, German-American Review 3 (June 1937): 21 V.
Frederick Barnard of Columbia University put it in 1886: ‘[I]n past years it
has seemed to be an impression almost universally prevailing among the
young men . . . with aspirations for making a career in a learned or scientiWc
profession . . . that a residence of one or more years at a German university
was indispensable to anything like signal success.’338 Similarly, George Mars-
den has noted that by the late nineteenth century ‘it would be rare to Wnd
either a university leader or a major scholar who had not spent some years
studying in Germany’.339
The Wrst American scholars of note to spend extensive time at German
universities were the New Englanders George Ticknor and Edward Everett,
who set sail together for Göttingen on 16 April 1815. Ticknor, incidentally,
was inspired to make the trip after reading de Staël’s De l’Allemagne.340 The
diaries, memoirs and correspondence of these men oVer a rich and revealing
picture of early nineteenth-century German academic life from an American
perspective.341 A letter of Ticknor’s to his friend Thomas JeVerson (soon to
found the University of Virginia) from October of 1815 sheds particular light
on Germany’s already vaunted academic freedom and its impact on theo-
logical study:
Every day books appear . . . [on] religion which in the rest of Europe would be
suppressed by the state. . . . They get perhaps a severe review or a severe answer, but
there [sic] are weapons which both parties can use and unfairness is very uncommon.
Indeed everything in Germany seems to me to be measured by the genius of acuteness
or learning it discovers without reference to previous opinion or future consequences
to an astonishing and sometimes alarming degree. . . . If truth is to be obtained by
freedom of inquiry, as I doubt not it is, the German professors and literati are certainly
in the high road.342
Following the path of Ticknor and Everett, George Bancroft, later to
become the United States’ Wrst distinguished historian, began his studies at
Göttingen in 1818, supported by a scholarship from Harvard. At Wrst Bancroft
intended to pursue theology, but he switched his focus to philology, history,
and philosophy, and received his doctoral degree in 1820 from the philo-
sophical faculty. Thereafter he studied for a semester in Berlin, which he
338 Quoted in Herbst, German Historical School in American Scholarship, 2.

339 George M. Marsden, The Soul of the American University: From Protestant Establishment to
Established Nonbelief (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 104. Cf. Laurence R. Veysey’s
discussion of the ‘lure of the German university’ in The Emergence of the American University
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), 125–32.
340 William Long, Literary Pioneers: Early American Explorers of European Culture (New York:
Russell & Russell, 1963), 5.
341 See esp. The Life, Letters, and Journals of George Ticknor (Boston, 1876).
342 Letter from Ticknor to JeVerson, 14 October 1815; quoted in Long, Literary Pioneers,
19–20.
enjoyed better than Göttingen. During his studies, Bancroft rubbed shoulders
with some of Germany’s leading academic lights: Eichhorn, Planck, Stäudlin,
Wolf, Schleiermacher, Savigny, Boeckh, and Hegel, among others. He also
traveled to Weimar and met Goethe, as had his American predecessors. In
contrast to Ticknor, who celebrated German theology, Bancroft evinced a
more circumspect attitude. In a letter to President John T. Kirkland of
Harvard, he expressed himself candidly on the matter:
I add one word about German theology. I have nothing to do with it, except so far as it
is merely critical. Of their inWdel systems I hear not a word; and I trust I have been too
long under your eye . . . to be in danger of being led away from the religion of my
Fathers. . . . I say this explicitly because before I left home I heard frequently expressed
fears, lest I should join the German School.343
Bancroft also complained of a deWcit of religious sentiment in Göttingen’s
theological lecture halls. ‘I have never heard anything,’ he wrote, ‘like moral or
religious feeling manifested in their theological lectures. . . . The bible is trea-
ted with very little respect, and the narratives are laughed at as an old wife’s
tale, Wt to be believed in the nursery.’344
Bancroft grew to dislike other aspects of his surroundings at the Georgia
Augusta. He deplored the ‘barbarian’ customs of the bearded, duelling,
drinking students, whom he described as ‘more hairy than the wild father
of the Ishmaelites’. The semester he spent in Berlin, therefore, proved to be a
welcome change. In fact, he was overwhelmed by the Prussian capital, its
university, and the professors he met there. ‘No Government,’ he wrote,
‘knows so well how to create Universities and high schools as the Prussians.’
‘How glad I am that I left Göttingen,’ he noted elsewhere, ‘to pass the winter in
Berlin! What can be more gloriously interesting than intimate communion
with the vast minds which are found here?’ Among Berlin’s ‘vast minds’,
Schleiermacher appears to have appealed to him the most. ‘I honour Schleier-
macher above all German scholars. He abounds in wit and is inimitable in
satire; yet he has a perfectly good heart, is generous and obliging.’ Impressed
by Schleiermacher’s ability to wed criticism and religious sentiment, Bancroft
even considered, despite earlier reservations about theology, devoting his life
to ‘raising among us [in America] a degraded and neglected branch of study,
which in itself is so noble, and to aid in establishing a thorough school of
Theological Critics’—something he never pursued further, devoting his sub-
sequent career to history and politics instead.345
343 Long, Literary Pioneers, 115.

344 Ibid. 120–21
345 Quoted in Herbst, German Historical School in American Scholarship, 76.
The pioneering studies of Ticknor, Everett, Bancroft, and others paved the
way for what one scholar has called ‘the great migration of American students
to German universities throughout the nineteenth century’.346 Not surpris-
ingly, many students devoted their energies to theology. Throughout the Wrst
two-thirds of the century, in fact, statistical evidence indicates that the
theological faculty, next only to the philosophical faculty, witnessed the
most frequent academic commitment by American students—leading over
the other two professional faculties of law and medicine.347 One of these
theological students, Edward Robinson (1794–1863), left behind a remark-
able, and now largely overlooked, series of observations on ‘theological
education in Germany’ in the journal Biblical Repository, which he founded
in 1831.348 According to his biographers, this journal represented ‘the Wrst
grand impulse given to the American evangelical theology by the evangelical
theology of Germany’.349
Born in Connecticut in 1794, Robinson studied at Hamilton College in
New York and later under Moses Stuart at Andover Seminary in Massachu-
setts, which had become a (mostly) conservative stronghold of orthodox
Calvinism in contrast to more liberal tendencies at Harvard. Nonetheless,
under Stuart’s leadership, Andover sought to remain in contact with contem-
porary European theological developments, and Stuart therefore felt it neces-
sary ‘to master German critical studies and use them in the cause of
orthodoxy’.350 It was probably Stuart who Wrst suggested that Robinson
study in Germany.351 Thus, in 1826 at the age of 32 Robinson travelled
to Germany ‘in quest of philological opportunities’, as his biographers put
346 Diehl, Americans and German Scholarship, 1. Another major factor contributing to this
phenomenon was the interest in German studies among New England Transcendentalists and
Unitarians. See Pochman, German Culture in America, 207 V.
347 While precise numbers are elusive, Diehl notes that between 1810 and 1870, 15.9% of all
American students were enrolled in German theological faculties. For this period, it was the
largest percentage enrolment of the three higher faculties. See the ‘statistical tables of American
students in German universities’ in Diehl, Americans and German Scholarship, 155 V.
348 In 1843 Robinson founded another journal, Bibliotheca sacra. In 1851 the two journals
merged, using the title of Bibliotheca sacra.
349 Henry B. Smith and Roswell D. Hitchcock, The Life, Writings, and Character of Edward
Robinson (New York, 1863), 54–5.
350 Jerry Wayne Brown, The Rise of Biblical Criticism in America, 1800–1870 (Middletown,
Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1969), 97. Cf. Moses Stuart, ‘The Study of the German
Language’, Christian Review 6 (1841): 457 V. However, Andover’s board of trustees worried
that the study of German posed theological risks to the seminarians. In 1825, trustees appointed
a commission to investigate the problem. The commission reported that ‘the unrestrained
cultivation of German studies has evidently tended to chill the ardor of piety, to impair belief
in the fundamentals of revealed religion, and even to induce, for the time, an approach to
universal skepticism’. Quoted in Daniel D. Williams, The Andover Liberals; A Study in American
Theology (New York: King’s Crown, 1941), 17.
351 Brown, The Rise of Biblical Criticism in America, 112.
it.352 He spent the lion’s share of his time in Berlin, Göttingen, and Halle. In
1828 he married a German woman, Therese Albertine Luise von Jakob, the
daughter of Heinrich von Jakob, professor of philosophy and political studies
at Halle. This marriage greatly facilitated his entry into the world of German
scholarship, and his wife would later help translate some of his own works
into German. Returning with his new bride to America in 1830, Robinson
taught and served as the librarian at Andover; later he accepted a post at the
Union Theological Seminary in New York, which had been founded in
1836.353 For his extensive scholarship, heavily indebted to German models,
one scholar has called him the most accomplished and only internationally
renowned American biblical scholar before the Civil War.354
Drawing from time spent in German universities, the Wrst four volumes of
his Biblical Repository contained articles by Robinson on German theological
education and university life. After introducing the German university system
as a whole in the Wrst article, Robinson focused attention in the second on ‘the
course of studies at German universities’ for theology students and in the
third on theological examinations and the role of the state vis-à-vis theo-
logical faculties. In the fourth article he provided a translation of a student
handbook on ‘Directions for Theological Students Entering the University of
Halle’.355
A theological conservative, Robinson exhibited a fairly typical wariness of
the critical tendencies of German theology, often faulting university theolo-
gians for prioritizing scientiWc exertion over personal piety. ‘The students of
theology’, he wrote, ‘indeed have theological instruction, but it’s mostly of the
scientiWc kind; and although a pious professor sometimes takes occasion to
make an appeal to the hearts and consciences of his pupils, yet this is not
customary and would generally be regarded as travelling out of the way.’356
352 Smith and Hitchcock, The Life, Writings, and Character of Edward Robinson, 48.
353 At Union ‘Robinson [remained] conversant with the growing technical specialization of
the disciplines of theology as centered in German universities. . . . His work was highly inXuen-
tial in bringing the new seminary into the forefront of developments in theological education.’
See Robert T. Handy, A History of Union Theological Seminary in New York (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1987), 14.
354 See Brown, The Rise of Biblical Criticism in America, 124. For a brief overview of
Robinson’s life, see Dumas Malone (ed.), Dictionary of American Biography (New York, 1935),
xvi. 39–40. Robinson’s principal international renown came to be associated with his activities
as a historical geographer of biblical sites in Palestine. Of crucial signiWcance was his Biblical
Researches in Palestine, published simultaneously in Boston, London, and Halle in 1841. See
Albrecht Alt, ‘Edward Robinson and the Historical Geography of Palestine’, The Journal of
Biblical Literature 58 (1939): 373–7.
355 Each article was entitled ‘Theological Education in Germany’. The four-part series began
in January 1831 and concluded in October 1831. My citations will simply refer to Robinson,
‘Theological Education’ followed by the individual article number.
356 Robinson, ‘Theological Education’, III. 426.
‘[T]he students are never questioned in regard to their motives in thus
devoting themselves to the sacred oYce,’ he complained further, ‘nor in any
shape examined as to their personal piety, nor in respect to their belief in
revelation, or even in the existence in God.’ Consequently, one found in
German theological faculties, both among students and professors, individ-
uals who appeared ‘destitute of any personal religion’.357
Robinson explained this situation as resulting from the over-application of
principles derived from the Reformation. Like most educated Protestants, he
believed the Reformation represented the historical triumph of reason, liberal
inquiry, and freedom of thought over religious authoritarianism and super-
stition; yet as a theologian sympathetic to the cause of conservative Protestant
orthodoxy, he still felt that critical reason must, Wnally, submit to divine
revelation. German academic theology, however, had often allowed reason
to ride roughshod over revelation. ‘The light of the Reformation has not yet
departed from Germany,’ as he put it, ‘although its glory has been obscured in
these latter days by urging to an extreme the fundamental principles on which
it proceeded. The Reformers, with all their zeal for liberty of thinking and
freedom of investigation, never had a thought of subjecting the form and
matter of revelation to the decisions of human reason.’ This tendency to
privilege reason over revelation, in Robinson’s view, had become quite cus-
tomary in many German universities and had given rise to ‘rationalism’,
which he regarded as a ‘poison [that] has spread through the body of the
church itself ’.358
Nonetheless, Robinson remained persuaded of the critical superiority of
German theological scholarship and insisted that any future theology must
not ignore its formidable achievements. What he especially liked was the fact
that the German system seemed to promote intellectual meritocracy, which
led to a progressive, dynamic understanding of theological scholarship. Every
division of theology, he noted, could lay claim to have experienced ‘progress’,
an assumption he regarded as prevalent ‘throughout the German theological
world’:
It is taken for granted that there is a constant progress in every science; and that a
learned man of the present day stands on higher ground than one of former days,
possessing as he does all the results of the labours and investigations of those who have
preceded him, as well as those his own industry and sagacity may have enabled him to
supply. His works are therefore supposed to be, prima facie, superior to former works
on the same subjects.359
357 Robinson, ‘Theological Education’, II. 211.

358 Ibid. I. 2–3. 359 Ibid. III. 430.
Robinson felt it incumbent upon American scholars, therefore, to learn the
German language and culture, because of Germany’s ‘eminent scholars’ and
‘the treasures of criticism which that language contains’.360
As an enthusiastic supporter of American voluntarism in religious matters,
Robinson was troubled by Germany’s Erastian church-state arrangements,
which inXuenced the operations of universities and theological faculties.
Robinson blamed ‘impiety’ at the universities, therefore, on the dulling of
religious passion brought about by the government’s tight grip over churches
and universities.
The government mixes itself in everything, prescribes everything, will know every-
thing, and prohibits everything, which does not strictly coincide with its own interests
and will. In this system of things, the universities act a conspicuous and necessary
part. They have been established, and are supported by the governments . . . to train up
and qualify young men for the oYces of church and state,—those oYces which the
governments alone can give, and which, as a universal rule, they give only to such as
have received a university education. . . . The universities are interwoven with the very
system of government . . . [and] remain under its immediate control.361
What was true of universities, according to Robinson, also applied to
churches: ‘the church [in Germany] is but the slave of the civil power, and
must do all its bidding. No man can devote himself to the service of the divine
Master, and proclaim salvation to the perishing souls of his fellow man, but in
the way which the government directs.’362 Robinson repeatedly contrasted this
to the American principle of religious voluntarism, which he greatly pre-
ferred: ‘Let then American Christianity rejoice, that the churches are here
thrown back upon their primitive foundation, the hearts and aVections of the
followers of Christ; that they neither receive nor claim support from the
civil power.’ In America, he concluded (presumably in contrast to Germany),
‘to be regarded as a theologian’ one must also ‘be regarded as a sincere
Christian.’363
A critic of state meddling in educational and religious aVairs, Robinson,
paradoxically, also attributed a measure of the success of German universities
to the government. In particular, the role of the state in professorial appoint-
ments, preferment, and civil service examinations, Robinson opined, often
provided incentives for diligence among students and scholars alike.
But the chief secret lies here . . . in the direct power of the government over all places of
honour and proWt; in the general requisition of a university education as a sine qua
360 Smith and Hitchcock, The Life, Writings, and Character of Edward Robinson, 49–51.
361 Robinson, ‘Theological Education’, I. 43.
362 Ibid. 42.
363 Ibid. II. 212, 226.
non preparation for every public station and lastly and principally in the fact that no
one is . . . admitted into any profession, nor to hold any oYce whatever, without being
Wrst subjected to two, and sometimes three, severe examinations. Here is the strong
hold of the government upon the students, and the main secret of the good behavior
and diligence of the latter. . . . It is here that the governments press with their whole
weight upon the students, and compels a diligence which can know neither remission
nor rest, until its great object be accomplished.364
At the heart of the well-ordered, state-dominated university system—which
Robinson likened at one point to a steam engine—was its ability to foster and
recognize Wrst-order intellectual distinction; this element outshone all others,
to both good and ill eVect. On the one hand, it promoted intellectual
meritocracy, of which Robinson approved. But, again, it also often led
theological students and scholars to discount the importance of personal
piety and ecclesiastical interests in the pursuit of academic plaudits: ‘[T]he
desire of distinction, which the system doubtless tends to foster, has some-
times taken a wrong direction, and sought its object in novelty and strange-
ness, rather than in the power of tracing and developing the character and
relations of truths already known.’365 At its worst, this impulse gave birth to a
restless spirit of novelty: ‘The rage seems to be for new men and new books;
and the old are laid aside as of less value or as obsolete. It is at Wrst very
striking to a foreigner, to see how few books of any antiquity are referred to in
the course of a theological education.’366
But Robinson was, ultimately, quite captivated by the universities and theo-
logical faculties of Germany, viewing them as seats of ‘a spirit of liberal inquiry
and deep-seated investigation’—this despite the fact that he also regarded them
as ‘creatures of the government’. He encouraged his American readership to
‘pray without ceasing’ that in these formidable institutions ‘pure and undeWled
religion may again prevail and abound’ so that they may ‘become once more,
what they once have been, a rich blessing to the church and the world’.367
In sum, Robinson represents a curious case of old Puritan piety convinced
of the merit of German Wissenschaft; and this makes him, from a historian’s
standpoint, a interesting bird indeed. Today he is, sadly, almost completely
forgotten.
If Robinson was among the Wrst major New World apostles of German
theological learning in America, Philip SchaV (1819–93) represents his Old
World counterpart. Twenty-Wve years Robinson’s junior but like-minded in
many respects, SchaV cuts a remarkable and complex Wgure in nineteenth-
century American and European intellectual history. A native of rural
364 Robinson, ‘Theological Education’, 45. 365 Ibid. 12. 366 Ibid. III. 428–9.
367 Ibid. I. 43.
Switzerland and of humble origins, SchaV studied theology in the 1830s and
1840s at Tübingen, Halle, and Berlin, where he came under the inXuence of a
number of Germany’s leading scholars, including Baur, Neander, Hengsten-
berg, Tholuck, and Twesten, among others.368 He was particularly inXuenced
by Neander, Berlin’s highly decorated church historian, whom SchaV once,
hyperbolically, called ‘the most original phenomenon in the literary world of
the nineteenth century’.369
Anticipating a call to a German or Swiss university, SchaV received an
unexpected invitation in 1843 from the Pennsylvania Synod of the German
Reformed Church in America370 to teach at its newly established seminary in
Mercersburg, Pennsylvania371 and bring with him the latest fruits of German
science and culture. After initial hesitation, SchaV Wnally accepted, encour-
aged to do so by Berlin’s theological faculty and even by oYcials in Prussia’s
Ministry of Culture. In 1844, a self-proclaimed ‘missionary of Wissenchaft’,372
SchaV sailed to America, where, with unXagging industry, he would teach,
write, and extol an irenic but traditional Protestant orthodoxy373 for forty-
nine years, Wrst at Mercersburg Seminary and after 1870 at Union Theological
Seminary in New York.374 During this time, he travelled back to Europe no
less than sixteen times, to pursue research and renew old friendships. Adolf
von Harnack once compared him to St Jerome, ‘the theological mediator
between East and West’.375
368 On SchaV’s university experiences in Germany, see the biography by his son, David S.
SchaV, The Life of Philip SchaV (New York, 1897), 17–37, and also a recent work by Klaus Penzel,
The German Education of Scholar Philip SchaV: The Formative Years, 1819–1844 (Lewiston, NY:
Edwin Mellen, 2004).
369 Philip SchaV, Germany; its Universities, Theology, and Religion (Philadelphia, 1857), 270.
370 On the early history of the German Reformed Church in America, see Syndey E. Ahlstrom,
Religious History of the American People (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972), 245–50.
371 It was located in the isolated hills of south-western Pennsylvania.
372 Noted in Klaus Penzel (ed.), Philip SchaV: Historians and Ambassador of the Universal
Church: Selected Writings (Mercer, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1991), p. xxxv.
373 With his colleague, John Williams Nevin (1803–86), SchaV is regarded as the founder of
the so-called ‘Mercersburg Theology’, a vigorous if short-lived theological movement in the
nineteenth century, which in the name of tradition, ecclesial authority, and church unity sought
to combat ‘the highly individualistic and subjectivist tradition of American evangelicalism’. See
Welch, Protestant Thought in the Nineteenth Century, i. 227. Cf. James C. Nichols, Romanticism
in American Theology: Nevin and SchaV at Mercersburg (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1961). The founding text of this movement was SchaV’s The Principle of Protestantism as Related
to the Present State of the Church (Chambersburg, Pa., 1845).
374 His oYcial title at Union was ‘Professor of Theological Encyclopedia and Christian
Symbolism’. On his time at Union, see Handy, A History of Union Theological Seminary in
New York, 35, 38, 47–51, passim.
375 See the ‘Congratulatory Address from the Theological Faculty of the University of Berlin’,
in Penzel (ed.), Philip SchaV, 343 V. Penned by Harnack, this document was sent to SchaV, at the
end of his career, on the occasion of the Wftieth anniversary of his reception of the venia legendi
from the University of Berlin.
What makes SchaV remarkable with respect to German university life was
the fact that he represents both an insider and an outsider in relation to it.
A student and Privatdozent in German theological faculties for over a decade
in the 1830s and 1840s, he, not surprisingly, celebrated the rigours and
accomplishments of German theological scholarship. However, as a native
of Switzerland and, after 1844, an adopted citizen of the United States, he also
possessed a critical distance from many norms characteristic of the German
professoriate. Frequently, SchaV referred to himself as ‘Swiss by birth, German
by education, and American by choice’.376 In his ‘Autobiographical Reminis-
cences’ SchaV described himself as having been ‘Americanized in feeling and
sympathy’;377 he heartily embraced American political liberty and religious
voluntarism and contrasted these features of the New World with the ‘evils’ of
Old-World ‘state-churchism’. ‘It . . . cannot be denied’, he wrote in a short
work on America,
that the American system of general political freedom and equality . . . with its kindred
doctrine of the rights, and duties of self-government and active co-operation of the
people in all the aVairs of the commonwealth, is, in some sense, a transferring to the
civil sphere the idea of the universal priesthood of Christians, which was Wrst clearly
and emphatically brought forward by the Reformers.378
Precisely this (‘Swiss-American’) political sensibility, married to his thor-
ough knowledge of German academic culture, informed his 1857 book,
Germany; its Universities, Theology, and Religion. In the preface, he called
the book an attempt to see ‘the old world from the standpoint of the new’ and
thereby bring ‘the German and American mind into closer union’. What is
more, he wanted the book to serve as ‘[a] guide . . . through the luxuriant
forest of Teutonic systems and opinions’. The preface left no doubt as to his
high esteem of German theology:
The universities of Germany are regarded by competent judges as the Wrst among the
learned institutions of the world. . . . The German theology of the last thirty or forty
years, whatever its errors and defects, its extravagance and follies, which we would be
among the last to deny, or to defend, is, upon the whole, the most learned, original,
fertile, and progressive theology of the age, and no active branch of Protestantism can
keep entirely aloof from its contact without injuring its own interests.379
376 David SchaV, The Life of Philip SchaV, 1.

377 Quoted in Gary K. Pranger, Philip SchaV (1819–1893): Portrait of an Immigrant Theolo-
gian (New York: Peter Lang, 1997), 72.
378 Philip SchaV, America: A Sketch of its Political, Social, and Religious Character, ed. Perry
Miller (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1961), 86 f.
379 SchaV, Germany; its Universities, Theology, and Religion, 8–10.
The book itself breaks into three parts. In the Wrst, SchaV treated the
universities, sketching both their history and current organization. He then
oVered proWles of individual universities, beginning, not surprisingly, with
Berlin, which he praised as occupying ‘the Wrst rank’ of all European univer-
sities.380 In addition, he discussed Halle, Bonn, Göttingen, Leipzig, Jena,
Heidelberg, and Tübingen—presumably his list of Germany’s leading univer-
sities. Together, these institutions represented ‘the pride and glory of Germany’.
They exert more inXuence there than similar institutions in any other country. They
are the centers of the higher intellectual and literary life of the nation and the
laboratories of new systems of thought and theories of action. . . . They receive the
best minds from the lowest as well as the highest ranks, to mold them for the learned
professions and Wt them for public usefulness. From them emanate principally the
ideas and maxims which rule the land, either in the service of the existing order of
things, or in the interests of progress. It is characteristic that the Reformation in
Germany proceeded, not from princes and bishops, as in England, but from theo-
logical professors. The great philosophical and theological revolution [i.e. the En-
lightenment] of the last century, and the counterrevolution of the present century [i.e.
German Idealism], have likewise proceeded mainly from the studies and lecture
rooms of academic teachers.381
The second part of the book concentrates on German theology and reli-
gion. Here SchaV discussed a variety of issues, including church–state rela-
tions, the Protestant Church Union of 1817, church parties, the Tübingen
School, the inXuence of Friedrich Schleiermacher, and ‘the latest form of
inWdelity’, i.e. the Left Hegelianism of D. F. Strauss, Bruno Bauer, and Ludwig
Feuerbach, that had recently roiled the theological world. In the book’s Wnal
section, SchaV presented ‘sketches of German divines’, restricting his discus-
sion to distinguished contemporary pastors and theology professors, many of
whom SchaV knew personally.382
Throughout the book, SchaV generously dispensed praise. However, like
Robinson, SchaV questioned the extensive power of the state over educational
and religious matters, contrasting what he called ‘the cold step-motherly
arm of [the] nominally Christian state’,383 which he rejected in Germany, to
the ‘voluntary principle’ of American religious life, which he had adopted as
his own. ‘The state-church system [in Germany]’, he wrote, ‘tends to secular-
ize the church, to convert it into a sort of higher police, an institution of the
government for the intellectual and moral training of its subjects, and to Wll
the ranks of the clergy with unconverted men, who seek the holy ministry
simply from secular motives, like any other state oYce.’384 This had especially
380 Ibid. 63. 381 Ibid. 27–28. 382 Ibid. 261 V. 383 Ibid. 70.
384 Ibid. 111–112.
problematic consequences, he held, for university theology. By contrast,
America presented a better way. Echoing sentiments in Tocqueville’s Democ-
racy in America, SchaV opined, ‘The glory of America is free Christianity,
independent of the secular government, and supported by voluntary contri-
butions from free people. This is one of the greatest facts in modern
history . . . [I]t marks gigantic progress.’385 Admittedly, like other Europeans,
SchaV was appalled by the ‘sectarianism’ unleashed by America’s
constitutional liberties. Still, on balance, he regarded this as a lesser evil than
‘state-churchism’, the peculiar ‘mis-alliance’ of the Old World.386
A defender of American religious and political liberties, SchaV also
defended German academic freedom. Similar to Robinson, SchaV recognized
that the teaching and learning freedom (Lehr- and Lernfreiheit) of German
universities, not unlike American freedoms in the political sphere, often
fostered a spirit of experimentation and novelty. In SchaV’s view, this some-
times had the unfortunate result of separating the goals of academic theology
from those of the church. ‘[T]he German universities,’ he wrote, ‘aVord an
unbounded freedom of thought and doctrine to the professors and students.
With a rare amount of invaluable learning and useful theories, they have
brought forth also many fantastic, absurd, and revolutionary views and
systems. They have been the hot-houses of rationalism, skepticism, panthe-
ism, and all sorts of dangerous novelties.’387 While SchaV lamented these
tendencies, he felt the solution did not lie in curtailing academic freedom in
theological faculties, as some critics had recommended, for this would only
turn them into ‘mere seminaries’ and discourage liberal education. ‘[T]he
liberty of teaching,’ he made clear, ‘is one of the chief excellences of the
German universities, and accounts for their extraordinary literary and scien-
tiWc fertility. It must be borne in mind that the theological faculties of that
country have after all a more comprehensive vocation than a . . . seminary for
the training of preachers. They ought to cultivate . . . and promote the sacred
sciences in the most thorough and liberal manner.’388
To be sure, much more could be said about SchaV and this important book,
but on the whole, qualiWcations and caveats notwithstanding, SchaV had high
praise for German universities—‘the pride and glory of Germany’—and he
recommended that their example be followed in America—‘the land of the
future’—even if certain alterations should be made to accommodate ‘the
385 Ibid. 105. For a fuller account of SchaV’s appraisal of religious life in the Untied States, see
Stephen R. Graham, Cosmos in the Chaos: Philip SchaV’s Interpretation of Nineteenth-Century
American Religion (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995).
386 SchaV, Germany; its Universities, Theology, and Religion, 105 V.
387 Ibid. 48.
388 Ibid. 57 f.
peculiar genius of our [American] people’.389 Aspiring American theologians,
it followed, had no choice in SchaV ’s view but to immerse themselves in the
riches of German theological scholarship. They could not, as some did, simply
rail against German ‘inWdelity’ and ‘rationalism’, and stand aloof from Ger-
man science, for the battle for orthodoxy, according to SchaV, depended on
the orthodox appropriating Wissenschaft for their own purposes: ‘After gun-
powder [i.e. Wissenschaft] had been invented,’ he reasoned, ‘victory could no
longer be obtained with bow and arrow.’ The astute theologian should thus
master German theology and apply its extensive learning to bolstering ortho-
doxy. Dabbling in German theology was not enough: ‘He who makes a
superWcial acquaintance with German theology . . . runs the great risk of
doing injury to his simple, child-like faith; but he who contends with it
manfully, and passes through the whole intricate and tedious process of
investigating the deepest grounds of our most holy faith, will come out
more Wrmly grounded in orthodoxy than before.’390
SchaV died in 1893. In his later years he witnessed an even vaster student
and scholarly migration to German universities and, concomintantly, greater
German inXuence on American higher education and seminary life. No doubt
a portion of this was encouraged by SchaV himself. ReXecting the trends of
the times, in 1877 Union Theological Seminary, with SchaV ’s prodding,
inaugurated ‘Prize Fellowships’ to send its ‘best graduates, for two years, to
German Universities, and particularly Berlin, to Wnish their studies’.391 Sign-
iWcance should also be accorded to the publication of SchaV ’s Theological
Propaedeutic, among the few German-style ‘theological encyclopedias’ pro-
duced in the United States, and one that became a staple in many centres of
theological learning.392 Of equal importance was his pioneering role in
producing the SchaV-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, a multi-
volume alphabetic encyclopedia modelled on the popular Realencyklopädie
für protestantische Theologie und Kirche (22 vols., 1868), edited by the German
scholars Johann Jakob Herzog and Albert Hauck.393 Finally, SchaV
played a crucial role in shaping American biblical scholarship and church
history by editing and translating the massive biblical commentary of J. P.
389 Ibid. 27, 59.

390 Philip SchaV, ‘German Literature in America’, Bibliotheca sacra 4 (1847): 512–13.
391 Penzel (ed.), SchaV, 348.
392 Philip SchaV, Theological Propaedeutic: A General Introduction to the Study of Theology
Exegetical, Historical, Systematic, and Practical, including Encyclopedia, Methodology and Bibli-
ography (New York, 1894).
393 The original SchaV-Herzog Encyclopedia appeared between 1889 and 1891. After SchaV’s
death, a greatly expanded and revised version—The New SchaV-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious
Knowledge (1909)—appeared, ed. Samuel Macauley Jackson. For a fuller account, see vol. i. of
the ‘new’ edn., pp. ix–xii.
Lange,394 by helping found the Society for Biblical Literature and Exegesis
(1880) and by launching the American Society of Church History (1888).
In the Wnal analysis though, SchaV is perhaps more historically noteworthy, at
least in the context of this study, as a symptom of more pervasive academic
and theological trends taking place in his lifetime. His career in the United
States, for example, corresponded almost exactly with that of the meteoric rise
of the University of Michigan, which under the chancellorship of Henry P.
Tappan (1805–81), ‘the John the Baptist of the German University Ideal’,
deliberately sought to emulate aspects of German universities. In his widely
regarded University Education (1851), Tappan in fact had asserted that ‘the
Universities of Protestant Germany stand forth as model institutions, if there
are to be found; and the whole [German] system of education . . . exhibits an
intellectual progress which commands our admiration’.395
In the following decades, the epochal foundings of Cornell University
(1868) and Johns Hopkins (1876) took place; many of these institutions’
original professors had studied in Germany and often sought to realize
German scholarly ideals on American soil. Astoundingly, of the Wfty-three
professors and lecturers on Johns Hopkins roster in 1884, nearly all had
studied at German universities, and thirteen had been awarded there the
doctoral degree. The doctoral degree itself, a German import, rose dramatic-
ally in the United States in the second half of the nineteenth century. Before
1860 not a single Ph.D. had been oVered by an American institution; by the
time of Philip SchaV’s death in 1894, the number had crested 3,000.396
Indeed, by the late nineteenth century SchaV’s high regard of German
Wissenschaft was no solitary phenomenon: the multitude of American stu-
dents and scholars returning from Germany magniWed the importance of
German higher learning, both in its sacred and secular aspects. Arguably, the
apotheosis of these trends in theological education came in a famous mani-
festo, ‘Shall the Theological Curriculum be ModiWed, and How?’, published in
1899 by the Hebrew scholar and president of the newly founded University of
Chicago (1890), William Rainey Harper (1856–1906).397 While more Baptist
churchman and zealous democrat than Germanophile, Harper nonetheless
394 Philip SchaV (ed.), A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures by John Peter Lange, 25 vols.
(New York, 1864–80).
395 Henry P. Tappan, University Education (New York, 1851), 39. On Tappan, see Marsden,
The Soul of the American University, 103–10.
396 Richard Hofstadter and Walter P. Metzger, The Development of Academic Freedom in the
United States (New York: Columbia University Press, 1955), 377 V. Cf. Hugh Hawkings, Pioneer:
A History of the Johns Hopkins University, 1874–1899 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
1960), 31–2, 39–40, 59–60, passim.
397 For Harper’s activity in founding the University of Chicago, see Marsden, The Soul of the
American University, 232–48.
gave expression to the increasingly German-inXuenced academic milieu when
he contended that theological study in the United States henceforth must be
scholarly and professional ‘to meet the requirement of the modern times’. To
bring the student ‘into touch with the modern spirit of science’, he opined,
theological learning could no longer be conWned to denominations and
seminaries, the American norm, but must be ‘organized in connection with
a university’.398 While Harper’s manifesto and its direct subject, the new
Divinity School at the University of Chicago, by no means instantly revolu-
tionized American theological learning, they were powerful symbols of
changes afoot and harbingers of ones to come. These changes, notes David
H. Kelsey, were substantively and symbolically ‘wissenschaftlich’ and distantly
‘rooted in Schleiermacher’s rationale for a school of theology in the University
of Berlin.’399
To be sure, throughout the late nineteenth century American populist and
anti-intellectual currents sometimes fomented criticism of scholarly, scientiWc
theology—criticism that often emanated from denominational seminaries,
the founding of which continued apace during this period.400 For later
commentators, therefore, the impact of German theology in America did
not appear as a harmonious development, but rather as a violent clash of
institutional and religious cultures. In his The American and German Univer-
sity (1928), for example, Charles Thwing noted that
the German faculty of theology . . . was and is primarily a condition and force of
scholarship. The Wrst relationship, therefore, of the German university to the Ameri-
can theological school should be interpreted by a word hardly less severe than
collision. For German theological scholarship was broad; American denominatio-
nal. . . . German theological education was independent, free both to learn and to
teach, yet insisting upon methods of thinking and of research Wtted to speciWc
Welds; American theological education could not avoid the charge of narrowness.401
398 W. R. Harper, ‘Shall the Theological Curriculum be ModiWed, and How?’ American
Journal of Theology 3 (1899): 45–66. On the pivotal importance of this document in the
development of American theological education, see David H. Kelsey, Between Athens and
Berlin: The Theological Education Debate (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), 51 f.
399 Kelsey makes this comment, discussing two early twentieth-century works that developed
Harper’s ideas on theological education: Robert L. Kelly, Theological Education in America (New
York, 1924), and Willam Adams Brown and Mark A. May, The Education of American Ministers,
4 vols. (New York, 1934). See Kelsey, Between Athens and Berlin, 51–5. On Harper’s importance
for shaping theological education in the United States, see Conrad Cherry, Hurrying toward
Zion: Universities, Divinity Schools, and American Protestantism (Bloomington: Indiana Univer-
sity Press, 1995), 1–13, passim.
400 On American populist opposition to scholarly theology, see Richard Hofstadter, Anti-
Intellectualism in American Life (New York: Knopf, 1963).
401 Charles F. Thwing, The American and German University (New York, 1928), 189.
Nevertheless, Thwing, a strong supporter German scholarship, was pleased by
the extent of the foreign inXuence, noting in particular the debt American
theology owed to students who went to Germany and returned to occupy
posts in seminaries, colleges, and universities in the United States. ‘Scores
upon scores of American students have studied theology and ecclesiastical
history under the [German] theological faculty. . . . [E]ach of them has gained
a knowledge, and received vast enlargement in the power of thinking on deep
and high themes.’402
Nonetheless, as in Germany itself, nineteenth-century changes in American
theological learning were regularly overshadowed by the explosive rise of the
natural sciences, the equally impressive growth of ‘the humanities’, and the
expansion of the university system itself, particularly after the landmark
Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862, which paved the way for the establishment
of numerous public universities with practically oriented curricula. Yet these
factors notwithstanding, American theological education, like university edu-
cation itself, underwent a sea change in the late nineteenth century under,
because of, and often in fruitful conXict with the persistent inXuence of
German institutional and scholarly norms. Granted, one should not confuse
German inXuence with the replication of German models; for, as American
historians have judiciously pointed out, German ideas and practices were
habitually modiWed to suit the distinctly American conditions of popular
democracy, religious voluntarism, and capitalistic individualism. Granted
too, Americans sometimes misunderstood and/or inordinately idealized Ger-
man scholarship. But these caveats do little to alter the basic fact that the
decisive foreign inXuence on American elite theology and higher education in
the half century before the watershed of 1914 Wnds its origin in the land
Joseph Green Cogswell once hailed as ‘the holy land of the scholar’.403
6 . ‘ T H E C R I S I S O F T H E T H E O LO G I C A L FAC U LT Y ’ :
LAGARDE, OV ERBECK, AND HARNACK
While German academic theology was gaining renown abroad in the late
nineteenth century, it began to Wnd itself in a predicament at home—a ‘crisis
of the theological faculty’ as some expressed it.404 The shape of the predicament
402 Ibid. 201–2. Thwing discusses numerous American students who either studied in
Germany or were deeply inXuenced by German theology. See pp. 184–207.
403 Noted in Joseph A. McCaughey, ‘The Transformation of American Academic Life:
Harvard University, 1821–1892’, Perspectives in American History 8 (1974): 264.
404 See Haenssler, Die Krisis der theologischen Fakultäten.
deWes easy summary, for it had many sources, many ramiWcations, and
appeared bound up, in the eyes of contemporaries, with the seemingly inexor-
able march of modernity itself. At one level though, it was epistemological in
nature, owing its existence to the rise of historicism in the nineteenth century.
In this sense, theology, and indeed Christianity itself, faced an unprecedented
challenge from the relativizing consequences of historical ways of thinking. The
very intellectual forces that had once supported theology’s claim to be a critical,
scientiWc enterprise, in other words, now turned out to threaten theology with
wholesale delegitimation, dissolving all religious verities, so some charged, into
mere time-bound, human-constructed phenomena unworthy of the assent of
faith. Such was the general shape of the intellectual dilemma that gave birth, in
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, to numerous treatises on ‘the
crisis of historicism’ or ‘the problem of historical knowledge’, culminating in
Ernst Troeltsch’s classic confrontation with the issue in his Der Historismus und
seine Probleme (1922).405
This epistemological crisis prompted an institutional dilemma, which
might be understood as the re-emergence of the critique of the theological
faculty levelled by Fichte at the time of the founding of the University of
Berlin. Fichte, it will be remembered, argued that theology, if it desired a
future in a modern university, must assume ‘a completely diVerent form’ (eine
ganz andere Gestalt) compatible with scientiWc modes of inquiry, particularly
historical and philological criticism.406 To be sure, theology certainly had
sought the mantle of science in the nineteenth century, even if it never, as
Fichte also advocated, severed its connections with biblical revelation and
ecclesiastical bodies. Yet these connections, late nineteenth-century critics
were quick to charge, denied theology the authenticating stamp of true
science and hence should deny it university citizenship as well.
Two additional factors exacerbated the dilemma. The Wrst was the emer-
gence shortly after mid-century, at Wrst largely outside Germany, of a new
academic discipline, alternatively designated as ‘the science of religion’ (Reli-
gionswissenschaft), ‘the history of religion’ (Religionsgeschichte) or ‘compara-
tive religious history’ (vergleichende Religionsgeschichte). Those championing
this discipline implicitly criticized the status quo of German theological
faculties. Since theology had increasingly turned from dogmatic and apolo-
getic considerations to more demonstrably scientiWc historical and philo-
logical modes of inquiry, why did faculties still restrict their focus
exclusively to Christianity and not broaden their scope to investigate other
world religions? (Various world religions after all were becoming better
405 Iggers, The German Conception of History, 124 V., 177–95.

406 Fichte, ‘Deduzierter Plan’, in Anrich, Die Idee der deutschen Universität, 160 V.
known through European colonialism and missionary activity abroad.) Im-
plied by this question was the yet more powerful critique that theology, its
own rhetoric notwithstanding, could never function as a genuine science so
long as it kept a traditional tie to ecclesiastical Christianity; the logic of science
demanded a critical historical investigation of religion in general shorn of all
residual attachments to any particular religion and its supporting institutions.
The second factor giving Fichte’s arguments new saliency was political and
legal in nature. It found expression especially among social democratic and
socialist critics, who argued, on the basis of the liberal doctrine of separation
of church and state, that an exclusively Christian theology with ecclesiastical
ties, no matter how tenuous, did not belong in a modern, publicly funded
scientiWc institution. Like Fichte, these critics thought theological training (if
it should exist at all) must be relocated to ecclesiastical seminaries and funded
by private sources, whereas the universities should become the seats of the
neutral, critical investigation of religion. Not surprisingly, under the political
conditions of the early Second Empire with its anti-socialist laws, such
criticisms did not gain much ground. However, the lifting of the anti-socialist
laws by Wilhelm II, the subsequent rise of Social Democracy, and then the
collapse of the Empire in 1918 gave critics an unprecedented, if ultimately
unsuccessful, opportunity to realize their goals.
After sketching in greater detail the emergence of the factors precipitating
theology’s late nineteenth-century predicament, I examine in what follows
how several theologians understood and experienced it. Two of these Wgures,
though, might in fact be considered contributors to the predicament: Paul de
Lagarde (1827–91) of Göttingen and Franz Overbeck (1837–1905) of Basle.
Although both trained in theology, they oVered trenchant criticisms of the
university theology of their day, contending that in the light of modern
circumstances few honest options presented themselves but for theology to
mutate into a general science of religion, cutting all former ties to dogmatic
Christianity.407 Overbeck even argued that the logic of ‘modern theology’
itself was to blame for this state of aVairs; its headlong pursuit of scientiWc
credibility and accommodation to modernity had in eVect already rendered
theology no longer ‘Christian’ in any meaningful sense.
In sharp contrast to Lagarde and Overbeck stands their younger contem-
porary Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930), whom we have already encountered
on a number of occasions. The indisputable heir at Berlin of Schleiermacher’s
liberal theological agenda, Harnack was not only a commanding theological
mind, but arguably the most prominent academic personality in Wilhelmine
Germany. A former pupil of Albrecht Ritschl, Harnack served as professor at
407 Pannenberg, Theology and the Philosophy of Science, 256, 259.

the University of Berlin, Director of the Royal Library, Secretary for the
Prussian Academy of Science, and cofounder and president of the prestigious
Kaiser Wilhelm Society, the forerunner of the present-day Max Planck insti-
tutes.408 While principally a scholar of the early church, Harnack wrote and
spoke on a wide range of issues, and he rarely kept aloof from important
public debates. In the late Wilhelmine and Weimar periods, he defended both
the project of liberal theology and the university status of theological faculties
against their many detractors, whether conservative churchmen sceptical of
science, advocates of the science of religion sceptical of theology, or social
democrats sceptical of theology’s university status. Paradoxically, Harnack’s
positions proved both timely and untimely. Against those (for whatever
reason) in favour of eliminating theological faculties, he oVered persuasive
countervailing arguments. Yet the nineteenth-century intellectual assump-
tions on which his arguments drew their strength were coming undone amid
the post-war cultural turmoil, and they were pointedly contested by the young
upstart, Karl Barth, and the theological challenge he and his associates
mounted in the 1920s.409
Although criticisms of theology in the name of science, as we have seen, certainly
predate the second half of the nineteenth century, it was only at this time,
roughly in the 1860s and 1870s, that a coherent alternative Weld of inquiry—
‘the science of religion’—came into its own. While not all practitioners of the
new science sought to displace theology, its very existence posed new challenges.
Despite their wissenschaftlich aspirations, few theologians, in Germany or
elsewhere, had questioned the superlative status of Christianity among world
religions or sought to broaden their scope of inquiry to include non-Christian
religions. The ‘science of religion’ made such questioning and broadening not
only possible, but the fundamental assumption of a ‘new science’.
Prior to the 1860s, numerous factors contributed to the feasibility and
growth of this Weld. Most fundamentally perhaps, data and artefacts collected
by Western colonialists, missionaries, and explorers had made available in
Europe a hitherto unknown wealth of ethnological information on ‘primitive’,
non-Western cultures, languages, and religions. Of early signiWcance, in 1822,
Jean-François Champollion famously deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs and
shortly thereafter published his famous Panthéon égyptien. At roughly the
same time, excavations in Mesopotamia unearthed thousands of cuneiform
documents in the great Babylonian and Assyrian palaces and libraries, while
408 Lothar Burckhardt, ‘Adolf von Harnack’, in Treue et al., Wissenschaftspolitik in Berlin, 215–
33. On Harnack’s career generally, see Zahn-Harnack, Adolf von Harnack.
409 Douglas J. Cremer, ‘Protestant Theology in Early Weimar Germany: Barth, Tillich, and
Bultmann’, JHI 56 (April 1995): 289–96.
the discovery of important Eastern texts in Avestan, Sanskrit, Pali, Chinese,
Tibetan, and Mongolian allowed European scholars to study and translate
them for the Wrst time.410 Often underlying these scholarly eVorts was the
Christian impulse to understand and convert non-Christian peoples, some-
thing which, many argued, necessitated thorough knowledge of foreign sys-
tems of belief and their histories.411
The sudden availability of so much material stimulated and stretched the
imagination of European scholars, who already in the eighteenth century had
evinced a strong (if often naive) interest in exotic, non-Western peoples and
their world-views. For example, Charles de Brosses’s Du culte des dieux fétiches
(1760) had introduced the word ‘fetishism’ to the West as a means of
explaining animistic religious practices. Bernard Picard and J. F. Bernard’s
multivolume Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peoples du mond
(1723–43), Hume’s Natural History of Religion (1755), Herder’s Ideen zur
Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (1784–91), Christoph Meiners’s
Grundriss der Geschichte aller Religion (1785), Joseph von Görres’s Mythen-
geschichte der asiatischen Welt (1810), and Friedrich Creuzer’s Symbolik und
Mythologie der alten Völker, besonders der Griechen (1810), are additional
examples of European interest in the origins and practice of non-Christian
cultures and the general phenomenon of ‘religion’. In his 1799 Reden Schleier-
macher gave additional stimulus to this interest by suggesting that Christian
theology itself should take seriously the general nature of religion, understood
as a transcultural, experiential reality present in the lives of all human beings.
Finally, one should bear in mind that historical and philological methods,
reWned by such scholars as Wolf, Niebuhr, Ranke, and Boeckh, coincided with
the intellectual ‘discovery’ of non-Western peoples. It was only a matter of
time, presumably, before these methods were widely applied to non-Western
religious texts as well.
The cumulative impact of these developments gave birth by mid-century to
an outpouring of general histories of religion and the establishment through-
out Europe of university chairs in religion (frequently called ‘history and
philosophy of religion’).412 Friedrich Max Müller (1823–1900) is the scholar
most widely credited with placing the new Weld on Wrm methodological
grounds and popularly promoting it. German by birth, Müller studied at
the University of Leipzig, receiving his doctorate in 1843 in comparative
410 Joseph M. Kitagawa and John S. Strong, ‘Friedrich Max Müller and the Comparative
Study of Religion’, in Ninian Smart et al. (eds.), Nineteenth Century Religious Thought in the
West, iii. 179–80.
411 On this point, see Karl Hammer, Weltmission und Kolonialismus: Sendungsideen des
19.Jahrhunderts im KonXikt (Munich: Kösel, 1978), 49–58.
412 Welch, Protestant Thought in the Nineteenth Century, ii. 173–4.
philology, concentrating in Sanskrit, which was just beginning to be taught
there by the accomplished linguist Hermann Brockhaus. After Leipzig, Müller
spent time in Berlin before taking up his studies in Paris in 1845. From Paris
he moved on to London and then Oxford, where in 1854 he received the
Taylorian Professorship of Modern Languages and made a Fellow of All Souls
College. Among Müller’s numerous works and translations, his critical edi-
tion of the Sanskrit text of the Rig-veda stands out—a labour of twenty-four
years.413
More pertinent, however, for the genesis of the ‘science of religion’ was a
series of lectures Müller delivered in 1870 at the Royal Institution in London
and subsequently published as Introduction to the Science of Religion (1873).
While not without competitors, this work has been widely hailed as the
founding document of the science of religion, not necessarily because Müller
brought forth new and original points of view, but because he focused
attention on enormous labours already underway and pointedly made the
case for a new, independent Weld of scientiWc inquiry. ‘A Science of Religion’,
he proclaimed,
based on an impartial and truly scientiWc comparison of all, or at all events of the most
important, religions of mankind is now only a question of time. . . . Its title, though
implying as yet a promise rather than a fulWllment, has become more or less familiar
in Germany, France, and America; its problems have attracted the eyes of many
inquiries, and its results have been anticipated either with fear or with delight. It
becomes therefore the duty of those who have devoted their life to the study of the
principal religions of the world in their original documents, and who value religion
and reverence it in whatever form it may present itself, to take possession of this new
territory in the name of true science.414
Müller also made the case that Christianity should have no privileged position
within this new science; rather it should be regarded as one area of inquiry
among others, in which all were treated with the same neutral tools of critical
investigation. This was not meant to detract from Christianity, Müller rea-
soned, but rather to enhance its understanding through the ability to compare
and contrast it with other global religions: ‘He who knows only one [religion],
knows none,’ Müller often remarked, alluding to a famous statement of
Goethe’s on language.415
Müller’s ideas found broader resonance in the late nineteenth century,
evidenced by the founding of university chairs devoted to general religious
413 Kitagawa and Strong, ‘Friedrich Max Müller and the Comparative Study of Religion’, in
Ninian Smart et al. (eds.), Nineteenth Century Religious Thought in the West, iii. 181–5.
414 Friedrich Max Müller, Introduction to the Science of Religion (London, 1873), 34 (em-
phasis added).
415 Quoted in Welch, Protestant Thought in the Nineteenth Century, 134.
history and comparative religion. The most striking early developments took
place in the Swiss and Dutch universities. The University of Basle founded a
professorship of the ‘general history of religion’ as early as 1840; Lausanne and
Geneva added similar chairs respectively in 1871 and 1873. To each of the four
Dutch universities (Amsterdam, Gröningen, Leiden, and Utrecht) was added,
in 1877 and 1878, a chair in general and comparative history of religions.
(Concurrently, theological faculties in Holland were divested of their ecclesi-
astical ties). Similar professorships were established at Uppsala (1878), the
Collège de France (1880), Brussels (1884), Oxford (1886), Cornell (1891), and
the University of Chicago (1892), among other seats of learning. Even the
newly founded Imperial Japanese University at Tokyo established in 1903 a
chair for ‘the science of religion’.416
Occupants of these chairs and other scholars produced an impressive
general literature on the science of religion in the late nineteenth century.
Excluding the voluminous works of Friedrich Max Müller, importance should
be accorded to the work of Albert Réville (of Paris), especially his Prolégo-
mènes de l’histoire des religions (1881) and his Wve-volume Historie des reli-
gions (1883–8), and that of Pierre Daniel Chantepie de la Saussaye (of
Amsterdam), particularly his two-volume Lehrburch der Religionsgeschichte
(1887, 1889). Additional works by Cornelius Petrus Tiele (of Leiden), Eugène
Goblet d’Alviella (of Brussels), Conrad von Orelli (of Basle), George Foot
Moore (of Harvard), among others, should also be taken into consider-
ation.417
Conspicuously absent from this list, however, were the works of scholars at
German universities. This fact appeared as curious to scholars in the late
nineteenth century as it does to us today. Given the reputation of German
universities for groundbreaking scholarship, it would seem after all that they
would have been at the forefront of the movement to establish a science of
religion. Such dismay was well expressed by Louis Jordon in his 1905 work,
Comparative Religion, an early attempt to chronicle the development of the
new science. Despite the fact that German universities had ‘constantly en-
rich[ed] the thought of the world’, Jordon lamented that ‘Comparative
Religion, regarded as a distinct discipline, has received in that country only
very scanty aid, and scarcely a vestige of oYcial recognition. . . . [T]his fact is
all the more to be regretted, since the assistance which has reasonably been
looked for would, if yielded, have proved to be of the very highest order.’418
416 On the founding dates, titles, and occupants of these chairs, see Jordon, Comparative
Religion, 579–91.
417 For greater bibliographical detail on these authors and others, see Jean Jacques Waarden-
burg, Classical Approaches to the Study of Religion, 2 vols. (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1999).
418 Jordon, Comparative Religion, 197.
Indeed, although often in the vanguard of scholarly and curricular innov-
ation, German universities were not quick to establish formal chairs in
Religionswissenschaft. At the same time, they were not unaVected by the
movement, the existence of which after all owed much to one of their own,
the German expatriate Müller. Numerous scholarly monographs and trans-
lations, originating in both the philosophical and theological faculties of
German universities, contributed to the general knowledge of comparative
religion.419 Moreover, the expansion of German missions and German colo-
nial eVorts in Africa and the Far East during the Wilhelmine period opened
up new contacts with and hence an impetus to study non-Western reli-
gions.420 Such developments and the example of foreign universities founding
chairs of religion placed acute pressures on German universities to follow suit.
What ensued instead was a protracted, theoretical debate on the nature and
purpose of theological study, a debate that pitted those in favour of a more
general Religionswissenschaft (the new avant-garde) against defenders of wis-
senschaftliche Theologie (the old avant-garde) as it had developed in German
universities since the time of Schleiermacher. Much was at stake in this debate,
but two issues were of particular signiWcance. First, what status should be
accorded to Christianity in university study? Did it possess a unique standing
among world religions, meriting special handling, or should its scholarly
treatment be indistinguishable from, say, Zoroastrianism or Buddhism? Sec-
ond, how did the practical function of the theological faculty (equipping
society with learned clergymen) bear on the scientiWc content of its instruc-
tion? In other words, should a faculty committed to the production of
Christian clergymen have legitimate business spending extensive time on
the study of non-Christian religions? Both issues, it should be clear, presented
a fundamental challenge to the dual conception of theological study articu-
lated by Schleiermacher, who, despite his musings on the general importance
of ‘religion’, had never questioned the superlative position of Christianity and
had legitimized the theological faculty (the seat of a ‘positive science’) on the
basis of its practical task of training Christian clergymen.
The debate over Religionswissenschaft as a challenge to wissenschaftliche
Theologie was forcefully, if somewhat oddly, brought to a head in Germany
by the University of Göttingen’s eccentric nationalist Paul de Lagarde (1827–
91, In 1873, he published a short essay, ‘Über das Verhältnis des deutschen
Staates zu Theologie, Kirche und Religion’, later included in his Deutsche
Schriften (1878), a collection of vituperative essays criticizing the religious
and political status quo in Germany. Specializing in the Old Testament and
419 e.g. see Otto PXeiderer, Philosophy and Development of Religion (New York, 1894), based
on the GiVord lectures he delivered.
420 Hammer, Weltmission und Kolonialismus, 241 V.
Near Eastern languages, Lagarde had studied at Halle and Berlin.421 After
receiving his doctorate in 1849 he lectured at Halle and later worked as a
private scholar and tutor, only belatedly securing a professorship at Göttingen
in 1869. During his academic sojourn Lagarde acquired the reputation of an
iconoclast. He viewed most of his fellow academics with contempt. Politically,
he regarded himself as a ‘conservative radical’; rejecting both the liberalism of
1848 and the Bismarckian solution of 1871, he preferred the creation of a
‘Greater Germany’ that included Austria. His ties with Christianity became
extremely tenuous; several years before Nietzsche’s declaration that ‘God is
Dead’, Lagarde proclaimed the bankruptcy of institutional Christianity and
called for the creation of a new national ‘Germanic religion’.422
In his 1873 essay Lagarde focused explicitly on what he regarded as the
problematic character of theological faculties. He felt that their existence as
still semi-confessional institutions did not comport with the secular nature of
the modern state and society, and hence they should be doomed to obsoles-
cence.423 In their place, he called for faculties to be converted into seats of the
comparative study of religion. Properly understood, theology was not dog-
matic knowledge of a particular religion but a ‘historical discipline’ that
should seek after ‘knowledge of religion in general’ (Wissen um die Religion
überhaupt). Transforming theological faculties in this manner would serve
both a scholarly and an ideological purpose, for this ‘new theology’ would
also function, in his nationalist vision, as ‘a pathWnder of the Germanic
religion’ (PfadWnderin in der deutschen Religion). ‘The new theology’, he
elaborated, ‘would reveal the essence of all religion and thus help fashion
the religion of the future’, for ‘a national religion is necessary for every nation’.
Lagarde granted that traditional churches were free to establish their own
seminaries, but the state should withhold funding in an eVort to hasten their
demise. Unlike Schleiermacher, Lagarde concluded that the aims of Wis-
senschaft and ecclesiastical interests were essentially at odds, and he even
expressed admiration for those theology students who, fearful of hypocrisy,
refused to take an oath of ordination and switched to secular careers in-
stead.424
421 On his time in Berlin, see Paul de Lagarde, Ueber einige Berliner Theologen und was von
ihnen zu lernen ist (Göttingen, 1890), which includes a harsh criticism of contemporary
Protestantism.
422 On Lagarde’s life and thought, see Fritz Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in
the Rise of the Germanic Ideology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961), 3–94, and RGG
iv. 200–1.
423 Lagarde, Deutsche Schriften (1878), 41–3.
424 Ibid. 6 V., 43–44. Cf. Robert Hanhart, ‘Paul Anton de Lagarde und seine Kritik an der
Theologie’, in Bernd Moeller (ed.), Theologie in Göttingen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 1987), 271–305.
Because of their extreme character, Lagarde’s ideas were taken up by few
other theologians. An important exception was the Basle theologian Franz
Overbeck (1837–1905), who, shortly after the appearance of Lagarde’s essay,
published his own controversial Über die Christlichkeit unserer heutigen Theo-
logie (1873), a scathing assault on German academic theology, in which he
favourably discussed Lagarde’s ‘stimulating and imaginative’ work.425 Born in
St Petersburg, the son of a German businessman and a Russian-born, French
Catholic mother, Overbeck regarded himself as an outsider to the mainstream
of German culture. His earliest spoken languages were Russian and French; he
mastered German only after his family relocated to Dresden in 1850, when he
was 13 years old. He studied theology and church history at Leipzig and
Göttingen, motivated less out of religious conviction than scholarly interests
and a vague sense of humanitarianism. All he got out of the critical theology
of his university years, he later conveyed, was the loss of any remnants of his
childhood faith.426
An apostate theologian, he nonetheless received and accepted a call to the
University of Basle in 1870—a call instigated by Basle’s liberal faction, who
mistakenly saw in Overbeck a promising representative of theological liber-
alism.427 Overbeck arrived in Basle one year after the appointment of Frie-
drich Nietzsche, who became his fast friend and housemate before Overbeck’s
marriage in 1876.428 The moderate, somewhat reclusive political atmosphere
in Basle, which Overbeck once called the ‘refuge’ for his theology, only further
distanced Overbeck from the dominant currents of Prussian-German intel-
lectual and political life. Although brieXy caught up in German nationalism
by the events of 1870–1, Overbeck soon came to share Nietzsche’s sentiment
that Prussia’s victories, in the Wnal analysis, represented the triumph of
425 Franz Overbeck, Über die Christlichkeit unserer heutigen Theologie, repr. of 2nd edn.
(Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1981), 120. Cf. Pannenberg, Theology and the
Philosophy of Science, 259.
426 Noted in Gossman, Basel in the Age of Burckhardt, 421. Cf. Franz Overbeck, Selbstbe-
kenntnisse, ed. Eberhardt Vischer (Basle, 1941) and Martin Henry, Franz Overbeck: Theologian?
(Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1995).
427 The liberal Reformverein of Basle believed Overbeck would ‘represent a more critical
direction’ in theology. See Hermann Schultz’s letter to Overbeck (15 November 1869). Ernst
Staehelin and Matthäus Gabathuler (eds.), Overbeckiana: Die Korrespondenz Franz Overbecks
(Basle: Helbing & Lichtenhahn, 1962), i. 86.
428 On the Nietzsche–Overbeck relationship, see C. A. Bernoulli, Overbeck und Friedrich
Nietzsche: eine Freundschaft, 2 vols. (Jena, 1908), and, more recently, Andreas Urs Sommer, Der
Geist der Historie und das Ende des Christentums: Zur ‘WaVengenossenschaft’ von Friedrich
Nietzsche und Franz Overbeck (Berlin: Akademie, 1997). Incidentally, Overbeck called
Nietzsche’s attention to Lagarde’s essay and Nietzsche in turn urged his friend Erwin Rohde
‘not to neglect this short and most astonishing work which says Wfty things wrongly, but Wfty
things rightly and truthfully, thus a very good work’. Friedrich Nietzsche, Gesammelte Briefe, 2nd
edn. (Leipzig, 1903), ii. 394.
philistinism and naked political power at the expense of ‘genuine’ German
culture. At Basle, Overbeck also increasingly fell out of step with the domin-
ant liberal theological trends, represented at Berlin, especially by Adolf von
Harnack, whose brand of modern theology and proximity to political power
Overbeck came to criticize with unsparing zeal. ‘Harnack’, Overbeck once
opined, ‘provides the service of a hair stylist for the theological wig of the
Emperor—just as Eusebius of Caesarea once did for the Emperor Constantine
the Great.’429
More generally, Overbeck held that the nineteenth century’s attempted
marriage of Wissenschaft and faith represented a stupendous failure. Far
from preparing students to serve the church, as Schleiermacher or Harnack
held, scientiWc theology represented the ruin of genuine Christianity. In fact
theology itself, Overbeck contended, had hammered the Wnal nails in the
coYn of Christianity, which he believed had virtually expired as a vital
cultural force in the modern, bourgeois world. Put most bluntly, Overbeck
once called modern theology the ‘Satan of religion’ and critical theologians
‘the traitors to the cause they are to defend’.430 While not one to mourn
Christianity’s passing, Overbeck kept most of his radical views to himself,
especially in the classroom where he played the incongruous role of a profes-
sor of church history.
However, with Nietzsche’s encouragement, Overbeck did publicize some of
his ideas: his Über die Christlichkeit unserer heutigen Theologie appeared in the
same year (1873) and by the same publisher as Nietzsche’s famous critical
essay on David Friedrich Strauss, the Wrst of his so-called ‘Untimely Medita-
tions’.431 While Overbeck validated Lagarde’s call for a comparative study of
religion, his own views were much more destructive than constructive, and he
rejected outright Lagarde’s contention that a ‘new theology’ could prepare the
way for some future ‘Germanic religion’. ‘Theologies,’ he dryly observed, ‘have
always followed their religions; in fact, the more energetic and unquestioned
the original religious impulse, the longer it took before theology made its
appearance. That a theology should precede a religion is unheard of, and it is
scarcely to be expected that something of that kind could happen in the
future.’432
429 Overbeck, Christentum und Kultur: Gedanken und Anmerkungen zur modernen Theologie,
selected and edited from Overbeck’s Nachlass by C. A. Bernoulli, 2nd edn. (Darmstadt:
Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1963), 209. Cf. Klaus Peter Blaser, ‘Harnack in der Kritik
Overbecks’, TZ 21 (1965): 96–112.
430 Overbeck, Christentum und Kultur, 236.
431 Nietzsche and Overbeck had their works bound together in two single volumes, and each
presented one of the volumes to the other as a gift and sign of friendship. Gossmann, Basel in the
Age of Burckhardt, 417.
432 Overbeck, Über die Christlichkeit unserer heutigen Theologie, 129.
In Overbeck’s judgment, theology ‘als Wissenschaft’, whether its practi-
tioners tended toward conservatism or liberalism, had enervated the essence
of Christianity, which Overbeck regarded as eschatological and world-deny-
ing. ‘World-denial’, he wrote, ‘is the innermost soul of Christianity.’433 In
contrast to moderns, early Christians expected the imminent end of the world
and they accordingly categorically denied the powers of this world, such as the
state, learning, and culture. The only place Overbeck saw genuine Christianity
still alive was in strict monastic communities, among those who sought to Xee
‘this world’. By contrast, modern academic theology, desirous of scientiWc
respectability and dependent on state support, contradicted the eschatological
character of Christianity and hence poisoned its own historical taproot.434
‘Nowadays,’ Overbeck wrote, ‘people hear it often said that Christianity has an
‘‘inclination to science’’ (Zug zur Wissenschaft). . . . On the contrary . . . Chris-
tianity, as does every religion, has the most unequivocal aversion to science,’
adding that ‘the antagonism between faith and knowledge is one that is
permanent and thoroughly irreconcilable.’435
Overbeck acknowledged that his views would be regarded as unpopular
and he candidly admitted the peculiarity of his own identity: a theologian,
neither traditionalist nor modern, who regarded the existence of his own
profession as a contradiction in terms. Such an outlook, he wrote, amounted
to ‘a leap into the air’ (sich in die Luft stellen), a suspenseful step into an
unprecedented and uncertain condition. By publishing such a work, more-
over, Overbeck was fully aware that he had ‘embroiled himself in an unre-
solvable conXict with the dominant theological current in the German empire
[typiWed by Harnack] and in consequence was condemned to exile’—in Swiss
Basle.436
As with Lagarde, the extremity of Overbeck’s views resulted in more raised
eyebrows than esteem. Toward the end of his life, Overbeck was able to count
a mere thirty references in German and English journals to his book.437 One
might conjecture that the failure of the comparative study of religion to gain a
foothold in Germany owed something to the fact that its earliest boosters—
Lagarde and Overbeck—were associated with both radical anti-Christian and
433 Ibid. 91.

434 Of Christianity and the state, Overbeck once wrote: ‘ ‘‘Das ursprüngliche Christentum ist
Abolition des Staates’’ (Friedrich Nietzsche, Der Wille zur Macht. Versuch einer Umwertung.
Leipzig 1901 S. 109f.). Wer das nicht einsieht, mit dem lohnt sich in der That nicht weiter über
das Verhältniss von Christenthum und Staat zu einander zu reden.’ From Overbeck’s Nachlass;
portions reprinted in Sommer, Der Geist der Historie, 147–8.
435 Overbeck, Über die Christlichkeit unserer heutigen Theologie, 22.
436 Quoted in Gossman, Basel in the Age of Burckhardt, 421–2.
437 Overbeck, Über die Christlichkeit unserer heutigen Theologie, (postscript to the 2nd edn.),
150–2.
anti-modern sentiments, which few others were willing to embrace. None-
theless, their criticism of ‘wissenschaftliche Theologie’ was not to pass from
the scene. In fact, it assumed a diVerent, less vituperative but nonetheless
powerful, outlet in the 1880s and 1890s with the emergence, largely at the
University of Göttingen, of the ‘History of Religions School’ (religions-
geschichtliche Schule).438
Unlike Lagarde and Overbeck, the scholars associated with this School—
principally Albert Eichhorn (1856–1926), Hermann Gunkel (1862–1932),
Johannes Weiss (1863–1914), and Wilhelm Bousset (1865–1920)439—were
not prone to make sweeping statements about the demise of Christianity or
theology. Rather, their challenge to the status quo was largely methodological.
Eschewing dogmatic considerations and making extensive use of the histor-
ical methods reWned by Ranke, Mommsen, and others, they argued that the
religious outlook and stories in the Old and New Testament could not be
understood apart from the detailed study of other religions of the Near East.
At Wrst the School conWned itself to tracing historical developments within
Judaism and Christianity, but it soon expanded its search for antecedents and
parallels in Egyptian, Babylonian, and various Hellenistic religious systems.
Several members of the School claimed that various key Old Testament
biblical passages derived from non-Hebrew sources. Bousset and Weiss ar-
gued that the eschatological ideas underlying the terms ‘Messiah’ and ‘King-
dom of God’ were also largely of non-Jewish origin, while others found
extrabiblical antecedents for such crucial theological ideas as ‘Holy Spirit’
and ‘Saviour’. Not surprisingly, the work of these scholars both intrigued and
disturbed the theological community, as they made a forceful case that
Christianity could not be understood apart from detailed knowledge of the
origin and history of other world religions.440 In short, they boldly aYrmed
Friedrich Max Müller’s maxim that ‘he who knows only one [religion], knows
none’.
The cumulative impact of the writings of Lagarde and Overbeck and the
rise of the religionsgeschichtliche Schule, not to mention the simultaneous,
mounting plea by the political Left for the separation of church and state,
placed acute pressures to change on German theological faculties, which still
rested on its dual foundation, championed by Schleiermacher, of scientiWc
training for church service. This pressure was intensiWed near the cusp of the
438 Lagarde himself is often considered one of the intellectual progenitors of this School.
439 Ernst Troeltsch is often considered the ‘systematic theologian’ of this School. See
Troeltsch, ‘The Dogmatics of the Religionsgeschichtliche Schule’, AJT 17 (July 1913): 1–21.
440 ODCC 1379–80 and Gerd Lüdemann, ‘Die Religionsgeschichtliche Schule’, in Moeller
(ed.), Theologie in Göttingen, 325–61. Cf. the essays in Gerd Lüdemann (ed.), Die ‘Religions-
geschichtliche Schule’: Facetten eines theologischen Umbruches (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang,
1996).
twentieth century by international factors. In 1893 in conjunction with the
Chicago’s World Fair, the Wrst World’s Parliament of Religions took place, an
unprecedented seventeen-day aVair of religious dialogue between ‘the ten
great religions of the world’. One eVect of this meeting was greater recognition
for the growth and institutional needs of the comparative study of religion.441
In 1897 the Wrst international Congress for the Science of Religion met in
Stockholm, Sweden, where the progress and future of comparative religious
studies were discussed. In these discussions, German universities were found
wanting.442 Similar conclusions were reached at the Congress’s meeting in
Paris in 1900. Here Albert Réville (holder of the newly founded chair of
religious history at the Collège de France) boasted of the new discipline’s
extensive international progress, but he noted that Germany lagged behind.
He explained this fact as a consequence of the persistence of ecclesiastical ties
among German theological faculties, and he called for theology to prioritize
its scientiWc character by including the general science of religion as one of its
principal foci.443
The implications of the aforementioned developments, again, placed theo-
logical faculties in Germany in a defensive and uncertain position. ‘If the
religious historical method has in fact arrived,’ the Halle theologian Max
Reischle summed up, ‘it brings with it a problem for theology. Implicit in
the proclamation of its methodology is the contention that the erstwhile
activity of theology does not suYce.’444
The debate over Religionswissenschaft and the future of Germany’s theo-
logical faculties played out in numerous church conferences, academic dis-
cussions, and periodicals in the early Wilhelmine period. However, arguably
no single event is more important for interpreting its meaning for the
German academic scene than Adolf Harnack’s 1901 rectorial address at the
University of Berlin, ‘The Task of the Theological Faculties and the General
History of Religion’.445 At the time of the address, Harnack was not only a
highly esteemed theologian and church historian but rapidly becoming one of
Germany’s leading public intellectuals. His fame had just been widened
through a popular series of lectures delivered in the winter semester of
441 Richard Hughes Seager, The World’s Parliament of Religions: The East/West Encounter,
Chicago, 1893 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994).
442 See P. D. Chantepie de la Saussaye, ‘Die vergleichende Religionsforschung und der
religiöse Glaube, Vortrag gehalten auf dem ersten religionswissenschaftlichen Kongresse in
Stockholm am 31.August 1897’ (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1898).
443 Albert Réville, ‘La Situation actuelle de l’enseignement de l’histoire des religions’, Revue de
l’histoire des religions 43 (1901): 58–74.
444 Max Reischle, Theologie und Religionsgeschichte (Tübingen, 1904), 21.
445 Welch, Protestant Thought in the Nineteenth Century, ii. 125. The address was given on 3
August 1901. It was later published in his Reden und Aufsätze (Giessen, 1906), ii. 159–88.
1899–1900, later published as Das Wesen des Christentums, often regarded as
the quintessential statement of modern liberal Protestantism. What is more,
Harnack had become among the principal advisers to Minister Friedrich
AlthoV, not to mention a favourite of the Emperor.446 In short, Harnack’s
words carried great inXuence and symbolic importance; and his reputation
was only to grow in the coming decades.447
In his address, delivered in the ceremonial Aula of the university, Harnack
sized up the problem straightforwardly: should the theological faculty restrict
itself primarily to the Christian faith or should it evolve into a faculty for the
general study of religious history and comparative religion? Or, at a min-
imum, should it include professorships of religious science to complement
those in the customary subdivisions of the theological faculty?
In principle, Harnack was willing to concede many points to the advocates
of Religionswissenschaft. He admitted that religion was a ‘general concept’
experienced by all people at all times, and hence it was a concept worthy of
serious and sustained critical investigation. Furthermore, other religions, like
Christianity, lent themselves to historical inquiry, and hence their study
would entail no major methodological obstacles. Finally, the current situation
of Christianity, its global expansion and increasing contact with foreign
cultures, clearly suggested the importance of the general investigation of
religion. With these considerations in mind, Harnack thus recognized why
some thought a preponderant focus on Christianity represented an ‘inadmis-
sible constraint’ placed on academic theology.448
But ultimately Harnack was unsympathetic to the winds of change. Con-
tending that an ‘inner reason’ (innere Vernunft) resided in the customary
fourfold organization of the faculties, he praised the founders of the Univer-
sity of Berlin for retaining it in 1810, despite pleas to do otherwise. With
respect to the theological faculty in particular, he claimed that powerful
countervailing arguments advised against transforming it into a seat for the
general study of religion. Religion, he reasoned, cannot after all be studied
apart from historical inquiry into the political, linguistic, economic, and
social foundations of the civilization of which it is a part. If one tried to
isolate the religious dimension of all civilizations and study it severed from its
historical context, ‘dilettantism’ would result.449 If such inquiry were located
446 Rüdiger vom Bruch, ‘Adolf von Harnack und Wilhelm II’, in Kurt Nowak and Otto
Gerhard Oexle (eds.), Adolf von Harnack: Theologe, Historiker, Wissenschaftspolitiker (Göttingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2001), 23–38.
447 Stefan Rebenich, Theodor Mommsen und Adolf Harnack: Wissenschaft und Politik im
Berlin des ausgehenden 19.Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1997), 116 V., 537 V.
448 Adolf Harnack, ‘Die Aufgabe der theologischen Fakultäten und die allgemeine Religions-
geschichte’, Reden und Aufsätze (Giessen, 1906), ii. 164–6.
449 Ibid. 167.
in the theological faculty it might duplicate similar eVorts in the philosophical
faculty, which Harnack held as the more suitable place for the general study of
religion.
More fundamentally, Harnack made the normative liberal-Protestant ar-
gument that Christianity represented the most historically advanced of all
world religions; as such it both encompassed and transcended other forms of
religious expression. Reversing Müller’s maxim, Harnack proclaimed that the
one who knew Christianity gained the greater capacity to know other reli-
gions as well: ‘Wer diese Religion nicht kennt, kennt keine, und wer sie samt
ihre Geschichte kennt, kennt alle.’ Furthermore, in a pointed rebuke to the
religionsgeschichtliche Schule, Harnack argued that Christianity’s similarities
to other religions were not the important thing, but rather the degree to
which Christianity exhibited superlative qualities that had allowed it to foster
progressive civilization and command the admiration of the world. The Bible
was the book above all others for Harnack, and neither the Vedas nor the
Koran could measure up to it. In it one gained contact with a great variety of
religious moods and expressions and with the whole intellectual wealth of the
ancient world. Whoever investigates the Bible carefully, Harnack proclaimed,
‘does not need to study any multiplicity of religion in order to know the way
of religion and religious history’. Scholars of the Bible, therefore, are less
dependent on students of other religions; rather they are dependent on
biblical scholars.450 In short, Christianity—its texts, history, and theology—
represented for Harnack the fullness of human religious expression, not to
mention the dominant cultural inXuence on occidental and increasingly
world civilization.
Harnack thus validated the theological faculty’s customary goal—in es-
sence, reasserting the twofold task bequeathed to modern theology by
Schleiermacher. On the one hand, academic theology should freely pursue
scientiWc knowledge about Christianity—and Harnack adamantly insisted
there be no ecclesiastical constraints on this pursuit. On the other hand,
theology was the servant of the church, in the sense that it oVered the church
the results of its scientiWc inquiry for the task of leading it to purer forms of
expression. In the Wnal analysis, Harnack wrote, ‘we [should] stick by the old
task of our theology’.451
But on an interpretative note, it should be clear that this ‘old task’ was by
no means the traditional confessional or dogmatic task of theology. At the
time of his address, Harnack had long since parted company with orthodoxy
and the confessional churches, whose representatives remained among his
450 Ibid. 168–69. Cf. Welch, Protestant Thought in the Nineteenth Century, ii. 126.
451 Harnack, ‘Die Aufgabe der theologischen Fakultäten’, 173–7.
foremost critics. Rather, Harnack’s ‘old task’ was the formerly ‘new task’ born
in the late Enlightenment and prominently institutionalized, as we have seen,
by Schleiermacher in conjunction with the founding of the University of
Berlin. Harnack now perceived the theological eVort of his illustrious forebear
to be under attack from more radical elements, and he found himself in a
position not unlike those members of the Third Estate confronted by Jaco-
binism, who sought to preserve their achievements against both reactionary
elements on the one hand and hyper-revolutionary ones on the other.
Although one cannot attribute the weakened position of Religionswis-
senschaft in Germany in the early twentieth century solely to Harnack’s
inXuential address, a number of his contemporaries and later commentators
interpreted this to be the case, and I am inclined to think there is merit in this
view.452 Whatever the case, an independent science of religion did not gain the
institutional foothold in Germany that it did in other lands, even if Germany,
as many proclaimed, was the indisputable birthplace of the critical methods
for this new Weld. Still, some inroads were made. For example, the journal
Archiv für Religionswissenschaft, founded around the time of Harnack’s ad-
dress, promoted the new Weld of study to a German academic readership.453
Individual chairs in Religionsgeschichte were established at Berlin and Leipzig
respectively in 1910 and 1912, and they were followed by a handful of others,
seated either in the theological but more often in the philosophical faculty.454
Additionally, the advent and spread of the ‘science of missions’ (Missionswis-
senschaft), in part a consequence of colonial expansion, gave some institu-
tional space for the study of non-Christian religions.455 Nonetheless, despite
some innovations, theological faculties largely stuck with their twofold
452 To be sure, Harnack also faced opposition in Germany: e.g. Martin Rade, editor of the
inXuential journal, Christliche Welt, was a strong supporter of establishing chairs in religious
history and comparative religion. In 1901 Rade and Harnack exchanged opinions on the issue in
Rade’s journal.
453 Published at Leipzig, the journal began in 1898 and was edited by Albrecht Dieterich and
Thomas Achelis. Nevertheless, this journal was founded twenty-eight years after its French
counterpart, Revue de l’histoire des religions (1870).
454 See Ernst Lüder Solte, Theologie an der Universität; 232, and Adolph Deissmann, Der
Lehrstuhl für Religionsgeschichte (Berlin, 1914). In 1933 there were Wve chairs devoted to
Religionswissenschaft in Germany. See Leonore Siegele-Wenschkewitz and Carsten Nicolaisen
(eds.), Theologische Fakultäten im Nationalsozialismus (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
1993), 90.
455 See Gerhard Rosenkranz, ‘Missionswissenschaft als Wissenschaft’, ZTK 53 (1956): 103–27.
Following an earlier example at Halle (1897), a ‘Missionsgeschichtliches Seminar’ was founded
at Berlin in 1917 and soon renamed ‘Missionswissenschaftliches Seminar’. In 1935 it was again
renamed as ‘Institut für Allgemeine Religionsgeschichte und Missionswissenschaft’. This latter
title reXects the reality that the study of missions and non-Christian religions often went hand in
hand. See the guide to the ‘Theologische Fakultät Dekanant’, HUA.
mandate bequeathed by Schleiermacher and also with the traditional fourfold
division into exegetical, historical, systematic, and practical branches.
Nearly two decades after his 1901 rectorial address, Harnack helped face down
a diVerent kind of threat to the theological faculty, this time however its
origins were more political in nature. The Social Democratic Party’s oppos-
ition to the status quo, in religious policy and other areas, was muted by the
wave of patriotic sentiment that swept over Germany after 1914. At this time,
political parties of all persuasions largely put aside their diVerences and rallied
behind the Kaiser in the war eVort. (Incidentally, Harnack, despite his sym-
pathy for socialism, supported the war, signing the infamous ‘Manifesto of
the 93 Intellectuals’ and once opining that the experience of war ‘was closely
akin to true religious feeling and aided many men to recognize the greater
importance of ideals over material wealth’.)456
The Armistice and the Revolution of November 1918 came as the destruc-
tion of an entire world order for most segments of the German population.
The ending of the Kaiserreich and the abdication of Wilhelm II, Prussia’s
erstwhile summus episcopus, also created conditions conducive for the real-
ization of the SPD’s political objectives, including its church–state policies.
Indeed, the reorganization of the church–state relationship became one of the
major and most contentious issues in the constitutional deliberations at
Weimar that took place in the spring and summer of 1919, preceding the
epochal adoption of the Weimar Constitution on 11 August 1919.457
Leaving aside the manifold complexities of these deliberations, two obser-
vations hold true with respect to church–state relations. First, despite early
proclamations of radical disestablishment along the lines adopted by France
in 1905, the outcome of church–state deliberations in the Weimar Assembly
moved in a moderate direction, resulting in the prohibition of an oYcial state
church but also the recognition of the public character of churches.458 As one
churchman later wrote, ‘How we feared the immediate future of the church
when the church-hostile Revolution broke out! And yet how smoothly—if we
overlook outbursts and agitation—the deliberations went in the National
Assembly.’459 Second, the future of theological faculties, their ‘right of exist-
ence’ (Existenzrecht) in the universities, became an important point of debate,
456 Quoted in Douglas F. Tobler, ‘Scholar between Worlds: Adolf von Harnack and the
Weimar Republic’, ZRG 28 (1976): 211. On the Manifesto, the German professoriate, and the
First World War, see Ringer, The Decline of the German Mandarins, 180–99.
457 Kurt Nowak, Geschichte des Christentums in Deutschland: Religion, Politik und Gesellschaft
vom Ende der Aufklärung bis zur Mitte des 20.Jahrhunderts (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1995), 205 V.
458 E. R. Huber and Wolfgang Huber (eds.), Staat und Kirche im 19. und 20.Jahrhundert
(Berlin: Duncker and Humblot, 1988), iv. 127.
459 Quoted in Daniel R. Borg, The Old-Prussian Church and the Weimar Republic: A Study in
Political Adjustment, 1917–1927 (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1984), 94.
pitting radicals, who argued for their abolition, against moderates and tradi-
tionalists, who argued for their retention.
The gauntlet for this debate was thrown down in November of 1918 in a
memorandum on disestablishment drafted by the socialist Alfred Dieterich,
who advocated ‘the abolition of the theological faculties and the transference
of the sciences of religion . . . as historical disciplines into the philosophical
and legal faculties’.460 Similar views were held by Adolf Hofmann, who
became, brieXy, Prussia’s Minister of Culture after the November Revolu-
tion.461 Eventually, however, more moderate voices prevailed. While the
adopted Constitution declared ‘Es besteht keine Staatskirche’ (§137), it also
made clear that ‘die theologischen Fakultäten in den Hochschulen bleiben
erhalten’ (§149).462 Thus, an element of continuity was maintained amid a
backdrop of fundamental political and social change.463 Despite the moderate
outcome, one should not fail to note the extraordinary symbolic meaning of
the conXict itself: the venerable ‘sacred faculty’, already eliminated in many
European countries, stood in the wake of Europe’s then greatest human
disaster before the bar of political and legal modernity in an eVort to justify
its existence in Germany. That it did so successfully is considerably, if not
exclusively, due to the determined eVorts, once again, of Adolf von Harnack.
Of the academic Wgures summoned by the Weimar Assembly for expert
advice and consultation, Harnack stands out. Already a highly visible and
respected intellectual, Harnack had open sympathy for many social demo-
cratic causes464 and his liberal theological views put him in good graces with
many members of the Weimar Assembly. Moreover, although a favourite of
the Kaiser and a war supporter, after November 1918 Harnack recognized—
unlike many churchmen and academics—that the Kaiserreich was ‘forever
past’ (unwiederbringlich) and that the ‘age of democracy and socialism’ was
here to stay.465 For all these reasons and more, Harnack’s words on the
Assembly weighed quite heavily.
Harnack’s advice was sought on a variety of matters pertaining to educa-
tion, religion, and science; and he had a decisive impact on framing issues
460 See the memorandum in Huber and Huber (eds.), Staat und Kirche, iv. 8–13.
461 Ibid. 3.
462 Ibid. 129–32.
463 For more details of the debate over theological faculties, see Walter Delius, ‘Die
theologischen Fakultäten als Problem der Revolution vom Jahre 1918’, Theologia viatorum 10
(1965): 34–54.
464 e.g. Harnack had participated with Friedrich Naumann (1860–1919) in founding the
Evangelical Social Congress in 1890, a Protestant organization that sought to address the ‘social
question’. Harnack served as its chairman for eight years, 1903–11. See Tobler, ‘Scholar between
Worlds’, 197.
465 Harnack, ‘Politische Maximen für das neue Deutschland, der akademischen Jugend
gewidmet’, in Harnack, Erforschtes und Erlebtes (Giessen, 1923), 321.
relevant to the theological faculties. He articulated his views before the
National Assembly at Weimar between 1 and 4 April 1919,466 but they were
even more forcefully and cogently set forth in a short article, ‘On the Sign-
iWcance of the Theological Faculties’, which appeared in the inXuential Pre-
ussiche Jahrbücher in March of 1919, in anticipation of his own appearance
before the Assembly.467
Rhetorically well-crafted and sensitive to the lingering appeal of national-
ism, the article reXects Harnack’s deep knowledge of and experience with
German academic and political culture. In it, he sought to refute the view that
‘the abolition of the theological faculties’ in the universities logically followed
from the Social Democratic platforms of ‘church and state must be separated’
and ‘religion is a private matter’. For Harnack the matter was far more
complicated; the current argument for abolition was both unexamined and
reXective of a penchant in modern thought to advocate change uncritically.
‘Religion builds communities [and] are communities,’ he asked rhetorically,
‘also exclusively a private matter?’ On the contrary, he argued that the public
domains of science and government (Wissenschaft and Staat) must take
supreme interest in the fate of the theological faculties, for their own highest
goods were also at stake in the debate over theology’s right to exist as a
university faculty.468
To highlight what in his view were the mutually beneWcial relations
between science, theology, and the state, Harnack turned to history. Appeal-
ing to the liberal, anticlerical proclivities of many representatives at the
National Assembly, Harnack pointed out that recent history made clear
that the two most vocal critics of university theology had been Protestant
pietists and ultramontane Catholics. Both wanted to relocate theology
from the precincts of the university to special ecclesiastical seminaries. Is
it not strange, Harnack mused, that those ‘moderns’, who ‘advocate the
abolition of the theological faculties in the name of enlightenment and the
neutral state have evangelical pietists and ultramontane politicians as bedfel-
lows’?469
Furthermore, Harnack argued that the place of the theological faculty,
the hitherto ‘centrepiece of the intellectual world’, occupied a place of pre-
eminent signiWcance for the history of modern German culture. Supporting
his claim, he appealed to the lives of Luther, Herder, and Schleiermacher,
466 See Verhandlungen der verfassunggebenden Deutschen Nationalversammlung, 336 (Berlin,

1920), 192 V., and 366 (Berlin, 1920), 216 V.
467 Adolf von Harnack, ‘Über die Bedeutung der theologischen Fakultäten’, PJ 61 (March
1919): 362–74.
468 Ibid. 363.
469 Ibid. 364.
among others.470 Although scholars might quibble over details, it cannot be
denied, Harnack asserted, that Luther qua ‘a Wittenberg professor of the-
ology’ assisted in the ‘dissolution of the medieval world’ and the ‘freeing of
knowledge’ from clerical control, a development of unrivalled importance for
present-day universities and intellectual life. Harnack attributed a similar
epochal signiWcance to Herder, ‘a Protestant theologian’, who as the pioneer
of German idealism and nationalism represented the ‘the blossoming of the
distinct character of the German spirit’.471
Turning to his illustrious predecessor at Berlin, Harnack called attention to
Schleiermacher and his inXuential labours in the early nineteenth century at
the theological faculties of Halle and Berlin. Schleiermacher’s fame as the
author of Reden über die Religion (1799) and as the translator of Plato were
perhaps overstated, Harnack argued, because he was just as important ‘as the
organizer of theology, the human sciences, the university and the academy’.
‘In my studies on the history of the Berlin Academy of Science,’ Harnack
elaborated,
I gained knowledge of numerous memoranda, written over a period of Wfteen years in
conjunction with the founding of the University of Berlin and the reorganization of
the Academy. . . . The result was that Schleiermacher’s stature and signiWcance meas-
ures up directly next to that of Wilhelm von Humboldt, and he even exceeds
Humboldt in organizational acumen and direct inXuence. Without exaggeration
one may say that the internal reconstruction of the human sciences, and the recon-
struction of the . . . German universities, were essentially the service of this professor of
theology.472
From historical examples Harnack turned to the present situation, asking
about the current relationship of ‘contemporary science to Protestant the-
ology and its faculties’. He regretted that the recent founding of the University
of Frankfurt am Main (1914) had once again emboldened voices who deemed
theological faculties as unnecessary.473 This had elicited objections from
470 He also mentioned F. C. Baur—as well as Hegel and Schelling, who, though not technic-
ally theologians in their mature years, ‘never denied their heritage in theology’. Ibid. 366.
471 Ibid. 365. Harnack attributed the fact that Herder never actually held a chair in a
theological faculty to ‘mere chance’, pointing out that eVorts were once made to secure one
for him at Göttingen.
472 Ibid. Harnack makes reference to his Geschichte der königlich Preußischen Akademie der
Wissenschaften zu Berlin, 3 vols. (Berlin, 1900). On the overstated importance of Humboldt for
the founding of the University of Berlin, see Walter Rüegg, ‘Der Mythos der Humboldtschen
Universität’, in Matthias Krieg and Martin Rose (eds.), Universitas in theologia—theologia in
universitate (Zurich: Theologischer Verlag Zurich, 1997), 155–76.
473 In point of fact, the University of Frankfurt am Main was founded in 1914 without a
theological faculty. This was an exceptional development as was the university itself, for the
founding endowment had come from private not public sources. The lack of a theological
rectors and other faculties throughout Germany, including non-theological
faculties. Harnack cited a memorandum from the University of Marburg,
where he had once taught, proclaiming that the retention of the theological
faculty was ‘indispensable’ for the functioning of a university and along with
other faculties theology was required for ‘the ediWce of modern German
science and culture’. Outside the university, he held, theology would inevit-
ably succumb to a narrow ‘one-sidedness’.474 Harnack reiterated this point
several times, noting that theology and philosophy especially stood in need of
one another. Could one imagine the philosophical brilliance of a Hegel or
Schelling, he mused, apart from the fact both had studied Protestant theology
in their youth?
Having made clear his general position, Harnack argued that there were yet
more convincing reasons for theology’s continuing legitimacy. Here he took
his point of departure from Schleiermacher’s classic twofold justiWcation of
the theological faculty. On the one hand, this faculty served society and the
state by providing well-trained, intellectually sophisticated clergymen able to
mediate advanced knowledge about Christianity to the German people, thus
leading the nation as a whole to a more developed religious and ethical life
(which for Harnack, it should be kept in mind, meant away from many
orthodox Christian doctrines). Second, it served as the seat of human know-
ledge about history’s most important event—the emergence of Christianity—
and its far-reaching implications in the ancient and modern world. The Bible,
Catholicism, and Protestantism, Harnack argued, had bequeathed to human
civilization objects of contemplation of the highest order. For this reason, the
work of the theological faculties ‘will never be exhausted’ so long as the
‘scientiWc urge’ lives on in human beings.475
Finally, Harnack sought to defend the theological faculty against three
criticisms not directly related to the political issue of church–state separation.
First, he returned to the question of whether theology should move in the
direction of Religionswissenschaft; referring to his 1901 rectorial address, he
again suggested that such a development would result in incurable dilettant-
ism, and that the best place for general religious inquiry remained in the
philosophical faculty. Second, he sought to refute those who, while admitting
faculty is partly explained by the fact that many of the key donors were Jewish and indiVerent to
the establishment of a Christian theological faculty. At the time of the founding, Harnack
vigorously opposed the absence of a theological faculty, arguing that ‘our culture is saturated by
the spirit of Protestantism, and a university is not allowed to dispense with professorships
concerned with [understanding] the roots of this spirit’. For this quotation and other material
about the founding of the University of Frankfurt sans theological faculty, see Paul Kluke, Die
Stiftungsuniversität Frankfurt am Main 1914–1932 (Frankfurt am Main: Kramer, 1972), 110–37.
474 Harnack, ‘Über die Bedeutung der theologischen Fakultäten,’ 367.
475 Ibid. 368–9.
the scientiWc credibility of exegetical and historical theology, rejected that of
systematic and practical theology.476 Against such critics, Harnack reasserted
Schleiermacher’s point that practical theology was the ‘crown’ of theology; if
it and systematic theology were separated from exegesis and church history,
then church leadership (Kirchenleitung) and pastoral care (Seelenführung)
throughout Germany would be intellectually diminished. Third, Harnack
took aim at those critics who argued that the theological faculty was an
‘alien body’ (Fremdkörper) in the university because many of its chair holders
professed a particular creed and maintained ecclesiastical connections. Har-
nack admitted that this often posed serious problems, especially when facul-
ties succumbed to church inXuence by appointing candidates based on their
theological views instead of on ‘scientiWc ability’ alone, as Harnack insisted
was appropriate. But Harnack also contended that credal commitment per se
did not necessarily invalidate the legitimacy of a particular candidate. St Paul,
Augustine, and Luther, he reasoned, all expressed views that many would Wnd
unpalatable in the modern university, but should these great teachers there-
fore be excluded from the university? To the contrary, echoing an argument
made by Schleiermacher during the establishment of Berlin’s theological
faculty, Harnack suggested that a plurality of viewpoints within the theo-
logical faculty constituted a positive good.477
Summarizing his main points, Harnack emphasized that university the-
ology was by no means an exclusive concern of the church, and hence it
should not be expelled from the university on the grounds of ‘separation
of church and state’. Rather, he concluded, Wissenschaft and Staat should
take a protective interest in maintaining the position of the theological
faculty against both its progressive and reactionary detractors. Failure to
do so would constitute ignorance of the lessons of history, a disparagement
of the German-Protestant spirit, and a misunderstanding of the scientiWc
mission of German universities and the Kulturstaat’s role in protecting
this mission.
Characteristically, Harnack’s words were taken with great seriousness.
Shortly after the publication of the article he received a personal letter from
Konrad Haenisch (1876–1925), the new Prussian Minister of Culture, ac-
knowledging the importance and timeliness of Harnack’s views. ‘You may rest
assured,’ Haenisch wrote, ‘that I will immediately attend to this matter with
great earnestness and scrupulousness. To this end your essay . . . [and] your
personal advice as well, is of the highest importance.’ Harnack also received a
letter from Wilhelm Kahl, a delegate at the Weimar Assembly, expressing the
476 See Bernoulli, Die wissenschaftliche und die kirchliche Methode in der Theologie.
477 Harnack, ‘Über die Bedeutung der theologischen Fakultäten’, 370–4.
opinion that Harnack’s article ‘appeared at the perfect time to aid the resolve
of several vacillating spirits (einige schwankende Gemüter). I conWdently hope
that the theological faculties will be anchored in the constitution itself.’478
That the Weimar Constitution eventually oVered such explicit protection for
the theological faculties—setting an important legal precedent in the twenti-
eth century and one that has set the German university system apart from that
of many Western liberal nations—suggests the powerful and enduring inXu-
ence of Harnack’s defence.479
The continuation of theological faculties also indirectly suggests the abiding
inXuence of Schleiermacher’s legacy, the spirit of which hovers over Harnack’s
1919 essay, indeed over Harnack’s entire career. One should, accordingly, not
overlook the historical parallels between Schleiermacher’s defence of the
theological faculty and university organization after the political crisis of
1806 and Harnack’s after the crisis of 1918. Both men understood themselves
to be defending a particular German intellectual and institutional heritage
against the materialistic and utilitarian depredations ushered in by a con-
quering ‘Western’ power. Removing theological faculties from the univer-
sities, for Harnack as for Schleiermacher before him, would mean spiritual
capitulation to a foreign imperium that conWgured relations between the-
ology, science, and the political order quite diVerently—certainly not ‘in the
German sense’ and certainly not in Wdelity to the Kulturstaat ideology as it
had developed in the nineteenth century.
At another level, removing theological faculties would mean turning one’s
back on the Reformation heritage and what this movement symbolized for
both German culture and modern liberal Protestant thought. It would violate,
as it were, the ‘eternal covenant’ that Schleiermacher had so eloquently
written about to Friedrich Lücke, to whom he had interpreted the Reforma-
tion as the union of ‘a living Christian faith’ and ‘a freely working
and independent science’. It was to Lücke too that Schleiermacher had
posed the famous question: ‘Is the knot of history [in our day] to be
unravelled by linking Christianity with barbarism and science with
478 Quoted in Zahn-Harnack, Adolf von Harnack, 387.

479 The relationship between church and state was not exclusively deWned by the Weimar
Constitution. Individual legal arrangements (Staatskirchenverträge) between the national state
and the churches of various Länder also contributed to the post-1918 outcome; Prussia’s
Staatskirchenvertrag dates from 1931. See Hans-Georg Babke, Theologie in der Universität: aus
rechtlicher, theologischer und wissenschaftstheoretischer Perspektive (Frankfurt am Main: Peter
Lang, 2000), 25–6. While the 1949 Constitution (Grundgesetzt) did not oVer theological
faculties explicit protection, such protections were continued in individual Landesverfassungen,
the constitutions of the various German states. See Solte, Theologie an der Universität, 112 V. Cf.
Martin Heckel, Die theologischen Fakultäten im weltlichen Verfassungsstaat (Tübingen: J. C. B.
Mohr, 1986).
unbelief?’480 After 1806 and again after 1918, the forces of barbarism had
overrun the gate, and both Schleiermacher and Harnack, in the impressive
breadth and limitations of their cultural horizons, strove tenaciously to
answer this question negatively.
480 Schleiermacher, Sendschreiben an Dr. Lücke (Giessen, 1908), 37–40.

6
Conclusion: Janus Gazing
[Theology] best illustrates the time-honored and profound word: ‘faculty.’

It is a landscape, like the landscape of Umbria or Tuscany, in which distant
perspectives are always clear. . . . But of all the sciences there is none which
is so beset with diYculties . . . It is the science which is most easily diVused
or petriWed, and which can become its own worst caricature.
Karl Barth, 1934
It is the destiny of our generation to stand between the times. We never
belonged to the period presently coming to an end; it is doubtful whether
we shall ever belong to the period which is to come. . . . So we stand in the
middle—in an empty space.
Friedrich Gogarten, 1920
On a number of occasions I have characterized the theological faculty’s
passage into modernity as ‘Janus-faced’. The expression has helped convey
both the scholarly virtuosity attained by Protestant academic theology in the
nineteenth century and also theology’s institutional diminution (and near
eviction) in the context of the expanding and modernizing university system.
Let us not forget, however, that in antiquity Janus’s two faces were intimately
linked with time, with endings and beginnings: one face gazed contempla-
tively at the happenings of the past, the other scrutinized the future. Janus
stood, as it were, between the times. This aspect of Janus I would now invoke,
for with the post-war years, 1919 to 1923 in particular, one observes both an
ending and a beginning. Adolf von Harnack’s eloquent and successful apolo-
gia for the theological faculty in the Preussische Jahrbücher (1919) marked in
many respects a culminating statement for nineteenth-century university
theology: the theological faculty’s public, national vindication despite much
criticism and amid dizzying social and political changes. At the same time, it
signalled an ending. Harnack’s publication coincided with that of Max
Weber’s famous ‘Wissenschaft als Beruf ’, which in the wake of a war that
‘dealt a staggering blow to epistemological conWdence’1 spawned numerous
1 David N. Myers, Resisting History: Historicism and its Discontents in German-Jewish

Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 2.
404 Conclusion: Janus Gazing
highly-charged discussions about ‘the crisis of learning’ in general and ‘the
crisis of the university’ in particular.2 Many commonplace assumptions of
academic life during the Wilhelmine era suddenly found themselves out of
place or under Wre. What is more, Harnack’s article coincided with the
beginning of an era that we have come to regard—due to Karl Barth, Emil
Brunner, Friedrich Gogarten, and others—as a ‘revolution’ in academic
theology, indeed as one of the most consequential developments in modern
Christian thought.3
I shall return to this ‘revolution’ shortly, but only after attending to a prior
matter. In the Introduction, I indicated that this study should be understood
at two levels: as an exercise in intellectual history, on the one hand, and as an
interpretative foray into the history of Christian theology, on the other. The
foregoing discussion of Harnack’s activities and writings have largely been a
matter of the former. Turning to the latter, a more comprehensive, if more
speculative, analysis of Harnack’s broader signiWcance requires moving be-
yond immediate intellectual and political circumstances, or at least placing
these in a broader framework of interpretation, one that takes into consider-
ation and takes seriously the history of Christian thought tout court.
If we were to engage in a thought experiment and consider the esteemed
Berlin scholar’s words not from the perspective of the collapsing German
Empire and early Weimar Republic, but instead from the standpoint of
Harnack’s own particular area of expertise, the patristic era, a rather diVerent
picture emerges than the one oVered in the preceding chapter. Given the
exemplary status enjoyed by this era for all major Christian traditions today, I
have not selected it arbitrarily. However, I invoke it here heuristically, not
normatively, to propound the idea that modern theological phenomena
require both synchronic and diachronic contextualization, for consideration
of a remoter past helps bring into relief the shared assumptions and general
tendencies of any given present.4
2 See Fritz Ringer, The Decline of the German Mandarins: The German Academic Community,
1890–1933 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969), 352 V., 367 V. On the preva-
lence of ‘crisis thinking’ generally in the early twentieth century, see Allan Megill, Prophets of
Extremity: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1985), 6, 21, passim.
3 See F. W. Graf, ‘Die ‘‘antihistorische Revolution’’ in der protestantischen Theologie der
zwanziger Jahre’, in Jan Rohls and Gunther Wenz (eds.), Vernunft des Glaubens: wissenschaftliche
Theologie und kirchliche Lehre (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1988), 357–76. Cf. Hans
Frei, ‘The Doctrine of Revelation in the Thought of Karl Barth, 1909 to 1922: The Nature of
Barth’s Break with Liberalism’, Ph.D. diss. (Yale University, 1956), p. iii.
4 By considering the patristic era here, I highlight the heuristic value of contrast. An equally
interesting comparative endeavour would be to consider the university theology of the High
Middle Ages in relation to the university theology of Wilhelmine Germany, examining in particu-
lar the meanings and values attributed respectively to scientia and Wissenschaft in both periods.
Conclusion: Janus Gazing 405
It might be beneWcial to isolate one aspect of Harnack’s thought as symp-
tomatic of Wn-de-siècle liberal academic theology generally: his contention
that a theology conducted under an ecclesiastical aegis posed a grave threat to
the credibility of theology, particularly its intellectual credibility.5 In most
Christian epochs perhaps, but certainly in the patristic period, this would
come across as something wholly alien, even unintelligible. For the early
church fathers, as Robert Louis Wilken has pointed out, ‘there was no
Christian thinking without the church’. The tasks of Christian understanding
were regarded simply as the intellectual outgrowth of the ecclesia, the fruit of
reXecting on the liturgy, the sacraments, Scripture, and prayer. With few
exceptions, such as Clement of Alexandria, practically every major theological
Wgure in antiquity held an ecclesiastical post, and their intellectual exertion
(no matter how they deWned the relationship between Athens and Jerusalem)
grew organically from the pastoral oYce.6 The best-known case undoubtedly
is Augustine—bishop of Hippo.
Harnack’s close linkage of theology with the modern forces of Verwis-
senschaftlichung and Verstaatlichung would appear equally foreign to the
ancient churchmen whom Harnack studied. In particular, the critical, in-
novative spirit of Wissenschaft, nourished by nineteenth-century institutional
arrangements, would have conXicted sharply with at least two principal
criteria of theological reXection in antiquity: the regulative role of tradition
and the necessary association of theological insight with one’s personal
spiritual progress in the context of ascetic or communal practices. For the
early church, to quote Wilken again, Christian thought was ‘inescapably
bound up with the lives and words of actual persons, for the truth of what
was handed on rested Wnally on the faithfulness of the traditores, those who
did the handing on’.7 To risk stating the obvious, traditores were emphatically
not Wissenschaftler in the modern sense: seminar-trained, furnished with
historical and philological methods, and driven by powerful institutional
incentives to make a mark in what Harnack himself had called the ‘Großbe-
trieb der Wissenschaft’, the large-scale industry of science. They were rather
regarded as exemplars of a spiritual and virtuous life, who approached
Scripture and theological subjects not as historical phenomena requiring
historical investigation—even if still as history, but history in a putatively
5 Cf. Hermann Mulert, Evangelische Kirchen und theologische Fakultäten (Tübingen, 1930),
30 f.
6 Robert Louis Wilken, The Spirit of Early Christian Thought (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2003), 46.
7 Quoted in Wilken, The Spirit of Early Christian Thought, 46. Cf. Manilo Simonetti, Biblical
Interpretation in the Early Church: An Historical Introduction to Patristic Exegesis, trans. John A.
Hughes (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1994).
deeper and truer sense, as Heilsgeschichte not Weltgeschichte. History thus
conceived stood above, overwhelmed, and helped decipher the profane world
and its manifold contingencies; knowledge of it held out the possibility of
purging the soul of untoward attachments and desires.8 Far from being
understood as a modern university science or as a cultural pillar of a particu-
lar nation-state, as Harnack had skilfully argued, theology was largely a way of
reading Scripture (the ultimate source of Heilsgeschichte) that furthered one’s
own spiritual advancement and thereby contributed to the life of the church.
‘You will progress in understanding the Holy Scripture’, Gregory the Great
wrote, ‘only to the degree that you yourself have made progress through
contact with them.’9 Study detached from spiritual ediWcation, in other
words, did one little good. And at worst, it could contribute to what medieval
thinkers regarded as the vice of curiositas, knowledge of important things
lodged in minds unsuited to steward them.
The positioning of academic theology under the oYcialdom and guard-
ianship of the modern Kulturstaat as pursued, administratively, in the early
nineteenth century by Altenstein and typiWed, intellectually, in the early
twentieth century by Harnack, also provides a stark contrast with Christian
antiquity. While the symbioses of theology and the political order (and the
problems inhering therein) in other epochs of Christian history should be
candidly acknowledged, it stands to reason that the liberal-critical theology
that took shape under the umbrella of the Kulturstaat ideal in modern
Germany—with Prussia setting the pace but with family resemblances exist-
ing in other states—represents a new departure in Christian intellectual and
institutional history. One should Wnd it noteworthy indeed, Hans Frei once
suggestively wrote of Prussia, to Wnd a modern state handing the training of
its clerics ‘to the very institution, the university, which was bound to be most
uneasy, perhaps even deeply skeptical, about the compatibility of such train-
ing [and] its own ideal of Wissenschaftlichkeit and the intellectual freedom
and institutional independence guaranteed by the same state that governed
the Church’.10 But precisely these conditions had emerged in the late nine-
teenth century, provoking numerous complaints, heard most clearly among
pietist and orthodox theologians, that the imperatives of the universities and
the interests of the pastoral oYce were drifting further and further apart.11
8 This would, of course, apply to much of what Hans Frei calls ‘precritical interpretation’. See
Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative: A Study in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Hermen-
eutics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), 17–50.
9 Quoted in Wilken, The Spirit of Early Christian Thought, 79.
10 Hans Frei, Types of Christian Theology (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 101.
11 Reinhold Seeberg, Die Kirche Deutschlands im neunzehnten Jahrhundert (Leipzig, 1904),
238 V.
But for those like Harnack, who regarded academic theology as a strictly
wissenschaftlich endeavour, these institutional conWgurations (however they
might appear from the broader sweep of Christian history) made it only
natural to look to the state, not churches or ecclesiastical bodies, as the
rightful protector of theology’s intellectual integrity and social inXuence.
(Remember, Harnack’s own culturally powerful position at Berlin originated
as an act of state power directed against ecclesiastical interests.) To do
otherwise, representatives of the regnant liberal theology regularly main-
tained, would mean to succumb to regressive historical forces—above all
residually ‘Catholic’ elements still not wholly exorcized from modern Prot-
estantism.12 Indeed, throughout the nineteenth century, and particularly
during and after the Kulturkampf, Catholicism served as the necessary
‘other’, not only for general Protestant self-deWnition, as is often noted, but
also for deWning the relationship between Protestantism and public institu-
tions. Without the protective space of state institutions, Harnack indicated,
Protestantism risked becoming ‘a sorry double of Catholicism’.13 Or, as
Friedrich Paulsen put the matter: Protestantism must not be deprived ‘of an
independent theology or the freedom of scientiWc endeavor, and therefore one
must not deliver the theological faculties into the hands of an ecclesiastical
party. The public administration of universities . . . has thus far guaranteed the
independent development of Protestant theology and can best guarantee it in
the future.’ A Protestant theology too tied to churchly interests, Paulsen
added, would ‘simply mean Catholicism’ and ‘have no value at all’.14
Indeed, this species of Protestant theology was quite indiVerent to and
perhaps ultimately unable to count itself, in Jacques Maritain’s phrase, among
‘the things that are not Caesar’s’. The opposite held true. Theology took its
place, intentionally and, at least in the case of Harnack, inXuentially, at the
table of the modern German nation-state, in the bosom of a state-managed
Kultus, seeking and Wnding justiWcation as an able contributor to ‘the ediWce
of modern German science and culture’.15 In the nineteenth century, this
12 On the broader historical reasons for the strong anti-Catholic elements in Protestant
academic theology, see Thomas Nipperdey, Deutsche Geschichte, 1866–1918 (Munich: C. H.
Beck, 1993), 364 V.
13 Harnack, Das Wesen des Christentums, ed. Trutz RendtorV (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Ver-
lagshaus, 1993), 257.
William W. Elwang (New York, 1906), 139–40. After 1907 such anti-Catholic sentiments were
especially directed against the encyclical of Pius X, Pascendi dominici gregis, which condemned
‘the doctrines of the modernists’. This was followed in 1910 by the requirement that all Catholic
theologians take an ‘anti-modernist oath’. See Eilert Herms, ‘Theologischer ‘‘Modernismus’’
und lerhamtlicher ‘‘Antimodernismus’’ in der romischen Kirche am Anfang des zwanzigsten
Jahrhunderts’, Troeltsch-Studien 4 (1987): 13–55.
15 Adolf von Harnack, ‘Über die Bedeutung der theologischen Fakultäten’, PJ (March 1919): 367.
partnership of power and spirit had conferred on the state a quasi-sacred
moral agency all its own, which for a vocal minority—such as the extreme but
revealing Wgure of Richard Rothe and, before him, Hegel—rendered churches
functionally superXuous institutions, cooperative appendages to the state at
best, and, at worst, purveyors of dogmatic anachronisms that only impeded
the full realization of a ‘New Protestantism’, a modernized form of Christen-
dom, Christianity understood as broad, civilizational project delivered from
the husks of older doctrinal or ecclesiastical considerations.16 One may
disagree about the extent and relative merits of this partnership of power
and spirit, but under it one can say, at a minimum, that the state was
decidedly not viewed with great scepticism by Protestant academic mandarins
such as Harnack; and it was emphatically not understood in Augustine’s
dictum as ‘the city of this world, a city which aims at dominion . . . but is
itself dominated by the very lust of domination’.17
Viewed in this light, Harnack’s politically successfully eVorts to defend
theology’s legitimacy in the university (though ostensibly conservative when
measured against more strident scientiWc and social democratic voices), rests
on and brings to seasoned expression a much greater discontinuity in the
nineteenth century: the redeWnition of Protestant theology (or at least
inXuential sectors thereof) not as an apologetic, practical, confessional, or
ecclesial enterprise, but as a critical, academic, scientiWc and, indeed, pro-
foundly statist one—the submission of Heilsgeschichte to the criteria of
Weltgeschichte, the submission of theology to the guidance of Wissenschaft,
the submission of the training of future church leaders to the custody of the
state. Perhaps Ernst Troeltsch recognized this situation most acutely when—
to quote him liberally—he wrote in 1908:
Theology, too, has become far more indiVerent to the problems of the church.
The special position of theological faculties as state institutions and members
of large academic corporations has given it a relative independence against ecclesias-
tical inXuences. This independence is produced and maintained partly by the
state. . . . [Protestant theologians] consider Protestantism to be the principle of free
research in religious matters. . . . This, however, has given theological science a new
character. In truth it is confessionless, Protestant only insofar as the freedom of
science is regarded as a Protestant demand. All liberations from historical Protestant-
ism are equated with [further] deliverance from Catholicism. [Theology] has accepted
16 As in Ch. 4, I draw implications from Hajo Holborn’s provocative article, ‘German

Idealism in the Light of Social History’, in Germany and Europe: Historical Essays by Hajo
Holborn (Garden City, NY: Anchor, 1971), 1–32. Cf. Harnack’s discussion of Protestantism in
Das Wesen des Christentums, 250–62.
17 Augustine, The City of God, ed. David Knowles (Baltimore: Penguin, 1972), 5.
the general scientiWc methods of [its] sister faculties. . . . The apologetic tendency has
greatly declined.18
Harnack’s argument for retaining theological faculties as members of the
public university drew its strength, Wnally, on this redeWnition of theology,
which, while not without sceptics (including other university-seated theolo-
gians) had become increasingly normalized in the late nineteenth century.19
Paradoxically, it was precisely this modern rationale for theology that allowed
Harnack and his sympathizers to buck the modern insistence of strict church–
state separationists, securing for the theological faculties of Germany explicit
legal sanction in the Weimar Constitution itself: ‘Die theologischen Fakultä-
ten in den Hochschulen bleiben erhalten’ (§149). The legacy of this sanction
lives on today.20
In addition to this glancing contrast with patristic thought, one gains illu-
minating perspective on the regnant liberal Protestantism of the early twen-
tieth century by considering divergent contemporaneous voices. As we have
seen, to the ‘left’ of Harnack stood proponents of Religionswissenschaft and
(often irreligious) voices of social democracy, who regularly sought the
removal of the theological faculty from the university. To the ‘right’ stood a
mix of confessional Protestants, pietists, and ultramontane Catholics. The
latter were alarmed by what they regarded as theology’s overly complaisant
attitude toward science in general; and they often pleaded either for semin-
aries free from state control and/or for dogmatic and pastoral theology to play
a greater role in theological education at the universities. Finally, we should
keep in mind those ‘alienated theologians’ such as Lagarde and Overbeck (and
one might also Wgure in here critics such as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, or Jacob
Burckhardt), who, neither conventionally progressive nor reactionary, felt
that the whole project of ‘modern theology’ with its attachments to ‘science’
and the ‘historical method’ was simply a curious enterprise, a bourgeois
academic parlour game, the ironic enervation of Christianity carried out in
the name of some of its highest principles.21
ZWT 51 (1908): 100–1.
19 Friedrich Wilhelm Graf, ‘Protestantische Theologie in der Gesellschaft des Kaiserreichs’, in
Graf (ed.), ProWle des neuzeitlichen Protestantismus: Kaiserreich (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlag-
shaus, 1992), ii. 8 V.
20 Hans-Georg Babke, Theologie in der Universität: aus rechtlicher, theologischer und wis-
senschaftstheoretischer Perspektive (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2000).
21 Karl Löwith, From Hegel to Nietzsche: The Revolution in Nineteenth-Century Thought,
trans. David E. Green (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1964), 158–62, 301–5, 359–88.
Cf. Van A. Harvey, ‘The Alienated Theologian’, in Robert A. Evans (ed.), The Future of
Philosophical Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1971), 113–43.
However, the critic that came to concern Harnack the most was none of the
above, but one of his own former pupils. Only a few months before Harnack
published his defence of the theological faculty in the Preussische Jahrbücher,
the young Swiss theologian Karl Barth published the Wrst edition of his
Römerbrief, a work, as one commentator famously put it, that fell ‘like a
bombshell in the playground of the theologians’.22
In the winter term of 1906–7 the young Barth had enrolled at Berlin in the
church history seminar of Harnack, whom he later described as ‘the theolo-
gian of the day’.23 As the seminar method encouraged, Barth produced for
Harnack a lengthy, wissenschaftlich research paper (158 pages) on ‘Paul’s
Missionary Work according to the Acts of the Apostle’. This work promised
a bright career along the path that Harnack himself had trodden—a path
extended in the following years by Barth’s warm relationships with Wilhelm
Hermann and Martin Rade, who together with Harnack constituted a for-
midable liberal-theological triumvirate on the eve of the First World War.24
Yet as is well known, in the ensuing years Barth parted intellectual company
with Harnack and his theological world, deeply shaken by his former mentor’s
endorsement of Germany’s war aims in 1914 and convinced by his own
experiences as a pastor in rural Safenwil, Switzerland that the prevalent
critical trends of theology in German universities had little to say to the
workaday lives of actual people, especially those of the lower classes.25 By
the early 1920s, Barth had emerged as the pugnacious leader of a new
‘dialectical’ movement in theology, a ‘theology of crisis’, destined to become
among the dominant theological currents of the twentieth century, aVecting
North American as much as European theology.26
Barth’s development troubled Harnack. In 1920 he heard his former pupil
speak at a student conference in Aarau, Switzerland and afterwards oVered the
striking confession to a friend that ‘the eVect of Barth’s lecture was just stagger-
ing. Not one word, not one sentence could I have said or thought. . . . [I]ts
theology frightened me. . . . Instead of losing any of its force, it appears to me
more and more hazardous, yes, in a way even scandalous.’27 The intellectual
22 The commentator was the Catholic theologian Karl Adam and the comment was actually
made in reference to the 2nd edn. of Barth’s work from 1922.
23 Quoted in Eberhard Busch, Karl Barth: His Life from Letters and Autobiographical Texts,
trans. John Bowden (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976), 39.
24 On Barth’s early ‘liberal’ phase, see his Wrst published article, ‘Moderne Theologie und
Reichsgottesarbeit’, ZTK 19 (1909): 317 V.
25 Busch, Karl Barth, 33 V. On Barth’s experience of the First World War and his reaction to
the German professoriate during this time, see Wilfried Härle, ‘Der Aufruf der 93 Intellektuellen
und Karl Barths Bruch mit der liberalen Theologie,’ ZTK 72 (1975): 207–24.
26 Sydney E. Ahlstrom, ‘Continental InXuence on American Christian Thought since World
War I’, CH 27 (1958): 256–72.
27 Quoted in Agnes von Zahn-Harnack, Adolf von Harnack (Berlin: Hans Bott, 1936), 532.
divide between Harnack and Barth is, to be sure, a complex and multifaceted
topic, but from the standpoint of this study it bears considering that a signiWcant
aspect of it had to do with Harnack’s view that Barth threatened to sever the
relationship between theology and Wissenschaft, the premise of theology’s
inclusion in the university. Some years after the Aarau conference, Harnack
wrote to Barth, telling him as much directly: ‘I am Wlled with anxiety for the
future of scientiWc theology.’28
Although Barth insisted that theology, above all, was a function of the
church, he did not repudiate the theological faculty’s position in the univer-
sity. (After Safenwil, Barth himself would spend the rest of his life occupying
academic posts—at Göttingen, Münster, Bonn, and Basle.) Like Harnack,
Barth validated the public character of theological faculties and he was
sceptical of the movement to found the ‘science of religion’ as a separate
discipline.29 However, Barth’s rationale for the theological faculty diVered
fundamentally from that of his former mentor. In Barth’s interpretation, the
nineteenth century had witnessed the conXation of the oYce of the theologian
and the historian; a vocation dedicated to engaging positively and actively the
most pressing issues of life had been reduced to the ‘passive detachment of an
observer.’ Historical inquiry was necessary, Barth always maintained, but its
assignment was ultimately ancillary to more important, i.e. dogmatic and
ecclesiastical, theological tasks. Already in the foreword to his Römerbrief of
1919, this was clear: ‘The critical historical method . . . has its place; it points
to a preparation for understanding that is never superXuous.’30
In the revised 1922 edition, Barth ampliWed and expanded these senti-
ments, and commented quite derogatively about his own student experiences
at the university. ‘I know what it means’, he wrote, ‘to have to go into the
pulpit year in and out, obliged to understand and explain, and wishing to do
so, yet being unable to do it, because we were given almost nothing at the
university except the famous ‘‘respect for history,’’ which despite the beautiful
expression means simply the renunciation of earnest, respectful understand-
ing and explanation.’
What came to trouble his critics was not so much that Barth rejected
historical understanding (although some accused him of this), but rather
that he had summarily downgraded its signiWcance for the task of theology
generally. In Barth’s eyes, those ‘critical theologians’ preoccupied with the
28 Letter to Harnack, quoted in Eduard Thurneysen (ed.), Karl Barth-Eduard Thurneysen

Briefwechsel, 1921–1930 (Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 1974), ii. 135.
29 Karl Barth, ‘Das Wort Gottes als Aufgabe der Theologie’, in Barth, Vorträge und kleinere
Arbeiten, 1922–1925, ed. Holger Finze (Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 1990), 156–7.
30 Barth, Römerbrief (1919), in Jürgen Moltmann (ed.), Die Anfänge der dialektischen Theo-
logie (Munich: Kaiser, 1966), i. 77.
‘merely historical’ had either put oV or abandoned the truly important
theological task of reckoning with the ‘permanent crisis of time and eternity’;
they had elevated method over content, observation over engagement, criti-
cism over dogma, and, in biblical exegesis, words over the Word. What
nineteenth-century liberal theology had trumpeted as scientiWc advances in
theology, Barth regarded as both stupendously impressive and, simultan-
eously, a tragic withering of the theological task. It was a preamble so
masterful as to mistake itself for a Wnished work. ‘[A]re these historians,
whom I truly respect as scholars, quite unaware that there is [after all] a
content, a cardinal question, a Word in the words?’31
In 1922 Barth gave an address, ‘The Word of God and the Task of Theology’,
in which he commented explicitly on the relationship between theology and
the university. Delivered just a few years after the ratiWcation of the Weimar
Constitution, the question of the theological faculty’s justiWcation within the
university remained a subject of concern and discussion—and Barth himself
had just moved from the pulpit to the lectern, accepting a position on
Göttingen’s theological faculty. For Barth, the theological faculty existed in
the university as the church existed in society. Just as the church, according to
conventional Christian teaching, was not to mirror the norms and expect-
ations of its surrounding culture, and instead often contradict and question
them, so theology was under no strict methodological obligation to imitate its
neighbouring faculties. Both the church and the theological faculty func-
tioned as ‘a signal of distress’ (Notzeichen), an indication that ‘all is not
well, even in the universitas litterarum’, that the human condition and human
knowledge, Wnally, presented one with a dire and terrible predicament. If this
were not the case, Barth reasoned, theology’s critics were right and there was
no justiWcation for theology in the university. But Barth went further still to
say that as an academic faculty compared to other faculties, theology had no
right to exist in the university; it existed at the extremity of scientiWc possi-
bilities as a reminder of something that needs to be said by all disciplines but
which, the world being mendacious and human knowledge Wnite, can only be
said as an ‘emergency measure’ (Notstandmaßnahme). In Barth’s own formu-
lation:
It is clear that theology’s existence in the university does not stand in need of a priori
justiWcation. It is there as a response to a crisis, but one not to be removed because this
crisis is permanent. This marks its similarity to the church in society. It is the
paradoxical but undeniable truth that as a science like other sciences theology has
no right to its place; for it becomes then a wholly unnecessary duplication of
31 Barth, Römerbrief (1919), in Jürgen Moltmann (ed.), Die Anfänge der dialektischen Theo-
logie (Munich: Kaiser, 1966), 112.
disciplines belonging to the other faculties. Only when a theological faculty undertakes
to say, or at least points out the need for saying, what the others . . . dare not say, or
dare not say aloud, only when it keeps reminding them that a chaos, though
wonderful, is not a cosmos, only when it is a question mark and an exclamation
point at the outermost edge of scientiWc possibility—or rather, in contrast to the
philosophical faculty, beyond the outermost edge—only then is there a reason for it.32
In this sense, the theological faculty is both necessary and exceptional, because
the Christian faith is both necessary and exceptional, a scandal to the intellect
by some measures and powerfully explanatory in the context of its own Wrst
principles. Theology therefore, as Barth was fond of saying, was both a
‘possible impossibility’ and ‘impossible possibility’.33
This kind of talk made Harnack wince. He likened his former student at
one point to the ancient heretic Marcion and also to Thomas Münzer, the
Wery apocalyptic leader of the 1525 peasants’ revolt in Germany, which
threatened to discredit the Reformation in its infancy.34 The diVerences and
mutual misgivings between Harnack and Barth steadily mounted in the early
1920s, Wnally giving birth in 1923 to an extraordinary exchange of opinions
between the two men, aired in the journal Die Christliche Welt, edited by their
mutual friend, Martin Rade.35 Harnack instigated the exchange by publishing
32 Barth, ‘Das Wort Gottes als Aufgabe der Theologie’, in Barth, Vorträge und kleinere
Arbeiten, 1922–1925, 155–7. DeWned in this manner, theology for Barth could still be regarded
as the Wrst faculty: ‘Theology, once the mother of the whole university, still stands in a unique
and primary position in relation to the other faculties, albeit perhaps with her head a little
bowed.’ See p. 157. In his Church Dogmatics, Barth wrote, moreover, that theology ‘cannot
regard itself as a member of an ordered cosmos, but only as a stopgap in a disordered one’
(Lückenbüßerin in einem ungeordneten Kosmos). Barth, Kirchliche Dogmatik I. 1, 7th edn.
(Zurich: Evangelischer Verlag, 1955), 8. Cf. Christoph Schwöbel, ‘Theology’, in John
Webster (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2000), 22–3.
33 Schwöbel, ‘Theology’, ibid. 21. As Barth wrote in his 1922 address, ‘Das Wort Gottes als
Aufgabe der Theologie’: ‘Wir sollen als Theologen von Gott reden. Wir sind aber Menschen und
können als solche nicht von Gott reden. Wir sollen Beides, unser Sollen und unser Nicht-
Können, wissen und eben Gott die Ehre geben. Das ist unsere Bedrängnis. Alles Andre is
daneben Kinderspiel.’ Moltmann (ed.), Die Anfänge der dialektischen Theologie, i. 199.
34 Barth alludes to Harnack’s comments about him in a letter (14 July 1920) to his
friend, Thurneysen. See Thurneysen (ed.), Karl Barth-Eduard Thurneysen Briefwechsel, 1913–
1921, i. 410.
35 The exchange appears in its entirety in Moltmann (ed.), Die Anfänge der dialektischen
Theologie, i. 323–47. An English translation is found in H. Martin Rumscheidt, Revelation and
Theology: An Analysis of the Barth-Harnack Correspondence of 1923 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1972), 29–53. Unless otherwise indicated, I cite from Rumscheidt. For a
thoughtful treatment of the exchange, see Dietrich Braun, ‘Der Ort der Theologie’, in Parrhesia:
Karl Barth zum achtzigsten Geburtstag (Zurich: Evangelischer Verlag Zurich, 1966), 11–49. In
focusing here on the signiWcance of Barth’s conXict with Harnack, I should nonetheless make
clear that the theological spectrum on the issue of theology’s scientiWc status had other strong
voices in the early 1920s, including Ernst Troeltsch and Paul Tillich. Troeltsch came closest to the
a set of questions, ‘Fifteen Questions to the Despisers of ScientiWc Theology
among the Theologians’, motivated by fears that the new directions set in
motion by Barth and his allies would render theology incapable of retaining
‘its status at the university, its status of being a scientiWc discipline’.36 Har-
nack’s central complaint therefore focused on whether Barth, by insisting that
the message of the Bible transcended human categories of experience, had
driven a wedge between one’s subjective religious experience and the public,
wissenschaftlich task of academic theology, allowing the former to take pre-
cedence, indeed to ride roughshod, over the latter. ‘May one leave the
determination of the content of the gospel solely to personal knowledge
(Erfahrung) and experience (Erlebnis),’ Harnack pointedly asked, ‘or does
one not rather need here historical knowledge and critical reXection?’ Reveal-
ingly, this phrase—‘geschichliches Wissen und kritisches Nachdenken’—
appears Wve times in the short treatise, a clear indication of what Harnack
felt Barth lacked. If one followed Barth’s lead, Harnack pressed further, one
would wind up with a ‘gnostic occultism’, bereft of the intellectual puriWcation
that rational discourse brings to religious phenomena. To avoid the dead ends
of subjectivism and gnosticism, Harnack therefore concluded, one had no
choice but to embrace ‘critical-historical study’ and ‘scientiWc theology’. ‘Is
there any other theology’, he asked, ‘than that which has strong ties and is in a
blood-relationship with science in general (Wissenschaft überhaupt)?’37
Barth accepted Harnack’s challenge and replied, point by point, to the
questions of his former teacher. Interestingly, Barth, by all accounts a critic
of historicism as it impinged upon theology, sought to historicize Harnack’s
concept of ‘Wissenschaft überhaupt’. In contrast to Harnack, his understand-
ing of the concept was not as the timeless means of rational inquiry, but
merely as the ‘opinio communis’ of the German academic guild as it had
developed in the nineteenth century. ‘Someone objecting to that form of
Protestant theology’, Barth wrote, ‘which has become determinative since
science-of-religions approach, whereas Tillich advocated a theology of culture and apologetics

in contrast to Barth’s dogmatic theology. See Paul Tillich, ‘Theology of Culture and the
Theology of the Church’, in Tillich, What is Religion?, ed. James Luther Adams (New York:
Harper & Row, 1969); Robert P. Scharlemann, ‘The No to Nothing and the Nothing to Know:
Barth and Tillich and the Possibility of Theological Science’, JAAR 55 (1987): 57–72; and the
introduction by Robert Morgan to Ernst Troeltsch: Writings on Theology and Religion, trans.
Robert Morgan and Michael Pye (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1990), 1–51.
36 Rumscheidt, Revelation and Theology, 54. At Wrst Barth was unsure whether these ques-
tions had been directed towards him, but indicated nonetheless that he was prepared to respond
to them ‘point by point’. See the circular letter (23 January 1923) about the matter that he sent to
several friends in Thurneysen (ed.), Karl Barth-Eduard Thurneysen Briefwechsel, ii. 134.
37 Harnack, ‘Fünfzehn Fragen an die Verächter der wissenschaftlichen Theologie unter den
Theologen’, in Harnack, Aus der Werkstatt des Vollendeten, ed. Axel von Harnack (Giessen,
1930), 51–4.
Pietism and the Enlightenment, especially during the last Wfty years of Ger-
man history, is not necessarily a ‘‘despiser of scientiWc theology.’’ Indeed,
Barth did not reject ‘critical study’ and ‘historical knowledge’ per se; rather
he sought to place strict limits on their eYcacy in the theological Weld. In fact,
in a mode of reasoning that one, mutatis mutandis, is tempted to liken to that
of Thomas Aquinas, Barth contended that historical-critical inquiry served
most honestly when it led one to the awareness of its own limits—that in the
Wnal analysis it did not possess the intellectual resources either to aYrm or
deny knowledge of divine things. AYrmation could only come through the
‘Word of God’ and ‘God-awakened faith’. Pushed to its limits, therefore,
historical-critical inquiry would become self-conscious of its restricted do-
main, and the necessity of a type of knowledge existentially needful but not
immanent in the human condition, knowledge not ‘according to the Xesh’,
would take on greater urgency. Although admitting the intellect’s limited
domain might ‘frighten’ at Wrst, Barth contended, that ‘this [nonetheless]
might turn out to be the service which ‘historical knowledge’ can render to
the actual task of theology.’38
Theology itself had the yet bolder prophetic task of proclaiming the ‘Word
of God’ in the marketplace of human ideas and institutions. ‘The task of
theology is at one with the task of preaching,’ Barth therefore put forth. ‘It
consists in the reception and transmission of the Word of the Christ.’39
Academic theologians’ failure to do this adequately represented, in Barth’s
judgment, an inappropriate understanding of vocation, one that grew out of a
long-standing and obsequious deference to the prevailing intellectual climate
and university norms. Barth therefore sought to turn the tables on his former
teacher, asking (somewhat quixotically, no doubt, given the times) why the
other faculties should not still, as they had once, look to theology for
intellectual leadership:
If theology were to regain the courage . . . to bear witness to the Word of revelation, of
judgment and of God’s love, the outcome might well be that ‘‘science in general’’
would have to seek ‘‘strong ties and a blood-relationship’’ with theology instead of the
other way around; for it would be better perhaps also for jurists, physicians and
philosophers if they knew what theologians ought to know. Or must the present
fortuitous opinio communis of others really be the instance through which we have to
let our [theological] work be judged . . . ?40
Another round of exchange between Harnack and Barth followed the initial
one. But the second round only made clear the intellectual chasm between the
two men. After complaining that much of Barth’s response was ‘wholly
38 Rumscheidt, Revelation and Theology, 31–5. 39 Ibid. 32.

40 Ibid. 35 (trans. modiWed).
incomprehensible’, Harnack sought to counter Barth’s eVort to historicize
scientiWc theology. ‘You see in contemporary scientiWc theology an unstable
and transitory product . . . and that it has the value of an opinio communis. I see
in it the only possible way of grasping the object epistemologically. This way is
old and new at the same time, new because it has attained greater clarity and
maturity only since the eighteenth century and old because it began when
man started thinking.’ Furthermore, Harnack categorically rejected Barth’s
equation of the task of theology with that of preaching, reaYrming that ‘the
task of theology is at one with the task of science in general ’.41
In Barth’s Wnal eVort to state his position, he took particular issue with
Harnack’s contention that theology had received greater ‘clarity and maturity’
since the eighteenth century, indicating that he was not alone in holding older
theologians in higher esteem than modern ones. ‘We have been irresistibly
impressed by the material superiority of those [Wgures of the Reformation]
and older theologians, however little they may Wt in the present scheme of the
guild. We, therefore, cannot feel ourselves relieved by the protest of the spirit
of modern times (which perhaps has to learn to understand itself Wrst!)’ Then,
calling explicit attention to the universities, Barth complained of ‘the chaotic
business of today’s faculties’ (chaotische Fakultätsbetrieb unsere Tage), which
had privileged ‘research’ and ‘method’ over the actual ‘object’ of theology.
Again, Barth did not reject the tools of research and method per se, but he
made clear that the primary theological task of the future—in dialectical
confrontation with that of recent past—was one of bringing to life again
‘classical theological train[s] of thought’, albeit ‘in and for our times’, as a
means of gaining perspective on and transcending the contemporary theo-
logical milieu.42
One can vividly imagine the elderly Harnack shaking his head as he read
Barth’s words and prepared a Wnal response. ‘I sincerely regret’, he wrote, ‘that
the answers to my questions only point out the magnitude of the gap that
divides us.’ Accusing Barth of oVering a ‘tormenting interpretation’ of faith
and theology, he called an end to the debate—yet not before coldly remarking
that Barth himself had now become for him an object of scientiWc curiosity:
‘Paul and Luther are for me not primarily subjects, but objects of scientiWc
theology as is Professor Barth and all those who express their Christianity as
prophets or witnesses like preachers.’ For the ‘scientiWc theologian’, he
41 Rumscheidt 36 (emphasis added). ‘Die Aufgabe der Theologie ist eins mit den Aufgaben
der Wissenschaft.’ Moltmann (ed.), Die Anfänge der dialektischen Theologie, i. 330.
42 Rumscheidt, Revelation and Theology, 41 f.
deWantly insisted, there ‘is only one scientiWc method [and] . . . only one
scientiWc task: the pure cognition of the object’.43
Having successfully defended the theological faculty from outsider threats,
from proponents of Religionswissenschaft and strict church–state separation-
ists, Harnack was, Wnally, at a loss of what to say to the insider challenge from
one of his brightest former students—a challenge that had begun to gain a
wide hearing through the newly founded journal Zwischen den Zeiten.44 For
Harnack, Barth’s development constituted a disease of the heart, not of the
skin. Here was a theologian, nourished in the best traditions of modern
Wissenschaft, who had nonetheless fallen out of step with the entire world
of theological modernity as championed by Harnack and embodied in the
internationally esteemed German university system.
Interestingly, to Harnack’s daughter and biographer, Agnes von Zahn-
Harnack, Barth’s problem was largely one of nationality, his Swissness, a
trait, she was quick to point out, that he shared with several other major
Wgures in the movement of dialectical theology. These theologians empha-
sized the ‘wholly other’ character of God and the limits of the human intellect,
she explained, because they had experienced the war from the standpoint of
neutral Switzerland. Theirs was an otherworldly, a spectator’s theology, one
that did not and could not comprehend the obligations of power and know-
ledge, the necessity of acting and thinking responsibly, in this world. Of the
war they had only felt ‘its horror, sinfulness, and wanton destruction’; they
had no grasp of ‘the sense of exaltation (Erhebung) that can tremble through a
nation, which is ready to lay down its life for its brother’.45
But for Harnack himself, the problem with Barth was deeper still, beyond
questions of nationality and the experience of the Great War. It had to do with
an inexplicable failure to take up the torch of Wissenschaft, which Harnack
had done with such virtuosity, pride, and sense of historical purpose. One
might admire the intensity of the new theology, Harnack conWded to Martin
Rade in 1928, but ‘how weak it is as Wissenschaft. . . . What seems to be lost
entirely is the link between theology and the universitas litterarum.’46 The
young upstart appeared to have turned his back on Schleiermacher’s ‘eternal
covenant’, forsaking the modern pact between theology and university
typiWed by Berlin after 1810. To be sure, Barth and a younger generation of
43 Ibid. 42–53. ‘denn wie es nur eine wissenschaftliche Methode gibt, so gibt es auch nur eine
wissenschaftliche Aufgabe—die reine Erkenntnis der Objekts’. Moltmann (ed.), Anfänge der
dialektischen Theologie, i. 346.
44 The journal was founded in 1923 and became the principle organ of dialectical theology in
the 1920s. On the circumstances of its founding, see Busch, Barth, 144 V.
45 Zahn-Harnack, Adolf von Harnack, 529–30.
46 Letter of 13 August 1928; cited in Zahn-Harnack, Adolf von Harnack, 536.
theologians had staked out a new agenda for theology in the twentieth
century, one that has since ramiWed far beyond the boundaries of German
and Protestant thought. Yet the price for such an uncompromising (even
dismissive) attitude towards the nineteenth century, one is hard pressed to
deny, has ensured that this formidable epoch’s questions and issues would
remain alive and well, particularly those concerning the relationship between
theology and the university; between deeply held articles of faith and critical-
scientiWc understanding; between the traditions of Christianity and their
public, cultural expression; in short, between what Schleiermacher had called
the ‘religious interest’ and the ‘scientiWc spirit’.
The legacy then of the 1923 debate bristles with signiWcance even as it
admits no easy interpretation. The debate’s polarizing points and
counterpoints, its echoes of past and anticipation of future conXicts, and the
far-reaching institutional, intellectual, and deeply personal stakes involved,
remain today, a rich and relevant heritage, and a profoundly conXicted one.47
We remain, perhaps, between the times.
47 Of course, the contemporary literature on theology and the university, religion and higher
education, and cognate topics is quite large. See Linell E. Cady and Delwin Brown (eds.),
Religious Studies, Theology, and the University: ConXicting Maps, Changing Terrains (Albany:
State University of New York Press, 2002), and Matthias Krieg and Martin Rose (eds.),
Universitas in theologia—theologia in universitate (Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 1997).
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Index
In the majority of cases, European city names refer to seats of universities.
Abelard, Peter 52, 57 Aquinas, Thomas 52, 77, 78, 415; see also
absolutism 46, 50, 90, 104, 213–14, 220–2, 229 medieval scholasticism
academic freedom 25, 91, 97, 98, 100, Aristotle, Aristotelianism 14, 54–6, 73, 74,
108–10, 125, 131, 132, 143, 175, 177, 180, 77, 78, 80, 306
182, 183, 185, 188, 189, 243, 245, 254–6, Arnold, Matthew 44, 360–1
258, 264–5, 271, 273, 288–91, 298, 300, 334, arts faculty (facultas artium); see
335, 348, 349, 361, 368, 374, 406; as a philosophical faculty
constitutional law 25, 256, 291 Aufklärung; see Enlightenment
academies, knightly (Ritterakademien) 81, Augsburg Confession 61, 64, 66, 67, 72, 75,
84, 105 92, 106, 109, 126, 193, 216, 255; see also
academies, scientiWc 47, 112, 116, 118, 121, Lutheranism, Lutheran orthodoxy
123, 167, 173, 336; see also Berlin Academy Augustine 16, 64, 65, 74, 83, 303, 306, 321,
of Science 400, 405, 408; see also Church Fathers
Acton, Lord 143, 172, 362 Austria 144, 267, 292, 326, 386
Adams, Henry 347, 363 awakening, pietist
Altdorf 49, 84, 135 (Erweckungsbegwegung) 253, 264;
Altenstein, Karl von 19, 24, 27, 268, 269, 273, see also pietism
275, 280, 284, 287, 288, 296, 297, 301, 351,
352, 406; inXuence of idealist philosophy Baden 197, 208
on 23, 214–15, 224–5, 228–9, 240–6; Bahrdt, Carl Friedrich 85
tenure as Prussian Minister of Culture 214, Bamberg 49, 134
215, 224, 225, 228–30, 235, 236, 237, Bancroft, George 363–6
239–67 Barth, Karl 9, 200, 206, 270, 272, 303, 312,
Altertumswissenschaft; see classical studies and 322–3, 381, 404, 410–18; and historical
philology criticism 411–12; conXict with Adolf von
AlthoV, Friedrich 27, 294, 297–300, 302, Harnack 410–18; see also dialectical
392 theology
America; see United States of America Basle 49, 67, 76, 272, 288, 304, 312, 380, 384,
American Revolution 21 387–9, 411
American students at German Bauer, Bruno 37, 208, 227, 250, 253, 288–90,
universities 363–78 373; see also Left Hegelianism
Amsterdam 384 Bauer, G. L. 158
Anabaptism 70, 71, 74 Baumgarten, Sigmund Jacob 99, 101
Andover Theological Seminary 367 Baur, Ferdinand Christian 112, 120, 250,
Anglicanism 235, 356–7, 359 279–81, 371
anti-Catholicism 7, 244, 244n.116, 246, 292, Benary, Ferdinand 253
330–2, 407; see also Kulturkampf Ben-David, Joseph 264
anticlericalism 23, 224, 397 Berlin 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 12, 15, 16, 24, 28, 30, 31,
anti-Semitism 244 34, 36, 37, 38, 41, 42, 47, 81, 85, 88, 90,
Anton, Paul 93 99, 103, 112, 119, 123, 129, 130–8, 141,
458 Index
Berlin (cont.) Breithaupt, Joachim Justus 93
198, 200, 201, 207, 209, 210, 226, 230, 233, Brentano, Clemens 179, 180
242, 245, 246, 247, 248, 249, 250, 251, 252, Breslau 38, 134, 135, 237, 246, 248, 331
254, 259, 261, 263, 266, 270, 271, 272, 273, Bretschneider, Karl Gottlieb 260
276, 277, 278, 280, 282, 284, 286, 288, 294, Brockhaus, Hermann 383
298, 299, 300, 303, 304, 310, 312, 324, 329, Brunner, Emil 404
333, 352, 354, 357, 365, 367, 371, 373, 375, Brussels 384
377, 379, 380, 386, 387, 391, 392, 394, 400, Burckhardt, Jacob 38–9, 277, 312, 324, 409
404, 407, 410, 417; Academy of Science Butler, Nicholas Murray 363
in 84, 113, 145, 148, 149, 154, 173, 179,
199, 208, 381, 398; founding of university Calixtus, Georg 75, 79, 107, 135
in 36, 142–55; university statutes 178–83, Calovius, Abraham 75, 79, 80
259; establishment of theological faculty Calvin, John 236
in 155–97; founding of theological Calvinism 23, 71, 76, 89, 90, 113, 114,
seminar in 185–6; statutes of theological 184, 193, 217, 220, 229, 231, 235,
faculty 183–93; early operations of 248, 366
theological faculty 178–97; semi- Cambridge 82, 356, 357, 359
centennial celebration of university Catherine the Great of Russia 2
(1860) 325, 334–5; centennial celebration Catholic Church, Catholicism 29, 34, 49, 52,
of university (1910) 325, 335–41 60, 69, 70, 78, 134, 135, 136, 185, 217, 218,
Berne 292 220, 235, 241, 244, 246, 247, 281, 292, 298,
Bernoulli, C. A. 322 299, 326, 330, 350, 351, 387, 397, 399,
Bethmann-Hollweg, Theobald von 336 407–9
Beyme, Karl Friedrich 145–52, 154, 160 Catholic theology, theological faculties 7,
biblical criticism; see historical criticism 7n.26, 17, 23, 25n.97, 26, 77, 135, 136, 202,
Biedermann, Alois Emmanuel 208 246, 285, 311, 330–2, 342, 353
Bildung 28, 131, 138, 141, 174, 176, 181, 273 censorship 102, 109–10, 124, 179, 182–3,
Bildungsbürgertum 19 234, 28
Bismarck, Otto von 267, 291–3, 300, 302, Chicago 336
354, 386 Chicago World’s Fair and German
Bodelschwingh, Friedrich 15 universities 325, 333, 341–7, 391
Boeckh, August 180, 274, 277–9, 334–5, Church Fathers 306, 327, 404–5, 409
365, 382 church history 76, 112, 117, 120, 165, 183–5,
Boethius 51–2, 54, 56 191, 194, 195, 196, 206, 210, 262, 279, 312,
Bok, Derek 43 317, 320, 330, 343, 344, 357, 375, 388, 400;
Bonaparte, Napoleon 2–4, 13, 19, 20, 38, see also historical theology
133–5, 142, 143, 144, 148, 150, 151, 159, Church of England; see Anglicanism
166, 181, 196, 214, 215, 221–3, 229, 230, churches, church bodies 14–17, 23, 24, 26,
239, 246, 287, 325, 338, 351, 354, 355; see 106, 136, 150, 161, 168, 169, 175, 177, 185,
also France 187, 189, 196, 203–17, 220, 224–30, 232,
Bonaventure 52 234, 237, 238, 239, 240, 242, 244, 256, 257,
Bonn 38, 254, 259, 261, 262, 263, 268, 288, 263, 264, 266, 270, 300, 301, 310, 314, 316,
289, 312, 331, 373, 411; founding of 319, 320–3, 329–32, 337, 346, 368, 369,
university in 246–8 373, 379, 386, 388, 390, 391, 393, 395, 400,
Bosse, J. R. 297 405, 406, 407, 411–12; see also clergy
Bousset, Wilhelm 390 church-state relations 21, 24, 26, 37, 38, 69,
Brandenburg 88–9, 216, 219 207, 212, 213, 264, 269, 380, 390, 395, 397,
Brandes, Ernst 114 399, 400, 409; in early modern central
Index 459
Europe 215–22; in Prussia after Danz, J. L. T. 318
1806 222–39; see also Erastianism and Darwin, Charles 347
Prussia de Wette, W. M. L. 37, 120, 178, 194–5, 197,
church-state separation; see church-state 198, 208–10, 242, 247, 254, 258, 312–13;
relations conXict with Schleiermacher 199;
civil religion 26 dismissal from the University of
classical studies (Altertumswissenschaft) Berlin 287–8
116–19, 137, 138, 185; see also philology deconfessionalization 11, 184, 408
Clement of Alexandria 16, 17, 405 deism 46, 98–9; see also Enlightenment
clergy 11, 24, 34, 35, 70, 103, 122, 157, 164, dialectical theology 270, 272, 303, 322, 410,
186, 188, 201, 212, 224, 228, 230, 232, 417; see also Karl Barth
233, 234, 236, 246, 255, 261, 265, 270, Diderot, Denis 2, 80
274, 287, 290, 291, 300, 305, 312, 320, Dietrich, Alfred 396
328, 330, 346, 347, 349, 352, 355, 357, 361, Dillingen 49, 134
373, 374, 385, 398, 399; see also churches, Dillmann, August 15–17
church bodies Dilthey, Wilhelm 116, 166, 312
Cogswell, Joseph Green 363, 378 Dohna, Alexander von 152, 214, 224, 229, 232
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 356 Döllinger, J. J. Ignaz von 326–8
Cologne 48, 57, 134, 246 Dresden 93, 387
colonialism 335, 341, 380, 385, 394 Drey, Johan Sebastian 202, 311
Columbia University 364 du Bois-Reymond, Emil 297
comparative religion; Duisburg 49, 83, 89, 148
see science of religion
confessionalism, confessionalization 1, 7, 14, Eichhorn, Albert 390
15, 25, 26, 27, 43, 46, 49, 68, 79, 82, 89, 91, Eichhorn, Friedrich 257, 289, 290
92, 93, 104, 108, 110, 111, 114, 128–31, 163, Eichhorn, J. G. 105, 119, 356, 365
167, 175, 184, 185, 187, 189, 192, 193, 199, encyclopedia 28–9, 42, 130, 139, 162, 201,
207, 209, 215, 216, 218, 220, 221, 225, 230, 260, 271, 304, 306, 309–10, 314; see also
231, 235, 237, 241, 255, 264, 269, 270, 289, theological encyclopedia
298, 299, 316, 319, 326, 330, 342, 343, 352, Engel, J. J. 147–8, 375
386, 393, 408, 409 Enlightenment 1, 3, 5, 35, 41, 44, 46, 48, 55,
Congress of Vienna 23, 181, 183, 220, 231, 71, 73, 76, 80, 83, 84, 86, 95, 97, 99, 100,
286; see also Restoration 103, 105, 111, 124, 125, 128, 131, 135, 142,
Conrad, Johannes 285, 328–9 144, 145, 165, 198, 213, 219, 223, 224, 394,
consistories 22, 150, 216–19, 221, 224, 415
229–32, 234; see also churches, church Erasmus, Desiderius 61–2, 71–2, 306
bodies Erastianism 22, 23, 26, 37, 213, 215, 216, 219,
Copenhagen 145 241, 264, 265, 349, 369; as characterizing
Cornell University 131, 376, 384 the Prussian Reform Era 222, 225, 226,
Council of Trent 70 230, 231, 235, 237, 239; see also church-
Cousin, Victor 352 state relations
Creuzer, Friedrich 382 Erfurt 48, 57, 82, 84, 135, 148
crisis theology; see dialectical theology Erhard, J. B. 148
culture state (Kulturstaat) 20, 26–7, 37, 91, Erlangen 148, 160, 194, 195, 196, 242, 319
127, 143, 158, 175, 177, 180, 213, 214, 226, Erlangen Theology 319
239, 240, 242, 243, 245, 261, 297, 298, 301, Ernesti, August Wilhelm 308
325, 334, 338, 400–1, 406 Essays and Reviews 359
Curtius, Ludwig 301–2 Evangelical Social Congress 396 n.464
460 Index
Everett, Edward 363–4, 366 150, 151, 153, 155, 156, 160–6, 172, 175; see
examinations 24, 25, 27, 54, 65, 102, 132, 186, also German idealism
191, 192, 208, 233, 283, 284, 305, 331n.217, Fischer, Fritz 229
345, 367, 369, 370 Flexner, Abraham 5
Foerster, Erich 213, 221, 224, 234, 239
faculties, university: four-faculty system 6, foreign students in German
11, 45, 51, 52, 60, 65, 86, 92, 97, 109, universities 348–78
121–2, 126, 131, 147, 157, 163, 167, 168, France 1, 2, 20, 48, 51, 87, 212, 219, 223, 224,
179, 180, 181, 342; theological 2, 3, 4, 6, 229, 233, 234, 282, 287, 292, 347, 350, 351,
10–18, 24, 25, 26, 33, 36, 37, 38, 40, 45, 46, 354, 362, 363, 395; system of higher
48, 51, 52, 53, 56, 57, 62, 64, 66, 69, 70, 71, education in 4, 135–7, 144, 166–7, 172,
76, 85, 92, 93, 95, 98, 99, 101, 103–11, 114, 352–5; inXuence of German universities
116, 117, 120, 122, 125–32, 136, 143, 146, and academic theology in 352–3; see also
147, 148, 155, 156, 157, 159, 163, 164, 165, French Revolution and Napoleon
167, 168, 169, 179, 180, 181, 183, 189, Bonaparte
191–9, 207, 208, 209, 212, 213, 215, 233, Francke, August Hermann 35, 95–9, 101,
242, 245, 247, 248, 250, 252, 253, 254, 137, 255, 306, 321, 358; and the founding of
255, 259, 260, 263, 265, 269, 270, 272, 274, The University of Halle, 89–90; and
281, 284, 285, 286, 288, 289, 290, 291, 292, theological study at Halle, 93–4; see also
294, 299, 300, 301, 302, 303, 320, 325, pietism
326, 328, 329, 330, 332, 333, 340, 342, Franco-Prussian War 268, 354
345, 346, 347, 349, 352, 366, 368, 372, 374, Frankfurt am Main 398
377, 378, 379, 381, 384, 385, 386, 390, Frankfurt an der Oder 49, 67, 83, 89, 135
391–401, 403, 407–13; legal 6, 11, 45, 51, Frankfurt Assembly (1848) 272, 290, 291; see
104, 109, 122, 126, 136, 147, 157, 163, 167, also Revolution of 1848
168, 179, 180, 181, 252, 299, 342, 396; fraternities (Burschenschaften) 247
medical 6, 11, 45, 51, 109, 122, 126, 136, Frei, Hans 10, 37, 40, 406
147, 157, 163, 167, 168, 179, 180, 181, 251, Freiburg im Breisgau 49, 285, 331
252, 259, 294, 299, 340, 342; French Revolution 1–3, 19, 24, 36, 87, 102,
philosophical 3, 6, 11, 36, 41, 45, 47, 48, 51, 134, 136, 160, 198, 222–3,
53, 60, 61, 62, 66, 73, 81, 95, 97, 104, 105, 228, 267, 309, 324, 349, 350, 355; see
109, 110, 114–29, 131, 136, 137, 138, 147, also France
155, 157, 159, 162, 163, 165, 167, 168, 169, Friedrich I, king in Prussia, 219
170, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 203, 204, 250, Friedrich II (the Great), king of Prussia 82,
251, 252, 258, 259, 261, 262, 270, 281–6, 84, 96–8, 101, 123, 154, 219, 220, 289
294, 296, 298, 311, 320, 328, 334, 340, 341, Friedrich Wilhelm I, king of Prusssia 82, 84,
342, 364, 366, 385, 393, 394, 396, 399, 413 96, 219
Falk, Adalbert 27, 297, 299, 302 Friedrich Wilhelm II, king of Prussia 83, 123,
Farley, Edward 308 174, 184, 219
Farrer, William 362 Friedrich Wilhelm III, king of Prussia 23, 30,
Feuerbach, Ludwig 373; see also Left 103, 143, 149, 152–4, 181, 228, 232, 235–7,
Hegelianism 249, 254–6
Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 3, 20, 23, 28, 31, 34, Friedrich Wilhelm IV, king of Prussia 290
37, 179, 194, 198, 202, 204, 214, 224–6, Fries, Jacob Friedrich 194, 199
230, 242, 243, 245, 246, 248, 249, 251, 273, Fulda 134
278, 301, 303, 309, 310, 314, 330, 340, 379,
380; and the founding of the University of Gabler, Johann Philipp 158, 194
Berlin 131, 139, 141, 142, 143, 145, 146, Gatterer, Johann Christoph 116–17
Index 461
Gebhard, J. B. 87 Greifswald 49, 67, 261
Geisteswissenschaften; see humanities Griesbach, J. J. 194, 308
Geneva 384 Gröningen 384
George II, king of England and elector of Grotius, Hugo 95
Hanover, 45–6 Gunkel, Hermann 390
Gerhard, Johann 75–9, 306
Gerlach, Ernst Ludwig von 255 Habilitation, Habilitationsschrift 190, 259
Gerlach, Otto von 254 Haenisch, Konrad 400
German Confederation 182, 218, 220, 287 Hagenbach, Karl Rudolf 202, 208, 210, 311,
German Evangelical Church Conference 219 344; and theological encyclopedia 270–1,
German idealism 20, 32n.27, 36, 44, 134, 139, 304, 311–18, 322, 344
140, 141, 144, 146, 179, 214, 235, 237, 239, Halle 1, 12, 25, 35–6, 38, 47, 81, 83, 105, 106,
242, 273, 274, 306, 309–10, 313, 322, 398; 111, 115, 121, 122, 124, 135, 146, 148, 149,
and science 28–32, 278–9, 285; and the 150, 152, 154, 159, 184, 185, 196, 197, 201,
founding of the University of 247, 248, 261, 274, 285, 304, 307, 308, 319,
Berlin 155–77; inXuence on the Prussian 343, 358, 366, 371, 373, 386, 391, 398;
Reform Era 23–4, 222–30 founding of university at 87–94; as seat of
German national uniWcation 13, 387, 267–8, pietism 93–5; and Christian WolV, 95–8;
292, 339, 387 as a seat of rationalist theology and biblical
German Reformed Church in America 371 criticism 98–104, 254–5
Gesenius, Friedrich 25, 120, 254–6 Haller, Albrecht von 112, 113
Gesner, Johann 115, 118–19 Hamburg 197
Giessen 49, 194, 282 Hammerstein, Notker 92
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 2, 85–6, 115, Hanover 35, 45, 104, 105, 113, 115, 146, 356
119, 137, 250, 282, 365, 383 Hardenburg, Karl August von 19, 214, 222,
Gogarten, Friedrich 404 224, 228–9, 233, 242, 245, 251
Görres, Joseph von 382 Harless, G. C. Adolf von 319
Gössler, Gustav von 297 Harnack, Adolf von 9, 15, 16, 17, 22, 205,
Göttingen 12, 35–6, 38, 45–7, 79, 81, 82, 241, 243, 269, 272, 278, 293, 298, 303, 344,
84, 99, 122, 131, 135, 137, 146, 148, 371, 380, 388, 389, 403–9; calling to
153, 184, 185, 194, 195, 197, 223, 242, 247, Berlin 299–301; as defender of the
248, 268, 272, 277, 308, 324, 342, 356, 357, theological faculty 391–402; conXict with
364, 365, 366, 373, 380, 385–7, 390, 411–12; Karl Barth 410–18
founding of university at 87–8, 104–21; Harper, William Rainey 376–7
inXuence of J. L. von Mosheim during Harvard University 43, 364, 365, 366, 384
founding period 107–14; development of Hauck, Albert 375
the idea of academic freedom at 108–10; Haupt, Erich 343, 345–6
development of philosophical Hegel, G. W. F. 4, 12, 23, 28, 32, 98, 134, 139,
faculty in the eighteenth century 140, 159, 208, 210, 214, 224–6, 240, 252,
114–21 278, 279, 301, 309, 314, 365, 399, 408;
Graf, Friedrich Wilhelm 26 calling to Berlin 248–50
Graz 49 Hegelianism 32, 37, 98, 140, 196, 198, 199,
Great Britain 18, 282, 293, 327, 347, 352; 240, 250, 253, 281, 289, 316, 318, 346; and
inXuence of German universities and research imperative 278–9; see also Left
academic theology in 355–63 Hegelianism
Great War 7, 267, 272, 293, 303, 322, 395, Heidelberg 37, 48, 51, 61, 62, 67, 135, 194,
410, 417 195, 196, 197, 249, 285, 373
Gregory the Great 406 Heidelberg Confession 321
462 Index
Heinrici, Georg 12, 311; and theological Hume, David 382
encyclopedia 320–2 Hyperius, Andreas Gerhard 75, 76, 306
Helmstedt 12, 49, 79, 105, 107, 110, 135
Hengstenberg, E. W. 37, 254–5, 264, 288, 371 idealist philosophy; see German idealism
Herborn 82 imperialism; see colonialism
Herder, J. G. 80, 119, 137, 194, 199, 307, 382, Industrial Revolution 267
397, 398 industrialization 29, 251, 267–9, 293–7,
Hering, Hermann 344 340–2, 360
Hermann, Wilhelm 269, 410 Ingolstadt 49, 134
Hermes, Georg, 246–7 Innsbruck 49
Herzog, J. J. 260, 375 institutes 30, 261, 274, 294–5, 302; see also
Heyne, Christian Gottlob 113, 115, 118–19, seminars
185, 277, 356 Italy 329
historical criticism 24, 37, 98, 100, 120,
195, 199, 205, 207, 209, 210, 247, 249, 264, Jacks, Lawrence Pearsall 269, 363
275, 277–81, 305, 308, 313, 316, 317, 321, Japan 293
330, 339, 346, 353, 359, 362, 380, 394, 409, Jaspers, Karl 312
411, 414, 415; see also historicism and JeVerson, Thomas 364
exegetical theology Jena 12, 49, 67, 75, 77, 96, 105, 124, 146, 156,
historicism 76, 100, 206, 271, 279, 311, 313, 160, 194, 197, 242, 265, 373; as a stronghold
315–18, 321, 324, 348, 379, 414; see also of German
historical theology and historical criticism idealism in the late eighteenth century, 139
history of religion; see science of religion Jews, Judaism 23, 26, 121, 186, 208, 241, 244;
History of Religions School see also anti-Semitism
(religionsgeschichtliche Schule) 390, 393 Johns Hopkins University 5, 376
history: development as an academic Jonas, Justas 66–7
discipline 115–17, 275–6, 344; see also Jordon, Louis 384
Leopold von Ranke Joseph II, emperor of the Holy Roman
Hofmann, A. W. 277, 284–5 Empire 144
Hofmann, J. C. K. von 319 Jowett, Benjamin 359
Hohenzollern dynasty 88–9, 94, 105, 297, 339 Judon, Harry Pratt 336
Holborn, Hajo 24, 225–6, 239 July Revolution (1830) 351
Holy Roman Empire 1, 14, 49, 68, 134, 141,
218–19, 222 Kafton, J. W. M. 336–8
Huber, E. R. 265 Kähler, Martin 344–5
humanism 49, 53–4, 59, 60–8, 71–3, Kaiser Wilhelm Society 381
117, 312 Kaiserreich; see Second German Empire
humanities, human sciences 28, 41, 136, 278, Kant, Immanuel 3, 36, 41, 47, 79, 96, 98, 100,
284, 285, 378, 398; see also philosophical 104, 194, 198, 199, 225, 230, 246, 251, 299,
faculty 308, 340; and ‘‘the conXict of the
Humboldt, Alexander von 146, 282 faculties’’ 121–91; impact of
Humboldt, Wilhelm von 31, 37, 85, 88, 104, thought on the founding of the
119, 178, 180, 184, 193, 215, 230, 232, 241, University of Berlin 131, 139, 155–63,
245, 268, 273, 275, 282, 295, 342, 360, 398; 175–6
and the founding of the University of Karlsbad Decrees (1819) 25, 182–3, 240, 264,
Berlin, 131, 138, 143, 146, 151–5, 160, 286, 296
172–7; and the reform of Prussia’s Kattenbusch, Ferdinand 9
secondary school system, 283–4 Kaufmann, Georg 50, 324
Index 463
Kautsch, Emil 343 235–7, 241, 248; see also Protestant
Kawerau, D. G. 347 scholasticism
Kiel 49, 268, 292 Lyotard, Jean-François 29, 42–3, 128
Kierkegaard, Søren 16, 409
Kingdom of Westphalia 148, 149, 159 MacIntyre, Alasdair 41–3, 125
Königsberg 36, 38, 49, 67, 79, 83, 89, 123, Mainz 49, 134
124, 144, 160, 230, 254, 261, 262 Mannheim 84
Köpke, Rudolf 334 Marburg 12, 49, 67, 96, 97, 135, 268, 299, 399
Kortum, Carl Arnold 83 Marheinecke, Philipp Konrad 37, 178, 194–9,
Kotzebue, August von 287 208–9, 214, 250, 253, 288
Kulturkampf 299, 331, 407 Maritain, Jacques 21, 407
Kulturprotestantismus; see liberal Marsden, George 42, 364
Protestantism Marsh, Herbert 356
Marx, Karl 249
Lachmann, Karl 275 Massow, Julius E. W. E. von 143–6, 221
Lagarde, Paul Anton de 272, 380, 385–90, 409 mediating theology
Landeshut 134 (Vermittlungstheologie) 188, 247–8, 313
Lausanne 384 Meinecke, Friedrich 235
Left Hegelianism 227, 249, 288, 373; see also Meiners, Christoph, 122–3, 324, 382
Hegelianism Melanchthon, Philip 61, 95, 101, 116, 117,
Lehr- und Lernfreiheit; see academic freedom 260, 306; on the reform of German
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 81, 84, 86, 95, 96 universities, 63–9; on the study of
Leiden 384 theology 71–8
Leipzig 49, 59, 66, 75, 89, 90, 93, 94, 276, 373, Michaelis, J. D. 82, 105, 113, 115, 116, 119,
382, 383, 387, 394 120, 122, 308, 351, 356
Lenz, Max 146, 156, 182, 298, 324, 325, 338–40 Milbank, John 41
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim 2, 85, 86, 308 mission canonica 331
Lexis, Wilhelm 342, 346–7 modern state 10, 13–15, 18, 19, 27, 35, 98,
liberal arts (artes liberales) 54–5 110, 127–9, 132, 133, 170, 171, 174, 175,
liberal Protestantism 3, 26, 34, 60, 200, 205, 177, 210, 214, 215, 224, 226, 265, 266, 406,
241, 270, 298, 299, 303, 327, 392, 393, 401, 408; and centralization, 20, 22, 91, 132, 152,
405, 407–9, 412; in the criticism of Karl 172, 176, 215, 219, 221, 223, 224, 227, 229,
Barth 410–18 232, 237, 239, 253, 296
Liebig, Justus 282 modernity, modernization 5, 8, 11, 18, 21, 22,
Linz 49 27, 36, 38, 40, 41, 48, 60, 68, 97, 104, 111,
Lombard, Peter 56–7, 59, 65, 311 114, 128, 132, 156, 169, 172, 179, 198, 199,
London 47, 112, 341, 351, 383 207, 214, 219, 224, 225, 242, 264, 265, 293,
Loofs, Friedrich 344 326, 333, 359, 362, 379, 380, 386, 396, 403,
Lowth, Robert 356 418
Lücke, Friedrich 37, 208, 209, 247, 248, 254, Mommsen, Theodor 275, 298, 390
312, 357, 401 Montauban 353
Luther, Martin 1, 63, 68, 73, 76, 109, Montgelas, Count Maximilian
137, 175, 216, 236, 321, 397, 398, 400, 416; von 135
on the need for university reform 61–2; on Morill Land Grant Act (1862) 378
theological education 72–3 Mosheim, Johann Lorenz von 36, 76, 79, 122,
Lutheranism, Lutheran orthodoxy 23, 61, 307; inXuence on the founding of the
71–80, 89, 90, 92, 96, 99, 106, 150, 184, 193, University of Göttingen 107–14; as a
194, 199, 213, 218, 220, 221, 231, 232, pioneering church historian 112, 344
464 Index
Mulert, Hermann 17 Oaths, of confessional loyalty 29, 46, 58, 92,
Müller, Friedrich Max 362, 390, 393; and the 120–1, 192–3, 291–2, 386
science of religion 382–5 Old Lutherans 26, 237, 244
Müller, Johannes 252, 282 Olmütz 49
Münchhausen, Gerlach Adolf von 105–8, Origen 311
112, 113, 114 Osnabrück 49
Munich 30, 84, 134, 135, 285, 326, 331 Overbeck, Franz 272, 312, 380, 387–90, 409
Münster 134, 148, 261, 331, 411 Oxford 51, 82, 356, 359, 362, 383–4
Mursinna, Samuel 307 Oxford Movement 358
Müsebeck, Ernst 225, 246
myth criticism of the Bible 120, 195, 210; Paderborn 49, 134, 148
see also historical criticism Pannenberg, Wolfhart 207, 311
Paris 12, 47–53, 56, 57, 66, 112, 135, 245, 282,
national education (Nationalerziehung) 20, 329, 383, 391; inXuence on make-up of
23, 141, 224, 237, 242, 261, 264 German universities 49–51
National Socialism 302 pastors, pastoral oYce; see clergy
nationalism 10, 134, 156, 214, 287, 312, patronage rights 217–18, 221, 230, 232–4
325, 330, 333, 334, 341, 386, 387, 397, Pattison, Mark 359, 361
398; during the founding of the Paulsen, Friedrich 15, 16, 50, 70, 97, 166, 269,
University of Berlin 141–2, 150–1 301, 324, 329–32, 407
natural law 95 Paulus, H. E. G. 194
natural philosophy (Naturphilosophie) 157, Peabody, Francis G. 269
281–2 Peace of Augsburg 216, 218
natural science 8, 27, 96, 145, 182, 251, 260, Peace of Tilsit 149, 151, 160
281–3, 285, 294, 296, 328, 342, 347 Peace of Westphalia (1648) 68, 216, 218
Naturwissenschaften; see natural science Pestalozzi, Heinrich 138, 141, 160, 230
Neander, August 37, 178, 194, 196–7, 200, PXeiderer, Otto 269, 299, 362
208, 209, 247, 312, 344, 357, 371 philology 8, 66, 99, 104, 116, 118–20, 138,
neohumanism (Neuhumanismus) 147, 163–6, 168, 202, 204, 252, 261, 262,
118–19, 131, 137, 138, 141, 144, 263, 269, 270, 274–8, 281, 282, 310, 314,
146, 179, 275 327, 364, 366, 379, 383, 405; see also
neology (Neologie) 98–9, 102, 199 classical studies
neo-orthodoxy; see dialectical theology. philosophes; see Enlightenment
Newman, John Henry 358, 362 pietism 15, 26, 80, 90, 98, 99, 100, 137, 236,
Nicolovius, Ludwig 214–15, 230, 237, 241, 253, 254, 260, 266, 269, 270, 289, 306, 308,
246 358, 397, 406, 409, 415; at the University of
Niebuhr, Barthold Georg 275–6, 382 Halle 93–6; see also Philipp Jakob Spener
Niemeyer, A. H. 100–3, 124, 254 and August Hermann Francke
Nietzsche, Friedrich 270, 272, 274, 312, Planck, J. G. 194, 307–8, 365
386–8, 409; as friend and Plato 164, 199, 205
housemate of Franz positive science 157–8, 203, 310, 314, 389
Overbeck 387–8 positivism 29, 30–1, 33, 44, 134, 268, 269,
Nipperdey, Thomas 19, 20, 177 270, 271, 273, 332
Nitzsch, Karl Immanuel 37, 188, 247–8, 254, post-liberal theology 44
312, 334, 357 Prague 48, 49, 51, 145
Nolte, J. W. H. 150 presbyteries; see churches, church bodies
Nösselt, J. A. 100–3, 124, 307–8, 357 private lecturers (Privatdozenten) 117, 182,
November Revolution (1918) 216, 395–6 190–1, 209, 247, 257–8, 288, 294, 372
Index 465
professionalization 25, 116, 138, 241, 264, on church-state relations 215–22;
273–6, 284, 361 tercentary celebration of 235–6
Protestant Church Union (1817) 23, 26, 89, Reformed Christianity; see Calvinism
184, 193, 211, 230, 235–7, 247, 248, Reichdeputationshauptschluß (1803)
264, 373 222, 234
Protestant scholasticism 14, 68, 71, 72, 90, 93, Reimarus, Hermann Samuel 86
95, 101, 306; and the study of theology, Reischle, Max 391
75–80 religious toleration 89–91, 97, 219, 220
Prussia 1, 4, 6, 7, 10, 12, 13, 18–27, 35, 38, 82, Renaissance 49, 50, 54, 60
83, 84, 87, 88, 91, 96, 98, 100, 101, 105, 113, Renan, Ernest 353, 354
121, 124, 125, 128, 133, 134, 138, 141, 142, research, reseach imperative 32, 40, 132, 137,
144, 145, 147–50, 156, 159, 160, 167, 177, 140, 162, 167, 168, 173–5, 188, 192, 198,
182, 183, 191, 196, 210, 213, 214, 218–23, 241, 250, 258, 262, 269, 273,
248, 249, 267, 268, 274, 283, 284, 285, 287, 274–9, 281, 283, 286, 295, 298, 313–15,
288, 290, 312, 325, 326, 334, 335, 339, 351, 321, 326, 329, 334, 338, 349,
352, 354, 361, 365, 387, 395, 406; Civil 354, 416; see also science
Code of (Allgemeines Landrecht) 6, 22, 181, (Wissenschaft), German idealism, and
182, 219–21; during Reform Era 19, 20, 22, positivism
37, 132, 152, 172, 177, 210, 213, 222–34, Restoration 4, 210, 351; see also Congress of
250, 261, 264, 302, 401; Constitution Vienna
of 1850 and academic freedom 25, 256, Reuchlin, Johann 62, 63
291; activities of Ministry of Culture Réville, Albert 384, 391
(Kultusministerium) in nineteenth Revolution of 1848 267, 272, 290–1, 386; see
century 22–7, 37, 132, 152, 174, 176, 188, also Frankfurt Assembly
215, 220, 222, 229–35, 236, 237, 239–66, Rhineland 23, 235, 246–8, 288
276, 283, 294, 296–302, 335, 336, 341, 352, Ringer, Fritz 291, 302
371, 396, 400; state’s spending on Rinteln 49, 135
universities 251, 297; territorial church Rites Controversy (Agendenstreit) 230, 236
of 16, 18, 207, 213, 214, 216–22, 261, 289; Ritschl, Albrecht 241, 269, 320, 336, 380
church-state relations in 22–5, 212–39; Robinson, Edward 363, 366–70, 373, 374
inXuence on German university system Romanticism 119, 157, 179
during imperial era 267–8, 297, 301 Rome 71, 153, 230
Pufendorf, Samuel 46 Rose, H. J. 357–8
Pusey, E. B. 357–8, 362 Rosenkranz, Karl 318
Rostock 49, 82
Rade, Martin 17, 241, 269, 410, 413, 417 Rothe, Richard 15, 16, 24, 62, 208, 318, 408
Ranke, Leopold von 116, 261, 382, 390; and Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 138, 141
the shaping of the historical Ruge, Arnold 288
profession 276–8
rationalism (Rationalismus) 98–9, 103, 228, Salzburg 49
254–5, 271, 308, 319, 344; as a catch-all Sand, Karl 287
characterization of German theology by Saussaye, Pierre Daniel Chantepie de la 384
foreigners, 349, 356–8, 368, 374–5 Savigny, Karl Friedrich von 179, 180, 252,
Reformation, Protestant 7, 14, 34, 49, 50, 53, 278, 365
54, 82, 98, 109, 116, 131, 151, 196, 199, 211, SchaV, Philip 197, 208, 266,
213, 239, 306, 307, 319, 349, 350, 368, 372, 311; on German universities and
401, 413; and German universities 60–70; theology 370–6
eVects on theological study 70–80; eVects Scheibel, Johannes G. 237
466 Index
Schelling, Friedrich 30, 34, 139, 142, 146, 151, idea of in nineteenth century 27–35,
153, 155, 194, 196, 199, 203, 225, 282, 309, 130–2, 137–42; in theoretical discussions
399; on academic study and preceding the founding of the University
theology 156–9 of Berlin 143, 147, 153, 155–62, 164,
Schiller, Friedrich 146–7, 153, 156, 167–77; in the literature of theological
194 encyclopedia 305, 308, 310, 312, 314,
Schlatter, Adolf 300n107 319–23; as an ideology
Schlegel, A. W. 119, 145 (Wissenschaftsideologie) 28, 137, 138, 157,
Schlegel, Friedrich 119 167, 288, 306, 309, 310, 312; see also
Schleiermacher, Friedrich 3, 6, 9, 28, 36, research, research imperative; German
76, 101, 207, 209, 210, 226, 228, 229, idealism; positivism; and specialization
231, 236, 247, 248, 250, 254, 256, 262, science of missions (Missionswissenschaft) 11,
265, 268, 270, 272, 273, 280, 287, 295, 186, 394
327, 334, 336, 344, 345, 351, 356, 357, science of religion (Religionswissenschaft) 11,
358, 362, 365, 377, 380, 382, 385, 386, 165, 320, 340, 379–85, 391, 392, 394, 399,
388, 390, 393, 394, 395, 397, 398, 400, 409, 411, 416–17; university chairs devoted
401, 417, 418; and the founding of the to 383–5, 394
University of Berlin, 131, 133, 141, 146, ScientiWc Revolution 47, 83
149, 150, 151, 153, 155, 156, 159, 166–72, scientiWc theology (wissenschaftliche
173, 174, 175, 177; as a pastor, 196, 208; Theologie) 6, 143, 242, 264, 266, 270, 272,
activities on Berlin’s Wrst theological 274, 289, 312, 332, 344, 345, 359, 362, 372,
faculty, 178–89, 193, 194, 195; eVorts to re- 385, 389, 411, 414–16
envision theological education, 197–207; Scotland 356, 362
general inXuence in nineteenth-century Second German Empire (1871–1918) 13, 26,
theological education, 303, 304, 306, 307, 241, 268, 269, 292–303, 331, 335, 339, 342,
310–21, 323 380, 381, 385, 389, 391, 395, 396, 404; see
Schlözer, A. L. 115–17 also German national
Schmalz, T. A. H. 146–7, 149, 150, 154 uniWcation
scholarship, see research and science Second World War 301
(Wissenschaft) secondary schools: Gymnasium 138, 145, 167,
scholasticism, medieval 54–9, 61, 63, 65, 67, 283–4, 295–6; Realschule 296
71, 72, 74, 76, 78 secularism, secularization 8, 9, 22, 43, 50, 68,
Schuckmann, Friedrich 154, 180, 181, 182, 69, 218, 219, 230, 234, 329
230, 240, 241, 246 seminar, seminar method 24, 30, 98, 99, 118,
Schulze, Johannes 24, 27, 215, 241, 245, 120, 140, 185, 186, 209, 247, 261–4, 274,
249–64, 269, 275–6, 280, 296–7, 302, 276, 281, 294, 295, 301, 405, 410
351–2 seminary 5, 70, 135, 136, 164, 248, 320, 352,
Schwarz, Karl 208 355, 366, 374, 375, 377, 378, 380, 386, 397,
science (Wissenschaft) 2, 6, 7, 11, 13–18, 36, 409
40, 41, 43, 55, 76, 77, 114, 126, 128, 179, Semler, Johann Salomo 76, 99, 100–1, 111,
187, 189, 192, 193, 199, 202–11, 215, 241, 307–08
243, 245, 247, 249, 260, 263, 264, 265, 266, separation of chuch and state; see church-state
270, 273, 274, 277, 278, 280, 283, 284, 288, relations
289, 292, 293, 295, 300, 327, 328, 331, 332, Sigismund, Johann 23
333, 334, 335, 337, 338, 339, 340, 341, 342, social democracy 241, 268, 291, 380–1,
344, 346, 347, 354, 360, 361, 370, 371, 375, 395–7, 408–9
376, 377, 379, 386, 388, 397, 400, 401, 405, Social Democratic Party (SPD); see social
406, 408, 409, 411, 414, 417; growth of democracy
Index 467
Sola scriptura 64, 66, 70, 316; see also Schleiermacher 197–207, 310–11; and Karl
Reformation Rudolf Hagenbach 311–18; and Karl
Solz, August von Trott zu 336, Barth 322–3
338 theological prolegomena 70–80
Sombart, Werner 302 theology, ‘‘queen of the sciences’’ 3, 6, 8, 56,
Sonderweg 26, 225 58, 123, 129, 131, 327
Sorbonne 136 theology, branches of study: exegetical 10, 11,
Spahn, Martin 298 76, 99, 120, 183–5, 191, 194, 195, 202, 206,
specialization 29–33, 241, 250–2, 262, 308, 313, 315–18, 321, 322, 343, 395, 400,
258, 268, 273, 277, 278, 282, 284–6, 295, 412; historical 11, 76, 165, 202, 205, 206, 308,
306, 309, 313, 315, 320, 322, 327, 334, 337, 311, 313, 315–18, 321, 322, 343, 344, 395, 400;
343, 345, 361; see also research, research philosophical (or systematic) 11, 71, 183,
imperative; science; and positivism 184, 191, 194, 202, 205, 308, 313, 315–18, 322,
Spener, Philipp Jakob 80, 94, 101, 137, 306, 332, 343, 344, 345, 395, 400; practical 11, 76,
358; see also pietism 94, 108, 183, 190, 202, 204, 205, 208, 210,
Spranger, Eduard 29–31, 334 248, 263, 308, 310, 313–19, 322, 343, 344, 395,
St. Louis World’s Fair and German 400
universities 325, 333, 341–2 theology, periodicals and journals 34, 209–10,
Staël, Madame de 350–1, 356, 364 247, 254–6, 277, 366–7, 394, 397, 413, 417
Stäudlin, Carl Friedrich 36, 124, 365 Thirty Years War 82
SteVens, Heinrich 141, 149, 150–1, 155, Thirwall, Connop 356
159–60, 282 Tholuck, F. A. G. 37, 254, 260, 264, 319, 357, 371
Stein, Karl von 151–2, 214, 222–4, 227–9, Thomasius, Christian 46, 89, 90, 94, 95, 122
232, 289 Thwing, Charles 377–8
Strasbourg 75, 268, 285, 298, 353–4 Ticknor, George 363–6
Strauss, David Friedrich 37, 120, 195, 208, Tocqueville, Alexis de 21, 226, 374
210, 227, 265, 279, 280–1, 289, 317, 353, Tokyo 384
358, 373, 388; see also myth criticism of the toleration; see religious toleration
Bible Treitschke, Heinrich von 37, 240, 312
Stuart, Moses 366 Trier 49, 134
Studia humanitatis; see humanism Troeltsch, Ernst 18, 212–13, 242, 269, 379, 408
Studt, Konrad von 297 Tübingen 38, 49, 62, 67, 75, 96, 135, 208, 249,
superintendents 216, 231 279–80, 285, 311, 331, 371, 373
Süvern, Johann Wilhelm 214, 230, 241, 246 Tübingen School; see Tübingen
Switzerland 160, 208, 288, 292, 312, 371, 372, Turner, R. Steven 28, 140, 264
384, 410, 417 Twesten, August 37, 206, 208, 334, 371
Sybel, Heinrich von 32, 33, 224
synods; see churches, church bodies Union Theological Seminary (New
York) 367, 371, 375
Tappan, Henry P. 376 Unitarianism 357, 363
technical universities (Technische United States of America 5, 8, 19, 21, 24,
Hochschulen) 295, 297, 347 26, 42, 115, 212, 224, 237, 293, 305,
Teller, Wilhelm A. 85, 122 313, 327, 335, 336, 341, 347–9, 352,
territorial church (Landeskirche) 68–9, 207; 410; inXuence of German universities and
development in post-Reformation era, academic theology in 363–78
214–16 Universities Tests Act (1871) 361
theological encyclopedia 13, 32, 38, 71, 101, University of Chicago 376–77, 384
150, 190, 270, 271, 303–23; and Friedrich University of London 359 n.321
468 Index
University of Michigan 376 Weiss, Johannes 390
University of Virginia 364 Welch, Claude 10, 34, 198
university: ceremonies and commemorative Wellhausen, Julius 105, 195, 269
events 46, 58, 156, 179, 189, 192, 271, 324, Westphalia 235, 248
325, 332–41; academic degrees (including White, Andrew Dickson 33, 131, 363
doctorate) 53, 54, 56, 58, 65, 67, 86, 111, Wilhelm I, king of Prussia and German
185, 186, 190–92, 248, 259, 325, 332, 338, emperor 334
345, 364, 376; dress and insignia 192, 333; Wilhelm II, king of Prussia and German
statutes and regulations 12, 46, 49, 52, 64, emperor 300, 303, 335, 338–9, 341, 380,
65, 91–3, 104, 106, 108–11, 114, 117, 120, 388, 392, 395–6
178–85, 294; worship services in 185, Wilken, Robert Louis 405
187–8, 248, 336; see also Berlin, Göttingen, Willich, Henriette von 201
Halle, and other universities Winckelmann, J. J. 119, 137
Uppsala 384 Wissenschaftlichkeit; see science
urbanization 293 Wittenberg 1, 12, 15, 49, 62, 75, 77, 79, 89, 90,
Utrecht 105, 384 93, 135, 194, 247–8, 398; reform of
university and theological curriculum
Vatke, Wilhelm 37, 208, 253 during Reformation 63–7
Vienna 17, 48, 51, 59, 145, 235, 292 Wolf, F. A. 119, 146–7, 149, 150, 153, 185,
Virchow, Rudolf 30–1, 142, 282, 283 261, 365, 382; role in shaping philology as
Voltaire 2, 80, 86, 219 an academic discipline 274–7
WolV, Christian 47, 94–9 104, 106,
Walch, J. G. 307 111, 122
Wars of Liberation (1813) 181, 334 Wöllner, Johann Christoph, and Religious
Wartburg Festival (1817) 240 Edict of 1788, 101–4, 123–5, 143, 174, 198,
Weber, Max 9, 30–1, 257, 273, 297, 301–2, 219, 221
329, 403 World War I; see Great War
Wednesday Society (Mittwochsgesellschaft) World’s Parliament of Religions 391
87, 121–2 Württemberg 208, 270
Wegscheider, J. A. 25, 254–56 Würzburg 48, 331
Weimar 119, 194, 365, 381, 395
Weimar Constitution 67, 272, 291, 395–6, Zahn-Harnack, Agnes von 417
401, 409, 412 Zedlitz, K. A. Freiherr von 98, 123, 221
Weimar Republic 38, 238, 272, 397, 404 Zorn, Philipp 16

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P ROTE S TA N T T H E O LO G Y A N D T H E M A K I N G

OF THE MODERN GERMAN UNIVERSITY

ISBN 0-19-926685-9 978- 0-19-926685-2

Select Bibliography 419

Reference Works, Books, and Collected Editions

ADB Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie

Libraries and Archives

Our universities . . . are our churches.

3 The Scottish universities, seats of the Scottish Enlightenment, represent an important

10 Anton Schindling, ‘Die protestantischen Universitäten im Heiligen Römischen Reich

15 G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Mind; quoted in Maurice Mandelbaum, History, Man,

23 There is no detailed, general study of the European-wide demise of university-seated

2. ON THE STAT E AND MODERN SCIENCE

Besides the obvious categories of ‘university’ and ‘theology’, the categories of

67 Troeltsch, Die Trennung von Staat und Kirche, 41.

74 Matthew Levinger, Enlightened Nationalism: The Transformation of Prussian Political

78 Winfried Speitkampf, ‘Educational Reforms in Germany between Revolution and Restor-

98 Claude Welch, ‘The Problem of a History of Nineteenth-Century Theology’, JR 52 (1972): 9.

My principal aim in this study is to interpret the evolution of the modern

127 Hilgenfeld, ‘Die wissenschaftliche Theologie’, ZWT 21.

4. BROADER CONSIDERATIONS, OR ‘ THE

134 Jacob Burckhardt, ReXections on History, trans. M. D. Hottinger (Indianapolis: Liberty,

142 MacIntyre, Three Rival Forms of Moral Enquiry, 44.

But the purpose of this science [theology] . . . is eternal beatitude, to

On the morning of 17 September 1737, to the sound of ringing church bells,

9 Paulsen, Geschichte des gelehrten Unterrichts, 540–1.

2. THE MEDIEVAL L EGACY

20 Kaufmann, Geschichte der deutschen Universitäten, ii. 17, 68 V.

34 OverWeld, Humanism and Scholasticism, 27.

38 Piltz, The World of Medieval Learning, 104.

55 Rashdall, The Universities of Europe, i. 484–6.

3. HUMANISM, THE REFORMATION,

59 Rashdall, Universities of Europe, ii. 233. 60 Paulsen, German Universities, 33.

69 See De corrigendis adolescentiae studiis in Robert Stupperich (ed.), Melanchthons Werke in

85 Ozment, The Age of Reform, 1250–1550, 316.

87 Philip Melanchthon, Orations on Philosophy and Education, trans. Christine F. Salazar

90 Notker Hammerstein, ‘Die deutschen Universitäten im Zeitalter der Aufklärung’, in

94 A succinct overview of post-Reformation Lutheran theological education is found in

95 Quoted in Robert D. Preus, The Theology of Post-Reformation Lutheranism: A Study of

97 Of special signiWcance is Melanchthon’s Declamatio de Aristotele (1536), in which he

117 ELC, 906.

If Protestant scholasticism had become a sterile enterprise by the early

127 HUE ii. 556.

5 . T H E WAY F ORWA RD : HA L L E A ND GÖT TI N GEN

Despite such sentiments as Gebhard’s, the opinion that the universities

173 Halle’s General Statutes § 1.

243 Ebel (ed.), Die Privilegien und ältesten Statuten, 181.

274 Turner, ‘Prussian Universities’, 112 V.

277 Ibid. 112 V.

286 Michaelis, Raisonnement, iv. 145 V.

302 Kant, Streit, 23–9. 303 Ibid. 32–45.

304 Ibid. 44–5. 305 Ibid. 65 V.

The founding of the University of Berlin is in point of fact one of the

In the entry on ‘universities’ for the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia

1 Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th edn., xxiii. 848.

8 See Laetetia Boehm and Johannes Spörl (eds.), Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Ingol-

24 See R. Steven Turner, ‘University Reformers and Professorial Scholarship in Germany,

How then did a university—what Fichte called ‘a new creation’31—come to be

32 Nipperdey, Germany from Napoleon to Bismarck, 19 V.

61 Nowak, Schleiermacher, 178–82.

68 Köpke, Die Gründung, 38–40.

71 SteVens, Was ich erlebte (Breslau, 1842), vi. 298 V.

4. THEOLO GY AND THE IDEA OF THE NEW UNIVERSITY