The German Genius

oneself , rather than something that is handed down. 46 The practice of written submissions for the seminars—organized along the lines of the new scientific disciplines then emerging—led to the distinction between dissertation and thesis, and to the degree of PhD. The dissertation was essentially a display of erudition (a student would be asked to locate and assemble all known fragments of this or that minor classical author), whereas a thesis was a piece of research testing or leading to a hypothesis. The PhD eventually became a recognized degree in the German civil service and from this time on, its ascendancy—which again we shall examine in more detail later—was assured. 47
    The development of the seminar and the transformation of the PhD went hand in hand with the evolution of classical and philological disciplines and biblical criticism, and so had an even bigger impact than all this implies. The neohumanism that these developments promoted helped to redefine the image of the educated man, changing it from the rather external one of the first university reform movement (at Halle, under Francke) to a more internal one, expressed in the concept Bildung . 48 There will be a great deal to say about Bildung in this book. Difficult to translate, in essence it refers to the inner development of the individual, a process of fulfillment through education and knowledge, in effect a secular search for perfection, representing progress and refinement both in knowledge and in moral terms, an amalgam of wisdom and self-realization.
    Together, Halle and Göttingen helped to fashion a new kind of education that prepared the way for a new stratum in German society, which will require not a little attention. This stratum, too small to be a class, in Tim Blanning’s words, nevertheless achieved a prominent position in Germany by means of its domination of the state bureaucracy, the church, the military, the professoriate, and the professions. The self-understanding of this new stratum, which more than any other group helped account for the revival of German culture, set it apart from the traditional, more commercial middle classes. 49 The progressive, rationalizing, meritocratic, and statist social vision that this new stratum brought to these institutions influenced the entire sweep of nineteenth-century history. 50 In the early part of the century, in the words of Thomas Howard, it even worked toward 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’…who understood that their aspirations should coincide with the high and morally serious purposes of the emergent nation-state.” After 1871, says Howard, “ Kulturprotestantismus ” or “ Bildungsprotestantismus ” functioned as the “civil-religious foundation” of the German empire. 51
    An important observation comes out of all this: the German intelligentsia differed sharply from its counterparts in other countries. In France, the intelligentsia became estranged from the royal regime, so much so that it eventually attacked the traditional authorities. In Russia the intelligentsia consisted almost entirely of nobles, and in Britain neither the term nor the concept existed until the twentieth century. In Germany, because a university education was needed for a government position, the intelligentsia was drawn from all social levels. Not irrelevant either was the fact that Germany at that time lacked a metropolitan capital to rival London or Paris. This left the German intelligentsia dispersed yet far more intimately involved in practical state administration than anywhere else. Whereas British and American sociologists have characterized “remoteness from the practical world of government and administration” as one of the identifying features of the intelligentsia, this is manifestly not true of Germany. 52
    T HE R EADING R EVOLUTION, A N EW P UBLIC S PACE AND N ATIONALISM E MERGING
     
    As late as May 1775 Christian Schubart reported in his Deutsche Chronik (German Chronicle) an encounter with a Neapolitan lady who was, he said, “under the impression” that “Germany must be a large city.” No less vividly, Joseph von Sonnenfels, one of the most distinguished figures of the Austrian Enlightenment, said this in a letter: “It