The German Genius

and accepted the first professorship of Altertumswissenschaft at the new University of Berlin.
    Suzanne Marchand argues that Wolf’s pursuit of philological expertise “contributed to the turning inward of the university community after 1800.” This was an important innovation in scholarship. “Wolfian haughty insistence on ‘disinterestedness’ and scholarly autonomy imbued philology and Altertumswissenschaft with a kind of social detachment rare among eighteenth-century scholars, many of whom had depended on the patronage of aristocrats or income from a second job outside the university. Eighteenth-century professors, too, had generally been esteemed for their lecture skills rather than for their independent research.”
    Winckelmann had made more of the comparison between the Greeks and the moderns than between the Greeks and the Germans. The advent of the wars with France changed all that too. Amid comprehensive defeat, the parallels between the German predicament and that of ancient Athens—politically fragmented, conquered by force of arms, yet having a superior culture (to Rome) united by a single language—became more plausible. “In the shadow of Prussia’s defeat in the Battle of Jena in 1806, German philhellenism underwent a profound change; its anti-aristocratic aspects were transformed into pronational sentiments, and a new form of pedagogy, built on the notion of Bildung , made its peace with the state and the status quo.” 50 Instead of birth or position, neohumanism—the foundational belief of the new Bildungsbürgertum—judged an individual according to his or her cultural capabilities.
    One of Wolf’s close friends was Wilhelm von Humboldt. Humboldt shared with Wolf a belief in the study of the ancients. For him, the study of classical texts provided a means of meeting the more impressive self-educated individuals who had existed in the past and it was also, he felt, a way to “discipline the mind.” Both Wolf and Schiller, to whom Humboldt was also close, convinced him of the suitability of ancient Greece as a countervailing influence to the social fragmentation of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In 1802, Humboldt was appointed Prussian ambassador to the Holy See, providing him with ample opportunity to live among the antiquities of Rome. This became practically relevant in 1808, when a number of Prussian schemes for reform were initiated, stimulated by Napoleon’s comprehensive defeat of the Prussians at the Battle of Jena. These reforms, carried through between 1806 and 1812, were implemented under the aegis of two energetic nobles, Karl August von Hardenberg (1750–1822) and Karl vom Stein zum Altenstein (1770–1840). The most important of the reform measures were the freeing of serfs, the granting of a (limited) form of citizenship to Jews, certain economic reforms, and a rethinking of the bureaucracy—which is where Humboldt came in. A new department of the Interior Ministry—for educational and ecclesiastical affairs—was created, and Humboldt, a friend of Hardenberg and Altenstein, was made minister in charge. Until then, educational institutions in Germany (in particular primary and secondary schools) had been administered by the church, but Hardenberg and Altenstein were convinced a new relationship between the state and the schools was needed. 51 Humboldt’s responsibilities included the supervision of schools, universities, the art and science academies, cultural associations, and the Royal Theater, all close to his heart. He now became patron and guardian of the educational ideal that had shaped himself.
    As a fundamental measure, he centralized funding. He introduced a requirement that all prospective university students pass a new examination, the Abitur , the main element of which was testing translations of Greek and Latin texts. Furthermore, he made the Abitur the sole prerogative of a particular type of classical school—known as the Gymnasium . Only these could prepare pupils for university, a state of affairs that continued for close to a hundred years. The culmination of Humboldt’s reforms was his design of the University of Berlin, founded in 1810. Consolidating the trend begun at Göttingen under Münchhausen, Humboldt promoted Berlin’s philosophical faculty (containing philology, philosophy proper, and the natural sciences) over and above the more “practical” faculties of medicine, law, and theology. More than that, within