Anja Werner. The Transatlantic World of Higher Education: Americans at German Universities, 1776–1914.

Abstract

Anja Werner's book, The Transatlantic World of Higher Education: Americans at German Universities, 1776–1914, focuses on the presence of American students at a select number of German universities during the so-called long nineteenth century. Werner argues that “the nineteenth-century German venture did not simply influence US academic culture but—in more subtle wa[y]s—left its imprint on US culture at large” (p. 260). The account also shows that over the course of the nineteenth century, U.S. students in Germany, as a group, became more diverse “with regard to gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic backgrounds” (p. 262). Ultimately, “the academic associations one could establish and strengthen in the course of a German venture were vital factors to further the academic career of US students” (p. 263), which leads Werner to conclude that “academic networking” (p. 2) was potentially the most important achievement of an American student's experience in Germany. Werner's study adds to the existing scholarship on American students in nineteenth-century Germany in important ways. Konrad Jarausch, and even more so Daniel T. Rodgers, has shown how significant the experience of studying in Germany could be for both select Americans as well as for the American progressive movement as a whole. Werner's research complements these studies with impressive quantitative and qualitative accounts. Not only does her study detail how many Americans lived and studied at some of the most important German universities between 1776 and 1914, but it also offers fascinating descriptions of the lives of American students in Germany and how the “German experience” of those students changed throughout the long nineteenth century. Berlin's Friedrich-Wilhelm University, however, is notably absent from Werner's study despite the fact that one of this university's most famous American students, W. E. B. Du Bois, is treated extensively in chapter 3.