Berlin and Constance: Two Models of Reform and Their Hermeneutic and Pedagogical Relevance

Abstract

Over 150 years separate the establishment of the University of Berlin (1809/10) and the University of Constance (1966/67), two institutions that mark significant moments in the history of German higher education. In the shadow of Napoleon's defeat of Prussia, Wilhelm von Humboldt and his colleagues Fichte and Schleiermacher inspired educational reforms that were unfortunately burdened and ultimately weakened by their oversuccessful institutionalization both in the German educational system and in German society. Humanistic Bildung became the sure entry to secure civil service positions and status.' Even defeats in two world wars did not seem to alter the infrastructure of the university institution. But after the Vietnam War and student revolts in the 1960s, academicians such as Gerhard Hess, Constance's first rector, and Hans Robert JauB and Wolfgang Iser, professors of Romanistik andAnglistik respectively, were prompted like their colleagues over a century before to call for substantive change in an educational system that had become, to put it bluntly, an anachronism. The comparisons between Berlin and Constance are cited copiously in many of the studies on the contemporary German university reform movements. However, very few of these studies deal with specific disciplines like Literaturwissenschaft in the broader context of Wissenschaftsgeschichte. They have not sufficiently pointed out the strikingly similar commitments of these institutions to a kind of critical thinking inspired by a particular type of scholarship/research, learning, and pedagogy. In fact, an even stronger tradition can be forged between those two institutions when these common academic concerns are seen to be based on the influence of hermeneuticsthe theory of interpretation and understanding.