:Clio the Romantic Muse: Historicizing the Faculties in Germany

Abstract

The history of the Romantic era of German history has received increased attention recently from scholars such as John E. Toews, Peter Fritzsche, George S. Williamson, and Robert Richards, and this book is a distinguished addition to that body of work. Admittedly, there is little here that is innovative, either in content or methodology. Theodore Ziolkowski's central contention—that a paradigm shift occurred in the early nineteenth century that put history at the center of Romantic consciousness—will come as no surprise. Concentrating on the impact of history on the academic disciplines, Ziolkowski devotes a chapter to each of the four traditional faculties of the German university (using Berlin as his main example) and traces the shift by means of an intellectual biography of a representative figure for each one: G.W.F. Hegel for philosophy, Friedrich Schleiermacher for theology, Friedrich Karl von Savigny for law, and Friedrich Schelling for medicine. In the last case, Ziolkowski modifies his approach by showing how a number of disciples of Schelling's Naturphilosophie played prominent roles in the study of life science, which was then often pursued by professors in the medical faculty. While this collective biographical approach will doubtless strike some readers as old-fashioned, the book is nevertheless highly recommended because of the depth, lucidity, and verve with which Ziolkowski carries it off. He is scrupulous in providing the right amount of contextual background for each of his figures, and he is unsurpassed in his grasp of the personal relationships and intellectual exchanges between them and the other contemporary figures in the Romantic movement. Moreover, in working through his material, Ziolkowski arrives at a conclusion that is actually more subtle than his initial thesis: Romanticism represented not so much an introduction of a historical approach—for history in an encyclopedic sense had figured prominently in the eighteenth century as well—as a transformation thereof. Each of the four figures developed a holistic view of knowledge that encompassed both static and dynamic aspects, a synthesis that embraced “both history and system, diachrony and synchrony” (p. 173).