Fritz K. Ringer's The Decline of the Mandarins

Abstract

During the past decade American scholars have devoted their energies to the pre-Nazi German academic community with an intensity that is not matched in the historiography of any other nation. The host of biographies that have appeared include works on Lujo Brentano, Heinrich Treitschke, Paul De Lagarde, Max Weber, and Max Scheler; substantial essays have been written about Werner Sombart, Edgar Salin, Robert von Mohl, Ferdinand Tonnies, Robert Michels, Adolf Wagner, and Othrnar Spann.2 Nor have German scholars failed to train their microscopes on their forebears. In addition to two volumes of articles on National Socialism and the German university, the last ten years have witnessed the publication of books concerned with the professoriat and a variety of subjects including World War I, antidemocratic thought, the fleet, and the Verein fur Sozialpolitik.3 Curiously, only Gustav Schmoller, the most heralded academic figure in imperial Germany, has managed to escape relatively unnoticed by contemporary historians. The reasons for this upsurge of interest are not difficult to discern. The primary catalysts are clearly the contributions of the respected academic community to the chaotic atmosphere of the twenties and the collapse of the German universities