Hegel's Last Year in Berlin

Abstract

Hegel's last year in Berlin, the last year of his life, shows the philosopher at the height of his literary output and his influence. Since his summoning from Heidelberg to the newly established University of Berlin, his philosophical system had received detailed elaboration in the course of his intensive lecturing activity. Parallel to this inner development of Hegel's philosophy ran a growth of its external influence. The first of Hegel's Heidelberg and even Berlin students were already lecturing at Berlin and other Prussian universities. In 1827 the journal Jahrbücher für wissenschaftliche Kritik was founded, which, precisely because it did not present itself as a mere organ of the school, provided Hegel's philosophy with an influence that reached beyond the subject borders of philosophy as well as beyond the borders of the Prussian state. At the threshold of his last year Hegel also reached the formal climax of his academic career: he was elected Rector. Not just Rector of any university, but of that university which stood at the centre of the newly constituted Prussian state and which, on the basis of a conception impressed upon it by Wilhelm von Humboldt, had already gained an outstanding position among German universities.. This is especially remarkable if one considers that Germany in those years, as in most years of its history, did not constitute a united nation, but was divided into several independent states. It has been said, not without justification, that in those years the German universities were the only link between the German states, cultural unity was a substitute for political unity.