The Romantic Idea of a University and the New Foundation in Berlin

Abstract

Germans still look back with pride at the founding of the University of Berlin. Heinrich Steffens called it ‘one of the most important movements in the history of modern Germany’, and, even outside Germany, many see it as the birth of the modern university.1 By the mid-ninteenth century, Berlin had become the flagship university in Germany and a model for new institutions worldwide. But how much did this institution partake of the romantic Idea of a university? It was, indeed, founded when Fichte, Schelling and other Romantics and idealist philosophers were at the height of their influence in German intellectual life. But it was also born in a time of bitter defeat for Prussia and an era filled with a level of confusion not seen in Germany since the Thirty Years’ War. It was remarkable that the university came into being when it did; more notable still that it survived; and almost miraculous that it could achieve such fame in the decades after its founding. The romantic Idea of a university, born at Jena, was a midwife to this institution, but so were the immediate needs of the Prussian state.