“To Live for Science”: Ideals and Realities at the University of Berlin

Abstract

Abstract Der Wissenschaft leben-”to live for science” or, perhaps more accurately, for scholarship-represented the ideal of Wilhelm von Humboldt, not only for himself as a wealthy, aristocratic, and learned Prussian civil servant but for his major institutional creation, the University of Berlin. Not only he but also some of the brightest lights of the German intellectual and especially neohumanist firmament, such as Fichte and Schleiermacher, were deeply involved in planning and running the young university from its founding in 1810. Many of its first professors were already illustrious scholars • borrowed from the Prussian Academy of Sciences. In the course of the nineteenth century this graft of searching intellect-what would come to be called research in a more institutionalized form-onto the pruned and rejuvenated trunk of the essentially teaching-oriented university tradition produced a new model for universities everywhere. And although Berlin was not the first university to try this experiment, it became so preeminent among German universities and had such good public relations agents that it usually got credit for being the pioneer of the “research university” model.