University of Göttingen

“ His father, who was a man of substance, sent him to the university of Göttingen, where he graduated in medicine. His chief interests, however, were in natural history and technology; he wrote a number of papers on both these subjects which gained him some reputation, and had both in view in a series of journeys which he made from time to time through various parts of Holland and Germany. ”

“ In 1729 he returned to Bern and began to practise as a physician; his best energies, however, were devoted to the botanical and anatomical researches which rapidly gave him a European reputation, and procured for him from George II. 856 in 1736 a call to the chair of medicine, anatomy, botany and surgery in the newly founded university of Göttingen. He became F.R.S. in 1743, and was ennobled in 1749. The quantity of work achieved by Haller in the seventeen years during which he occupied his Göttingen professorship was immense. ”

“ THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY. A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS. VOL. VII.—MARCH, 1861.—NO. XLI. GERMAN UNIVERSITIES. THE PROFESSORS. "Which of the German universities would be the best adapted to my purpose?" is the question of many an American student, who, having gone through the usual course in the United States, looks abroad for the completion of his scientific or liberal studies. Of Göttingen and Heidelberg he will often have read and heard; the reputation of the comparatively new university of Berlin will not be unfamiliar to him ”

“ I wished to devote myself professionally and with zeal to those aforesaid fundamental studies, and while I thought to advance myself more rapidly in my own works by a more thorough insight into antiquity, to qualify myself for a university professorship, which seemed to me the most desirable thing for a young man who intended to cultivate himself and to contribute to the cultivation of others.
With these intentions, I always had my eye upon Göttingen. My whole confidence rested upon men like Heyne, Michaelis, and so many others ”

“ In 1829 he entered the university of Leipzig, and one year later that of Göttingen, where, under the influence of Otfried Müller, he finally decided to devote himself to the archaeological side of philology. From Göttingen he proceeded to Berlin, where he graduated in 1833 as doctor with the thesis De tabulis Eugubinis. In the same year he proceeded to study in Paris, and was commissioned by the duc de Luynes to collect material from the Greek and Latin writers for his work on the weapons of the ancients. ”

“ He was graduated at Princeton in 1849, and then studied at the universities of Berlin, Bonn, and Göttingen in Germany, taking the degree of Ph. D. at the latter institution in 1853. Soon after his return to the United States he was elected professor of Greek in the University of Virginia, where he remained from 1856 till 1876, also occupying the chair of Latin in that university from 1861 till 1866. ”

“ Both Halle and Göttingen were lost, and the loss of Halle was a severe blow. In 1807 Fichte, who had been a professor at Jena, drew up a plan and submitted it to the King for the organization of a new university at Berlin. When Humboldt came to the head of the Department of Public Instruction the idea at once won his enthusiastic approval. In May, 1809, he reported favorably on the project to the King, and three months later a Cabinet Order was issued creating the new university, giving it an annual money grant, and assigning a royal palace to it for a home. ”

“ Not less beneficial was the example set at Göttingen of securing the appointment of its professors by a less prejudiced and partial body than a university board is only too likely to become. “ ‘The Great Münchhausen,’ says an illustrious professor of that seminary, ‘allowed our university the right of presentation, of designation, or of recommendation, as little as the right of free election ”

“ At Leipzig, Göttingen and Halle he studied for four years, ultimately devoting himself to mathematics and astronomy. In 1815 he settled at Leipzig as privatdocent, and the next year became extraordinary professor of astronomy in connexion with the university. Later he was chosen director of the university observatory, which was erected (1818–1821) under his superintendence. In 1844 he was elected ordinary professor of higher mechanics and astronomy, a position which he held till his death on the 26th of September 1868. ”

“ When he was at Göttingen, in the beginning of his German tour, he received the compliment of being appointed honorary professor of philosophy and geology in that university; but he never entered upon the active duties of a professorship. He was also a correspondent of the Academy of Sciences at Paris, and a member of several other scientific associations. He died at Windsor on the 7th of November 1817. ”

“ His liberalism in politics having brought him into conflict with the university authorities of Giessen, he exchanged that university for Göttingen in 1816, and three years later received a chair at the new university of Bonn, where he established the art museum and the library, of which he became the first librarian. ”

“ I have also repeatedly observed in the course of my life that ties are the faster, the more enduring and the truer the more they spring from higher, universal, and impersonal sources.
The person who in Mecklenburg stood next above me in position in the house and in the family was the private tutor, whom I found already there—a young doctor of philosophy of Göttingen University. We did not come much into contact on the whole since he as a university graduate took a far higher stand than I; but through I came into some connection with the clergymen of the district, and this was of benefit to me. ”

“ Not more native to the Cumberland meres is Wordsworth, and to the banks of Doon is Robert Burns, than Goethe’s Faust is to Göttingen, Leipzig, and Bonn. A university in Germany is socially a more powerful thing, though architecturally and aristocratically by no means so magnificent a thing as Oxford in England. The German professors are the great representatives and leaders of the national mind in all departments of thought; this is the case only to a certain limited extent in our country. The academical element, therefore, must assert a prominent place in a truly German national poem. ”

“ It is traversed by the Leine, which separates the Altstadt from the Neustadt and Masch; and it is surrounded by ramparts which are planted with lime trees and form an agreeable promenade. The streets in the older part of the town are for the most part crooked and narrow, but the newer portions are spaciously and regularly built. Apart from the churches and the numerous university buildings, it has few structures of any public importance. ”

“ The next extract is from a letter of Cogswell’s, and gives a glimpse at the actual work done by these young men:—
Göttingen, March 8, 1817.
I must tell you something about our colony at Göttingen before I discuss other subjects, for you probably care little about the University and its host of professors, except as they operate upon us. First as to the Professor (Everett) and Dr. Ticknor, as they are called here; everybody knows them in this part of Germany, and also knows how to value them. ”

“ He himself called these years his "university course as a pedagogue," but they also furnished him with the means to continue the studies in natural history which he had commenced in Jena. He had laid aside for this purpose part of his salary as tutor, and was permitted, from 1810 to 1812, to complete in Gottingen his astronomical and mineralogical studies. Yet the wish to try his powers as a pedagogue never deserted him; and when, in 1812, the position of teacher in the Plamann Institute in Berlin was offered him, he accepted it. ”

“ We went on the same night to Gottingen, an exceedingly neat and well-built town, situated in a beautiful country. The university founded here by [62] George the Second has a considerable reputation. We made but a short stay at Gottingen, and arrived about a month since at Brunswick. ”

“ He was educated at Göttingen, and at University College, London, where he won many prizes. In 1839 he graduated LL.B. at London, and was elected to the university law scholarship. He became a fellow of University College in 1843, and was for several years an examiner in law to the university of London. ”

“ After studying at Giessen, Göttingen and Berlin, he spent a few years in Italy studying the fine arts, and established himself in 1842 at Giessen as a teacher of philosophy. In 1853 he was appointed professor at the university of Munich, where he lectured mainly on aesthetics. ”

“ The system of patronage adopted at Göttingen was, in fact, identical with that which had already been instituted in the universities of the Netherlands by Douza. The Erlangen. university of Erlangen, a Lutheran centre, was founded by Frederick, margrave of Baireuth. ”

“ Towards the end of the 18th century Göttingen was the centre of a society of young poets of the Sturm und Drang period of German literature, known as the Göttingen Dichterbund or Hainbund (see Germany: Literature) . ”

“ But, you will ask, is Göttingen the only place for the acquisition of such learning? No, not the only, but I believe far the best for such learning as it is necessary for Mr. E. to fit him to make Cambridge in some degree a Göttingen, and render it no longer requisite to depend upon the latter for the formation of their scholars: it is true that very few of what the Germans call scholars are needed in America ”

“ In general, the inhabitants of Göttingen may be divided into students, professors, Philistines, and cattle. The cattle class is numerically the strongest. To place on record here the names of all professors and students would take me too far afield, nor can I even, at this moment, remember the name of every student; while among the professors there are many who have as yet made none. The number of Philistines in Göttingen must be like that of the sands—or rather the mud—of the sea. ”

“ The Academy of Göttingen refused to print his communications, and it was not until 1815 that they appeared in the first volume of the History of his friend Heeren, who, being untrammelled by the prejudices of Oriental learning, had been one of the earliest to accept his conclusions. ”

“ The son of a poor minister, beginning life as an apothecary's assistant, he published in 1778 an "Introduction to Pharmaceutical Chemistry," and so interested Goethe that the latter made it possible for him to study at Göttingen from 1784 till 1787, and to travel and observe industrial conditions in Holland and England. Shortly after his return his powerful patron secured his appointment to a professorship at Jena, where he was very profitably active for many years. ”

“ During the last forty-four years his laboratory at Göttingen has been the workshop in which great numbers of students have been taught how to conduct original researches, and many of these pupils have become professors all over the world. All of those who took their degrees must have presented an original thesis; and in nearly every instance, although the student performed the physical labors of the research, the suggestion, the topic, and the method came from Wöhler. It is difficult to measure the importance of such a life, or to express in fitting terms the gratitude we owe the man. ”

“ In many other States, and in more than one country, he studied with the best of teachers, lecturing at times himself. At the age of twenty-six he became professor and hospital director at Berne, and in 1752 published his famous researches on irritability. Three years later he accepted a call to Gottingen as Professor of Anatomy, Surgery, Chemistry, and Botany. He was the founder of a botanical garden; for many years was so busy that he slept and lived in his library; and, in spite of his enormous and unique correspondence with the savants of the world, he never left a letter unanswered. ”

“ Between the ages of eleven and thirteen he attended Phillips Exeter academy, and thence proceeded to Harvard, where, during his first year, he had Edward Everett for his tutor. Mr. Everett, being appointed professor, went to Göttingen to further fit himself for his office, and from there wrote to Harvard advising that some brilliant young man should be sent to Germany to study, in order that the teaching at Harvard might be strengthened. Young Bancroft, on his grad nation in 1817, was chosen and sent. At Göttingen he had Eichhorn, Blumenbach and Heeren for his teachers. ”

“ In the majority of the last-named places, foreigners, especially his own countrymen, are rare; none of his friends have studied there; they have followed the current, since the last century, and spent their time in Göttingen or Heidelberg, perhaps a winter in Berlin. They have found these institutions good, and affording every facility for study; but would not Munich, or Leipzig, or Jena, or any other one of the twenty-six universities of Germany, better answer the purpose of many a student? ”

“ All that he writes to his father concerning the more illustrious of his teachers, is interesting enough. It shows us how here in Göttingen, and especially through listening to and associating with Otfried Müller, Dissen, and the Grimms, science was revealed to him in a new and clearer light. ”

“ The summer of 1872 was again spent in Göttingen, mainly in working at Arabic with Lagarde. Lagarde assured his pupil at the close of the session that he had nothing more to teach him. At Göttingen he now became personally acquainted with Wellhausen, and saw something of Benfey and Clebsch. In the course of the summer he also had some intercourse with Riehm, Diestel, and Fleischer. ”