University of Halle

“ That the fault—at least in the case of the University of Halle—was not to be attributed to a failure on the part of the Medical Faculty to appreciate the value of such instruction is clearly shown by the saying attributed to Friedrich Hoffmann, who at that period was the Professor of Medicine:—
By a mere attendance upon medical lectures no man will ever succeed in becoming a properly equipped practitioner of that art ”

“ He founded the university of Halle, and the Academy of Sciences at Berlin; welcomed and protected Protestant refugees from France and elsewhere; and lavished money on the erection of public buildings. ”

“ At Berlin a University could best, and at least expense, be established. Accordingly all funds which had hitherto gone to Halle were to go for the future to Berlin, and assurances were to be given to the expelled Professors which might prevent their talents being lost to the country. A University is not founded in a day, and accordingly while Stein held office the design did not pass beyond the stage of discussion. ”

“ Half of the better known and most influential of German universities are of later origin than ours. The University of Göttingen, once the most flourishing in Germany, is younger than Harvard by a hundred years. Halle is younger, and Erlangen, and Munich with its vast library, and Bonn, and Berlin, by nearly two hundred years.
When this College was founded, two of the main forces of the intellectual world of our time had scarcely come into play,—modern literature and modern science. Science knew nothing as yet of chemistry, nothing of electricity, of geology, scarce anything of botany. ”

“ He studied medicine at Greifswald and Halle, and in 1830 went to Berlin to qualify himself to be a teacher of natural history. He was soon after appointed an instructor in the gymnasium at Cologne, and in 1842 became professor of zoölogy in the university of Halle. In 1848 he was a deputy from Halle to the national assembly of Frankfort, and afterward a representative from Liegnitz in the first Prussian chamber, where he took his seat among the liberals. ”

“ Professor Teck, of Rostock, published a work On the Happiness of those who die in the Lord, in which he decided that heaven will open its gates sometimes to the extremely impious who die without any external mark of repentance, and also to those who die in gross sin; but not to such a man as Spener.
The University of Halle was founded for the avowed purpose of promoting personal piety, Scriptural knowledge, and practical preaching throughout the land. It had already been a place of instruction, but not of theological training. ”

“ But in Germany the soil is so rich as to support three great universities—Leipzig, Halle, and Jena—planted within a circle of twenty miles radius, and nevertheless all thriving. Even the overweening development of Berlin University since that city has become the imperial capital has not yet overshadowed the smaller institutions. For, curious as it seems to us Americans, students in Europe are not influenced in the choice of a university chiefly by its size, the splendor of its buildings, or even its athletic record. ”

“ So I might here divide the universities into such as where a man may live cheaply and well, to which class Munich and Vienna particularly belong; where he may live cheap and badly, as in many of the smaller universities, particularly Halle, which affords only nutriment for the hungerers after knowledge; where he may live well and somewhat expensively, as at Heidelberg; and finally, where he may live dearly and ill, of which the great Berlin is an example. I speak here only of the material life, apart from which, every university has its peculiarities in many respects ”

“ Original research and contributions to knowledge marked the work of both students and professors, the object being, not to train teachers for the schools, but to produce scholars capable of advancing knowledge by personal research. Even more than at Halle, the institution was a place where professors and students worked to discover truth, uninfluenced by any preconceived notions and unmindful of what older ideas might be upset in the process. The value of such pioneer work for university scholars everywhere is not likely to be overestimated. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A “Ritterschule” for the sons of the nobility was opened, and in the course of a few years it was decided to found a university. Saxony endeavoured to thwart the scheme, urging the proximity of Leipzig; but her opposition was overruled by the emperor Leopold I., who granted (19th October 1693) the requisite charter, and in the following year the Work of the university commenced. Frankfort-on-the-Oder had by this time become a centre of the Reformed party, and the primary object in founding a university in Halle was to create a centre for the Lutheran party ”

“ At the universities medical students were not permitted to go out without their scholastic cloaks,—a regulation that still obtains in Spain. That the number of students has enormously multiplied may be seen from the fact that the little University of Giessen, with scarcely any medical school at all, has always more students than had Halle in the days of the famous Hoffmann. ”

“ Ullmann found in Halle all the diversities of point of view that existed at Heidelberg, and, indeed, at every University. Wegscheider and Gesenius represented Rationalism, but a better and larger spirit possessed the faculties. More frequent opportunities were, moreover, afforded him of meeting the other eminent men of the age. He visited Schleiermacher and Neander in Berlin ”

“ He had been in the habit of visiting a gentleman who was a man of study, much respected by the Professors at the Halle University. The daughter of this good man, a girl of great piety, became much interested in the young student. She tried her best to persuade him to commit himself wholly to the mercy and care of God and lent him books from her father’s library to help him. ”

“ The Hegelian theologian, Marheineke of Berlin, undauntedly declared that he, too, was desirous that Bruno Bauer should be relieved from his post as lecturer, because he considered that such an eminent critic, a man of such thorough scientific training, should be promoted to a really influential appointment. But Bauer's fate was sealed. The Halle students petitioned that David Strauss might be appointed professor at their university. ”

“ It is not: such occurrences are of everyday, and the system which inculcates these practices is not confined to one university, but with some slight modifications is found in all The students of Halle and Heidelberg had their Comment (or Code of Honour) as well as their brethren of Jena and Gottingen, and it little matters whether the laws be called Burschenschaft or Landsmanschaft, the principle is the same. ”

“ In order that Handel should have met them there it was necessary that they should return in 1703 on their way to Hamburg. But then he was eighteen years; and the legend of the infant prodigy being victorious over the two masters thus disappears (Attilio Ariosti in Berlin, 1905, Leipzig) .
[26] The broad-minded policy of the Electors of Brandenburg attracted to their University at Halle many of the most independent men in Germany who had been persecuted elsewhere. Thus the Pietists who were driven from Leipzig came to Halle. ”

“ After attending the Gymnasium at Stettin, he studied at Berlin University from 1840 to 1844. In 1848 he took his degree at Halle, and in 1850 was appointed professor of physics in the royal artillery and engineering school at Berlin. ”

“ The conflict of interests and jurisdictions led to the usual internecine strife during the middle ages. The panners (Pfänner) of the Tal, feudatories or officials, became a close hereditary aristocracy in perpetual rivalry with the gilds in the town; and both resisted the pretensions of the archbishops. At the beginning of the 12th century Halle had attained considerable importance, and in the 13th and 14th centuries as a member of the Hanseatic League it carried on successful wars with the archbishops of Magdeburg; and in 1435 it resisted an army of 30,000 men under the elector of Saxony. ”

“ They embrace an orphanage, a laboratory where medicines are prepared and distributed, a Bible press from which Bibles are issued at a cheap rate, and eight schools of various grades, attended in all by over 3000 pupils. The other principal institutions are the city gymnasium, the provincial lunatic asylum, the prison, the town hospital and infirmary, and the deaf and dumb institute. The salt-springs of Halle have been known from a very early period. Some rise within the town and others on an island in the Saale; and together their annual yield of salt is about 8500 tons. ”

“ And yet those who have lived in Halle for any length of time always think of it with affection. Its streets are narrow and close; its pavements used to be uncivilized in summer, and absolutely barbarous in winter; its atmosphere is tainted by one general smell of the peculiar kind of turf that is burnt, and by numerous particular odours; the older houses and rooms are fusty, and abound in tenants who do not pay, but exact rent from their fellow-lodgers; it is awfully hot in summer and cold in winter ”

“ In this way Berlin receives a considerable sum every year, and uses it to assist poorer professors and to attract new men. As a rule a German professor has not passed the State examinations. These are official, not academic, and they qualify men for government posts rather than for professorial chairs. A professor acquires the academic title of doctor by writing an original essay that convinces the university of his learning. ”

“ The love of knowledge carries them to college, the fame of its professors decides in which college they shall enrol themselves. To the sedulous choice of the best men from the various schools of Germany, and to great care in rearing and fostering the best of its own alumni, the university of Berlin owes its rapid growth in numbers and in reputation, and the city of Berlin the agreeable circle of distinguished philosophers, among whom the intellectual stranger finds at once a ready welcome and a great enjoyment. ”

“ Of his reception at Halle after his long absence he thus writes, with no little sense of self-gratulation: "A great multitude of students rode out of the city to meet me, in order to invite me formally. They were attended by six glittering postillions. All the villagers along the roadside came out of their towns, and anxiously [Pg 109] awaited my arrival. When we reached Halle, all the streets and market-places were filled with an immense concourse of people, and I celebrated my jubilee amidst a universal jubilee. ”

“ There are twenty-one universities in the empire: at Königsberg, Berlin, Breslau, Greifswald (in Pomerania, southeast of Stralsund) , Kiel, Halle, Göttingen, Münster, Bonn, Marburg, Rostock, Giessen, Jena, Leipzig, Heidelberg, Freiburg, Strassburg, Tübingen, Munich, Erlangen, and Würzburg. All of these have the four faculties of theology, law, medicine, and philosophy, and many are some of the oldest foundations of their kind in Europe. ”

“ Of the above 131 illiterates in 1900–1901, 114 were in East and West Prussia, Posen and Silesia.
Universities and Higher Technical Schools.—Germany owes its large number of universities, and its widely diffused higher education to its former subdivision into many separate states. Only a few of the universities date their existence from the 19th century; the majority of them are very much older. Each of the larger provinces, except Posen, has at least one university, the entire number being 21. All have four faculties except Münster, which has no faculty of medicine. ”

“ Arriving at Heidelberg at a time before its high prestige had suffered much diminution, I found in all the four Faculties men of great distinction. One hears that in the stern centralising to which since 1870 Germany has been subjected the outer universities have suffered, their strength, their able teachers, namely, being drawn away for a brilliant concentration at Berlin. In the little university town of those days students and professors rubbed closely and great men were sometimes found in odd environments. ”

“ From my earliest youth it has been the goal of my life to act as a professor in a German university, and if this dream of my youth was not to be fulfilled in its entirety, I feel all the more grateful that, through the kindness of my friends and German colleagues, I have been allowed, at least once in my life, to act during the present spring and summer as a real German professor in a German university. ”

“ But the odd fact is, that the Briton who leaves school a man is more under control at Oxford [48] or Cambridge than the German at Heidelberg who leaves school a boy.
A German university is a teaching institution which prepares for the State examinations, and is never residential. There are no old colleges. The professors live in flats like other people, and the students live in lodgings or board with private families. There is one building or block of buildings called the Universität where there are laboratories and lecture-rooms. The State can decline a professor chosen by the university ”

“ Hundreds of American students tarry each year for a longer or shorter term of study in Berlin, and it is rapidly gaining upon Leipsic as a centre for musical study also. No woman is allowed to [53] matriculate in the University at present, although there are not wanting German women who, in advance of general public sentiment, affirm that this ought not so to be.
The Academy of Arts and the Academy of Science are housed in the conspicuous building opposite the palace of Emperor William I. and adjoining the University. ”