University of Jena

“ Its chief prosperity centres, however, in the university. In 1547 the elector John Frederick the Magnanimous of Saxony, while a captive in the hands of the emperor Charles V., conceived the plan of founding a university at Jena, which was accordingly established by his three sons. After having obtained a charter from the emperor Ferdinand I., it was inaugurated on the 2nd of February 1558. It was most numerously attended about the middle of the 18th century ”

“ Most in evidence everywhere are the students, who swagger through the town with the consciousness of owning it, their bright-colored corps caps at a cocky angle, and their faces looking like advertisements of the dangers of not using safety razors, for the Jena student has three hundred and fifty years of university tradition to live up to, and he realizes the responsibility of it to the full. ”

“ It is not true, I believe, in anything like the same degree of any other German university, or of any other university in the world. One thing before others that has endeared Jena to Haeckel, and kept him there in the face of repeated flattering calls to other universities, is that full liberty of spirit has been accorded him there, as he knew it would not be accorded elsewhere. "When a man comes into the atmosphere of Jena," says Professor Haeckel, "he perforce begins to think—there is no escape from it. And he is free to let his thoughts carry him whithersoever they honestly may. ”

“ At length he was appointed to the professorship of history in the university of Jena with a salary of two hundred rix-dollars. This income, combined with his other resources, seemed sufficient for the humble wishes of the happy pair, and they were united in 1790. ”

“ Reluctant as Fichte was at first to yield immediate assent to this call, he could not refuse the opportunity of entering once for all upon the career for which he appeared specially marked out, and after sending in his acceptance to Privy Councillor Voigt, he made arrangements for beginning his course at Jena in the Easter term of 1794.
The University at Jena was then at the very height of its renown. No other period, in all its brilliant history, rivals the first decades of the nineteenth century. ”

“ He was educated at the gymnasium at Gotha and the university of Jena. At Jena he studied oriental languages, of which he became professor there in 1803. Subsequently he became ordinary professor of theology (1812) , and for a time rector, at Breslau. In 1819 he was transferred to the university of Bonn, where he was made professor primarius. In 1828 he was appointed chief member of the consistorial council at Coblenz. ”

“ That of Philosophie, with solemn and inscrutable face, is very appropriately nearest to the lecture room of Professor Eucken. As we enter we see opposite the portal to the Aula, the university hall of state, on either side of which are gigantic paintings emblematic of the transmission of culture, a grown man on one side holding out his torch to a young man, that he may light his torch by it. The most important picture at the Jena University is the Auszug deutscher Studenten im Jahre 1815 by Hodler, who used as a model for the middle figure the youngest son of Professor Eucken. ”

“ In 1905 it was attended by about 1100 students, and its teaching staff (including privatdocenten) numbered 112. Amongst its numerous auxiliaries may be mentioned the library, with 200,000 volumes, the observatory, the meteorological institute, the botanical garden, seminaries of theology, philology and education, and well equipped clinical, anatomical and physical institutes. There are also veterinary and agricultural colleges in connexion with the university. The manufactures of Jena are not considerable. The book trade has of late years revived, and there are several printing establishments. ”

“ It might naturally be supposed that a teacher possessed of so many qualities fitted to command the respect and admiration of his students could not fail to acquire a powerful influence, not only on the nature and direction of their studies, but also on their outward relations. Accordingly we find Fichte, soon after his settlement at Jena, occupying a most influential position towards the youth, not of his own department merely, but of the whole University. ”

“ Rein of Jena, who trains men as teachers, gave some nice lectures. Miss Louch is come back, having had a delightful time at the Educational Congress at the Clarke University, under the Presidency of Dr. Stanley Hall. She says she has learned a great deal.... I think our Training Department has as many if not more than any College there is, in spite of not having received any of the thousands that have been given to them—or, shall I say, because of it? I am sure it is good to [388] have to pay one’s way. I believe our Universities would do better work if they had nothing. ”

“ Educated at his native town, he became lecturer on the history of philosophy at Jena in 1788. Ten years later he became professor at the same university, where he remained till 1804. His great work is an eleven-volume history of philosophy, which he began at Jena and finished at Marburg, where he was professor of philosophy from 1804 till his death. ”

“ 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. ”

“ At both Tübingen and Heidelberg Reuchlin (p. 254) taught for a time, and both institutions early became centers for the study of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. At Leipzig the reigning duke brought various humanistic scholars to the university to lecture, after 1507, and in 1519 entirely reformed the university by subordinating the mediaeval disciplines to the new studies. Four new universities— Wittenberg (1502) , Marburg (1527) , Königsberg (1544) , and Jena (1558) — were established on the new humanistic basis, and from their beginning were centers for the new learning. ”

“ Jemappes (11) , a manufacturing Belgian town, 3 m. W. of Mons, where Dumouriez in the name of the French Republic defeated the Austrians in 1792.
Jemindar, a native officer in the Indian army of rank equal to that of lieutenant in the British.
Jena (13) , in Saxe-Weimar, on the Saale, 14 m. SE. of Weimar, an old town with memories of Luther, Goethe, and Schiller; has a university founded to be a centre of Reformation influence, and since associated with Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and the Schlegels, who were teachers there ”

“ In 1590 the fellows of Corpus Christi College received royal letters recommending Jegon to the mastership, then vacant by the death of Dr. Copcot (Cal. State Papers, 1581–90, p. 682) . The fellows, who were desirous of electing one of their own number (Mr. Dix) , complied reluctantly, and in a letter to the chancellor of the university, Lord Burghley, stated that they did so, ‘for that our statute so in part requireth, and your last letters seem to command.’ Jegon, however, who brought with him several of his pupils at Queens' College, soon justified the royal choice. ”

“ Each one of the German universities has a particular character; for, as no universal cultivation can pervade our fatherland, every place adheres to its own fashion, and carries out, even to the last, its own characteristic peculiarities: exactly the same thing holds good of the universities. In Jena and Halle roughness had been carried to the highest pitch: bodily strength, skill in fighting, the wildest self-help, was there the order of the day ”

“ This was the time of the refounding of that institution under the beginning of President Northrop's administration, to whom Professor Judson became a right hand. His career is an illustrious example of one rising slowly and patiently through every grade of the public school system, to its crown in the highest grades in the state university. It must have been of inestimable worth to him to become familiar with the genius of a state university, so peculiarly a people's institution and so characteristic of the middle West. ”

“ But he detested it generally as the home of Privy Councillors, of science in the Procrustean bed of official supervision. When he compared what he himself had done at Jena with the slenderest possible appliances, and what, in his judgment, had been done by the heads of the Berlin schools in their princely institutes, he would humorously—though it has been taken very seriously—lay down the “natural law” that the magnitude of the scientific achievement is in inverse proportion to the size of the scientific institute. ”

“ I don't mean, of course, that the Jena streets are thick with aunts being led by dogs on strings, but that they have that tragic blindness of the spirit that misses seeing things that are hopeful and generous and lovely; things alight with young enthusiasms, or beautiful with a patience that has had time to grow gray. They also have that odd, unfurnished sort of mind that can never forget and never forgive. Yesterday at the Kaffee-Klatsch I met them all again, the Jena aunts I know so well and who are yet for ever strange, for ever of a ghastly freshness. ”

“ This army, lacking in martial ardour, and educated more for parade than for war, was rushing with blinded eyes towards its doom. The flames of annihilation already shone ahead; the heirs of Sedan's conquerors marched straight onward, firm and erect in grand ceremonial array--and the sign-posts by the way pointed to Jena.
Reimers groaned in bitter distress of mind.
Was there no salvation?
He looked around him and gazed into the blackness of night. All about him was gloom. A light breeze was blowing; it bore on its wings the scent of the blossoming heather and the resinous odour of pine-trees. ”

“ But now such sympathy was destined to offer itself as a means of education and improvement. For there were in Jena just then two scientific associations, one for natural history and botany, the other for mineralogy, as it was then called. Many of the young students, who had shown living interest and done active work in natural science, were invited to become members by the President, and this elevating pleasure was also offered to me. ”

“ Reformers arose even among the Heads of Houses, as, for instance, Dr. Jeune, the Master of Pembroke College, who was credited with having rajeuni l’ancienne université. But he was by no means the only, or even the chief actor in University reform. Many of my personal friends, such as Dr. Tait, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, the Rev. H. G. Liddell, afterwards Dean of Christ Church, Professor Baden-Powell, and the Rev. ”

“ The Associates of the Owens College, whom it is my privilege to present to you to-day, are spontaneously linking their names and reputations with the name and fame of our University, and it seems a twice-blessed relationship which on both sides is founded on goodwill. Many of those whom I am about to lead to you are men distinguished in letters and science, and in the several learned professions and other occupations to which their lives are devoted. Some are members of the governing and teaching bodies of our own University. ”

“ A great number hold the degrees of other Universities—of those older Universities from which our own has received so many signs of kindly and ready sympathy, or of that great examining University without which much of the educational progress of the last half-century—without which such progress as was made within the walls of Owens College, would itself have lacked its trustworthiest tests. ”

“ People will talk at all times, and when news is wanting—what so easy as to invent? All the inhabitants of the town of Jena thought that they had a right to know and to talk of my private affairs, and seeing that I was of a reserved disposition and that they were not likely to extract much from me by pumping, it began to be rumoured abroad that I had certain grave reasons for maintaining secrecy, and in a very short time it was reported that I was a great "my lord," travelling in disguise for political purposes, and that I possessed a fortune of countless millions of pounds sterling. ”

“ Though a particular University might be strongest in a particular faculty, as Bologna was in Law and Paris in Theology, yet it is a traditional attribute of such a body that several different branches of higher study shall be represented in it. It is among the distinctive advantages of a University, that it brings together in one place students—by whom I mean teachers as well as learners—of various subjects. ”

“ But how to make this influence a continuous influence in the life of our graduates and undergraduates, how to develop that sense of responsibility which attaches to membership in such an intellectual communion, is a problem to which as a University we have yet to address ourselves. I do not believe that we shall ever be able to reap the best fruits of a University culture until this consciousness of organic union has been established, and all are made to feel that they have an interest wider than that of their individual College, wider than that of the Faculty under which they are enrolled. ”