University of Tübingen

“ In 1829 he was made extraordinary professor of German literature at the university of Tübingen, but he resigned this appointment in 1833, when it was found to be incompatible with his political views. In 1848 he became a member of the Frankfort parliament. ”

“ Advised by Daub, Ullmann accordingly resolved to go to Tübingen.
This custom of students pursuing their studies at more than one University is almost universal in Germany; and where the system of instruction is one by lectures, has, unquestionably, many advantages. Some of the direct personal influence and stimulus that a man of eminent vigour may exercise, is perhaps lost; but, on the other hand, the danger of a young man being too much influenced is avoided, and a greater manifoldness of development is favoured. ”

“ 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. As regards theology, Bonn, Breslau and Tübingen have both a Protestant and a Catholic faculty; Freiburg, Munich, Münster and Würzburg are exclusively Catholic; and all the rest are Protestant. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Melanchthon was lecturer at Tübingen before he was summoned to Wittenberg. The university is attended by about 1400 students, a considerable proportion of whom are foreigners, and has a teaching staff of 53 professors, 17 extraordinary professors, and 10 lecturers. The commercial and manufacturing industries of the town are slight. Printing, book-selling, the manufacture of surgical and philosophical instruments, and the cultivation of hops, fruit, and vines are among the leading occupations of the inhabitants. ”

“ The officers of some of the universities, as Tübingen, for instance, are very particular in enforcing all the rules, inquiring of the applicant, whatever be his age or nationality, whether he has a written permission from his parents to study abroad and in their university, whether he has the money necessary to pay the debts he may contract, and such other minute questions as will strike an American especially as particularly impertinent. ”

“ Each can choose for himself whether he will work or play; for German university life is a very free life; it seems to have no restraints. The student does not live in the college buildings, but hires his own lodgings, in any locality he prefers, and he takes his meals when and where he pleases. He goes to bed when it suits him, and does not get up at all unless he wants to. He is not entered at the university for any particular length of time; so he is likely to change about. He passes no examinations upon entering college. ”

“ He becomes famous in his own university, his renown spreads to other universities. He is invited to Goettingen, to fight with a Goettingen expert; if he is victorious, he will be invited to other colleges, or those colleges will send their experts to him. Americans and Englishmen often join one or another of the five corps. A year or two ago, the principal Heidelberg expert was a big Kentuckian; he was invited to the various universities and left a wake of victory behind him all about Germany; but at last a little student in Strasburg defeated him. ”

“ Among the many who have tasted the college prison's dreary hospitality was a lively young fellow from one of the Southern States of America, whose first year's experience of German university life was rather peculiar. The day he arrived in Heidelberg he enrolled his name on the college books, and was so elated with the fact that his dearest hope had found fruition and he was actually a student of the old and renowned university, that he set to work that very night to celebrate the event by a grand lark in company with some other students. ”

“ Foreign youth steer clear of the gymnasium; its rules are too severe. They go to the university to put a mansard roof on their whole general education; but the German student already has his mansard roof, so he goes there to add a steeple in the nature of some specialty, such as a particular branch of law, or diseases of the eye, or special study of the ancient Gothic tongues. So this German attends only the lectures which belong to the chosen branch, and drinks his beer and tows his dog around and has a general good time the rest of the day. ”

“ It would be a mistake to suppose that the easy-going pleasure-seeking student carries an empty head. Just the contrary. He has spent nine years in the gymnasium, under a system which allowed him no freedom, but vigorously compelled him to work like a slave. Consequently, he has left the gymnasium with an education which is so extensive and complete, that the most a university can do for it is to perfect some of its profounder specialties. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It may have contributed not a little to the reputation of Göttingen and Heidelberg with foreigners, that a good and clear German is spoken in both places by the professors. In Tübingen, on the contrary, even in Munich, to a great extent, the local dialect prevails to such a degree, that students from Northern Germany, many of whom frequent these cities in the summer session, find it difficult, nay, almost impossible, to understand at first, especially the broad Suabian of Tübingen. ”

“ In Berlin the students dress like everybody else.’
‘Tell us something of your student life,’ said Alexandra Pavlovna.
Rudin complied. He was not altogether successful in narrative. There was a lack of colour in his descriptions. He did not know how to be humorous. However, from relating his own adventures abroad, Rudin soon passed to general themes, the special value of education and science, universities, and university life generally. He sketched in a large and comprehensive picture in broad and striking lines. All listened to him with profound attention. ”

“ The excellence of our universities is to be found in the fact that they are not mere institutions where instruction is given, but are workshops of science2—that their vital principle is unceasing scientific productivity. Hence it is that the state assembles the best men of all Germany as professors at its universities, so that the phenomenon, common enough in England and France, of a distinguished savant without a university chair is with us a very unusual exception. ”

“ Most German students, when they leave school, have not only a natural curiosity, but a real thirst for learning. They have also a feeling of great reverence for the professors, particularly for the most famous professors in each university. They often select their university in order to hear the lectures of a certain professor, and if he is moved to another university they migrate with him. In the strictly professional faculties of medicine, law, and theology, there is no doubt a certain routine, and students know by a kind of tradition what lectures they should attend in each semester. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Compared with it, as Martin Luther says, the other universities are mere private academies. At present we have from a thousand to thirteen hundred students. Some of our professors have studied the classics in Italy, under the descendents of the ancient Greeks and Romans. The Elector Frederic has, indeed, lately founded a new University at Wittemberg, but we at Erfurt have little fear of Wittemberg outstripping our ancient institution.
The Humanists, or disciples of the ancient heathen learning, are in great force here, with Mutianus Rufus at their head. ”

“ It seems to be extremely difficult to prevent dissensions among men who devote themselves to different branches of science, to unite in the bonds of friendship and concord the disciples of the speculative, the historical, and the practical sciences. If I belonged to the class of men of which I am speaking, I would express my opinions more fully. Why did not the illustrious theologians of Tübingen deign to come to Munich in 1863? Why is there so slim an attendance of German professors at the Catholic congresses? ”

“ In Germany the results of the highest education are systematically brought to bear on all the greater industries. But this highest education is not given only in completely equipped Universities which confer degrees. It is largely given in the institutions known as Technical High Schools. In these schools, teaching of a University standard is given by Professors of University rank in subjects such as Architecture, various branches of Engineering, Chemistry, and General Technical Science. ”

“ The mixed universities, like those of Bonn, Freyburg, and others, are in a great degree supported by Catholic talent; and the great Catholic University of Munich, which the present excellent King of Bavaria founded in 1826, already by the celebrity of its professors, the number of its scholars, and the admirable direction of the studies, bids fair to rival the most celebrated Universities in Germany. ”

“ In his later life Mark Twain was accorded high academic honors. Already, in 1888, he had received from Yale College the degree of Master of Arts, and the same college made him a Doctor of Literature in 1901. A year later the university of his own State, at Columbia, Missouri, conferred the same degree, and then, in 1907, came the crowning honor, when venerable Oxford tendered him the doctor's robe.
"I don't know why they should give me a degree like that," he said, quaintly. "I never doctored any literature—I wouldn't know how." ”

“ Their tenour was that almost the most important object of this year was to establish traditions of comradeship on the common ground of academic freedom between the Prince and the student corps, especially in the interests of the dynasty—the regulation phrases, which Herr von Knobelsdorff rattled off almost casually, and which Doctor Ueberbein listened to with a silent bow, while he drew his mouth, and with it his red beard, a little to one side. Then followed Klaus Heinrich's departure with his mentor, a dogcart and a servant or two, for the university. ”

“ The weak point in the German university system is that, unless an undergraduate is personally known to a professor, he receives very little guidance. He generally arrives from school, where he has been under very strict guidance, without any choice as to what he really wishes to learn. ”

“ For the final honor examination the student might choose from a dozen or more honor groups, in any one of which he would receive scientific culture of the most advanced type, while at the same time, by means of private reading under his tutor, he might fill in very pleasantly the outlines of his subject. It is probable that such a system would even facilitate the efforts of those who are endeavoring to transplant German standards. According to Professor Münsterberg, the student who specializes in the German university is a good two years or more in advance of the American freshman. ”

“ 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 ”

“ All the ordinary professors are members of the faculty by virtue of their office. Their rank in the faculty determines itself by the number of years during which they have occupied regular professorships, whether in that in which they reside, or in some other university of Germany. The oldest member of each faculty becomes, according to established rule, its head, with the title of Dean. To him it belongs to bring forward all affairs of the faculty; to superintend the examination of the students, as well as to issue the diplomas conferred on them. ”

“ When I got home I had to take down thy volume on Universities in Germany, and restore my failing faith by a glance at the Appendix, giving a list of the courses of lectures by Professors, Privabdocenten, and readers of the University of Berlin during one winter, in which the Medical Faculty’s subjects occupy seven pages; and to remind myself, that the characteristics of the German Universities are “Lehrfreiheit und Lernfreiheit,” “Liberty for the teacher, and liberty for the learner”; also that “the French University has no liberty, and the English Universities have no sciences ”