Abstract
The recognition of a difference between the scientific dimension of institutionalized knowledge in society and the rhetorical, didactic one, as well as the potential for conflict between them, is by no means unique to modern German culture. For centuries, English universities put the formation of clergymen and gentlemen ahead of the advancement of knowledge, and American colleges vied with each other in adapting both instruction and inquiry to the building of piety or moral character or civic virtue, not to speak of the utilitarian didactic achievements of inculcating commercial initiative or housewifely guile. Francis Bacon and Adam Smith denounced Oxford and Cambridge early in the modern era, and their spiritual heirs later created the London School of Economics, while the protests of Charles Beard and Thorstein Veblen against the higher education in America helped to bring into being the New School that was eventually to harbor an important contingent of the German émigrés of 1933.
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Notes
Abraham Flexner, I Remember. The Autobiography of Abraham Flexner (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1940) (hereafter cited as I Remember).
Klaus Lichtblau, Kulturkrise und Soziologie um die Jahrhundertwende: Zur Genealogie der Kultursoziologie in Deutschland (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1996), 408. Cf. Karl Mannheim, “ Science and Youth,” in Karl Mannheim (ed.), Sociology as Political Education (New Brunswick: Transaction, 2001), 99–104 (Volume cited hereafter as Sociology as Political Education).
For an excellent analytical overview, see Aleida Assmann, Arbeit am nationalen Gedä chtnis. Eine kurze Geschichte der deutschen Bildungsidee (Frankfurt, New York: Campus-Verlag, 1993), 72– 77, 85– 91 (hereafter cited as Arbeit am nationalen Gedä chtnis).
W H. Cowley, “ The University and the Individual. The Student as an Individual in Contrast to Mr. Flexner’ s Interest in his Intellect Only,” The Journal of Higher Education 2, 7 (October 1931): 390–396. A defense of the undergraduate college with a special emphasis is offered by Henry N. Maccracken of Vassar College, writing on “ Flexner and the Woman’ s College,” The Journal of Higher Education 2, 7 (October 1931): 367– 373.
Cf. David A. Hollinger, Science, Jews, and Secular Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996).
Mitchell G. Ash and Alfons Sö llner (eds.), Forced Migration and Scientific Change. Emigré German-Speaking Scientists and Scholars after 1933 (Washington: German Historical Institute, Cambridge University Press, 1996); Giuliana Gemelli (ed.), The “ Unacceptabks” American Foundations and Refugee Scholars between the Two Wars and after (Brussels et al: Peter Lang, 2000).
Peter Nettl, “ Ideas, Intellectuals, and Structures of Dissent,” in Philip Reif (ed.), On Intellectuals (New York: Doubleday & Company, 1969), 57–134.
Hans Freyer, Das politische Semester: Ein Vorschlag zur Universitä tsreform (Jena: Eugen Diederich, 1933), 8, 16–18, 37, 39.
Edgar Salin, Um Stefan George (Godesberg: Kü pper, 1948), 256.
Gerd Mattenklott, Bilderdienst. Ä sthetische Opposition bei Beardsley und George (Frankfurt: Aisthesis, 1985).
Ludwig Thormaehlen, Erinnerungen an Stefan George (Hamburg: Hauswedell, 1962), 57.19-26
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© 2005 David Kettler and Gerhard Lauer
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Kettler, D., Lauer, G. (2005). The “Other Germany” and the Question of Bildung: Weimar to Bonn. In: Kettler, D., Lauer, G. (eds) Exile, Science and Bildung. Studies in European Culture and History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-04596-6_1
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