Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, no. 41, March, 1861

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Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, Issue 41,
March, 1861

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March,
1861, by Various
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Title: Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861
Author: Various
Release Date: February 17, 2004 [eBook #11134]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ATLANTIC
MONTHLY, VOLUME 7, ISSUE 41, MARCH, 1861***
E-text prepared by Joshua Hutchinson, Tonya Allen, and Project
Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders

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;
but of Tübingen, Würzburg, Erlangen, Halle, or Bonn, even, he will
perhaps know little more than the name. 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?
During the last winter, in many conversations with a retired professor
in Berlin, who manifested a special interest in American institutions,
mainly in the American educational system, he was very particular in
inquiring as to what we meant by our term College. He had read the
work of the historian Raumer on America, and declared that from this
he could get no notion whatever as to what the term meant with us. The
very same thing occurs daily in the United States in regard to foreign,
or, more properly, the Continental universities. Accustomed as we are
to the prevalence of the tutorial system, the use of text-books,--in many
parts of the Union not defining clearly the difference between the terms
University, College, Institute, and Academy, giving the first name often
to institutions having but one faculty, and that at times incomplete, with
no theological, and often no law or medical department, forgetting that
the University should, from its very name, be as universal as possible in
its teachings, comprehending in its list of studies the combined
scientific and literary pursuits of the age,--we are apt to look upon
foreign schools of learning as similar in nature and purpose to our own,
differing not in the quality or specific character of the teaching, but
rather in the scope and extent of the branches taught. Yet nothing is
farther from the truth. The result is, that many a one starts for Europe
full of hope, to seek what he would have found better at home,--or,
when prepared and mature for European travel, is left to chance or
one-sided advice in the choice of a locality in which to prosecute
further studies. Often with only book-knowledge of the language of the
country, accident will lead him to the very university the least adequate

to his purpose.
Having now spent some time in four of the leading German universities,
and contemplating a longer stay for the purpose of visiting others, the
writer has thought that some general remarks might call attention to
points often disregarded, and serve to give some insight into the nature
of the institutions of learning of the country,--rather aiming to
characterize the system of higher education as it now exists than to give
detailed historical notices, including something of student-life, and the
professors,--in fine, such observations as would not be likely to be
made by a general tourist, and such as native writers deem it
unnecessary to make, presupposing a knowledge of the facts in their
own readers.
The German universities are the culminating point of German culture.
They concentrate within themselves the intellectual pith of the country.
Dating their foundation as far back as the fourteenth century, as Prague,
Vienna, and Heidelberg,--or established but of late years in the
nineteenth, as Berlin, Bonn, and Munich,--they attract to themselves
the mental strength of the land, forming a focus from which radiates,
whether in Theology, Science, Literature, or Art, the new world of
thought, which finds its
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