German universities: a narrative of personal experience, together with recent statistical information, practical suggestions, and a comparison of the German, English and American systems of higher education

Part I. — Personal Narrative

CHAPTER. PAGB.

I. First Impressions of Gottingen, I

II. Attacking German, 19

ill. Matriculation and Lectures, 35

IV. Auf der Mensur, - 65

v. Daylight in German, 84 vn. Removal to Berlin — Umsatteln, - - 104

vin. Wiesbaden — The Institutes, 122

IX. Anniversary of Battle of Leipsic — Commers, - 137

x. The Pandects, 149

XI. The American Colony — Birthdays, - - 158 xin. The Final Agony of Preparation, - 192

XIV. Examination, 217

I PART II. — GENERAL REMARKS.

I. What is a University ?----- 249

ii. Professors, ------- 264

III. Prtvatdocenten, ------- 276

iv. Students, 287 vi. Comparison with English Universities, 321

vn. Comparison with American Colleges, - - 338

vin. Statistics of German Universities, - - 356

ix. Practical Hints 383

TO

GEORGE HAVEN PUTNAM,

WHOSE STEADFAST WISH HAS BEEN FATHER TO THE AUTHOR'S

THOUGHT, THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED, IN FRIENDLY

REMEMBRANCE OF THE

GEORGIA AUGUSTA, 1861-2.

OF THK

UNIVERSITY

UV)

X

Preface

Much has been published in a fugitive form upon the fruitful topic of university life in Germany. One man has taken up the lecture-system, another the dueling, a third the manners and customs of the instructors or of the students. But no one, I believe, has told, in a plain, straightforward narrative, how he himself passed his time at the university, what he studied,- and what he accomplished. It seemed to me, therefore, that I might do the cause of education in America some service, by offering my own experience as a sample of German student-life in the average. Had my career in Gottingen been an extraordinary one, full of exciting episodes, I should have hesitated to make it public. But precisely because it was so uneventful, so like the lives of my associates, I have deemed it fit to serve as a model for illustration, not imitation, and as a basis for digression. I have had throughout but one aim: to communicate facts and impressions from which the reader might draw his own inferences. Even those portions of the Personal Narrative which assume the form of argument are intended to remove prejudices, not to state final conclusions.

PREFACE.

The General Remarks must abide the verdict as they stand. If they contain aught that is erroneous or distorted, the present is not the place for correction. I can only say that I have striven faithfully to make them both accurate and just. Should the reader be disposed to regard my estimate of the German Universities as extravagant, of the English as too unfavorable, I would refer him to an oration delivered by von Sybel, in 1868, upon " German and Foreign Universities." It forms part of a volume entitled Vortr'dge und Aufsatze, recently published under the auspices of the Allgemeiner Verein fur deutsche Literatur. The renowned historian, who is certainly the last man to be taxed with blind, unreasoning patriotism, approaches the subject from a different side, yet his views bear such close resemblance, both in form and in spirit, to those set forth in the present work, that, to escape the imputation of unfair borrowing, I feel bound to state explicitly that I did not read the oration, in fact was not aware of its existence, until my own manuscript had passed entirely into the hands of the printer. After all, there can be but one opinion as to the merits of the several university systems of England, France and Germany.

It may not be superfluous to add that the present work is not an attack upon the American College. Although holding that the German method of

PREFACE. vii

Higher Education is far above our own, I should be very sorry to see that method adopted at once, and in the lump. Before taking decided steps towards the expansion 'of our colleges into quasi universities, it will be advisable for us to consider thoroughly what a university really is, what it accomplishes, what it does not accomplish, the basis upon which it rests, the relations that it holds to the nation at large. Until we have formed clear and stable conceptions upon all these points, innovation, I fear, will be only tinkering, not reform. If I have succeeded in throwing any light upon the subject, my wish is abundantly realized.

J. M. H.

NEW YORK, August, 1874.

GERMAN UNIVERSITIES.

CHAPTER I. First Impressions of Gottingen

ON a quiet Saturday afternoon — the last, if I remember aright — in the month of August, 1861, I took my first stroll " around the wall " of the town of Gottingen. I little imagined that the quaint group of rather scraggy looking houses then unrolling itself before my eyes for the first time was to be my home for three long years. I had reached Gottingen late the preceding night, having traveled through by the day express from Basel, Switzerland. The journey had been, of course, a fatiguing one. It was midnight before I had been able to get to bed, and although a prolonged rest had done something in the way of refreshing me, I still felt disposed to take life easily. The weather was suited to my mood. The summer of 1 86 1 was very hot and dry throughout Europe, causing the foliage to turn and fall much sooner than common ; on that particular afternoon, a cool breeze rustled among the fast withering linden tops, and whispered already of autumn and early winter. The sober colors of the houses and garden walls, the gen-

GERMAN UNIVERSITIES.

eral lameness of the North German landscape visible from the summit of the wall, the comparative insignificance of the surrounding hills, the entire atmosphere of -he place to which I had been suddenly transplanted, disposed me to reflection. My sense of the picturesque was not wounded by the perception of positive ugliness, nor was there any thing in the state of my personal affairs to call forth a feeling of sadness; I was simply in a mood for re very. My first year abroad had been passed in Geneva, on the borders of the glorious lake, and in sight of the still more glgrious Mont Blanc ; I had just finished a pedestrian tour of many weeks through the Upper Alps, had seen all the beauties of Chamounix, the Bernese Oberland and Zerrnatt, had risked my neck more than once on glacier and arete. Small wonder, then, that the contrast was striking, not to say oppressive ; I missed all that I was accustomed to feast my eyes upon, the rich, warm glow of Switzerland in its summer radiance, the rocks, and eternal snows, and blue waters. I was to adjust my faculties of perception to novel surroundings, my habits of thought to a fresh phase of life. The very walk over which I directed my footsteps was something wholly strange and unexpected, something without an analogy in my previous experience. Gbttingen was, in the Middle Ages, a town of some importance, and in consequence strongly fortified, for those days, by an earth wall. This wall, erected before the era of artillery, is nothing more than a rampart of earth completely encircling the town, deflecting here and there from the line of the circle because of inequalities in the ground, but without any of those salient and reentering angles which are the characteristic features of modern artillery walls. It is useless for the purposes of defense. The Hanoverian troops, on their retreat through from Hanover to Langensalza, in 1866, did not even make an attempt to hold the town, although it lay directly in the line of the Prussian advance from the north, and although checking that advance for only a few hours might have enabled them to break through the intercepting force on the south. The wall is simply a promenade, about twenty-five or thirty feet wide at the top, and averaging fifteen feet in height. There is a row of lindens on each side, the branches of which overarch so as to form a shaded avenue in summer ; in winter, the wall, being high and exposed to the rays of the sun throughout its entire length, is always dry under foot. It is the walk by eminence of Gottingen ; when one man asks another to take a walk, he means, as a matter of course, "around the wall," unless he specifies some excursion into the country. The wall has been broken through in five places for the entrance of the country roads. The quondam ditch or moat running around the wall outside is entirely dry, except for a short distance, where it has been enlarged into a sort of pond, and is used for vege-

GERMAN UNIVERSITIES.

table and fruit gardens, or converted into a public park. The houses of the town do not abut against the wall, but stand back, generallyat some distance; the intervening space is cut up into house gardens. The time occupied in making the circuit of the wall is forty-five minutes of average walking. Go when you will, morning, afternoon, or evening, l)y rain or by shine, in the nipping frost of winter or the oppressive heat of summer, you may be sure of meeting promenaders out for a stroll : grave professors snatching a few minutes of relaxation from their manuscripts, and looking as meek and helpless out in the open air as a policeman off duty ; schoolboys tumbling one another down the sloping grassy sides of the wall ; gay Corps-studenten, in knots of three or four, gaudy with top-boots and Cerevis-mutzen (beer caps), each carrying the inevitable cane, with which he keeps himself in fencing practice by cutting graceful Lufthiebe (blows in the air) at an imaginary antagonist; maidens of the intensest German type, plain featured but erect and hearty, stepping briskly, and looking neither to right nor to left ; or, perhaps, an entire family mit Kind und Kegel, that is to say, " the dog and I and father and mother," escaped from the Philistia of rickety stairs and low-ceilinged shops to inhale the free breath of nature.

Although thirteen eventful years have since elapsed, I have still a vivid impression of my first walk around the wall There were very few strollers out, for it was

FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF GOTTINGEN.

the middle of the long vacation and all the students and many of the professors were away. My companion, the landlady to whom I was recommended by a kinsman who had recently left Gottingen to return home, chatted away volubly in the purest Hanoverian. Is there any thing, by the way, so exasperating as one's first attempt at conversation in a foreign language, the abortive, frantic efforts to convey one's own ideas, the utter inability to follow the thread .of the simplest narrative ? Is there any thing so humiliating as the consciousness that, although your companion is evidently using the shortest phrases and most every-day words, in fact a sort of baby talk adapted to your undeveloped mental capacities, you, in spite of all your book-learning and private lessons at so much an hour, cannot catch more than one idea in ten ? Yet, tyro as I was in German conversation, I detected a difference ; my teacher in Geneva had been a Saxon, and he had certainly not spoken as my landlady was then speaking, while the contrast to the jargon of Switzerland, and to the broad sing-song of the Rhine region through which I had hurried the day previous, was still more evident. The vowels were clear and full, the Umlauts pure, the consonants sharp ; there was no apocope of letters and syllables, no running of words together ; the. general intonation of the voice was graciously modulated. I had no difficulty in distinguishing each word as it was uttered, although I might not have the faintest conception of its meaning.

GERMAN UNIVERSITIES.

I had gathered from various sources, that Hanover was the province in which to begin one's study of German to the best advantage. My very first day's experience only corroborated the belief, which has not been shaken by years of subsequent study and travel. The cultivated classes throughout Germany speak sub-' stantially the same language. Even in Vienna, the professors and men of letters do not differ much, either in their choice of words or in their accent, from their colleagues in Berlin or in Heidelberg. Still the difference exists, and is plainly perceptible to the trained ear. But among the uncultivated classes, the variations of speech and accent amount to dialects. Along the Rhine, in Suabia, Bavaria, and Austria, the folk speaks in a language that is almost unintelligible when first heard. The grounds upon which I base my preference for Hanover are briefly these. In the first place, the Hanoverian pronunciation conforms more closely than any other to the printed form of the word, it is more precise, it does not confound e.g., J?euerwith Feier, Worter with Warter, Thur with Thier. I do not pretend, of course, to settle in this off-hand way the competing claims of the various German dialects; there are grave reasons why we may, perhaps, regard the Saxon pronunciation as historically the most correct. This is a matter for the professed philologist ; but the foreigner, who has to grope his way the best he can, who has to train both ear and throat to strange sounds, and to derive the greater part of his knowledge from books, will find it a decided advantage to begin his studies among a population that, more than any other, speaks as it writes and writes as it speaks.

In the next place, the Hanoverians generally use good grammar. There are, of course, uneducated persons who make an occasional slip; but in the main, the foreigner may take for granted that whatever he hears he can repeat with safety. We, of the English-speaking race, are apt to overlook the importance of this point; our own language is so bare of grammatical inflections, that we have really lost an adequate sense of their significance. A few very gross vulgarisms aside, such as went for gone, done for did, there is almost no bad grammar in English, however much we may be plagued with bad style. But in German, the importance of a correct knowledge of words cases, government of prepositions, agreement of adjective and noun, is ten times as great. To the foreigner in Germany, then, who has to learn every thing at once, as it were, to struggle with dictionary and grammar, it makes a material difference whether or not he resides in a community whose utterances he may look upon, for practical purposes, as infallible, whether or not he has to unlearn in his room what he has learned on the street. It is a mistake to imagine that one's dealings in a foreign country are exclusively with the cultivated classes; one comes in contact with shopkeepers, waiters, servants of all kinds,

GERMAN UNIVERSITIES.

—

and if their communications are corrupt, one's own manners will suffer. In Berlin, for instance, one often hears some such expression as, Ich habe Ihnen * nicht gesehen. The advanced student of German will not be misled by such a gross blunder; but the tyro, who has not yet fully unraveled the perplexities of the dative and accusative cases, could scarcely escape bewilderment. In learning a language, one has need of every help ; it is no small comfort, then, to converse with even a servant girl or a boot-black and feel a reasonable degree of assurance that one's grammar is not becoming infected at every other sentence. Taken all in all, there is no section of Germany where the foreigner can converse so safely with any and every body as he can in the kingdom (now province) of Hanover.

Mr. Bristed,* in his introductory chapter, entitled " First Impressions of Cambridge," has suggested rather than described the general features of an English university town. The reader can construct from them a tolerably clear picture of what Cambridge or Oxford must be, the grandiose character of its architecture, the half-monkish official garb of the students and dons, the pervading tone of scholasticism. Both Cambridge and Oxford are simply congeries or clusters of colleges, each college doing about the same work; neither is a university in the true

sense of the term. But reserving the discussion of

* Five Years in an English University.

this point for another place, I shall deal for the present exclusively with externals, with buildings, if the reader prefer this expression.

No two institutions of the same species can be imagined more diverse than an English and a German university. Were I to push the antithesis to its extreme limits, I might say that the former was all body, all bricks and mortar ; the latter, no body and all soul. The Englishman or American who visits a ; German university town for the first time will scarcely realize the fact that it is the seat of a great institution of learning. He can see nothing; there is no visible sign of the university, no chapel, no huge buildings, whether we call them dormitories or quadrangles, no campus. There is no rallying place of professors and students, where he can stand and, letting his eye sweep around on every side, say: This is the university. He may even pass his entire life in the town and never once see the body of professors and students assembled in one place.

I dwell upon this distinction, because it is an important one. The reader who wishes to get a just notion of the character of a German university must dismiss from his mind all prejudices, aLny expectation of finding what his early associations may have led him to consider as the conspicuous features in a seat of learning. As I walked around the wall of Gottingen for the first time, the predominating thought in my mind was : Where is the university ? I could find no tangible evidences of its existence, its reality. Putting what- questions I could in my imperfect German, and paying strict attention to the answers, I could make out that the dome to the left, near the starting-place of our walk, by the Geismar Gate, was an observatory; considerably farther on, in close proximity to the railway station, was a large building bearing the inscription "Theatrum Anatomicum," evidently the medical school ; still further on, in the moat by the side of the wall, was an arrangement of glass-houses, that was no less evidently a botanical garden. This was all of the university that I could detect in my first tour of the great Gottingen promenade.

Having come to Germany without any definite plan beyond that of learning the language and familiarizing myself somewhat with the literature, I could afford to take things as I found them and await future explanations. The Americans at that time studying at Gottingen were all absent on one or another summer excursion, so that I was a stranger in a strange land. What with puzzling over German Grammar and taking short walks eyery afternoon in the county, time did not hang too heavy on my hands. Fortunately, in about a week an Englishman residing in the same house returned unexpectedly, having cut short his trip. Those who have never tried the experiment of settling in a foreign country and among utter strangers, with the most imperfect knowledge of the language and the ways of the people, can scarcely appreciate the discomforts of the first few days. My landlady was the most obliging and attentive one in the world, and had had more than one American in her friendly care. Still, she knew no English and I knew very little German, so that life for the first week was a half-amusing, half-provoking comedy

of errors. The return of Mr. E , then, was for me

a bit of good luck; I had at last some one with whom to converse freely and from whom to get needful information. Having already passed four or five semesters in the place, he was thoroughly familiar with shops, and streets, and university life, and had leisure to pilot me around and tell me what to do. The university lectures, I learned, would not be resumed until the third week in October, so that I had fully a month and a half in which to get up my German. We worked together over the catalogue of lectures for the coming term, in the attempt to pick out one or more that it might be worth my while to attempt to hear. I learned a good many peculiarities of university language ; for instance, that a professor never " instructs " or " lectures," he " reads ; " the students do not " study," they " hear." I learned also that instruction in a German university runs in sharply defined channels. E was studying chemistry, consequently he could give me no information about lectures or professors in other departments ; he did not even know half of them by name, and could not venture an opinion as to their respective merits. All that he could say was, " Wait until H— - gets back. He's a Philolog, and can perhaps tell you what you wish to know."

At all events, E • 's guidance enabled me to

familiarize myself with the general aspects of the town and the location of the university buildings. Gottingen may serve as the type of the German university town. The population is about 12,000., The streets are neither very straight ^nor very /9/O crooked, and no one runs directly through the town; in general, they are tolerably wide. The houses are plain and poorly built. The frame work is of wood, the outer walls being filled in with a sort of mud that is mixed with a good deal of straw to give it consistency ; after the mud has dried, it is painted. For a cheap mode of building, it is much better than might be supposed. The number of ^stone and brick buildings is small. The handsomest building in town is (or was in my day) the Laboratory, built under the supervision of Wbhler himself, since deceased. It is a large structure, built of light blue stone, and perfectly fire-proof. The Aula is the centre of the university, so far as it can be said to have a centre. It is a small but not inelegant looking building, somewhat after the Grecian order, standing on a small open place or square not far from the centre of the town. In this Aula new students are matriculated and the University Court holds its sessions ; it also contains the general offices of the university, such as the treasurer's, and, last but not least, the Career, where unruly students are confined for a fortnight or less, for minor offenses; graver ones are punished by relegation or by expul-^ sion.

Lectures on chemistry were delivered in the laboratory; those on medicine, in the Theatrum Anatomicum ; all the others, including theology, law and philosophy, in the university sense of that term, were held in the so-called Collegien-haus, a short row of buildings that had once been private dwellings, but had been converted into lecture rooms.

In 1865 the new Collegien-haus was opened, a large and elegant building constructed for the especial purpose, just out of the Wende Gate, near the Botanical Garden. By the side of the old Collegien-haus, separated from it by an arched way, stands the celebrated university library, one of the best in Europe ; the building is nothing more than an old church, adapted to secular uses and enlarged here and there by irregular extensions or wings. In the arched way between the lecture rooms and the library stood the Schwarzes Brett (black board), a long board painted black and having a wire screen in front. On this board were posted all announcements relating to university instruction, announcements of lectures or changes in lectures, of degrees conferred upon students, and the like.

Besides the buildings that I have described, there are other, minor ones sea ttered over the town ; the headquarters of the agricultural department are even located about two miles out of town, on a model farm near the village of Wende.

It is needless to go deeper into details; I have said already enough to make it clear to the reader that a German university, as far as buildings and outward show are concerned, is made up of disjecta membra. There is a bond of vital union, a very strong one too, but it is wholly spiritual ; it does not appeal to the senses. In architectural display, I am confident that the most unimportant college at Oxford or Cambridge will surpass any university in Germany.

The new life that I was leading dawned upon me very pleasantly. The weather continued fine for

many weeks, permitting E and myself to take long

walks every afternoon. Sometimes our landlady,

Frau H- , accompanied us ; sometimes, even, she

made up a small party of her friends for our benefit. The Germans are very fond of walking, but look upon it much more sensibly than the English do ; they regard it as a pleasure, a relaxation, not as so many miles to be covered, so many ditches to be leaped in an hour. Old and young, men and women, go out for a stroll whenever they can find the time and favorable weather. The roads in Germany are good, and the by-paths easy to follow. Around every town in the land, at distances varying from one mile to two or three, lie scattered here and there ten or a dozen villages or gardens where the pedestrian can sit down to rest and refresh himself with beer or coffee ; in most of these places a warm supper even can be had. On any fine day in spring, summer, or autumn, one can see an entire German family, parents, grandparents perhaps, children, all wending their way to some Garten or Muhle, where they will meet other like-minded families and pass the afternoon and part of the evening in recreation ; the men roll Kegel (nine-pins ), the women knit and gossip over their coffee, the children roam through the fields. Enjoyment is simple and unrestrained ; there are no " roughs " in Germany. Now and then one reads in the newspapers of a murder or a robbery in the neighborhood of Berlin or Vienna ; but such deeds are perpetrated only in very obscure, degraded localities. Such a thing as the breaking up of a pleasure party by wanton, malicious " roughs" is an unheard-of occurrence.

The scenery around Gottingen is not grand nor very beautiful, but it is pleasant. At first I thought it tame enough, coming as I did direct from the Alps. This feeling of disappointment, however, soon wore away, and I began to conceive a decided liking for my new home. Gottingen lies in a broad, fertile valley ; the hill to the east, called the Rhons or the Kehr ( both proper names of men who formerly lived there), stands quite near the town, and slopes away to a height of three or four hundred feet ; the hill to the west, crossed in zig-zag by the railroad from Cassel, is much farther away and much higher. The little river Leine, a narrow, muddy stream, that would be called in America a creek, flows through the middle of the town, although it is so covered up by mills and other buildings that it is visible only in a few places.

The valley is uncommonly level, and, in the neighborhood of the town, rather marshy. A small branch of the Leine flows around the town in a detour. The water in this branch is a few feet higher than the land, and is allowed to overflow in winter, partly to fertilize the soil, partly to give the Gottingese an opportunity for skating. The land in the district of Gottingen is both Grossgutsbesitz and Kleingut, that is to say, there are both large estates and small peasant-holdings. The peasantry, Bauern, as a class, are industrious and wealthy, although by no means as wealthy as their famous brethren of Sachsen-Altenburg. In the immediate vicinity of the town, the land is given up to grass ; farther put, there are immense fields of wheat, buckwheat, rye and barley. One feature of the German method of cultivation impressed me as being not only practical but as enhancing materially the beauty of the landscape ; the same feature prevails also in France. I mean the total absence of fences, those wretched snake-like black trails that disfigure the face of the country in America. I have walked for miles in every direction from Gottingen, over meadows, through fields of wheat and rye, but I cannot remember once encountering a fence. Some of the gardens just outside of the town are surrounded by high walls ; but after he has left them behind him, the pedestrian finds that he has an unobstructed sweep of vision. The boundary lines of farms and estates' are marked at the angles by stones sunk in the ground. In this way the Germans not only save themselves the trouble and expense of building fences, but they preserve the natural aspect of the terrain. Cattle, sheep and horses, when put out to graze, are not allowed to roam at will but are kept in herds by men and dogs, or else enclosed by a slight temporary fence. Not even along the great royal chaussee that follows the valley of the Leine from Witzenhausen through Gottingen and Nordheim to the city of Hanover, is there any thing to separate the road from the fields ; only a small shallow ditch on each side, and two rows of monotonous Lombardy poplars blending into one in the dim distance.