NEW SOLIDARITY December 21, 1981 Page 4

The Modernity of the Humboldt Idea of Education

by Helga Zepp-LaRouche

Wilhelm, Freiherr von Humboldt, 1757-1835. The life's work of Wilhelm and his brother Alexander proves that the notion of "Renaissance man" is not only possible, but is the foundation of modern civilization.

O God: in what a state is our poor good honest Germany! —Caroline von Humboldt, November 1806

Who can take responsibility now for the events with the cour-age that comes solely from the consciousness and conviction of inviolable obligation is my only striving, and I am educating my children thus as well, for I sense that they shall have to live through a great deal.—Wilhelm von Humboldt, November 1806

Anyone who considers the external pressures on Germany today, and current developments within the country, will realize that our physical and moral existence is now at stake, renew the poet Heinrich Heine's well-known pledge and search for a solution with all the urgency a genuine patriot must feel. The only comforting thought is that it is often only when faced by great danger that the forces needed to succeed can be mustered—provided that the potential for a mobilization has already been developed.

Quite apart from external policy pressures, all our fundamental problems in the Federal Republic today—above all the lack of informed citizens conscious of their responsibilities—stem from a lack of education: education, not in the sense of factual knowledge, but in Humboldt's sense of cultivated human character, or in the sense in which the philosopher Gottfried Leibniz defined sinfulness as a lack of development.

Today the great majority of parents, teachers, trade-union members, industrialists and scientists, will, in discussing the education question, spontaneously agree that the school reforms introduced in West Germany since the late 1960s have been a total failure; indeed, the fear is frequently expressed that we are on the verge of losing our young people.

Granted, not every young person has fallen victim to the drug-rock-reggae-punk and other countercultural phenomena. But anyone who thinks the majority of youth remains in decent condition (as is sometimes said in Christian Democratic circles) is too easily reassured. The latest studies have simply confirmed what had already struck acute observers: the so-called model youth today tends to be a weak, petty self-seeker, placing no great intellectual or moral demands on himself, interested simply in his short-term satisfactions. More noteworthy than the number of school dropouts is the intense mediocrity among the majority, the great number of "little people."

One demonstrable result of the school reforms is the drastic decline in the average graduate's level of qualification: shorter concentration span, sparser knowledge, and inadequate character formation are the rule. The formal aspects of the reform are only secondarily to blame; the main responsibility lies with the elimination, or pluralistic watering-down, of the content of education.

In the Ruhr's universities alone, for example, there are 4,000 vacancies for students in the natural-science faculties, while the "ologies"— political science, sociology, psychology, and futurology—are overflowing. Industrial

companies complain that many graduates are useless even for the simpler jobs; scientists see with dread that in basic research, no younger generation is in sight; there is a growing threat that the gap will become irreparable.

While the overall question remains the Federal Republic's survival as an economically highly developed nation, these practical considerations are alarming enough in themselves. There exists, however, a still more profound and urgent reason to reverse the school reforms, and that is the future moral condition of our society, with which our capacity to deal with the coming crisis is intimately interlinked.

We must return to Humboldt's educational ideal with the utmost urgency, enriching it with modern scientific knowledge, of course, but establishing it on the basis of the same humanist world-outlook for which Humboldt's name became a synonym.

Not Mere Practical Skills

The Humboldt system of education is the best developed thus far in human history—all self-appointed critics to the contrary. It represents the most magnificent effort to realize the ideal of full human development toward universality, and the transmission of the entirety of the Greek-classics-oriented European culture in a comprehensive school system, from elementary school through the humanistic Gymnasium (academic high school), up to the university.

"The true goal of an individual—prescribed not by transient inclination, but by eternal Reason—is the highest and best-proportioned formation of his powers into a totality." Wilhelm von Humboldt shaped not only his own life but his educational system in accordance with this neo-Platonic humanist view of man. What became for him personally a noble imperative, he systematized for education, in order to awaken in young people the desire "to leave behind them proof that it has been worth existing." For all levels of his educational design he pursued the same goal; to arouse the minds of young people to free, self-active development.

The German classics of the late 18th century Weimar period represent a pinnacle in German history never regained, and one of the absolute peaks in human history as a whole; scarcely any other era was so fruitful in bringing forth geniuses inspired by this spirit, whether in the sphere of poetry and

Wilhelm von Humboldt's fight for the classical "ideal" of humanist education produced reforms which in turn led to a century of German preeminence in the sciences, particularly in mathematical physics. Shown above is the statue of Wilhelm Humboldt before Humboldt University.

music or in the profundity and abundance of scientists in the most disparate fields.

Most strongly influenced by the poet and historian Friedrich Schiller, Humboldt, who himself was among the pillars of Weimar classicism, was inspired to transform this lofty German classical spirit into an educational system in which every student was to carry forward the same fundamental principles. "For the commonest day-laborer, and the most exquisitely instructed individual, must both originally be attuned to have the same disposition of character, if the former is not to be rudely emplaced below his human value, and the latter is not to be perverted into a chimerical senti-mentality beneath his human powers."

This educational ideal declared war both on all narrow specialization and all demands for mere practical utility. Humboldt sought to develop human

Above is a library at Göttingen University, which was at the forefront of world scientific thought well into the 20th century.

beings in their mental and moral capacities, not to foster their quest for simple happiness and material satisfaction—for which his conception of intellectual worth, and its inherent moral object, were far too elevated.

Key to German Scientific Tradition

Any modern skeptic inclined to dismiss these observations as idealistic delusions ought to be informed that precisely because of this principle, "to form highest and best-proportioned of his [the student's] powers into a totality." Humboldt's educational system has been the most successful, engendering an unprecedented profusion of scientists who make pioneering discoveries in their fields. It was upon the application of these principles that Germany's great scientific preeminence in the 19th century was based.

It is to these principles that we owe the fact that for 160 years—roughly from 1810 to 1970—a deep-ranging humanistic foundation was transmitted

to the German population, without which they could not have survived the evil times within that stretch of history.

There currently exist only two principal groups of skeptics challenging the Humboldt educational ideal: those who say it failed, and those who say it is indeed the right program, but today it unfortunately can no longer be realized.

Regarding the first category: in their day the reactionary Junkers at the Prussian court were bitter enemies of this republican educational system, whose declared goal was to bring forth free, active citizens, thus endanger-ing Junker rule over a subjugated, ignorant population. Nothing about this hostile motivation has changed down to the present.

Anyone willing to undertake the rewarding task of conducting research on the destruction of Humboldt's conception of science would immediately run up against the effort—ultimately emanating from hatred on the part of the Romantics and the political forces of reaction for technological progress—to create an artificial contradiction between Geisteswissenschaft (philosophy and the humanities) and Naturwissenschaft (natural science).

We have not shaken off the prejudice that specific research into a given topic is possible only when one renounces comprehensive development of the subject as a whole. Here Humboldt maintained precisely the opposite: "There are certain kinds of knowledge that absolutely must be imparted to everyone, and still more a certain development of temperament and character which no one can lack. So-and-so is, then, a good craftsman, salesman, soldier or business only if, unto himself and irrespective of his particular occupation, he is, according to his station, a virtuous human being and citizen. Give him the formal education required for him to be so, and he will thereafter thus easily gain the special expertise of his vocation, and always possess the freedom, as so often occurs in actual life, to move from one calling to another."

Niebuhr and Savigny are undoubtedly among the first to instigate that artificial division between Naturwissenschaft and Geisteswissenschaft; toward the end of the 19th century, however, to the degree that Germany flourished economically and scientifically, the battle over the concept of education became the most important political question. It was England and Vienna, above all, which sought victory against the Humboldt system: British utilitarianism and Viennese neo-positivism joined together for a

NSIPS

Friedrich Schiller, poet, philosopher, and historian. Of his friend Schiller, Wilhelm von Humboldt wrote: "All the best in me was essentially always addressed to him, and at the same time he always gave me good temper and courage."

massed attack in the persons of Wilhelm Wundt, Ernst Mach, Ludwig von Mises, Georg Simmel, Bertrand Russell, and Rudolf Carnap, to name only a few.

Yet even during the Nazi period, the humanist world-outlook could not be fully uprooted. The Nazis dared not openly attack the German classics, but attempted to maim them and bend them to their own evil ends, as it is easy to demonstrate should one look through the school texts of the Third Reich.

Even the occupation powers' efforts to utterly reverse Germany's educational tradition, an effort by those forces who not much earlier had sympathized with Hitler (Churchill, Gen. William Draper, et al.), and the large-scale 1961 effort by the OECD under the leadership of Club of Rome co-founder Alexander King, did not fully succeed in destroying the Humboldt ideal.

That dubious service was first performed by Willy Brandt, under whose chancellorship school reforms were carried out which produced not only inferior pupils but also inferior teachers, a deplorable state of affairs Humboldt had tried to preempt with his examinational procedures for the upper-school faculty, to guard against "the insinuation of mediocre or poor teachers." The "long march through the institutions" [infiltration by New Leftists and counterculture adherents] did not exactly contribute to pedagogical excellence.

To the second category of skeptics, among whom we find even humanists of the old school such as the Schiller scholar Benno von Wiese, the reply is that it is in fact possible that we may no longer be capable of realizing the humanistic ideal of education. If that is the case, however, then the Federal Republic has no chance of survival.

For it is precisely in our age, marked as it is by television consumption and discotheque banality, that Humboldt's judgment holds true: "The human species now stands at a level of culture from which it can only soar higher through the development of the individual; and thus all institutions which hinder this development, and seek to press men further into mere masses, are now more destructive than ever."

If the spark of humanity is not awakened in our youth, if the inspiration of trying out and proving their own creativity is never experienced, if the coherence of the universe and the lawfulness of their own thinking process are not grasped, afterward this deficiency can scarcely ever be remedied.

Wilhelm von Humboldt, and Alexander von Humboldt as well, embodied in their own persons virtually the entire scientific aspirations of their age; both were in communication with almost all the leading minds of that period, and it surely cannot be argued that the amount of scientific material has since increased to the extent that this universality may no longer be attained. The conceptual level of the classics, and of the two Humboldts, is miles above the level of later periods, and of most authors who have written on those

NSIPS

Author Helga Zepp-LaRouche (above) is Chairman of the European Labor Party (EAP) and is leading the party's campaign in West Germany to revive the German classical culture of Schiller, the von Humboldts, and Beethoven.

subjects: anyone can, and should, convince himself of this by reading the Humboldts' texts, letters, or diaries.

Wilhelm and Alexander Humboldt are precisely the models for our own time, and indeed Wilhelm is perhaps the only significant German statesman who was at the same time an important scientist. That sort of phenomenon is urgently required today.

The Age of Development

The Humboldt brothers experienced the good fortune to have certain teachers who later distinguished themselves as scientists or political figures. Wilhelm was instructed for 14 years in mathematics, history, Latin, French, German, and Greek; he attended lectures on kameralism (the Leibnizian system of political economy) by von Dohm, natural law by Klein, philosophy by Engel; he studied Leibniz and ancient philosophy. Plato accompanied him his whole life long; he devoured Leibniz, whose theory of

monads immediately captivated him during his Berlin period, and whose belief in human perfectibility he appropriated as his own.

Humboldt's work with the best philologists (Heyne and Wolf) and the general climate at Göttingen, then the most modern, most advanced university in existence, as well as his friendship with one of the most extraordinary women in German history, Caroline von Dacheröden, who later became his wife—all these were influences which shortly made him find the prospect of a career as a Prussian civil servant too dreary. To the distress of his father-in-law and an abundance of other critics, he gave up that calling, in order to dedicate himself to his further development; otherwise, it is probable that he never could have made the contributions that have proven so extremely fruitful for Germany.

In the writings on the theory of the state that he published in 1781-83, which rank among the classic documents in this field, he stated something about France which also held true of his own work: "Is it the case that this system of government will progress? By historical analogy: no! Yet it will elucidate ideas anew, kindle every virtue anew, and thus spread its blessing far beyond the boundaries of France. It will thus preserve the course of all human events, in which the Good never exercises its effect on the spot where it occurs, but in broad expanses of space and time, and transmits its beneficent effects into places far, far distant from one another."

These early writings already contain the essential spirit of vom Stein's Prussian reforms, albeit their relationship to the nation-state still required a further phase of development, a phase that included Humboldt's fruitful collaboration with Schiller, and, to a lesser extent with Goethe; travels to France, Spain, and Italy; further studies in philology; and first-hand diplomatic activity as an envoy to the Vatican.

His relationship with Schiller was for Humboldt the most important one of his life; he wrote to his wife, "Schiller remains the finest and greatest man I have ever known." After Schiller's death, the news of which reached him in Rome, he wrote to their mutual friend Korner: "In truth, it is to me as if I had suddenly lost the guiding star of my entire intellectual journey, and I do not yet venture to judge what effect it actually will have upon me. Hitherto, if I wrote something, if I merely made an attempt to write, I really thought of him always as my sole critic and tribunal. All the best in me was essentially always addressed to him, and at the same time he always gave me good temper and good courage."

Yet Humboldt made his own independent contributions to Weimar classicism; his writings on constitutional law grew out of the inspiration of the American Declaration of Independence, and the promulgation of the Bill of Rights; but they were written in clear rejection of the concept of the absolute state, of Locke, of Montesquieu, and of Rousseau (the historian Eduard Spranger makes a mammoth mistake when he claims that Humboldt was influenced by Rousseau).

It is extremely interesting that as early as 1782, Humboldt anticipated the military doctrine by means of which, 24 years later, France's Lazare Carnot inflicted defeat on Prussia, Humboldt criticized standing armies because "the martial spirit is only to be venerated in conjunction with the noblest, most pacific virtue; military discipline only in conjunction with the most elevated passion for freedom." Civilians' militia exercises, which are "absolutely necessary," should be "given a direction such that they do not simply instill sheer unflinchingness, tenacity, and habits of subordination in a soldier, but on the contrary inspire the spirit of a true warrior, or rather, a noble-minded citizen, who is constantly prepared to do battle for his fatherland."

Above all, Humboldt embodied the world-citizen as patriot: he deeply loved the mind and spirit of Germany, her language, her poetry; yet certain further levels of development were necessary for her. The effort to shape the national character of a people, of France, Spain, Italy, and ancient Greece, sharpened his perception of the interconnectedness of language and nationhood; in the case of Greece, he found an organic unity of a national culture in bloom.

The Shock

However, for Humboldt as for so many other Germans, it required the catastrophe of Prussia's total defeat, and a humiliating subordination at the hands of Napoleon, to kindle a patriotic blaze. The German republicans around vom Stein and Scharnhorst had already clearly recognized that politically and economically backward Prussia require deep-ranging reforms; and vom Stein had already demanded a reform of the state structure, Scharnhorst a reform of the military system.

The Prussian court and the Junkers saw no reason at all to reform the comfortably absolutist state run by their bureaucracy, although they were aware that in France, despite the insanities of the Revolution, a modern steel industry had been built up within the space of a few years under the

influence of the Ecole Polytechnique. Lazare Carnot effected a revolution in the conduct of war, by developing a light mobile field artillery on the basis of the kind of citizens' army that, in the decisive battles of Jena and Auerstadt, showed the immobile Prussian troops and their incompetent generals to be utterly inadequate.

It was this total military disaster that enabled vom Stein, Scharnhorst, and Humboldt to introduce their reforms. Only through the painfully gained consciousness that their own policies had led to unrelieved disaster was the Prussian aristocracy—if only for a brief interval—brought to recognize reality.

This brings up one of the reasons why Humboldt's era has a burning immediacy for us today. The question is, will the leading institutions of the Federal Republic be capable of recognizing that their policies have failed, and correct them before disaster prevails?

(To be continued)