The German educator, statesman, political theorist, and philologist Baron Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835) reformed the Prussian school system and founded the University of Berlin. He was influential in developing the science of comparative philology.

Wilhelm von Humboldt was born in Potsdam on June 22, 1767. He studied law in Berlin and Göttingen. In his essay Ü ber das Studium des Klassischen Altertums (1793) he summarized his program for educational reform, which was basically the program of German neohumanism. In Jena (1794-1797) he was a member of Friedrich von Schiller's circle. After traveling through Spain and France, during which Humboldt became interested in philology, he was appointed Prussian resident minister in Rome (1802-1808).

Humboldt was influenced by the educational principles of Johann Pestalozzi. As Prussian minister of education (1809-1810), he sent teachers to Switzerland to study Pestalozzi's methods, and he founded the University of Berlin (1809). Humboldt's ideas profoundly influenced European and American elementary education.

From 1810 to 1819 Humboldt served the government as minister in Vienna, London, and Berlin. He resigned from the ministry in protest against the reactionary policies of the government. His philological works on the Basque language (1821) and on Kavi, the ancient language of Java, published posthumously (1836-1840), were landmarks in their field. He died at Tegel on April 8, 1835.

Political Theory

In The Sphere and Duties of Government (published in part in 1792 and completely in 1851) Humboldt held that although the nation-state is a growing body, government is only one of the means aiding its welfare, a means whose sole aim should be to provide security for social development. As in biological evolution, all growth is good, as it brings forth an organism more complex, more diverse, and richer, and government - while a major agent in fostering this development - is not the only one. If it tries to do too much, it interferes with and retards the beneficial effects of other agencies.

Under the influence of romanticism Humboldt became almost mystical as he placed more stress on supra-individual and historically conditioned nationality and viewed individual nationality in turn as part of the universal spiritual and divine life which was the characteristic expression of humanity. In essays on the German (1813) and Prussian (1819) constitutions he advocated a liberalism which would preserve the unique character and traditions of individual states, provinces, and regions, with the constitution of any state adapted to the particular genius of its national character. He rejected both the artificial and atomistic liberalism of the French Revolution, which derived the state from the isolated and arbitrary wills of individuals, and the ultraconservative program to revive the old feudal estates. He advocated a liberalism grounded in tradition with regional self-governing bodies participating in governing a monarchical civil service state.

Further Reading

There is no definitive biography in English on Humboldt. One work is Hermann Klencke, Lives of the Brothers Humboldt, Alexander and William (trans. 1952). Humboldt is discussed or mentioned in the following works: Henry Barnard, Pestalozzi and His Educational System (1881); Eugene Newton Anderson, Nationalism and the Cultural Crisis in Prussia, 1806-15 (1939); Leonard Kreiger, The German Idea of Freedom (1957); and Walter Horace Bruford, Culture and Society in Classical Weimar, 1775-1806 (1962).

Additional Sources

Sweet, Paul Robinson, Wilhelm von Humboldt: a biography, Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1978-c1980.

For more information on Karl Wilhelm baron von Humboldt, visit Britannica.com.

Humboldt, Wilhelm, Freiherr von (Potsdam, 1767-1835, Schloß Tegel, Berlin), was a writer, philologist, and a prominent representative of the 18th- and early 19th-c. humanistic school of thought; he introduced far-reaching school and university reforms into Prussia as part of the general reforms preceding and following the Wars of Liberation (see Napoleonic Wars).

Humboldt studied at Frankfurt/Oder (where Kant taught) and Göttingen universities, and in 1789 went to Erfurt (where he met Karoline von Dacheröden, his future wife), to Weimar, and to Jena, forming friendships with K. Th. von Dalberg, the brothers A. W. and F. Schlegel, F. H. Jacobi, Goethe, and Schiller. He collaborated in the Propyläen and Die Horen, and in 1792 wrote his Ideen zu einem Versuch, die Grenzen der Wirksamkeit des Staates zu bestimmen.

For a time (1790-1) Humboldt worked at the Berlin Kammergericht, earning the title Legationsrat. He left Prussian service to devote himself to learning and travel, spending some time in Paris, Spain (1797-9), and Rome (1801-8), where he acted as Minister in the Prussian Legation, while pursuing extensive studies in ancient history. In 1809 he was appointed to the Prussian Ministry of the Interior (on the recommendation of Freiherr vom Stein), and worked for the Prussian Academy (see Akademien). It was during his short period as director of culture and education (Kultur- und Unterrichtswesen) that he put a number of his ideas on education into practice, the most conspicuous results being the foundation of Berlin University (Friedrich-Wilhelm, since 1945 Humboldt-Universität), and the reform of secondary education. Between 1810 and 1815 he was Prussian ambassador at Vienna, representing Prussia at the Congress (see Wiener Kongress). He expressed his views on the unification of Germany frankly in Über die Behandlung der Angelegenheiten des Deutschen Bundes durch Preußen (1816). In 1817 he was appointed ambassador in London, and he completed his public service as Minister für ständische und kommunale Angelegenheiten, retiring in December 1819 in protest against the repressive Carlsbad Decrees (see Karlsbader Beschlüsse). He spent the remainder of his life at Schloß Tegel devoting himself to private study and writing.

As an educationalist Humboldt was influenced, apart from Kant, by F. A. Wolf, Fichte, Schelling, and Schleiermacher, and he himself possessed a strong sense of individualism. He aimed at the development of a cultured personality, and sought a radical division between the education of the individual based on an idealized classical (Greek) model and vocational training (Fachschulausbildung). He envisaged education as a dialectical process in which the pupil (individuality) learns ancient culture (universality) to live for a humanist ideal (totality). His humanistic Gymnasium (humanistisches Gymnasium or Gelehrtenschule) was to serve this end, and Latin and Greek were prominent in the curriculum. Humboldt envisaged educational institutions as working communities entailing the exchange of ideas between professors and students. Matriculation (Abitur), qualifying for university entrance, was revised, and students were free to migrate to different universities as part of their academic freedom (akademische Freiheit). Universities were to be autonomous, educating a cultural, philosophically orientated society. Accordingly, Religionsphilosophie, Rechtsphilosophie, and Naturphilosophie replaced the existing methods of study in theology, law, and the natural sciences. The state appointed university teachers, who thereby gained in status and income.

The reforms which Humboldt inaugurated had far-reaching social and political consequences. His ideal that the educated personality realized the highest ethical potential in man was conceived as a bulwark against materialism.

Humboldt's anthropological research was based on the study of languages as an expression of human character and the mentality and cultural standard of different peoples throughout the ages (Über die Kawisprache auf der Insel Jawa, 4 vols., 1836-40). In his Ideen of 1792 Humboldt sought to limit the authority of the state over the individual. They were included in the first (incomplete) edition of his works (Gesammelte Werke, 1841-52, vol. 7), and aim at the realization of human dignity on the basis of individual freedom. F. Lassalle ridiculed Humboldt's conception of the state as a ‘Nachtwächterstaat’. Humboldt's idealism made little allowance for man's moral and intellectual limitations. His broad views were nevertheless a factor in the development of 19th-c. liberalism.

Humboldt's correspondence with Schiller, published as Briefwechsel zwischen Schiller und Wilhelm von Humboldt (1830), is preceded by a highly perceptive and appreciative essay, Über Schiller und den Gang seiner Geistesentwicklung. Gesammelte Schriften, authorized by the Prussian Academy, ed. A. Leitzmann and B. Gebhardt (17 vols.), appeared 1903-36, reissued 1968. Leitzmann also edited various other writings, among them Humboldt's correspondence with A. W. Schlegel (1908), Schiller (1935); Wilhelm und Karoline von Humboldt in ihren Briefen (7 vols), ed. Anna von Sydow, appeared 1906-16. Wilhelm was the brother of Alexander von Humboldt. Werke (5 vols.), ed. A. Flitner and K. Giel, were published in 1960 ff.

(vĭl'hĕlm frī'hĕr fən hʊm'bôlt) , 1767–1835, German statesman and philologist; brother of Alexander von Humboldt. As Prussian minister of education (1809–10) he thoroughly reformed the school system, largely on the basis of the ideas of Pestalozzi, and he sent Prussian teachers to study the methods of Pestalozzi's school in Switzerland. He was one of the founders of the Univ. of Berlin. Humboldt was one of the great liberal reformers of Prussia along with Stein and Hardenberg. He remained prominent in the government until 1819, when he retired because of his opposition to the prevailing spirit of reaction. Humboldt was a friend of Goethe and Schiller. His lengthy treatise on Kavi, the ancient language of Java, published posthumously (1836–40), is a work of precision, clarity, and scientific caution.

Quotes:

"True enjoyment comes from activity of the mind and exercise of the body; the two are ever united."

"Coercion may prevent many transgressions; but it robs even actions which are legal of a part of their beauty. Freedom may lead to many transgressions, but it lends even to vices a less ignoble form."

"Freedom is but the possibility of a various and indefinite activity; while government, or the exercise of dominion, is a single, yet real activity. The longing for freedom, therefore, is at first only too frequently suggested by the deep-felt consciousness of its absence."

"Providence certainly does not favor just certain individuals, but the deep wisdom of its counsel, instruction and ennoblement extends to all."

"The government is best which makes itself unnecessary."

"I am more and more convinced that our happiness or our unhappiness depends far more on the way we meet the events of life than on the nature of those events themselves."

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