HUMBOLDT, WILHELM, FREIHERR VON (1767–1835)

The philologist and educational reformer, and elder brother of Alexander, Karl Wilhelm von Humboldt was born in Potsdam and studied at Göttingen and Jena. He visited Paris in 1789 and briefly worked in the Prussian civil service (1790–1) before marrying and retiring in order to pursue his intellectual interests. He worked closely with Goethe and Schiller, and established a reputation as a literary critic and translator of classical poetry. In 1802 he resumed his public career, this time as a diplomat, and was appointed Prussian minister in Rome, where he remained until 1808. The following year he joined the reforming administration of Freiherr vom Stein as director of culture and education in the newly reorganized interior ministry.

Humboldt’s reforms effectively established the modern German education system at all levels. His ideas reflected the times and his own experience: he had visited Paris in 1789 and lived through the disorder of the Napoleonic Wars. He had explored the theme of the relationship between the individual citizen and the political authority of the state in

a number of essays on constitutional problems, notably Ideen zu einem Versuch, die Grenzen des Staates zu bestimmen, written in 1792 but first published in 1851, where he argued that the state had the responsibility to ensure the development of the citizen’s individual strengths, and state authority should be limited if it threatened to hinder this. Earlier grounds for limiting individual freedom for the benefit of the nation now no longer applied because a point had been reached where further human development could no longer be achieved by state decrees, but only by the undirected activity of individuals. Citizens on the other hand should be responsible enough to place their developed talents at the service of the community. He was committed to the notion of Bildung—education as the free development of a cultivated individual according to humanistic values. Accordingly, he aimed to extend educational opportunity and educate Germans as cultivated and responsible citizens. Primary education was improved by raising standards of teaching training, and was to draw on the liberal pedagogical principles of the contemporary Swiss educationalist Pestallozzi. The humanistic Gymnasium with its classical curriculum became the standard secondary school of the educated middle classes, and Berlin University, in whose foundation Humboldt played a pivotal part, not only served as a model for other German universities founded in the nineteenth century, but also profoundly influenced the modern understanding of research and scholarship.

Humboldt resigned his ministerial position in 1810. As ambassador to Vienna (from 1811) he helped persuade Austria to rejoin the coalition against Napoleon. At the Congress of Vienna he was an advocate of a liberal constitution for the German Confederation, and of civil rights for Jews. Although he held other positions in the state service after 1815 he was out of place in the new conservative order of restoration Germany and was relieved of all his duties in 1819 after opposing the Karlsbad Decrees. He spent the rest of his life in retirement at the family estate.

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HUMBOLDT, WILHELM, FREIHERR VON (1767–1835)