Klein, Ursula (Author)
The most prominent German physicist of the second half of the nineteenth century, Hermann (von) Helmholtz (1821–1894), was also a representative of the Bildungsbürgertum – Germany’s educated elite which sought to gain social prestige and political influence through intellectual superiority. Having received a humanistic education at a gymnasium and having studied at university, members of the Bildungsbürgertum envisioned a more powerful German nation that was also a bearer of culture and a model of individual freedom. David Cahan’s new biography of Helmholtz shows impressively how Helmholtz became a leading scientist who created a bridge between modern science and the classical ideals of the Bildungsbürgertum. 1 In his Aesthetics, Industry, and Science, Norton Wise also portrays Helmholtz as a member of the Bildungsbürgertum, but he does so in the broader context of a cultural history that aims to capture entanglements of aesthetics, neohumanism, industry and science. 2 Bildungsbürgertum, a term introduced in the twentieth century (see below), is an ambiguous term with both social and cultural meanings. The members of the nineteenth-century Bildungsbürgertum belonged to the middle classes; they included professors – mostly of theology, law, medicine, philosophy and the humanities – teachers, parsons, lawyers, physicians, writers, artists, high-level state officials, and also a number of scientists. The Bildungsbürgertum cultivated aesthetic and humanistic ideals and argued for humanistic education, including knowledge about Greek and Latin, ancient art and philosophy, classical German literature, music, painting and theatre. Helmholtz was a typical Bildungsbürger in the full sense of the term, both with respect to his social background and his cultural ideals and accomplishments. His father was a philosopher and teacher at the Potsdam Gymnasium, who made clear to his son that it was a man’s Bildung and inner intellectual life that distinguished him. He had also attended the Potsdam Gymnasium and then studied medicine. Sharing the values and ideals of the Bildungsbürgertum, even late in his scientific life he was still convinced that knowledge of Greek prepared students well for university and gave them ‘the fine formation of taste’ (quoted in Cahan, Helmholtz, p. 657). He also possessed outstanding knowledge of philosophy and the fine arts, and he even linked scientific knowledge with theories of art. The question arises, however, of whether Helmholtz was also a typical nineteenth-century German scientist, which concerns both Cahan’s and Wise’s book.
...MoreBook David Cahan (2018) Helmholtz: A Life in Science.
Book M. Norton Wise (2018) Aesthetics, Industry, and Science: Hermann von Helmholtz and the Berlin Physical Society.
Article
Wegener, Daan;
(2009)
Science and Internationalism in Germany: Helmholtz, Du Bois-Reymond and Their Critics
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Chapter
Cahan, David;
(2005)
Hermann von Helmholtz und die Ausgestaltung der amerikanischen Physik im Gilded Age
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Thesis
Pantalony, David Alexander;
(2002)
Rudolph Koenig (1832--1901), Hermann von Helmholtz (1821--1894) and the birth of modern acoustics
(/isis/citation/CBB001562537/)
Article
Pesic, Peter;
(2013)
Helmholtz, Riemann, and the Sirens: Sound, Color, and the “Problem of Space”
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Article
Pourprix, Bernard;
(2007)
De la reconstitution de la physique allemande du XIXe siècle: Les exemples de Georg Simon Ohm et Hermann Helmholtz
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Article
Cahan, David;
(2010)
Helmholtz in Gilded-Age America: The International Electrical Congress of 1893 and the Relations of Science and Technology
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Article
Cahan, David;
(2012)
The Awarding of the Copley Medal and the “Discovery”of the Law of Conservation of Energy: Joule, Mayer and Helmholtz Revisited
(/isis/citation/CBB001251433/)
Thesis
Oldham, Kalil T. Swain;
(2008)
The Doctrine of Description: Gustav Kirchhoff, Classical Physics, and the “Purpose of All Science” in 19th-Century Germany
(/isis/citation/CBB001561193/)
Article
Katzir, Shaul;
(2009)
Hermann Aron's Electricity Meters: Physics and Invention in Late Nineteenth-Century Germany
(/isis/citation/CBB001031880/)
Article
Arendt, Hans-Jürgen;
(2001)
Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801-1887) und die Leipziger bürgerliche Gesellschaft im 19. Jahrhundert
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Article
Henning Schmidgen;
(2015)
Leviathan and the Myograph: Hermann Helmholtz's “Second Note” on the Propagation Speed of Nervous Stimulations
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Article
Gill, Manfred;
Löhnert, Peter;
(2002)
Jüdische Zwangsarbeiter im Aceta-Werk Berlin-Lichtenberg
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Book
Patzel-Mattern, Katja;
(2008)
Ökonomische Effizienz und gesellschaftlicher Ausgleich. Die industrielle Psychotechnik in der Weimarer Republik
(/isis/citation/CBB001250896/)
Book
Christa Jungnickel;
Russell McCormmach;
(2018)
The Second Physicist: On the History of Theoretical Physics in Germany
(/isis/citation/CBB957245561/)
Book
David J. Murray;
Stephen W. Link;
(2020)
The Creation of Scientific Psychology
(/isis/citation/CBB845455295/)
Book
Meulders, Michel;
(2001)
Helmholtz: Des lumières aux neurosciences
(/isis/citation/CBB000774837/)
Article
Sjang L. Ten Hagen;
(2022)
History as a Tool for Natural Science: How Ernst Mach Applied Historical Methods to Physics
(/isis/citation/CBB303872937/)
Article
Pantalony, David;
(2005)
Rudolph Koenig's Workshop of Sound: Instruments, Theories, and the Debate over Combination Tones
(/isis/citation/CBB000500117/)
Book
Hiebert, Erwin N.;
(2014)
The Helmholtz Legacy in Physiological Acoustics
(/isis/citation/CBB001551096/)
Book
David Cahan;
(2018)
Helmholtz: A Life in Science
(/isis/citation/CBB216467015/)
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