Essay Review ID: CBB173266813

Science, Industry, and the German Bildungsbürgertum (2020)

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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.

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Authors & Contributors
Cahan, David L.
Pantalony, David Alexander
Stephen W. Link
ten Hagen, Sjang L.
Wegener, Daan
Schmidgen, Henning
Concepts
Physics
Science and society
Acoustics
Science and industry
Science and technology, relationships
Conservation of energy (physical concept)
Time Periods
19th century
20th century, early
20th century
Places
Germany
United States
Weimar Republic (1919-1933)
Institutions
Royal Society (Great Britain). European Science Exchange Programme
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