Wilhelm von Humboldt

The educational administrator

In 1802, Wilhelm von Humboldt rejoined the Prussian civil service and became envoy to the Vatican in

Rome. This appointment enabled him to become even more familiar with the history and culture of

classical Greece and Rome. But when ‘Germany suffered its deep humiliation’—in the words of a

contemporary publication—after the battle at Jena-Auerstadt, Humboldt obeyed a call from Baron von

und zum Stein to return to Berlin and play a leading role in the regeneration of the Prussian State. In

1807, Stein had issued an edict that abolished hereditary subjection, put an end to villeinage and was

intended to terminate the whole caste system within society. A regulation permitting self-administration

of the towns followed in November 1808. But the reformers often proved unsuccessful, not simply

because of resistance from conservative elements but also because of the inadequate level of education

of the citizens. The men around Stein saw Wilhelm von Humboldt as a figure who was capable of

bringing about a complete reform of the Prussian education system. ‘Their idea was to strengthen and

elevate the nation by removing the burdens weighing on it and also through education. They endorsed

a proposal made by the great Swiss thinker and, after regaining their freedom, took action by setting up

teacher training establishments [...]’ (Diesterweg, 1979, p. 41).

Two colleagues in the Prussian educational administration had already worked on a reform of

the education system based on Pestalozzi’s ideas in 1808: Johann Heinrich Ludwig Nicolovius and

Johann Wilhelm Süvern. They granted scholarships to young teachers and sent them to study

Pestalozzi’s methods in Yverdon. In a letter, Süvern urged these ‘Prussian pupils’ not just to acquire

the mechanical forms of the method but to penetrate to its ‘innermost heart’ and to ‘warm themselves

at the sacred fire’ which was spread by Pestalozzi (see Diesterweg, 1961, p. 155). Following their

return, the intention was that they should help to disseminate Pestalozzi’s pedagogical ideas as the

heads of teacher training seminaries or members of their teaching staff. To begin with, Humboldt felt

some reservations over Pestalozzi’s teaching methods, but these were probably dispersed under the

influence of Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s ‘Addresses to the German Nation’. In two of these addresses,

Fichte had taken Pestalozzi’s ideas as the foundation of his plan for German national education. Even

before Humboldt met Nicolovius, he wrote to him on 25 March 1809 that ‘the introduction of

Pestalozzi’s method has my undivided support [...] provided that it is put into effect correctly’ (Letters,

p. 593). In Nicolovius and Süvern, Humboldt had particularly able colleagues who were bent on

reform of the Prussian education system.

On 28 February 1809, Wilhelm von Humboldt became head of the culture and education

section at the Ministry of the Interior, but Stein had left office by then. Napoleon had called for his

dismissal and the King of Prussia had acceded to that request. This section was answerable to the

Minister of the Interior, Count von Dohna, with whom Humboldt did not enjoy particularly good

relations. To underline the importance of the education system for the Prussian reform programme,

Humboldt advocated from the outset its separation from the Ministry of the Interior; he urged both the

Minister of the Interior and also the King to set up a Ministry of Education in its own right. But this

only came about many years later under Altenstein in 1817.

Humboldt’s view on the way in which government business should be transacted differed

greatly from those of von Dohna and Finance Minister von Bülow. Humboldt wanted to see more

collegiality, but was unable to persuade either the Minister or the King of the need for a State Council.

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As head of his own section, he adopted a distinctly collegial style of management. In a letter to

the famous neo-humanist, Christian Friedrich Wolf, whom he called to Berlin and wanted to join his

own department, he wrote on 31 July 1809 that ‘the joint reflection by several heads’ had his

preference, as did ‘a collective opinion rather than that of an individual, even my own’ (Letters, p. 610).

He was the instigator of a Scientific Delegation that was to bring the spirit of science to administrative

functions. But in 1815 the responsibilities of this scientific council, whose membership included leading

scholars, among them Schleiermacher, were confined to the organization of examinations.

The exchange of correspondence between Wilhelm von Humboldt and his wife, who had

stayed behind in Rome where she was expecting her ninth child, enables us to reconstruct with some

accuracy the ideas and thoughts that motivated him during his civil service career. Just a few days after

taking up his duties in Berlin, he informed his wife on 4 March 1809 of his plan to arrange ‘for schools

to be paid for by the nation alone’ (Letters, p. 591); he wanted a fund to be set up to enable schools to

be run and their teachers paid independently of the government and external circumstances. He took

that idea further in a letter to Nicolovius: ‘Education is a matter for the nation and we are preparing

(admittedly with great caution) to diminish the powers of the State and win the nation over to our own

interests’ (Letters, p. 594).

Humboldt never advocated a system of national education that was predominantly Prussian; he

looked beyond the frontiers of the State of Prussia and saw himself as a spokesman of the whole

German people; in his scientific works, his thinking always had in mind the interests of all mankind.

In early April 1809, Humboldt left Berlin to travel to the seat of government that had been

transferred to Königsberg (now Kaliningrad). He devoted himself to his new duties with extraordinary

zeal; he visited schools in Königsberg, often unannounced, and set out on an extended series of visits in

September/October which took him to Gumbinnen and Memel and in the course of which he refined in

still greater detail the school plan which he had drawn up in Königsberg.

Because the education process consists of ‘three natural stages’, Humboldt advocated three

different types of schools, i.e. establishments for elementary schooling; for secondary schooling; and for

university education.

The elementary school was to lay the foundations for the subsequent levels of education. If

pupils were excluded from further courses of education from the outset, the elementary schools would

become nothing other than ‘people’s schools in the most derogatory meaning of the term’ (quoted by

Spranger, 1910, p. 138). In his ‘Guiding Ideas on a Plan for the Establishment of the Lithuanian

Municipal School System’ (1809), Humboldt explained that ‘this whole education system therefore

rests on one and the same foundation. The commonest jobbing worker and the finest graduate must at

the outset be given the same mental training, unless human dignity is to be disregarded in the former

and the latter allowed to fall victim to unworthy sentimentality and chimera’ (GS, XIII, p. 278).

Humboldt advocated ‘complete training of the human personality’ even for the poorest members of

society in the elementary schools (GS, XIII, p. 266) and naturally also the possibility for pupils who

lacked resources of their own to be able to attend higher educational establishments by drawing on a

newly created national fund. This idea of a uniform educational structure with three successive stages

did not gain acceptance in the nineteenth century and has not even been put completely in place in the

twentieth.

The importance attached by Humboldt to a democratic school constitution emerges from a

letter written to his wife from Vienna on 20 August 1814: elementary schooling must be organized in

such a way ‘that it becomes a general foundation which no one can disparage without disparaging

himself; it must be the basis on which all subsequent education can be built’ (Letters, p. 735). At that

time he was again employed in the foreign service. Diesterweg reports that ‘Wilhelm von Humboldt,

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who was as imaginative as he was scholarly, found time during the Congress of Vienna to think his

way into the ideas of Pestalozzi’s popular education and showed the same energetic support for the

creation of elementary schools as he had previously for the foundation of Berlin University’

(Diesterweg, 1976, p. 75).

The Königsberg period had given Humboldt a deeper insight into Pestalozzi’s ideas on

teaching. Carl August Zeller, who taught after 1803 at Pestalozzi’s establishments, first in Burgdorf

and then in Yverdon, was summoned to Königsberg in 1809 and placed in charge of the orphanage and

an affiliated teacher training seminary; the graduates of this seminary would, it was hoped, reform the

East Prussian school system according to the principles of Pestalozzi. In October 1809, the royal family

visited the orphanage headed by Zeller, and Humboldt presumably accompanied them.

The death of his father-in-law obliged Humboldt to interrupt his school reform activities. In

November 1809 he took extended leave in order to settle the estate for his wife who was still living

with their children in Rome. The desire to be reunited with his family and the realization that he would

never be able to gain acceptance for his school plan or for his ideas of effective educational

administration under the government of the day led to his resignation in the spring of 1810 that the

King accepted on 25 May. This step was greatly regretted by the reformers, but his departure was a

source of some satisfaction to his opponents, especially Minister von Dohna who was extremely

dissatisfied with Humboldt’s ‘lack of religious understanding’. On 23 June 1810, Nicolovius took over

his duties with one exception—Humboldt remained chairman of the founding committee of Berlin

University.

How difficult he found it to leave the educational administration and rejoin the foreign service

is apparent from a letter which he wrote to his wife on 28 July 1810: ‘The internal administration of a

country is beyond doubt far more important overall than its external relations; but the education of a

nation over which I presided and which went ahead successfully under my administration is of

incomparably greater importance still.’ He went on to explain once again what his intentions were: ‘I

had drawn up a general plan which covered everything from the smallest school to the university and in

which all the component parts fitted together; I was at home with all these parts. I took on the smallest

and largest tasks without any preference and with the same energy. I was put off by no difficulties [...]’

(Letters, p. 662 ff.).