Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature - 6. Young GermanyBrandes, Georg
History
Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature - 6. Young Germany
Brandes, Georg
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- History and criticism; Naturalism in literature; Romanticism
It was by the king's wish that Schelling was brought from Munich
to Berlin to fill the professorial chair left vacant by the death
of Hegel, that from that vantage ground he might propound his new
philosophy, that _Philosophie der Offenbarung_ (Philosophy of
Revelation) which, like some quack remedy, had been kept secret
for years, and yet puffed as if it were to introduce a new era. He
received a larger salary than had ever before been given to a Prussian
university professor (it was declared that he was almost as well
paid as a _premiere danseuse_); and it was certainly not the king's
fault that, in spite of all Schelling's endeavours, there seemed no
possibility of eradicating Hegelian unorthodoxy. As a matter of fact,
Schelling was a failure. He could not but feel that he was regarded
with contempt by the whole youth of a nation. Ch. Kapp wrote a clever
description of the court thinker's various metamorphoses since the
days of his youth, his apostasy from himself, the humbug in his
reconciliation of faith and thought; and Ludwig Feuerbach, in his
energetic language, styled him the philosophical Cagliostro of the
nineteenth century, and his philosophy a theosophic farce.
Eichhorn proceeded to take a variety of measures to counteract the
progress of science. He set a fixed limit to the number of teachers
at all the different Prussian universities, thereby reducing the
number of private lecturers and increasing the influence of the
Government. Professor Hoffman (von Fallersleben) was dismissed from
the University of Breslau, because of some harmless jests at politics
in his _Unpolitical Songs_--jovial, catching verses, which so exactly
chimed in with the Liberal ideas of the middle-class citizen that
they alarmed the authorities. The Biblical critic, Bruno Bauer's, two
books on the authenticity of the Four Gospels cost him his post of
lecturer at the University of Bonn. The servile Faculties carried out
the wishes of the Government: they approved of free scientific inquiry,
but could not approve of Bruno Bauer as a lecturer on _theology_. The
Hegelian theologian, Marheineke of Berlin, undauntedly declared that
he, too, was desirous that Bruno Bauer should be relieved from his
post as lecturer, because he considered that such an eminent critic,
a man of such thorough scientific training, should be promoted to a
really influential appointment. But Bauer's fate was sealed. The Halle
students petitioned that David Strauss might be appointed professor at
their university. The answer to their petition was a reprimand, and
the three students whose names headed the list of petitioners were
expelled. After Gans's death, the noted reactionary Stahl (author
of _Umkehr der Wissenschaft_) was appointed to his professorship
in Berlin. It was somewhat humiliating for the Government that the
students refused to listen to Stahl's first lecture; they drummed him
out of the lecture-room.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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