Early on this semester, in my political science class, during the talk in which he addressed our need for acceptance and rational in our debate of political values, my professor repeated a claim, “90 percent of University faculty are on the left, the other 10 percent are on the far left.” While in all likelihood this expression is an exaggeration, it is a reasonable assertion to believe that our leading educational institutions have a tendency toward liberalism. This is not a new development. Coupling mankind’s ascent from the dark ages, our brightest minds have aggregated and chosen to believe that our system can always be improved. This determination for improvement is the basic quality of liberalism. While socioeconomic conditions in Vormarz Germany spurned discontent and anxiety, the larger proportion of educated society, particularly those at University, were highly influenced by their surroundings, and in turn influential in the liberal mindset that helped to determine Europe’s future.
Johann Fichte, German philosopher and contributer to the German Idealism movement, sets the nationalistic tone for Robertson’s essay in his call to arms for the “fatherland” against the French in 1813. After the fall of Napoleon, and a return to a peace, students were living in a land of “thirty separate sovereigns.” While some had viewed the fight against Napoleon as a fight for “Germany,” as so often happens the patriotism and unity dissolved after the common enemy was defeated. While peasants went back to farming their land and artisans resumed their craft, the students were left with a revolutionary new sets of ideas to linger upon as a result from the massively influential enlightenment and French Revolution. These new, and now dubbed as liberal by historians, thoughts led to basic desires for “free press, free speech, a constitution, and, of course, academic freedom.” On a broad level students wanted to see democracy in their respective institutions. They wanted to see merit cited as a principal in governmental appointments. They were eager to see the fall of arbitrariness in society as replaced by reason. Perhaps the strongest sector of unity amongst the intellectual community was in their desire for a united fatherland.
Unfortunately the many governments widely did not acquiesce these demands, and thus Revolution. State control hampered academic freedom. In a land where the mightily influential Immanuel Kant envisioned a world where the Universities had freedom of criticism of the governments, the authorities made sure that vision simply did not develop. In a post-Napoleonic Europe, state control of the more radical portion of society seemed like the only sensible option to the conservatives. While the students were apparently thrilled at the selective status as citizens with the right of dueling, the lack of fulfillment in what we would consider basic rights did little to quell the anxiety and discontent amongst the masses. In my analysis I can’t see any other scenario than it perpetuating those sentiments.
Institutional appeasements were made after the incidents of 1848. These concessions illustrated a change in philosophy of the aristocratic elite. No longer was suppression absolutely necessary, which is good, because as we all learned in Braveheart, we can’t kill an idea. The beliefs in inherent freedoms, the desire for a fatherland, and the push for academic freedom united intellectuals of the time, and remained a prevalent part of German society. While not fully recognized until the 20th century, the intellectual evolution in Germany is a strong factor in Germany rising to challenge the world on two occasions.
