1—
Academic Chemistry in Early Nineteenth-Century Germany
University Reform
In 1840, Justus Liebig lamented that at the time of the liberation of the German states from French domination "there were no longer any scientists in Germany."[1] A certain discount for hyperbole must be applied to this, as to many of Liebig's programmatic assertions. Among the active workers in German academic chemistry at the time of Napoleon's final defeat were Friedrich Stromeyer, Johann Wolfgang Döbereiner, Heinrich Klaproth, J. B. Trommsdorff, and Karl Kastner—all justly famous chemists in their day. Chemistry was being practiced by an identifiable professional community of capable scholars and researchers, which, although less prominent than the corresponding communities in France or England, was far from negligible in importance. Allied with the academic chemical community in various ways were the guild-based but state-licensed and increasingly university-educated apothecaries who compounded drugs for the medical profession. Finally, largely outside this professional community were the practical chemical entrepreneurs and workers who made the soda, potash, acids, gunpowder, soap, paints, and dyes needed in their society by largely empirical methods in small shops. Recognition of the practical utility of chemistry in medicine, pharmacy, technology, mining, metallurgy, agriculture, and most other arts of material civilization resulted in a certain minimum level of social support for chemists and their community, even in the agrarian German states of the early Vormärz period (1815-1848).[2]
But despite the importance of pharmacists and technical chemists, the real institutional home for the chemical community in Germany (more so than in any other country) was the university.[3] The universities had arisen in the middle ages essentially as guilds of teachers and students; indeed, the Latin word universitas from which the modern term derives was used by the medieval guilds to refer to the totality of workers in a given craft. The guild model survived into modern German history. After satisfying entrance requirements (after 1834 this meant only graduating from a Gymnasium—a neohumanist secondary school—with the leaving certificate called the Abitur ), the student (apprentice) worked with a professor (master) until he had satisfied the minimum demands of his intellectual craft. Students typically studied a fairly narrow curriculum—usually in one of the three professional faculties of law, medicine, or theology—having already spent nine years in Gymnasium learning the classical languages, religion, history, and German, as well as a modicum of modern foreign languages, mathematics, and natural science. But the matriculated student had full freedom to take whatever university courses he chose. The student could also travel from one university to another, and due to the fragmentation of the German states, there were many from which to choose. The baccalaureate and master's degrees having fallen into disuse, the doctorate was the degree that mattered, and it could be earned after two or three years of hard work. In addition to examinations, a dissertation was often (but not always) required; in the sciences during the nineteenth century, this was on the order of a substantial (and often published) article.
Most university graduates entered one of the traditional professions or became civil servants. If the student desired an academic career, it was customary to spend one or more years after the doctorate at other universities, sometimes foreign ones, as a kind of Wanderjahr , or journeyman period. One then normally needed to obtain a second degree, the venia legendi , or teaching certification. The Germans still refer to this process as Habilitation , or enablement. A second dissertation was required, analogous to the journeyman's certifying masterpiece; this was called the Habilitationsschrift . Some universities in the scholastic mode also required a public disputation on a theme chosen by the aspirant. The successful applicant now had the right to teach courses at the university that had certified him; but his income derived solely from fees collected directly from students electing his courses, nothing from the university itself. Those who had passed this certification were known as Privatdozenten , or private lecturers; uncommon in the eighteenth century, Privatdozenten proliferated in the nineteenth.
After a few years one could hope to be named an ausserordentlicher (extraordinary) professor, also called Extraordinarius . These were poorly paid positions, however. The ultimate goal was to receive a "call" to an ordentlicher (ordinary) professorship, which was a "chair" or Ordinarius position for which one was paid a real salary, as well as being entitled to student fees for all except the required weekly public lecture. As in the guild model, the universities were largely self-regulated by the "masters," that is, the ordentlicher professors. From their number they elected deans of constituent faculties, the rector (president) of the university, and a senate. They also had the power, at least in theory, to select new members of their body, i.e., to fill vacant chairs.
In eighteenth-century Germany, this corporative structure was particularly strong, and many small universities lived almost entirely from their own distressingly meager financial means. Even ordentlicher professors often earned ridiculously small salaries, and student fees usually could not make up the difference since enrollments declined throughout the century. As a consequence, an academic profession barely existed at all, and what did exist tended toward mediocrity. Much of the instruction in the fourth or "philosophical" faculty (designed to prepare students to enter one of the professional faculties) was painfully elementary and hidebound. Publishing novel research was not considered necessary or even desirable and hence was not normally done. The universities, having become essentially narrow professional schools, left scientific research largely to the academies of sciences and to wealthy or patronized amateurs.
The University of Göttingen was a notable exception to this pattern. Founded on a consciously "modernist" and liberal model, well funded and endowed with what soon became the best library in the German states, it attracted an international and often wealthy student body and served as an intellectual pipeline between the kingdoms of Hanover and Great Britain (whose sovereign was the same throughout most of the eighteenth century). In the second half of the century, it became the "first university" of Germany and the central locus of the movement to recast the universities from their stodgy medieval outlook toward the model of progressive teaching institutions, incorporating a strong research mandate. A. G. Kästner wrote toward the end of the century that those professors who failed this mandate were as "mouse turds among peppercorns."[4] But most of the Göttingen professoriate were of the best odor. During its first century, the university was graced by Albrecht von Haller and J. F. Blumenbach in medicine and natural history; Kästner, Tobias Meyer, Wilhelm Weber, G. C. Lich-
tenberg, and Carl Friedrich Gauss in mathematics and physics; and Stromeyer and Friedrich Gmelin in chemistry. The humanities were equally well represented.
The other German universities changed dramatically after the turn of the century, when their sad state reached a point of crisis and the chaos and humiliation of the French wars provided an effective excuse for a new beginning. The German reforms were influenced to a degree by Napoleon's own progressive ideas about education, but even more by a neohumanist revival that was more typical of German Romanticism and constituted a reaction against Napoleon. Using the University of Göttingen as a model, such Prussian reformers as Wilhelm von Humboldt, J. G. Fichte, and Friedrich Schleiermacher worked to recast the universities of their state in a more "modern" mold. One side of the eighteenth-century resistance to the research ethic had been the Enlightenment ideals of utility, universalism, gradual progress, and encyclopedic breadth. It turned out that the new Wissenschaftsideologie was consistent with more particularist and individualist instincts, as well as with a certain iconoclastic dynamism and a strong disavowal of crass materialist utilitarianism—in other words, an ideology consonant with Romantic notions in general. Moreover, placing a neohumanist rhetorical overlay on university reform had the salutary consequence of rescuing the universities from their predominant eighteenth-century role of narrow professional and civil service training and providing the basis for their new mission of broadly based education of the mind and spirit. Finally, Göttingen's practice of hiring scholarly "stars" active in research and publication had been very successful in attracting relatively large numbers of wealthy, noble, and foreign students. Hanover reaped the benefits of the resulting prestige and indirect income, and envious university administrators in other German states wanted a piece of that action. In this way, the research mandate became associated with neohumanist reforms.
Taking stronger control over the corporative universities and hiring a larger and more eminent faculty meant both larger financial investments and higher expectations on the part of the state ministries of culture. The faculties were still expected to prepare a prioritized list of (usually three) candidates to fill any vacant chair, but the state could, and sometimes did, overrule the faculty to follow a program of its own. Once the research mandate became an expected standard, the German states often competed with one another in attempting to land the biggest academic stars for their universities and attract the highest number of wealthy and foreign students. Salaries rose, at least for the Ordinarien, and the professoriate became a real career option. The leading role was taken after 1817 by Prussian Kultusminister Karl Freiherr
vom Stein zum Altenstein, who put the reforms into effect, especially at the newly founded universities of Berlin and Bonn, and in the process revived the moribund philosophical faculties.
In the meantime, the Ordinarien were competing for student fees with the other faculty ranks, the Extraordinarien and especially the increasingly numerous Privatdozenten. One consequence of this phenomenon was the gradual raising of the standards for admission to the teaching staff, that is, for the venia legendi . Thus, vigorous competition among states, among academic ranks, and among the members of each rank for preferment, as well as the exercise of greater control by the states for their own reasons, resulted in a general strengthening of the research mandate, ever higher standards for research excellence, and increasing professionalization of academic careers. Institutionalized first in the German states during the Vormärz , the dualist professorial standard of teaching and research was widely copied by countries around the world during the second half of the nineteenth century.
Pedagogical Reform
Associated with the reform of the German universities in the early nineteenth century was a gradual change of opinion that came about in how best to teach in the universities. The change was most dramatic in the natural sciences and medicine, where an empiricist-sensationalist epistemology derived from leading Enlightenment ideas led to less reliance on lectures and lecture demonstrations and eventually dictated laboratory-based instruction for most students in the sciences. In this new movement, some historians have emphasized the role of eighteenth-century pedagogical reformers such as Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi,[5] while others have tried to trace the change to early philological and historical seminars at late eighteenth-century modernist universities such as Göttingen. The humanist seminar has been an appealing historical model because it was there that the new research-oriented scholars tried to create a monism from their dualist activities, by interesting their students in research problems and making research a routine aspect of pedagogy, at least for selected advanced students.
Recent work has, however, cast some doubt on a simple evolutionary model from the humanist seminar to the scientific laboratory-based university institute.[6] One problem in making this connection has been reconciling it with the atmosphere of the aggressively idealist, non-utilitarian and nonmaterialist neohumanist rhetoric of the day and considering the popularity in Germany of a speculative and nonempirical Naturphilosophie movement. Another problem has been the recognition that most of the early institutes and seminars (i.e., those
before about 1820) were not in fact research oriented but were instead largely propaedeutic in nature.[7] Moreover, a distinction needs to be made between the introduction of laboratory research for the professionalizing elite student, which occurred early, and laboratory work for all, including average students studying ancillary disciplines.[8] This latter pattern of the scientific teaching laboratory did not emerge until relatively late; the first models were only created in the 1830s. The pioneering field in this development was chemistry.
A useful way to begin to describe the way these events came about is to discuss briefly four of the leading protagonists in this sea change. In addition to some curious commonalities in their backgrounds, all had a decisive influence on the young Hermann Kolbe—who will be more formally introduced in the next chapter.
Jacob Berzelius
Berzelius (1779-1848)[9] was the sort and stepson of Lutheran country pastors, from whom he imbibed a dose of theism strongly moderated by late eighteenth-century rationalism and materialism. His education was fully in the spirit of the Gustavian Swedish Enlightenment and was much influenced by French ideas. During his years as a medical student at the University of Uppsala, he found himself "irrevocably gripped" by the love of chemical experimentation. Although to a certain extent an autodidact in chemistry, he learned the French antiphlogistic chemistry of Lavoisier and Fourcroy from his professors, in particular A. G. Ekeberg and Pehr Afzelius. He also consorted with liberal and progressive circles at the university. He graduated from Uppsala in 1804, at which time he became an adjunct (similar to Privatdozent) at the Stockholm School of Surgery—later the Karolinska Mediko-Kirurgiska Institutet—and a physician for the poor. In his meager spare time, he pursued an increasingly successful experimental research program. In January 1807 Berzelius was appointed professor at the school, and he remained in this position for the rest of his life. It was significant that Berzelius spent his career in a professional school, not a university; it required him to remain close to the practical and empirical level, consistent with his innate inclinations. In the 1820s Berzelius fought unsuccessfully for legal equivalence of the Karolinska Institutet with the Swedish universities and urged a more utilitarian and modernist university curriculum. He also fought the phosphorist school, a Swedish version of Naturphilosophie that was influential in the first quarter of the nineteenth century.[10]
Berzelius' first love was physiological chemistry, but he soon discovered stoichiometry and atomic theory. His utter brilliance as a bench
chemist, his theoretical talent, and his extraordinary capacity for work led to a variety of fundamental contributions in both of these areas by 1812, although most were published only in Swedish and so were little known outside of the country. In the summer of 1812 he spent four and a half months in England; in 1818-1819 he spent almost a year in Paris, also visiting Great Britain and Germany. Other trips followed. These foreign travels, and the consequent translations of his books and papers into the major European languages, effectively spread Berzelius' ideas, and by 1820 he was recognized internationally as one of the greatest of living chemists. It is largely to Berzelius (and mainly during these years) that we owe the successful elaboration of atomic theory, as well as the initial stages of development of experimental and theoretical organic chemistry from the base established by Scheele, Lavoisier, Fourcroy, and Gay-Lussac.[11]
Berzelius' reputation was even further enhanced during the 1820s. It was only after 1820 that reliable and full translations of his monumental textbook began to appear, which was first begun in Swedish in 1808. A new edition, edited from 1825 on by Friedrich Wöhler, appeared first in German, the Swedish version following along behind. This edition was the first by Berzelius to treat organic chemistry in detail; the two organic volumes can be viewed as the first full-length organic chemistry textbook in history. Moreover, Berzelius' new position as Secretary of the Swedish Academy of Sciences brought with it an obligation to write an annual report on the progress of chemistry in all subfields throughout the world. The first of these reports, for the calendar year 1820, was quickly translated into German, and a pattern was established that persisted until Berzelius' death. The size of these reports, usually known by their German name Jahresberichte , gradually increased until they were the size of substantial books. In the 1820s, Berzelius was at the top of his form and he knew it. His magisterial judgments of his colleagues' work in the reports were closely followed and highly respected. Berzelius had become the supreme judge and legislator in his science, the one man whose word mattered to all.
An additional factor promoting Berzelius' high standing in Germany was his practice of accepting selected applicants for advanced work in his laboratory. His second guest worker, and the first non-Scandinavian, was C. G. Gmelin in 1814-1815, who later became a professor at Tübingen. Closely following Berzelius' first visit to Germany came the young Eilhard Mitscherlich and the brothers Heinrich and Gustav Rose, all from Berlin and all in 1820-1821. Mitscherlich's visit resulted from the circumstance that Altenstein had offered Berzelius the chair of chemistry at the university, vacated by Klaproth's
death in 1816. Berzelius declined; at least six others were then offered or were considered for the chair, including Stromeyer and Leopold Gmelin. Asked his advice during his visit to Germany in 1819, Berzelius recommended Mitscherlich, whom he had only just befriended. Altenstein agreed, but with the proviso that Mitscherlich should first study with Berzelius in Stockholm. The Rose brothers' trips were also related to this connection, as well as to their friendship with Mitscherlich.
At most, Berzelius accommodated two or three guests in his laboratory, and he often had none at all. Systematic instruction was not given; rather, Berzelius allowed visitors to follow their own research ideas, simply giving advice whenever it was desired. In addition to the four Germans just mentioned, Wöhler came to Stockholm in 1823-1824 and Gustav Magnus, another Berliner, in 1827-1828. By 1830 Justus Liebig could be considered a disciple of Berzelius, even though he had not studied directly with the master; a few years later, Robert Bunsen joined the Berzelians, again in spirit if not in the flesh in Stockholm. German chemistry was thus strongly infused with Berzelian ideas in the 1820s and 1830s, through both direct and indirect channels.
By the late 1830s, however, Berzelius was in a theoretical retreat, most noticeably in the field of organic chemistry, largely because of the experiments and ideas of upstart French chemists such as J. B. Dumas, Auguste Laurent, and Charles Gerhardt. A sense that Berzelian chemistry was passé gradually took root in Germany as well, certainly well before Berzelius' death in 1848. Berzelius himself, who gave up most laboratory work by about 1835, grew increasingly inflexible and cantankerous. His opinions were always freely and openly expressed in his Jahresberichte , and they created much ill will among those whom he attacked—above all, the French chemists, but also his hitherto devoted admirer Liebig. His most loyal disciple and friend, however, was Wöhler.
Friedrich Wöhler
Wöhler (1800-1882)[12] was the son of a Hessian agronomist and veterinarian, and he grew up near Frankfurt. After attending the Gymnasium there, he entered Marburg University in 1821 with the intent of studying medicine. His passion from early childhood, however, had been chemical experimentation and mineral collecting, and Ferdinand Wurzer's lectures did not attract him. Accordingly, he transferred to Heidelberg to study with Leopold Gmelin. But Gmelin judged that Wöhler already knew too much chemistry to profit from his courses; he advised Wöhler to study with Berzelius after receiving his M.D. de-
gree. In the fall of 1823, upon receiving a favorable response to his inquiry from Stockholm, Wöhler took this step. It determined the course of his life.
Wöhler not only learned Berzelian techniques in his year in Stockholm, he also learned fluent Swedish and formed an extremely close friendship with the older Swede that lasted until Berzelius' death. Berzelius eventually urged the familiar form of address upon his student—for the time, an unusually strong mark of regard of an older for a younger man. Back in Germany, Wöhler sought habilitation at Heidelberg, but was instead hired for the new Berlin Gewerbeschule (trade school) at a salary of 400 thalers. Three years later, he had become a highly respected chemist and was earning 1200 thalers.[13] By this time he had also become Berzelius' viceroy in Germany by translating and editing the German editions of Berzelius' Jahresberichte and Lehrbuch —an average of about one and a half large volumes of text per year for over twenty years.
Late in 1831 Wöhler accepted for personal reasons a call to the newly founded Technische Hochschule (Institute of Technology) in Kassel at a diminished salary of 800 thalers plus free rent. There he continued the experimental work that he had begun so well in Berlin. Wöhler's work on cyano compounds, beryllium, yttrium, and aluminum had already brought him fame; his synthesis of urea in 1828 was particularly dramatic, in its implications both for organic synthesis and organic isomerism. Wöhler's models were the sober empiricist Gmelin and the incomparable Berzelius; he was a superb and enormously prolific experimental chemist. Disinclined toward philosophy or even chemical theory, Wöhler fit in well with the rationalist and practical traditions of the Berlin Gewerbeschule and Kasseler Technische Hochschule and, later, the University of Göttingen. He impressed everyone with his kind and unassuming character. In their correspondence, he and Berzelius often ridiculed the Naturphilosophen and the Hegelian philosophers.[14]
Wöhler first met Liebig in 1825, and the two young chemists always seemed to be stepping on each others' toes in their research during the middle to late 1820s. To avoid future problems, in 1829 they began to collaborate occasionally on topics of interest to both of them. By this time they were already close friends, and they maintained this friendship until Liebig's death in 1873. Wöhler learned from Liebig the newly improved method for elemental organic analysis one year after Liebig developed it in the fall of 1830.[15] When Wöhler suffered the death of his young wife in 1832, Liebig invited him to Giessen for companionship and for the distraction from grief that hard work could offer.[16] This was the period in which the two chemists completed their
work on the benzoyl series, an article that galvanized the chemical world and is usually regarded as the best single contribution of either Liebig or Wöhler.
In the spring of 1836, Wöhler transferred to Göttingen as Stromeyer's successor. Gmelin had declined the offer, and Wöhler, supported by Gmelin and Berzelius, was preferred over his close rival and friend Liebig. Liebig wrote Wöhler that he, like Gmelin, would have declined, but regretted that he did not get the offer to use to good effect with his administration.[17] Stromeyer had inherited from J. F. Gmelin a small but well-equipped teaching and research laboratory on the ground floor of an old but spacious dwelling; a director's residence was provided upstairs. Shortly after his arrival, Wöhler wrote Berzelius describing many details, quite pleased with his new environs.[18] He quickly became an ornament of the faculty and taught a phenomenal number of students during his forty-six year tenure there.
Since soon after his arrival in Göttingen Wöhler provided Kolbe with his first detailed introduction to chemistry, and since Wöhler's early teaching career has never been closely studied, a discussion of the latter is warranted. Every semester Wöhler taught general theoretical (inorganic) chemistry at 9:00 A.M. six days a week and a laboratory practicum every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday at 11:00 to 1:00. In the summer semester he also taught pharmacy Monday through Friday at 6:00 A.M. Advanced students were allowed to work all day every day in the lab. He used the laboratory left him by Stromeyer, although he reappointed it in "Berzelian" style during his first semester and refloored and repainted it two years later. It appears that Wöhler had reasonable demand for his lectures and practicum during his first two years, but precise numbers and names are not available.[19]
Whatever the initial numbers were, Wöhler's correspondence provides evidence for a noticeable increase in his enrollments beginning in summer semester 1838—coincidentally, the semester that Hermann Kolbe entered the university. Although exact information is sketchy here, too, we do know that he had twenty-eight students taking the practicum by the spring of 1840 and forty by the end of 1841, a remarkable level that continued to be maintained thereafter. After the influx started, it appears that Wöhler began to assign special projects to his most advanced students, investigations that might yield publishable results. There is no evidence that he ever did this in Berlin or Kassel, although it appears that he did have a practicum in Kassel.[20] The first Wöhler pupils whose names appear as authors of published papers were pharmacy students: August Stürenburg and Friedrich Weppen, who enrolled at Göttingen in May 1838, and Georg
Schnedermann, who came in the fall of 1839. Apparently all were from bourgeois Hanoverian families. Schnedermann worked with Wöhler for no less than six years, published a number of short papers, and became Wöhler's assistant in his last semester. The first Wöhler chemistry Ph.D. was earned by Friedrich Carl Voelckel, the son of a Bavarian merchant, who enrolled for summer semester 1839 and received his degree three years later. He later became professor of chemistry in Solothurn, Switzerland.[21]
In these early years, Wöhler's approach to publication of his student's work varied according to its significance and the student's precise role. He did not hesitate to use student results in his own papers, often without even naming the student, if the work was simply straightforward or mechanical assistance. If more skill or persistence had been needed, Wöhler was careful to acknowledge the assistance by name. Finally, there are a few examples in these years of Wöhler supervising what was essentially independent original research, and in such cases, the student published in his name alone.[22]
From 1838 until 1841, Wöhler appears to have had only a very small number of these select advanced students working on such projects at any given time—one, two, or three per semester. By summer semester 1841—again, ironically, the very semester Kolbe became an all-day Praktikant—a real research cohort of eight advanced workers emerged for the first time. In addition to Kolbe, Voelckel, Schnedermann, and Weppen, the group included the medical students Otto Griepenkerl and August Vogel and the philosophy students August Beringer and Wilhelm Knop.[23]
The pattern for the future was now set. Wöhler's increasing popularity and fame, and the rising profile of the chemistry profession itself, ensured that Wöhler would have substantial and rising enrollments ever after. Having inherited Stromeyer's assistant, H. A. Wiggers (later professor of pharmacology at Göttingen), Wöhler successfully petitioned for a second (Schnedermann), hired for the winter semester 1841/42, to help him with the now heavy numbers. That semester he had another increase, now past forty Praktikanten, more than the space could really accommodate. No fewer than fourteen of these men were doing advanced projects and working not just the scheduled four or eight hours per week but morning to evening in the lab. The number of these advanced Praktikanten, however, seems to have been rather variable, for in winter semester 1843/44 he had only three, while for each of the following two semesters the number jumped back up to twelve.[24]
Some additional information on Wöhler's students can be obtained from careful study of the Göttingen matriculation registry. During the
period before Kolbe left Göttingen (fall 1842), a total of twenty-one students can be identified who were known (or can safely be presumed) to have studied with Wöhler. Eight listed chemistry as their field of study; the third of these was Kolbe. Kolbe's preparation apparently was not as thorough—or his progress not as swift—as that of Voelckel or Schnedermann, who arrived slightly later but were earlier in publishing articles from the lab. Nonetheless, it is interesting to note that Wöhler's most famous student was also very nearly his first. The rest of these twenty-one Wöhler students from Kolbe's days in Göttingen are divided by discipline roughly equally among pharmacy, medicine, and philosophy.[25]
This cohort represents but a small fraction of the total number passing through Wöhler's lab during these years. The rest cannot be identified by name, but it is probable that they were mostly students of pharmacy or medicine. All told, the number of students who passed through his laboratory from his arrival in Göttingen until Kolbe left for Marburg six years later was probably between 100 and 200.
Early in the spring of 1842, ground was broken for a new laboratory extension in Hospitalstrasse, immediately adjacent to the old lab. Directed closely by Wöhler, construction of the "magnificent building" was completed by that fall; the two sections could now accommodate up to fifty workers.[26] (This building, since destroyed, sufficed until 1859-1860, when a completely new and much larger laboratory was constructed for the Chemical Institute.) Unfortunately, Kolbe could not personally enjoy the expanded facilities since he left Göttingen in the fall of 1842. He must have watched with interest, however, as the facility slowly rose and became fitted for chemical research, while working daily in the old lab that summer.
Justus Liebig
Liebig (1803-1873)[27] was the son of a wholesale materials supplier in Darmstadt. Like Wöhler and Berzelius, from an early age Liebig desperately wanted to be a chemist, and he was largely self-taught. In his autobiography, Liebig described his youthful passion for reading every chemistry book he could find and his utter devotion to reproducing every experiment possible in his father's makeshift laboratory—and moreover, to performing the same experiment many times until he had absolutely mastered it. He also got to know all the local artisans in tanning, dyeing, soapmaking, and metallurgy, and he thoroughly learned their empirical chemical arts. However, he was a poor pupil. When asked by his teacher what would become of him and he replied, "a chemist," both his classmates and the teacher exploded in laughter be-
cause, Liebig said, no one then considered chemistry as a possible career.[28]
An unsuccessful pharmaceutical apprenticeship in Heppenheim (1817-1818) was followed by enrollment at the Universities of Bonn and Erlangen (1820-1822). Liebig was attracted by the lectures of Schelling and Kastner, the former of whom was the leader of Naturphilosophie and the latter reputed to be one of the best chemists in Germany. In 1821 he purchased and read an early (partial) German edition of Berzelius' textbook. At this point, he followed Kastner's advice to study for a time in Paris, and through Kastner's connections he was granted a stipend from the Grand Duke of Hesse-Darmstadt that enabled him to do so.[29]
During his years in Paris (1822-1824) Liebig heard lectures by Arago, Dulong, Thenard, and Gay-Lussac, which had for him an "indescribable charm." Alexander von Humboldt, then residing in Paris, made the acquaintance of the young man and recommended him to Gay-Lussac, who took Liebig into his laboratory for collaborative research. The two men produced several important contributions—Liebig's first successful research. These events, as Liebig wrote in letters home and recollected in his memoirs of old age, came as revelations of a hitherto unknown world of true science. He was overwhelmed by the sophistication of the methods, the experimentalist commitment, and above all, the conscientious avoidance of unnecessary hypotheses. This was in marked contrast to the speculative approach of Schelling, L. Oken, G. H. Schubert, and other Naturphilosophen he had previously so admired in Germany. As Wöhler was forging a personal bond with Berzelius, Liebig was simultaneously becoming warm friends with Berzelius' principal French rival.[30]
While still at Erlangen, Liebig had hoped eventually to gain a chair at a German university and, as Kastner had suggested to him, to open a laboratory-based pharmaceutical-chemical institute similar to existing models (especially that of J. B. Trommsdorff at Erfurt).[31] This possibility was realized in the spring of 1824, when the Grand Duke (without consulting the faculty) offered Liebig an ausserordentlicher professorship at Hesse-Darmstadt's single (and tiny) university at Giessen. That fall, Liebig began his teaching career with twelve eager listeners and two Praktikanten in the university's improvised chemical laboratory, newly established in the guardroom of an abandoned army barracks at the edge of town. It appears that he shared this space, none too amicably, with the ordentlicher professor of chemistry, Ludwig Wilhelm Zimmermann (1782-1825). The following summer semester both men advertised chemistry courses, but only Liebig got customers. Despondent, Zimmermann committed suicide in the Lahn
River, and Liebig ascended to the rank of Ordinarius at the amazing age of twenty-two. He also was given a raise to the extremely poor annual salary of only 800 florins (equivalent to around $300 U.S. at the time) .[32]
In the summer of 1826, Liebig, in conjunction with two colleagues, achieved his goal of opening a pharmaceutical-chemical institute. Since the university refused financial support for such a narrow professionalist endeavor, it was initially run as a private venture. They were allowed to use the university's chemical laboratory, however. Although the proprietors rated the institute's capacity as twenty to thirty students, it appears that in its first decade, usually only about ten worked there at any one time. Recent work suggests that the institute was initially successful in its advertised function of pharmaceutical training but not in its ultimate function of advanced chemical education and research.[33] However, from winter semester 1826/27 on, Liebig insisted that all students in his chemical institute spend an entire semester working all day every day in the laboratory. Hence, his later claim that his pedagogical philosophy that later became so famous originated at the beginning of his Giessen years may well be accurate, in spirit if not in detail.[34]
During the fall of 1830, Liebig invented an apparatus for elemental analysis that was to revolutionize organic chemistry—his Kaliapparat , or potash-bulb apparatus. Berzelius' third trip to Germany took place just at this time, and he was able to spend a few days with Liebig. Until this time, Berzelius had regarded Liebig as having been infected with the "geschwind aber schlecht" (fast but sloppy) methods of the French. Berzelius now changed his mind, and for the next decade, he and Liebig formed an extremely close bond.[35] Liebig became an ardent Berzelian, but without yielding in his regard for Gay-Lussac. His friendships with Wöhler as well as Berzelius marked the time during which Liebig's loyalties were consolidated in the emerging German experimentalist school, of which he, Wöhler, and (slightly later) Bunsen were the most prominent members and of which Berzelius was the honorary dean. All of these men (with the possible exception of Bunsen) began to regard French chemistry of the new generation led by Dumas as sloppy, superficial, and self-aggrandizing.
By the early 1830s, Liebig had lost patience with his penurious administration, and he complained bitterly and tenaciously about the lack of financial and material resources in Giessen. Serious real and imagined illnesses added to the strain. Liebig's peremptory complaints, and even more so, his growing fame, made the administrators listen. In 1835 Liebig's laboratory institute was finally brought under the official aegis of the university, and funds were approved to renovate and ex-
pand it. Soon thereafter, Liebig himself received a substantial raise in salary, the laboratory was given a proper annual budget, and a new lecture hall was built. In 1838 the number of laboratory workers rose significantly—it reached twenty for the first time—and the composition of the practicum students shifted suddenly from nearly exclusively pharmacy to a mixture of pharmacy and chemistry majors. Within a few years they were nearly all chemists. Simultaneously, the lab began to attract foreign students. Liebig later suggested that the idea of practical chemical instruction "was at that time in the air," which constituted his explanation for the sudden popularity of his lab in the late 1830s.[36]
Liebig's first students of note were Friedrich Knapp, who came to Giessen in 1835, and Heinrich Will and Hermann Fehling, who arrived in 1837. All three had successful academic careers in chemistry, Will becoming Liebig's successor. Up until then, only a handful of Ph.D. chemists had emerged from Liebig's laboratory; from this time on, large numbers of promising students were to come. This divide is also marked by a change in the sort of research projects that Liebig assigned. For years, Liebig had been using students to carry out analyses or isolated fragments of research in a similar way to what Wöhler did from about 1838. But for the first time in the late 1830s, we see Liebig organizing projects for multiple workers that were well articulated and coordinated around a single problem area of interest to Liebig. F. L. Holmes has plausibly suggested that this shift may have been related to a change in Liebig's own research orientation. From about 1836 Liebig became intensely involved in a variety of writing and editing projects, and in 1840 he gave up theoretical organic research entirely. As he began to find it difficult to maintain his personal research agenda, he began to trust that agenda more to his students.[37]
He had more and more students to whom to turn. In 1839 Liebig's lab was again expanded and further renovated—the architect was J. P. Hofmann, whose son August Wilhelm entered Liebig's lab that same year—and his salary and budget were again increased. The renovation must have had something to do with a remarkable further increase in the quantity and quality of his students, traceable to that year. In addition to Hofmann, Hermann Kopp (already a Ph.D.) as well as Franz Varrentrapp, Lyon Playfair, and John Stenhouse all entered Liebig's lab that year, and Adolf Strecker came the next year. All became prominent academic chemists of the new generation. By 1841 Liebig had fifty workers, and in 1843 there were sixty-eight.[38] In the latter year, a new branch laboratory for beginners was constructed to handle the crowds, which was physically separate from the old one, and it was placed under Will's directorship.[39]
The great watershed in student demand for Liebig's lab was approximately simultaneous with that for the lab of his close friend Wöhler. The widespread assumption that Liebig must have enjoyed high popularity from the start appears not to survive careful scrutiny, for the transition to the pattern that became so famous, as we have seen, does not much predate 1840.[40]
Robert Bunsen
Bunsen (1811-1899)[41] was the son of a professor of modern languages at the University of Göttingen. He studied the sciences there, completing his Ph.D. under Stromeyer in 1831. From the beginning of 1832 to the fall of 1833, he traveled on a government grant in Germany, France, and Austria, seeking especially to investigate practical, technical, and geological subjects. A nine-month residence in Paris enabled him to learn from Gay-Lussac, Dumas, Chevreul, Pelouze, Regnault, and others, and he had the good fortune to spend a month in Giessen just when Wöhler and Liebig were collaborating on their benzoyl work. He also visited Mitscherlich and the Rose brothers in Berlin. On his return home, he habilitated at Göttingen, teaching technical chemistry and stoichiometry. Upon Stromeyer's death (18 August 1835) he took over the general lectures and the laboratory practicum. In the spring of 1836, he was appointed Wöhler's successor at the Kassel Technische Hochschule at the reduced salary of 650 thalers.[42]
Even before his transfer to Kassel, Bunsen had begun to establish an enviable research reputation. His papers merited favorable mention in Berzelius' Jahresberichte from 1835 on, and that fall he had the pleasure of accompanying Berzelius on a journey from Kassel to Göttingen.[43] From the late 1830s Berzelius began to extol Bunsen's work in the highest terms, both for its technical virtuosity and for its relevance to Berzelius' theoretical positions.[44] Bunsen later described Berzelius as "my truest friend and counselor."[45] To the extent that he had any theoretical commitment it was thoroughly Berzelian, maintaining the Swede's notational and formula styles to at least the 1880s, long after all others had abandoned it.[46]
In Kassel, Bunsen Continued' to teach students in the small and primitive laboratory inherited from Wöhler and began what were to become world-famous researches into eudiometry and the cacodyl radical. His growing eminence led to his call in 1839 to the University of Marburg, initially as Extraordinarius (at 650 thalers) but raised to the Ordinarius rank (800 thalers) two years later. His predecessor, Ferdinand Wurzer, had since 1811 been teaching selected students in his laboratory, but had done so according to the older pedagogical pat-
tern, namely, on a small scale and on the basis of personal patronage. Wöhler, who spent a semester studying with Wurzer before transferring to Heidelberg, had found him intolerably old-fashioned.[47]
By contrast, in the spring of 1840 Bunsen initiated a chemical practicum in the consciously "modern" (Liebig-Wöhler) style, namely, in the words of Christoph Meinel, a "planned, didactically self-contained, and consistently structured unit of instruction." Moreover, the practicum was publicly advertised in the university course list, and the professor took a standardized fee for it.[48] The course was advertised as eight hours a week during precisely the same hours as Wöhler's practicum at Göttingen, but well-motivated students had no trouble persuading Bunsen to allow them to work all day every day. Bunsen was also careful to remit all fees for students who could not afford them—or even for those students who were exceptionally well motivated, regardless of their means.[49] In 1852 he was called to Heidelberg as Leopold Gmelin's successor, and there he formed the nucleus of what was the liveliest academic chemical community—though not a "school" in the usual sense—in all of Germany until the 1860s.
Bunsen was a man of uncommon benevolence, kindness, and humor, universally admired by his peers and revered by his students. He had a straightforward practical and empirical orientation, was sensitive to technological implications of his work (without, on a point of principle, ever taking out a patent), and was uninterested in theory to a degree bordering on outright hostility. There is probably no great chemist in history who was more averse to hypotheses and theoretical structures of all kinds, nor one more skilled in laboratory operations. After his great cacodyl investigation, which ended in 1841, he never returned to organic chemistry; later in Heidelberg, he totally excluded this field from his activities. His students and biographers have plausibly suggested that his aversion to organic chemistry was directly related to his aversion to theory, for it was just at the time of his one and only sizable organic-chemical project that organic chemistry became and remained intensely theoretical—and correspondingly, intensely disputatious, a quality that was also anathema to the gentle Bunsen.[50]
Another significant gap in Bunsen's career appears to have been directly related to his theoretical aversion: he never founded a school, despite his eminence and despite teaching a phenomenal number of students over no less than sixty-five years. Indeed, testimony from many sources agrees that he lavished his greatest attention on beginners and that once the tyro began to show initiative and independence, Bunsen lost interest in further guiding him. In Heidelberg, Privatdozenten were not directed or counseled by Bunsen, nor were they even allowed to work in his university facility. Instead, they were
forced to cobble together improvised labs in their lodgings or in specially rented spaces. This was due less to lack of consideration by Bunsen than to his adamant refusal to create a coherent chemical school. It was enough for him to continue to induct new members into the fraternity of academic chemists and to pursue his own always fruitful research agenda in physical, inorganic, analytical, and geological chemistry.[51]
The New Culture of Science in Germany
Liebig, Wöhler, and Bunsen, and behind them the guiding spirit of Berzelius, constituted the chief representatives of the founding generation of post-Napoleonic German academic chemistry, a field that grew explosively and attained world preeminence by the second half of the century. Among them, they created during the Vormärz new models of chemical research, as well as pedagogical reforms that were much emulated in the second half of the century, not only in Germany but elsewhere as well. But these models were not created in a vacuum. Some context and biographical detail has already been established here. Several questions now need to be addressed. What specific predecessor institutions and patterns did our founders have in mind in pursuing their innovations? What clienteles were they attempting to serve, in what fashion and for what purposes? And what wider cultural and psychological models were influential for them during this period?
With regard to the first of these questions, it should be clear by now that our founders were not the first to develop laboratory-based instruction in German universities.[52] Breslau established a chemical institute in 1811, which was led after 1815 by N. W. Fischer. It seems that Döbereiner had a practicum at Jena after 1810; enrollment figures are not known, but twenty are reported in 1828. Even earlier, a practicum had been established at Göttingen by J. F. Gmelin, which was continued by his successor Stromeyer. Stromeyer is a particularly interesting figure since it appears that his practicum was the first to be advertised in a university course list. His subject was inorganic quantitative analysis, and his clientele mostly medical students; among his students were Wöhler's teacher Leopold Gmelin, as well as Mitscherlich and Bunsen.[53] A few other examples of early chemical practica exist. All of these were, however, small affairs, rarely sanctioned or supported by university authorities and usually available only on the basis of personal patronage of the laboratory's director. Apparatus and chemical stocks were as a rule the personal property of the director. The principal institutionalized purposes of academic laboratories dur-
ing this period were for the personal research of the professor and for the preparation of lecture demonstrations.
Early nineteenth-century academic laboratories in other countries followed the same pattern. The situation in France has been examined for the cases of Gay-Lussac and Dumas. There the situation was slowest to change among the principal European countries because of the degree of centralization of academic culture in Paris and a certain insularity that took hold.[54] Insularity was even more evident in Britain early in the century, though British academic institutions were gradually transformed by the influence of Liebig and other German chemists after about 1840.[55]
The University of Berlin exemplifies the difficulties that German academic chemists experienced in mounting successful experimental institutes. One recent study of the ideological battles over institution building in the early Vormärz depicts the situation in Prussia as characterized by a conflict between disciples of Schelling and Kant.[56] Humboldt, the architect of the university in 1809-1810, was inclined toward speculative idealist philosophy and the intellectual intuition of Schelling; as Liebig so luridly portrayed a generation later, Naturphilosophie had not yet spent its popular force. But already in 1810, Humboldt was succeeded by Friedrich Schuckmann, and after 1817, the ministry of culture was directed for more than two decades by Altenstein.
Schuckmann and Altenstein were much more favorably influenced by the empirical attitude of Kant and the latter's emphasis on sense intuition. Many of the German experimental scientists of the nineteenth century were enrolled under a Kantian banner. Kantian physical scientists hired early for Berlin include Klaproth, E. G. Fischer, Christian Weiss, and Paul Erman, and H. F. Link arrived in 1815. Altenstein sought to acquire the sober experimentalist Berzelius as the successor to Klaproth; when that failed, he hired Link's student Mitscherlich and the brothers Rose. In the following few years, he brought in J. C. Poggendorff, Heinrich Dove, and Gustav Magnus. The same pattern transpired at other universities: C. G. Bischof at Bonn, N. W. Fischer at Breslau, L. W. Gilbert at Halle, and Kastner at Halle, Bonn, and Erlangen were all self-professed Kantians or clearly influenced by his ideas. German physicists during this period and later were even more oriented toward Kant.[57]
Despite the experimentalist stamp of nearly all of Altenstein's acquisitions, however, laboratory instruction was virtually unavailable to Berlin students. Mitscherlich had a laboratory not at the university but at the Prussian Academy of Sciences, where he was a member. Following the example of Stromeyer, Heinrich Rose began a practicum in his first semester of teaching in the fall of 1822. This was at first in Mit-
scherlich's lab, then in his own residence, for the university refused to pay expenses or provide a space. Magnus was also forced to set up a "university" lab in his lodgings, but fortunately, he came from a wealthy family and could afford to provide proper equipment and supplies. None of these men had more than a small handful of students at any one time, even as late as the 1840s and 1850s. Mitscherlich, Magnus, and Rose all complained to the university administration without effect about the lack of support. However, as late as 1841 all three men also asserted a preference for the use of academic laboratories only for personal research, a few advanced students, and lecture demonstrations—not for general education. The first large-scale university-supported laboratory institute at Berlin came only upon A. W. Hofmann's arrival in 1865.[58]
Representatives of other sciences were also having trouble in initiating and maintaining healthy laboratory-based practica in German academia. In physics, for instance, Wilhelm Weber introduced practical exercises in his lab at Göttingen as early as winter semester 1833/34, and Franz Neumann established his mathematical—physical seminar at Königsberg the following year. In addition, Magnus is often cited as having established an early physics practicum at Berlin in 1843. However, these cannot be compared to the Liebig-Wöhler style of chemical laboratories. Lacking the argument of importance for technology, medicine, and pharmacy and lacking the student clienteles that chemistry could lay claim to, these physics practica remained small and undernourished. Participants were mostly prospective Gymnasium teachers of mathematics and physics, a clientele whose numbers were very limited due to the relatively small amount of science taught in the German Gymnasien of the Vormärz.[59] The field of physiology has also been examined for signs of early laboratory-based education. Johannes Müller at Berlin and Jan Purkyne at Breslau in the 1830s, and Jakob Henle at Heidelberg in the 1840s are candidates for early innovators in this respect.[60] It is curious that these developments happened simultaneously with those in the field of chemistry.
The crucial change in both chemistry and physiology was from the older private-research cum student patronage-research cum lecture-demonstration model of academic labs, which extends well back into the eighteenth century, into the modern mass-education cure mass-research model. What made all the difference was student demand, with the symptom of the crucial change being the induction of large numbers of students into the practica. Once the numbers became available, entrepreneurial professors could then extort conditions from their administrations for support of their institutes and make use of the students in implementing their research programs. From here on, the
intense competitiveness of German academia could provide the engine of change throughout the rest of the century.
Partial answers to the question of where the clientele for chemistry was located are beginning to appear. A revealing study of 105 European universities and technical schools (65 of them from German-speaking countries) has established the overall shifts that took place in chemical professorships during the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth centuries.[61] University chemistry posts before about 1790 were almost entirely confined to medical faculties. Significant growth in the number of academic chemists had occurred during the eighteenth century, at first ensconced in positions that embraced several fields and were filled by physicians, but culminating in the second half of the century in a trend toward dedicated chemistry professorships in the medical schools. Between 1790 and 1845, the total number of university chemistry posts remained approximately constant (at around sixty in these 105 universities), but a trend began toward moving these professorships from the medical to the philosophical faculties. By 1845 the majority of academic chemists were teaching the subject as an independent science, not as a purely ancillary medical art.
The circumstance that two of our founders, Berzelius and Wöhler, were educated as physicians and taught in medical school faculties is emblematic of the medical orientation of academic chemistry. Döbereiner (at Jena), Klaproth (at Berlin), Kastner (at Erlangen), and Zimmermann and Liebig (at Giessen) were early examples of chemists in German philosophical faculties; Bunsen was moved from the Marburg medical to the philosophical faculty upon his promotion to Ordinarius in 1841. This was the position to which Kolbe succeeded. The image of chemistry as a practical and empirical art rather than a true science such as physics provided the resistance against movement into the philosophical faculty. This resistance was gradually overcome as evidence of the maturation of chemical science percolated into the consciousness of university administrators, faculty colleagues, and students. Clearly, though, even at mid-century and even in modernist chemistry curricula in philosophical faculties, a substantial student contingent group came from medicine.
Pharmacy, however, was a rival to medicine as a source of chemistry students, and it formed the locus of the critical transition period during the early nineteenth century.[62] Since the late eighteenth century, pharmacists in Germany had been trying to raise professional standards, above all by transforming pharmaceutical training from craft apprenticeship to academic education. Because prospective pharmacists were largely excluded from the universities by the fact that few attended Gymnasium and hence did not possess the necessary Abitur
certificate, there arose several chemical boarding schools that emphasized laboratory practica. These were led by such chemists as J. C. Wiegleb, S. F. Hermbstaedt, J. F. A. Göttling, C. T. Göbel, and especially J. B. Trommsdorff. Many of these proprietors were well-known university professors. The best of these schools offered well-rounded scientific instruction and attracted clientele that included budding chemical technologists and civil servants as well as pharmacists.
But an alternative route around the difficulty was simultaneously being created. The philosophical faculties in German universities accepted students without the Abitur since these faculties had traditionally served as preparatory education for the "professional" faculties. This was true even after their status was raised and their propaedeutic function dropped in the wake of the neohumanist reforms. As chemistry moved increasingly into the philosophical faculties, a new and fruitful source of student clientele became available in the form of pharmacy students without Abiturs. As German academic chemists discovered this rich vein, the Trommsdorff-style schools lost business and were forced to close. An obvious conflict existed at the neohumanist universities between what looked like narrow and practical professional training in the new institutes and the widely accepted Romantic convictions regarding the pure and elevated character of university education, but the chasm could be bridged by appropriate argumentation.
There is evidence that at least some chemists deliberately pursued this strategy.[63] Liebig founded his laboratory school self-consciously on Trommsdorff's model, but aggressively defended his pedagogy with Humboldtian neohumanist rhetoric. Although for many years most of his (and Wöhler's) students were in pharmacy or medicine, the purpose of his all-day practica, he argued, was not to show students how to boil soap or to compound drugs but rather to educate the mind and teach the student how to think. Chemistry was a true science, independent of other sciences but complementary to them—including such humanist sciences as philology and history. At least in his rhetoric (which as we will see is an important qualification), Liebig was contemptuous of the eighteenth-century emphasis on utility and application. The way to learn any discipline, he argued, was to concentrate first on the study of pure knowledge and theory, but always in conjunction with laboratory manipulations. Indeed, applications would emerge fastest and first under the hands of those who could think clearly and could logically develop their pure understanding, leaving those who learned their craft merely by rote far behind.
It may seem that Liebig was trying to have it both ways—appealing to pure theory and neohumanist Bildung while at the same time
pushing intense laboratory practice for large numbers of students as well as the ultimate utilitarian value of his pedagogical philosophy. This ambivalence can be understood by looking at some more distant models that may have helped guide the predilections and psychology of Liebig and our other founders. The first point to be noted is that these men were autodidacts to a striking degree. A rather sharp generational change occurred in Germany that resulted especially from the French wars, and it would not be surprising to see new and foreign elements of thought in the first Vormärz generation, nor would perfect self-consistency be expected.
Indeed, one factor that has been too little emphasized is the curious prevalence of French and specifically French Enlightenment ideas in this group of German "Romantic" scientists: namely, an ardent empiricist commitment coupled with a marked orientation toward practical or technological utility. These ideas flourished even in the face of the strong currents of nativist Francophobia, neohumanism, and speculative and idealist philosophies prevalent in Germany at this time. Berzelius was educated in the 1780s and 1790s under the spell of French Enlightenment ideas suffusing Gustavian-age Sweden. He maintained a lifelong commitment to physiological chemistry and to practical and empirical medicine due to his convictions of utility, he taught his entire career at a professional medical school rather than a university, and he tenaciously fought the neohumanists, Naturphilosophen, and other idealist philosophers of the Schelling-Hegel school.[64]
The situation was similar with Liebig and Wöhler, and not just because of Berzelius' influence. Both were raised in technically oriented families, and as students, neither man found in Germany the experimentalist style of science he was seeking: Wöhler traveled to Sweden, and Liebig to Paris, where each discovered a new world of precision and empiricism. As we have seen, Liebig's proximate goal was to become a professor neither in the older nor in the modern (neohumanist) mold, but rather to found a professional laboratory school for pharmaceutical chemists. After a decade and a half of what felt to him like mucking around in theoretical organic chemical matters, in 1840 Liebig threw it all aside and for the rest of his life devoted himself to practical and technological applications in agriculture, physiology, and medicine. To the end of his life, what especially troubled him about the modern "structural" chemistry was its distance from practical (physiological) application.[65]
Wöhler's first position was at the Berlin Trade School, his second at the Kassel Technische Hochschule. Only at the age of thirty-six did he go to a university, and even then it was to Göttingen, which was the most prominent representative of the Aufklärung in Germany, little
touched by idealist or romantic modes of thought. He maintained his personal and institutional ties to medicine and pharmacy all his life.
Bunsen's early environment was also Göttingen, and as a professor's son, he must have gotten a strong dose of the university's rationalist flavor. His teacher Stromeyer was educated partly at the École Polytechnique under Vauquelin. Similarly, Bunsen's Wanderjahr was spent largely in Paris; it also included a stay with Liebig and Wöhler. The strongest influence on his scientific development, however, may well have been Berzelius, even if indirectly. After serving as Privatdozent at Göttingen, he went, as Wöhler had, to the Kassel Technische Hochschule; only in 1839 did he become professor at Marburg. He had the most pronounced technological orientation of any of our founders. In 1841 he invented a battery that proved revolutionary both for practical applications and for pure science, and in 1855 he developed his eponymous laboratory gas burner. The major advance in eudiometry connected with his name also had great practical significance.
We have summarized the origins of systematic chemical laboratory-based instruction at the German universities at the hands of Liebig in particular, but also Wöhler and Bunsen slightly later. It was Liebig's model to which most people looked and many emulated, especially after 1850. To be sure, Coleman has suggested that the physiologist Purkyne was a principal innovator in Germany, and he has argued for the relevance of the empiricist Enlightenment pedagogue Pestalozzi, which would suggest parallel development in physiology from similar factors. And yet, Coleman himself noted that one essential element is absent from Purkyne's early activities, and that is the number and type of students in the laboratory. It seems that except for Stromeyer's relatively uninfluential and smaller-scale efforts, Liebig really was the first to offer systematic lab instruction to large numbers of students, many of whom were of only average abilities or were studying ancillary disciplines.[66] The model also carried over into physics, but as we have seen, those developments came significantly later.
It is Coleman who has most clearly indicated, if not investigated in detail, what he calls "a veritable culture of science" in early nineteenth-century Germany—an outgrowth of Enlightenment ideas that was in some essential respects at odds with the dominant romantic culture.[67] If neohumanism represented a break with the past in Germany, this scientific culture represents a more cosmopolitan element of continuity, an influence that looks toward rather than away from France. For Ernst Bischoff, a professor of medicine at Bonn and a representative of the older patterns, Liebig and his style of research and mass teaching of students in the laboratory represented a modern
academic cancer, which he (correctly) saw as "an imported French evil."[68]
The pedagogical orientation does have a definite French feel to it. We have stressed the predominance of professional and trade schools rather than universities in the backgrounds of our founding generation. Many of these institutions were patterned directly or indirectly on French models, especially the École Polytechnique (where Liebig himself studied), although eighteenth-century German predecessor institutions existed as well.[69] By contrast, the universities and their administrators, under the thrall of anti-utilitarian neohumanism, tended to view laboratories as connected with the materialistic world of commerce and technology, alien to their sacred refuge of Wissenschaft. This seems to have worked especially effectively at Berlin, the fount of neohumanist reform, to delay the introduction of routine laboratory instruction. Gradually this negative perception faded, and after 1848 it was replaced by positive promotion of laboratory sciences in the universities of most of the German states. This new movement was based partly on the conviction in the state ministries that experimental science could provide a means for promoting industrialization, economic modernization, and social stability.[70]
Overall, the commonalities in the interests and careers of our founders explored in the past few pages provide exemplification and further support for Coleman's point and for the claims made by other recent scholars regarding a certain disjunction between neohumanism and the development of science at the German universities. Yet it would be foolish to deny that these men were also an intimate part of their culture and shared many nativist, romantic, and neohumanist values. One area in which this can be seen is the sometimes diffuse tradition of nineteenth-century Kantianism, to which I have already referred.
Elsewhere I have argued for a distinct, though perhaps indirect, influence of Kantian philosophy on Berzelius.[71] I know of no evidence of the direct influence of Kant on Bunsen. However, Debus, noting inter alia Bunsen's orientation toward empiricism and precision, speculated that although Bunsen may never have studied Kant's works, he always acted and thought in a Kantian spirit.[72] There are some suggestive connections between Kant and Liebig, who was, after all, a student of the Kantian Kastner. I have noted his passionate experimentation even as a boy. In his autobiography, he argued that this activity produced in him a characteristic that is found particularly in successful chemists: the ability to "think in phenomena." This talent, he said, can only be developed by constant exercise of the senses, and it increased in him to the point of becoming a photographic visual memory of compounds
and reactions.[73] Debus remarked that this "concrete" manner of thinking as described by Liebig and exemplified by Bunsen is sharply opposed to a more abstract mathematical style and precisely illustrates Kantian sense intuition.[74]
That Liebig thought this talent was vital to his great success is indicated by the fact that he spent the first several pages of his autobiography describing it. Those scientists that lack such an ability, he thought, do not reach or maintain their potential. Soon before Berzelius' death, he expressed to Wöhler the opinion that as great as Berzelius was, he was too wedded to mere data, that he never mastered the vital art of "creation through thoughts,"[75] which is another way of saying the same thing. But Liebig was underestimating Berzelius. In a letter to Wöhler, Berzelius explained that he could "sense" incorrect theories even without being able to propose a better alternative, the same way a musician can sense delicate differences of intonations.[76]
Wöhler stated something similar, in his characteristic self-deprecating way:
My imagination is fairly active, but I am somewhat slow in my thinking. No one is less oriented to be a critic than I. The organ for philosophical thought is entirely missing in me, as you know so well, just as that for mathematics. Only for observation do I imagine that I have a passable facility in my brain, which may be connected with a sort of instinct to be able to predict empirical relationships.[77]
Such a predilection for the anschaulich and the intuitive found in Liebig, Bunsen, Berzelius, and Wöhler is strongly reminiscent of Kantian sense intuition. This tendency is also (at least rhetorically) discernible in Kolbe, who constantly stressed his mission to teach students to "think like a chemist," by which he meant in concrete phenomenal terms and not abstractly. Kenneth Caneva has explored the differences between what he calls "concretizing" and "abstracting" scientific styles among physicists, the former characteristic especially of early nineteenth-century Kantians and the latter prevalent among mid- and late-century mathematical physicists.[78]
To put the matter perhaps a bit too bluntly, Liebig's balancing act between neohumanist Bildung and utilitarian laboratory practice can be understood as a combination of German idealist and French empiricist philosophies. The new German culture of science that took root in the Vormärz had imported French roots, but also a strong nativist element as well. In the process of assimilating these ideas to their own agendas, Liebig and others had created a novel pedagogy with a great future.