Thomas Albert Howard. Protestant Theology and the Making of the Modern German University. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. 496 S. $135.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-19-926685-2.
Reviewed by Anthony J. Steinhoff (Department of History, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga)
Published on H-German (March, 2007)
Re-Enchanting the Idea of the Modern University
Lord Acton's famous dictum on the nature of power--that it tends to corrupt and that absolute power corrupts absolutely--is suggestive of the impact that secularization theory had on western scholarship during the second half of the twentieth century. Initially, the concept promised much. It seemed to describe the relationship between religion and (western) modernity in ways that fit the data and matched scholars' personal experiences and observations. This concept also helped justify new research fields and methodologies, such as social and quantitative history. Yet, the greater the degree of hegemonic status the secularization thesis achieved, the more it corrupted how scholars perceived and explored the past. Not only did individuals increasingly frame their analyses in terms of a narrow pre-modern/modern dichotomy, but they used this opposition to discourage inquiries into certain fields--religion, above all--on the grounds that they were not important for understanding the modern condition.
Beginning in the late 1970s and early 1980s, growing doubts about the premises and explanations of the secularization thesis encouraged scholars to devote new attention to religion as a factor in modern history. Academics explored anew the evolution of religious life and church organization and they began to take religion seriously as a factor in their analyses of state formation, the construction of gender, and even modern understandings of madness. The growing body of revisionist scholarship has yet to deal a knock-out blow to the secularization thesis; nevertheless, these scholars have made clear that, deep into the twentieth century, religion played an important part in the shaping of modern European political, social, and cultural life. Religious institutions and practices underwent a certain modernization, while the actions of faith communities in the public sphere promoted, inter alia, the development of new, modern forms of social and political organization.
Thomas Albert Howard's latest book is very much part of this revisionist movement. He views this study as an effort to bring together the history of the modern research university and the history of modern academic theology--narratives that, in fact, share a common starting point with the early nineteenth-century German university. Indeed, by century's end the German academy was regarded not only as the epitome of the modern university, but also as the birthplace and foremost producer of modern Protestant theological scholarship. That the German university could be seen as the citadel of scientific learning, Wissenschaft, and theology, Howard contends, was hardly accidental. Early on, Protestant theologians embraced the modern research imperative, to the point they considered a solid scholarly training to be the essential foundation for practical preparation to the ministry. Moreover, thanks to the contributions of men like Friedrich Schleiermacher and Adolf von Harnack, theologians exerted considerable influence over the German university's very organization and public image.
Contending that scholars have not devoted sufficient attention to the modern university's medieval and early modern roots, Howard launches his study, in chapter 2, with a lengthy discussion of European university history and the emergence of a distinctly Protestant approach to theology. His account culminates where most studies of the rise of the modern university commence: with the eighteenth-century foundation of Halle and Göttingen as "reform universities" and the rising criticism of theology's institutional privileges, as evidenced by Kant's 1789 treatise, The Conflict of the Faculties. Chapter 3 focuses on the creation of the University of Berlin. In this context, Howard stresses the decision to include a faculty of theology in the new academy, a decision that reflected not so much tradition as the idealization of the Prussian state as a Kulturstaat. In keeping with the state's new, positive role as a promoter of religion and morality among the people, it needed to provide for the proper training of its ministers of religion. Thus, at the same time that the Prussian state asserted greater control over the Protestant church, what Howard later calls "Erastian modernity" (p. 213), it required these ministers to be prepared in the new state universities. Lastly, Howard highlights Schleiermacher's influential voice in shaping the new university and establishing the theological faculty's reputation as a site of scientific, supra-confessional scholarship.
Chapter 4 is devoted to the development of two main pillars of the Prussian Kulturstaat: the Protestant state church (Landeskirche) and the Prussian university system, especially under the leadership of Karl von Altenstein, Prussian Kultusminister from 1817-38. In the first section, Howard rightly notes that the state's enhanced ecclesiastical powers, both over the form (jus circa sacra, as seen in the unification by fiat of the Lutheran and Calvinist churches in 1817) and content (jus in sacra , as in the imposition of a new common liturgy in the 1820s) of church life, stemmed from the emergence of a new state idea during the Prussian Reform Era. But, fascinating as this discussion is, Howard neglects to integrate it clearly into the larger argument. Much more successful is his analysis of Altenstein's university policies. The minister strove to make the university the preeminent seat of scientific inquiry, as evidenced by the creation of research seminars, special treatment for "star" professors, regular budget increases to hire additional faculty and open new institutions. He also endeavored to hold theologians to the same standards as the philosophical and scientific faculties. To this end, Altenstein lobbied constantly to select theology professors for their scholarship and academic promise, rather than their piety, a battle he normally won.
The book's final substantive chapter (chapter 5) looks broadly at the changing place of academic theology in the modern German university. It is organized into five sections. Howard begins by pointing out several major trends in nineteenth-century German higher education, most notably the state's formal endorsement of academic freedom after 1848, which tended to protect theologians from conservative church authorities, and the steady rise of enrollments in the non-theological faculties, especially philosophy, which raised new questions about theology's right to an independent existence. He then examines theological education itself, noting how it came to be organized in four major areas: exegetical, historical, systematic, and practical theology, due to the influence of prominent textbook ("theological encyclopedia") writers like Karl Rudolf Hagenbach.
The third and fourth sections survey how religion and academic theology figured in public perceptions of the university. Howard calls attention first to theology's presence in institutional histories, commemorative events, and the university's presentation of itself at international exhibitions. Although he emphasizes that theology remained important to the university's identity--for example, the 1860 commemoration of Berlin's founding opened with a festive worship service and the two-volume book on the German universities prepared for the 1893 Columbian Exhibition contained sizable essays on both the Protestant and Catholic theological faculties--his remarks also indicate that serious doubts were emerging about this relationship. The four-volume set on German education produced for the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair devoted only sixteen pages to Protestant theology. He also looks at foreign reactions to the German university, examining the comments of French, British, and American academics and theologians, and observes that, even if they had reservations about its scientific orientation, outside observers were quick to appreciate German Protestant theology's debts to its university setting. This chapter concludes with an account of the faculty's fin-de-siècle crisis, occasioned on the one hand by intellectuals like Paul de Lagarde and Franz Overbeck, who wanted to remove theology from the university because they saw religion as irreconcilably opposed to modern science, and on the other hand by advocates of comparative religion and the history of religion, who contested the scientific value of limiting the academic study of religion to Christianity alone. That the theological faculties withstood these challenges, Howard maintains, owed much to the actions of Adolf von Harnack, the most prominent university figure of the early twentieth century. In 1901, and again in 1919, the liberal theologian defended the theological faculty's raison d'être, inasmuch as it alone had the vital task of providing scientific knowledge of history's "most important event"--the rise of Christianity (p. 399)--in German society.
There is much to admire in this volume. Howard has mastered an impressive body of scholarship and presents his ideas in a clear, accessible prose style. He also demonstrates persuasively that the rise of the German research university and the emergence of a modern Protestant theology were interrelated. In so doing, the study provides still more evidence of the positive contributions religion has made to the construction of European modernity. This said, the book has some significant shortcomings. Most notably, for a work that aspires to reframe existing debates over theology and the modern university, Howard presents very little original research. Apart from portions of Chapters 3, the section dealing with Schleiermacher and the founding of the University of Berlin, and 5, concerning the theological encyclopedias, university self-representations, and foreign perceptions of the German university, most of Howard's points depend on a reinterpretation of extant research. Consequently, where current secondary literature is characterized by lacunae, as in its silence on theologians' involvement in university affairs overall, so too is Howard's volume.
The monograph's organization is also counterproductive. Howard does well to emphasize that the French Revolution did not mark an absolute break in German university history, but eighty pages on the university's medieval and early modern origins are not necessary to make this point. This space would have been better allotted to a more sustained account of nineteenth-century developments. At the very least, the material in the omnibus fifth chapter should have been expanded and restructured into two or more chapters. Problematic, too, is Howard's conclusion, in which he seeks to reposition the study as an "interpretative foray into the history of Christian theology" (p. 404). Interesting as his reflections on the comparisons between the 1920s and the early Christian church and the different perspectives on academic theology held by Harnack and his former student Karl Barth are, the heuristic gesture undermines the intellectual honesty of Howard's entire endeavor. It shines the spotlight on theology, but leaves what he had announced as the co-star, the German university, in the shadows. Scholars of German history, religion, and higher education will likely find many aspects of Howard's synthesis useful. But as a work of Wissenschaft in the nineteenth-century German tradition, the volume comes up short.
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Citation:
Anthony J. Steinhoff. Review of Howard, Thomas Albert, Protestant Theology and the Making of the Modern German University.
H-German, H-Net Reviews.
March, 2007.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=12979
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