Humanities Underground

The Bernhard Case

  Max Weber [There are many institutions of higher education—universities and research centres, where we have periodically seen academic administrators being appointed/elevated in significant positions for reasons of ideology or expediency.  Each such decision hits at the very foundation of the world of ideas. In multiple ways. In this context, HUG remembers Max Weber’s classic pronouncement on The Bernhard Case] ———————————————– We have received the following from academic circles: The investigations in the press into the much discussed “Bernhard Case” have by no means put an end to the interest the case has aroused. It is, of course, scandalous that the government (or, to be precise, the minister, acting entirely on his own personal initiative, although directly influenced by the government) has imposed a professor on the largest university in Germany, and that the academic staff involved, who are among the most distinguished scholars in Germany, only learned of this fact through the press or when their new colleague paid them a visit. Such scandals are typical. Some other circumstances, however, are perhaps even more typical. Firstly, the behavior of the man who was so suddenly promoted. In the days when the writer of these lines was as young as Herr Ludwig Bernhard himself is today, it was regarded as a fundamental requirement of academic decorum for someone who had been offered a chair by the ministry to satisfy himself, before doing anything else, and before deciding whether or not to accept the offer, that he enjoyed the scientific confidence of the faculty, or at least of the most prominent of the colleagues with whom he would be working in his field; and this applied irrespective of whether or not he feared that it might create difficulties, even if these were only of a moral nature, for his appointment. Anyone who, merely because he was “in favor,” chose to disregard these generally accepted rules, in order to “get on” in the academic world, was subject to exactly the same judgment and exactly the same treatment at the hands of his colleagues as that which is meted out to people who speculate on furthering their career by taking “inferior” professorships [Strafprofessuren] for denominational or political reasons. Since it is clear that Herr Bernhard did not find it necessary to observe these rules, he has shown that he is not personally worthy of further consideration. Of more general importance, however, is the fact that this kind of attitude is evidently on the increase among a section of the new academic recruits and that moreover the Prussian Government is deliberately cultivating these types of “operators” [Geschäftsleute], as they say in academic circles. Indeed, there are professorial chairs that are regularly used as “way stations” for the sustenance of such elements. As far as the University of Berlin itself is concerned, it is, of course, true that appointment to a professorship there is generally regarded as good business in financial terms even today. But the time has passed when it was thought of as a high scholarly honor. True, even now we are happy to recognize that there are many scientists in Berlin who are genuine leaders in their various fields and are absolutely independent personalities. And yet the number of “complacent” mediocrities there, who are sought after for their very mediocrity, seems to be growing, if anything, faster than elsewhere. And then there are the people like Herr Bernhard, people for whom, from the point of view of the government, membership of the university is essentially a reward in the pecuniary sense or in the sense of social prestige. No doubt it is to some extent a welcome bonus to provincial universities that this practice enables them to retain a far greater number of outstanding scholars than would be the case if professors in Berlin were selected on solely scholarly criteria. Naturally, from the point of view of the University of Berlin, these matters are probably seen in a different light. There is a curious irony here. In a number of Berlin faculties, despite increasing numbers of students, there have been attempts, sometimes successful, sometimes not, to limit the number of professorships. Indeed, one faculty created a special statute restricting the securing of a Habilitation for academic teachers from other higher education institutions, and then promptly made use of this obstacle, which the faculty had itself created, to exclude an outstanding academic teacher from appointment as an adjunct lecturer [Privatdozent], who was acknowledged as such, against the votes of the faculty [Fachmänner]. The irony is that this same university must now accept that its university chairs are used as rewards when some ministry happens to feel the need to have politically desirable research carried out by an able young man. The price to be paid for any concessions by the faculties to inappropriate proposals, and in particular for any deviation from the principle of gaining as many highly qualified academic staff as humanly possible, will ultimately be the weakening of the moral authority of the faculties themselves. And of course the consequences of this will not be limited to cases like the present one. After all, Herr Bernhard has written a book that, allowing for a certain scholarly immaturity, I, for one, find very impressive; it is important in its field and shows a distinctiveness of method. But everyone knows that in the field of economics, for example, at least two other people are waiting outside the door of the faculty who are “deserving” in different ways, in the case of one of them for services rendered back in the “Stumm era.” Sooner or later, their time will undoubtedly come. It seems quite unlikely that the eventual successors of men such as Adolf Wagner and Gustav [von] Schmoller will be important and scientifically unique personalities. The situation is similar at the other Prussian universities. None of them today are dealing with Herr [Friedrich T.] Althoff,  who despite the questionable nature of his “system” nevertheless had a certain impressiveness. Instead, for the foreseeable