The Project Gutenberg eBook, Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March,
1861, by Various

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Title: Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861

Author: Various

Release Date: February 17, 2004 [eBook #11134]

Language: English

Character set encoding: US-ASCII

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ATLANTIC MONTHLY, VOLUME 7, ISSUE
41, MARCH, 1861***

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THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.

VOL. VII.--MARCH, 1861.--NO. XLI.

GERMAN UNIVERSITIES.

THE PROFESSORS.

"Which of the German universities would be the best adapted to my
purpose?" is the question of many an American student, who, having gone
through the usual course in the United States, looks abroad for the
completion of his scientific or liberal studies. Of Goettingen and
Heidelberg he will often have read and heard; the reputation of the
comparatively new university of Berlin will not be unfamiliar to him;
but of Tuebingen, Wuerzburg, Erlangen, Halle, or Bonn, even, he will
perhaps know little more than the name. In the majority of the
last-named places, foreigners, especially his own countrymen, are rare;
none of his friends have studied there; they have followed the current,
since the last century, and spent their time in Goettingen or Heidelberg,
perhaps a winter in Berlin. They have found these institutions good, and
affording every facility for study; but would not Munich, or Leipzig, or
Jena, or any other one of the twenty-six universities of Germany, better
answer the purpose of many a student?

During the last winter, in many conversations with a retired professor
in Berlin, who manifested a special interest in American institutions,
mainly in the American educational system, he was very particular in
inquiring as to what we meant by our term _College_. He had read the
work of the historian Raumer on America, and declared that from this he
could get no notion whatever as to what the term meant with us. The very
same thing occurs daily in the United States in regard to foreign, or,
more properly, the Continental universi