XII Международная студенческая научная конференция Студенческий научный форум - 2020

Youth and Education

Humboldt’s father, Alexander Georg von Humboldt (1720-1779) was ordered by Frederick the Great Chamberlain to leave his military service with the wife of the heir to the throne until this marriage failed in 1769. Already in 1766 Alexander Georg had married the wealthy widow of Huguenot origin Elisabeth von Holwede, née Colomb, and through her came into possession of Tegel Castle.

Wilhelm von Humboldt along with his brother Alexander experienced a decent education by prominent teachers who were among the leading minds of the Berlin Enlightenment. The parents hired renowned personalities such as Joachim Heinrich Campe and Johann Jacob Engel as house teachers, and from 1777, for more than ten years, Johann Christian Kunth, who coordinated the educational plan and supervised the teaching of the various subject teachers. Already at the age of 13 Wilhelm is said to have spoken Greek, Latin and French and to have been familiar with important authors of the respective literature. 

Educational reforms

Humboldt had been home schooled and never finished his comparably short university studies at the universities of Frankfurt (Oder) and Göttingen. Nevertheless, he became one of the most influential officials in German education. Actually, Humboldt had intended to become Minister of education, but failed to attain that position. The Prussian King asked him to leave Rome in 1809 and to lead the directorate of education under Friedrich Ferdinand Alexander zu Dohna-Schlobitten. Humboldt did not reply to the appointment for several weeks and would have preferred to stay on at the embassy in Rome. His wife did not return with him to Prussia; the couple met again when Humboldt stepped down from the educational post and was appointed head of the Embassy in Vienna.

Wilhelm von Humboldt‘s most significant contributions belongs the founding of the University of Berlin in 1810. He imposed a standardization of state examinations and inspections and created a special department within the ministry to oversee and design curricula, textbooks and learning aids.

Humboldt's educational ideal was entirely coloured by social considerations. He never believed that the 'human race could culminate in the attainment of a general perfection conceived in abstract terms'. In 1789, he wrote in his diary that 'the education of the individual requires his incorporation into society and involves his links with society at large'. In his essay on the 'Theory of Human Education', he answered the question as to the 'demands which must be made of a nation, of an age and of the human race'. 'Education, truth and virtue' must be disseminated to such an extent that the 'concept of mankind' takes on a great and dignified form in each individual.

Linguist

Wilhelm von Humboldt was an adept linguist and studied the Basque language. He translated Pindar and Aeschylus into German.

Humboldt's work as a philologist in Basque has had more extensive impact than his other work. His visit to the Basque country resulted in Researches into the Early Inhabitants of Spain by the help of the Basque language (1821). In this work, Humboldt endeavored to show by examining geographical placenames that at one time a race or races speaking dialects allied to modern Basque extended throughout Spain, southern France and the Balearic Islands, he identified these people with the Iberians of classical writers, and further surmised that they had been allied with the Berbers of northern Africa. Humboldt's pioneering work has been superseded in its details by modern linguistics and archaeology, but is sometimes still uncritically followed even today. He was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1820, and a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1822.

Linguistic studies and later life

In 1811 Humboldt was sent to Vienna as envoy and was instrumental in Austria’s accession to the coalition against Napoleon. He took part in the negotiations for the first and second Paris Peace Treaty and at the Congress of Vienna, where he successfully stood up for Jewish civil rights, but without success for a liberal constitution for the German Confederation, as Prussia’s second plenipotentiary. In 1819 he returned to Berlin as Minister for State Affairs.

He moved to the family residence in Tegel, where, interrupted only by a trip to Paris and London (1828), he devoted himself to linguistic research until the end of his life. From 1820 to 1823, his studies of the Old American languages resulted in some thirty grammars and dictionaries written by himself, more or less widely executed.

Humboldt died without completing perhaps the great work of his life, a study of the ancient Kawi language of Java. The imperfect fragment, edited by his brother and J. Buschmann in 1836, contained an introduction, Über die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues: und ihren Einfluss auf die geistige Entwickelung des Menschengeschlechts (Eng. trans. On Language: The Diversity of Human Language-Structure and Its Influence on the Mental Development of Mankind), on language differences and their influence on humankind’s development, an essay that has been called the textbook of the philosophy of speech. His other linguistic writings, along with poems and essays on aesthetic subjects, were published by his brother in seven volumes (1841–52). His correspondence with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was published in 1876.

Список использованных ресурсов

http://scihi.org/wilhelm-von-humboldt

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_von_Humboldt

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wilhelm-von-Humboldt

https://www.multitran.com/

https://www.dw.com/en/wilhelm-von-humboldt-unwavering-idealist/a-39519270