Christiaan Engberts - Scholarly Virtues in Nineteenth-Century Sciences and Humanities: Loyalty and Independence Entangled

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The research for this book has been made possible by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) who funded the research The Scholarly Self: Character, Habit and Virtue in the Humanities, 18601930 between 2013 and 2018 at Leiden University. Of course, my research would not have been the same if it were not for the input of the projects leader, Prof. Herman Paul, and my closest colleagues in the project, Katharina Manteufel and Dr. Ljon Saarloos.

The research carried out for this book has also been made possible by two extended stays in Germany. I would like to thank Prof. Matthias Middell and Dr. Martina Keilbach at the Global and European Studies Institute at the University of Leipzig for hosting me in the autumn of 2015. I would like to thank Prof. Arnd Bauerkmper at the Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut of the Freie Universitt Berlin for hosting me during the autumn of 2016.

In addition, I would like to thank the helpful staff of the different libraries and archives, without whom my research would not have been possible. I am particularly grateful to the staff at Leiden University Library, the Universittsarchiv of the Martin-Luther-University in Halle, the Universittsarchiv and the Universittsbibliothek of the University of Leipzig, and the Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preuischer Kulturbesitz, the Staatsbibliothek, and the Robert Koch-Institut in Berlin.

Even though the Leipzig philosopher Wilhelm Wundt was not known for his charismatic presence and attractive presentation, one of his 1883 lectures made a profound impression on at least one ambitious member of his audience. The young medical student Hugo Mnsterberg was so captivated that he decided to put off his initial choice of study and join Wundts psychological laboratory instead. This decision marked the starting point of a very successful career. Thanks to the support of William James , Harvard would be his academic home base from the early 1890s onward. By the end of this decade, he was elected president of the American Psychological Association. Wundt had good reason to proudly celebrate the successes of the young man who had joined his institute fifteen years before.

The correspondence between the successful student and his former teacher, however, bears witness to a tense relationship. As early as 1890, Mnsterbergs letters show that he was burdened by the suspicion that Wundt did not appreciate him all that much. Friends and acquaintances had told him that his Doktorvater had privately asserted that his former student had been ungrateful to him. In a letter to Wundt , Mnsterberg sadly claimed that, while he could accept his former teachers criticism of his scholarly accomplishments, he would lose [his] self-respect when [these] accusations of ungratefulness would be warranted. He pointed out that he continued to express his indebtedness to Wundt in many ways: I ostentatiously present myself as your student toward all your detractors; a framed picture of you is the only decoration on the walls of my laboratory; I sent you the first copy of all my books. These displays of loyalty did not, however, appease Wundt.

Wundt indignantly denied that he had ever accused Mnsterberg of ingratitude and took on the offensive. He wryly asserted that Mnsterbergs recent work had been rushed and not sufficiently matured. He added insult to injury by pointing out that his students could only display their gratitude by working reliably, diligently, and meticulously without caring about authorities or [their] career. He essentially argued that the rushed and immature character of Mnsterbergs latest publications should be interpreted as the regrettable neglect to display gratitude in an appropriate and convincing manner. Wundts addition that he had shared his unfavourable opinion of his former students recent work with mutual acquaintances suggests that the worrying reports of Mnsterbergs friends may have been accurate.

Though Wundt and Mnsterberg would stay in touch until the latter died in 1916, the pattern of mutual recrimination established in the early 1890s would continue to shape their relationship. Mnsterberg referred to the rushed production of his early career over and over again in his letters.

For the purposes of this study, the significance of these awkward exchanges between Wundt and Mnsterberg lies not in the merit of their work. I will neither look into the supposed hasty sloppiness of the students early work, nor will I discuss whether the work of the teacher would have merited a Nobel Prize. Their correspondence is mostly of interest to me because it provides a clear example of scholars employing a language of virtue to discuss both their work and their relationship. Both men take it for granted that a students gratitude is essential to maintaining a good relationship with his former teacher, and both agree that good scholarship is the result of virtues like reliability, diligence, and meticulousness. Their correspondence also suggests that such virtues cannot be understood in isolation from each other. In Wundts eyes, gratefulness is clearly bound up with meticulousness and other virtues, and Mnsterberg does not challenge this assumption. This study investigates this interwovenness of broadly shared virtues of scholarship on the basis of in-depth case studies from nineteenth and early twentieth-century Germany.