. THE GERMAN UNIVERSITY SYS. TEM. The conception of a university is, as part of the German educational system, free from all the difficulties of determination which are involved in the American usage of the word. In the United States the university means some times the best equipped colleges as distinguished from the poorer ones; sometimes those institu tions which combine colleges and professional schools; yet at the same time many of the smallest and newest schools leading to the bachelor's degree call themselves universities, while the older and better ones keep the tra ditional name of college. Thus there is on the American side no sharp demarcation line, and hundreds of hardly comparable institutions may be called universities. The situation in Ger many is in every respect the opposite of this. The German Empire has 21 universities which, at least in theory, all stand on exactly the same level, have uniform entrance conditions and de grees, are sharply and absolutely different from a German school or gymnasium, from the acad emies and technical schools and from every American institution; comparable perhaps with the four post-graduate departments plus the junior and senior classes of an institution like Harvard University.
The oldest German universities lie outside of the present German Empire, in Austria : Prague was founded in 1348 and soon after, Vienna. In the Germany of to-day none is older than Heidelberg, founded 1385. The others are, in historical order : Leipzig (1409), Rostock (1419), Grief swald ( 1456), Freiburg ( 1457), Tubingen (1477), Marburg (1527), Konigsberg (1544), Jena (1558), Wiirzburg (1582), Giessen (1607), Kiel (1665), Halle (1694), Breslau (1702), Gottingen (1737), Erlangen (1743), Miinster (1780), Berlin (1809), Bonn (1818), Miinchen (1826), Strassburg (1872). A lively agitation makes it probable that the next univer sity will be founded in Hamburg.
Sixteen universities, some of them of great historical importance, existed for some centuries and disappeared again, as, for instance, Köln ( 1388-1794), Erfurt ( 1392-1816), Ingolstadt (1472-1800), Mainz (1477-1798), Wittenberg (1502-1817), Frankfurt a. O. (1506-1810), elmstadt (1576-1809), Altdorf (1622-1807).
The essential features of these 21 institu tions are given in the fact, firstly,,that they are state institutions; that the instruction is adjusted to the professional training of the lawyer, the physician, the minister, the high school teacher and the scholar; thirdly, that the teachers are appointed for their achieve ments in productive scholarship; and finally, that the students are left to the complete free dom of independent young scholars. We have
to consider carefully the bearing of these four features to understand the meaning of those in stitutions which have been throughout the whole of the 19th century the chief pride of the Ger man nation, and have secured to German scholarship the acknowledged leadership in the civilized world.
State Institutions.— The German universi ties are state institutions. While in America the State has organized university life wherever private initiative has been insufficient, giving to the State universities on the whole a supple mentary character, inasmuch as all the leading historical universities have been under the con trol of private corporations, the German nation takes for granted that the higher education is a matter for the state. This administrative de pendence upon the state alone can secure the necessary uniformity in the preparation of the state employees, teachers, judges, and so on. And, on the other hand, as the state demands that its employees shall have studied a number of years in German state universities, it would be impossible to develop universities on private foundations. Germany thus represents in this respect the opposite extreme to England, while America takes a middle place. But it is not the empire which has any control of the uni versities. The higher education is a function of the particular states. Thus, Berlin is under the control of Prussia; Leipzig, of Saxony; Munich, of Bavaria; Heidelberg, of Baden; and so on. The state appoints the professors, de termines their salaries and their functions and determines the requirements for the state ex aminations. All the expenses of the university, salaries and pensions, buildings and equipment, figure in the state budget, and are independent of the small fees which the students pay and which go directly to the professors whose lec tures they attend. Thus the income of the in structors comes from two sources: the salary and the fees. In the case of disability of the professor, his whole salary is to be paid until his death; and in every case, the state takes care of the widow and orphans.