Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-rkxrd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-16T17:22:21.453Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

15 - A Mediator between Two Historical Worlds: Hermann Eduard von Hoist and the University of Chicago

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2013

Henry Geitz
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin
Jürgen Heideking
Affiliation:
Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen, Germany
Jurgen Herbst
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin
Get access

Summary

In January 1892, the eminent historian Heinrich von Sybel, one of the main representatives of the Prussian school of political historians, advised his friend and colleague Hermann Eduard von Hoist to accept a position with the newly founded University of Chicago:

For a proficient man the decisive factor for the choice of his habitat must be his sphere of action. Concerning your person everything is said with that. . . . As a pioneer of German scholarship you will have an effect in a field of almost unlimited perspective in Chicago. You will not be lost for Germany, however, and you will create a yearly growing market for the best commodity of German production.

Sybel's coaxing recommendation, with its terms “production” and “market” reverberating with notions of cultural imperialism, had its effect on Hoist. He accepted the call from the University of Chicago, but it was not the first attempt on the part of an American university to win Hoist as a history professor. Other universities had already recognized that Hoist would make an invaluable contribution to the development of their still nascent history departments.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1995

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×