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FRANZ-MICHAEL KONRAD 7. WILHELM VON HUMBOLDTHUMBOLDT’S’S CONTRIBUTION TO A THEORY OF BILDUNGBILDUNGBILDUNG INTRODUCTION: NIETZSCHE’S CRITICISM OF BILDUNG In the first months of the year 1872, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), who had been teaching as a professor of classical philology at the University of Basel, held five lectures at the invitation of an academic society in Basel. After Nietzsche’s death (1900), these lectures were published under the title, Über die Zukunft unserer Bildungsanstalten (On the Future of Our Educational Institutions). In these lectures, Nietzsche strongly criticised the state of the German schools, in particular, of the Gymnasium (secondary school). The schools, according to Nietzsche, were no longer places of true Bildung, but “institutions of existential hardship” (Nietzsche, 1988, p. 717). The idea of Bildung, which, above all, the Gymnasien, had long upheld, had, in Nietzsche’s opinion, been completely ruined. Nietzsche named three aspects of this deterioration: Firstly, the economisation and utilitarisation of Bildung. Bildung was seen only as an economic factor. And this held true for society as a whole, which regarded Bildung as a productive factor, as well as for the individual, who hoped to turn Bildung into money as quickly as possible. Secondly, Nietzsche referred to massification. In the meantime, everyone was striving for Bildung. The driving force behind this development – and this is the third aspect which Nietzsche cited – was the state, which hoped to use Bildung as a means of binding its citizens to it. Economisation, massification and nationalisation – those were the three central points of criticism with regard to the state of Bildung which Nietzsche described.
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