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Taming Travel and Disciplining Reason: Enlightenment and Pedagogy in the Work of Joachim Heinrich Campe

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Taming Travel and Disciplining Reason: Enlightenment and Pedagogy in the Work of Joachim Heinrich Campe View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Carolina Digital Repository Taming Travel and Disciplining Reason: Enlightenment and Pedagogy in the Work of Joachim Heinrich Campe Richard B. Apgar A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Germanic Languages. Chapel Hill 2008 Approved by: Professor Jonathan M. Hess Professor Eric Downing Professor Clayton Koelb Professor Alice Kuzniar Professor Siegfried Mews © 2008 Richard B. Apgar ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT RICHARD B. APGAR: Taming Travel and Disciplining Reason: Enlightenment and Pedagogy in the Work of Joachim Heinrich Campe (Under the direction of Jonathan M. Hess In an examination of three incredibly popular works by Joachim Heinrich Campe (1746-1818), the eighteenth century’s most prolific and successful children’s author, this dissertation explores the relationship between the explosion in published travel accounts and the birth of children’s literature in Germany during the final three decades of the eighteenth century. Robinson der Jüngere (1779-80), Die Entdeckung von Amerika (1781-82) and the Sammlung interessanter und zweckmäßig abgefasster Reisebeschreibungen für die Jugend (1785-93) were conceived by Campe as a series that would use travel-adventure texts to improve the reader’s knowledge and understanding of the world. This dissertation explores the dialectic interplay between the two spheres of these narratives. In exploring the fine connections these works display between the domestic and the foreign, or more broadly put, the familiar and the exotic, this dissertation argues that an understanding of Enlightenment culture requires coming to terms with the dynamic nature of these relationships. In examining how this series of texts draws on, utilizes, and constructs this wealth of material for a pedagogy that places the creation of citizens as its primary goal, I demonstrate the fundamental importance of exotic imagery for identity formation in the late 18th century. In probing the nexus of pedagogy, Enlightenment ideology, and travel narratives in Campe’s work, this dissertation makes a contribution to scholarship on each of these areas and contends that all three are, in their essence, deeply intertwined. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS A project such as this requires the help of many people and I would like to acknowledge my advisor, Jonathan Hess, for his support and helpful guidance throughout the course of my graduate studies, my colleagues in the German Department for their good cheer and camaraderie, and Sara for her constant encouragement and willingness to accept the burdens such a project imposes. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION: CHILDREN’S LITERATURE AND THE EXPANDING WORLD ......................................................................1 I. The Birth of Children’s Literature......................................................................8 II. Travel Writing in the 18th Century ..................................................................16 III. Bildung and the Dangers of Social Education ...............................................23 2. PEDAGOGICAL FANTASIES: THE PUBLIC SPHERE AND DISCOURSES ON NATIONAL IMPROVEMENT IN ROBINSON DER JÜNGERE AND THE DEUTSCHES MUSEUM .......................................31 I. Imagining a Pedagogical Public Sphere in the Deutsches Museum .................53 II. Robinson der Jüngere: A Pedagogical Adventure ..........................................68 3. APPROPRIATING THE EXOTIC: DOMESTIC PEDAGOGY AND DIE ENTDECKUNG VON AMERIKA.......................................................85 I. The Hero and the Child ..................................................................................103 II. Native and the Child......................................................................................124 III. Child : Native :: Father : Explorer ...............................................................140 4. READING THE WORLD: TRAVEL NARRATIVES AND COSMOPOLITAN EDUCATION....................................................................155 I. The Art of Travel, the Art of Travel Writing .................................................167 II. The Other Abroad..........................................................................................181 III. Cosmopolitan Anti-Imperialism ..................................................................208 v 5. CONCLUSION: UNRULY IMAGES, OR WHAT ABOUT THE NINETEENTH CENTURY?.............................................................................214 BIBLIOGRAPHY......................................................................................................219 vi Chapter One _____________________________________________________________________________________________ Introduction: Children’s Literature and the Expanding World On the 23rd of July 1789, Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835), the renowned linguist, philosopher and eventual Prussian education minister, took a moment to record some thoughts about his one-time Hauslehrer and current travel companion, Joachim Heinrich Campe (1746-1818). After nearly a week bouncing across Germany together, Humboldt paused from his routine journaling to enter a series of observations about the, for the moment, much more famous author and pedagogue he was accompanying. As they approached Aachen for a brief visit with Christian Wilhelm von Dohm (1751-1820), Humboldt crystallized the impressions that had formed during their time together. Dohm, co-founder of the Deutsches Musuem, a leading Enlightenment political and cultural journal, and coincidentally, another of Humboldt’s former teachers, was at the time a Prussian envoy in Aachen, and it is clear from his diary that Humboldt eagerly anticipated their brief reunion. After a series of less fulfilling waystations, this stop certainly looked to be a highlight as he and Campe made their way toward Paris to witness the tumultuous early days of the French revolution. In writing about Campe, Humboldt underscored the fundamental difference in their perspectives: Ich kann mich nicht in die art finden, wie er die dinge ansieht. Seine und meine gesichtspunkte liegen immer himmelweit auseinander. Ewig hat er vor augen, und führt er im munde das, was nützlich ist, was die menschen glüklicher macht, und wenn es nun darauf ankommt zu bestimmen was das ist, so ist diese bestimmung immer so eingeschränkt. Für das schöne, selbst für das wahre, tiefe, feine, scharfsinnige im intellectuellen, für das grosse, in sich edle in moralischen dingen scheint er äusserst wenig gefühl zu haben, wenn nicht mit diesem zugleich eigen ein unmittelbarer nuzen verbunden ist.1 Like his brother Alexander, the globe-trotting scientist, Wilhelm von Humboldt was an astute, sharp and critical observer. Humboldt’s rather biting formulation of Campe’s unwavering attention to utilitarian and practical concerns contrasts with the broader aesthetic, intellectual pursuits that interested him. For the founder of the modern German university, Campe’s manner of seeing the world is narrow, is restrictive and overlooks subtler connections. What Humboldt bemoans as an absolute lack of aesthetic sensibility is precisely what defines Campe’s worldview. Throughout his work, almost to the point of obsession, Campe privileges information, facts and useful knowledge. He maintains a clear focus on achievements and deeds that led to the improvement of social conditions. The turn to the aesthetic is, at least in Campe’s mind, illusory and clouds judgments that can be made through the steady application of reasoned criticism. Whereas Wilhelm von Humboldt had lofty aims for the education of the individual as Mensch, for the development of all human faculties in the liberal tradition, Campe conceived of Bildung in very concrete terms, namely the acquisition of specific skills, training for professions, and ultimately the formation of Bürger. It is not necessary to read these traits into his oeuvre for they are plainly stated in the titles of his major works: Robinson der Jüngere, zur angenehmen und nützlichen Unterhaltung für Kinder (1779-80); Die Entdeckung von Amerika. Ein angenehmes und nützliches Lesebuch (1781-82); Sammlung interessanter und zweckmäßig abgefasster Reisebeschreibungen (1785-93); Allgemeine Revision des gesammten Schul- und 1 Wilhelm von Humboldt, Wilhelm von Humboldts Tagebücher, Ed. Albert Leitzmann, 2 vols. (Berlin: B. Behr, 1916) 85-6. 2 Erziehungswesens von einer Gesellschaft practischer Erzieher (1785-92). The first three titles will form the body of this dissertation, an article from the last will be discussed below. Wilhelm von Humboldt concludes his Tagebuch reflection on Campe with a less critical moment, noting “uebrigens aber reis’ ich doch gern mit ihm; er ist lustig, nicht an viele bequemlichkeiten gewöhnt, und fordert beinah gar kein gespräch von mir. Führeransehn giebt er sich gar nicht.”2 Campe might be blind to nuanced aesthetic impressions and closed off to the soul-nourishing beauty of the world, yet he remains an agreeable travel companion. Nearly two years later in January 1791, Alexander von Humboldt, who corresponded fairly regularly with Campe from 1789-1792, would write his friend, Samuel Thomas von Sömmerring (1755-1830) that he expected to receive a letter inviting him to accompany Campe on a trip across the Atlantic.3 Alexander von Humboldt satirizes Campe’s
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