Hermann Baumgarten


Hermann Baumgarten was a German historian and a political publicist whose work had a major impact on liberalism during the unification of Germany. Baumgarten's philosophy also created a significant political impression on Max Weber, an influential social theorist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Life and career

Hermann Baumgarten was born in Wolfenbüttel in the Duchy of Brunswick. He studied philology and history at the University of Jena before becoming a journalist in 1855. In 1859 he began working at Maximilian Duncker's "literary bureau", a Prussian institution used to disseminate propaganda. In 1861, he also took up a teaching post at the Technical University of Karlsruhe.
As a champion of Prussian/German liberalism, Baumgarten faced the dilemma as to whether or not to accept the military and political successes of Prussia's conservative Prime Minister, Otto von Bismarck. In 1866, Baumgarten published his support of Bismarck's policies in an essay entitled A Self-Criticism of German Liberalism. This work essentially ended radical German liberalism as a force, whereupon many Prussians joined the Bismarck-supporting National Liberal Party), and allowed the new German empire to nationalize and solidify.
In 1872, Baumgarten became Professor of History at the Reichsuniversität in Strasbourg. During the late 1880s and early 1890s, Baumgarten made a significant political impression upon Max Weber, Baumgarten's nephew by marriage. Weber would go on to profoundly influence social theory and the remit of sociology itself. At the age of 68, Baumgarten died in Strasbourg, Alsace-Lorraine.

Works