The encounter of American "literary pilgrims" and Transcendentalist thinkers with accomplished scholars in the universities of Northern Germany - originally (prior to 1815) off the beaten track of the "grand tour" - strengthened American cultural nationalism and prompted efforts at far reaching reforms in American higher education. A study of the travelogues by future academics, politicians and diplomats like C. Ticknor, G. Bancroft, and J.L. Motley and H.E. Dwight's pioneering Travels in the North of Germany (1829) can highlight the notion of the relational structure of imagological representations. It can illustrate the persistence of older stereotypes and the impact of ethnocentrism in the face of novel impressions and a perception of academic individuals and institutions abroad as models of excellence.
An examination of the reception of later books by germanophile travelers like C.L. Brace and J.R. Browne, which in their positive acknowledgment of alternative customs include favorable pictures of German pedagogues, reveals growing anxieties in the US about the influx of settlers from abroad and the import of alien customs (e.g. outlandish Sunday visits to beergardens). While the concept of the exemplary role of the German scholar and scientist was gaining ground and benevolent and paternalistic immigrant German scholars figured in popular fiction (like amiable Professor Bhaer in L.M. Alcott's Little Women), increasing opposition to a "modern" weltanschauung is indicated in the projection of "German" scholars and scientists as insidious and dangerous characters in magazine stories, a trend culminating in the depiction of "Dr. Materialismus" (1890), a character type suitable for subverting the moral valuesof American society. The portrait of a character like Dr. R. Staub in H. James' "A Bundle of Letters" mirrors prejudices following the rise of Prussia to political preeminence, though popular romances e.g. by Francis Marion Crawford retained the established positive image of the German scholar and university education (cf. Doctor Claudius and, in more problematic form, Greifenstein).
While the circumstances surrounding German unification and imperial policies affected and polarized opinion even inside American families - cf. the conflicting attitudes and contrasting heterostereotypes of German professors held by Henry and William James - the increasing political tensions between the German Empire and the U.S.A. also arguably colored the views of thousands of returning American students who had flocked to German universities, as a course of study there had almost become a requisite for an academic career. That some of these travelers later revised earlier impressions and dismissed or caricatured the German school system and academic is apparent in Henry Adams' Education.
In spite of laudable efforts to mediate between conflicting transatlantic cultural assumptions and the exposure of clichés causing misunderstandings (cf. Hugo Munsterberg), the course of events leading to World War I finally made German pedagogues favorite scapegoats in polemics for allegedly having transformed German children into "cogs in the wheel" of the Prussian military machine and having fostered the development of "rabid German nationalism", with von Treitschke serving as the prime example in the stories of returnees from Berlin. The memoirs of the son of a prominent journalist and diplomat, Poultney Bigelow, and of a pioneer of American Studies, Fred Louis Pattee, written under the pall of World Wars I and II respectively, provide evidence of such a reinterpretation of earlier travel experience.
For an articulate minority of American writers, the soon much-maligned "German Professor", however, continued to fulfill an important function. In the early 20th century the advocates of revolt against the "genteel tradition", like H.L. Mencken and Percival Pollard, found inspiration in the provocative teachings of a German Professor like F. Nietzsche. Thus they inadvertently furnished arguments for the vociferous critics of German culture.
The notorious "War of the Professors" - caused by the unfortunate open letters signed by hundreds of academics and giving unqualified support to their belligerent governments - did further damage to the reputations of erstwhile admired members of the "republic of letters" in Germany. After a diatribe by H.L. Mencken, who had been silenced during most of the war, against jingoistic American college professors, Sinclair Lewis' staging of a rational debate between his American protagonist Sam Dodsworth and a representative of the academic profession in Berlin on the merits of their respective cultures did something to redress the balance in the appreciation of the German scholars, but the "Great War" had effectively terminated the role of the "German Professor" as a cultural model.
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