Conversation with Univ. of Chicago's David Wellbery

The distinguished scholar examines German language and culture in centuries past—and in a globalized world.

“I CAME TO THE UNIVERSITY of Chicago to study with David Wellbery,” says Germanic studies doctoral candidate Georginna Hinnebusch, AM’07. “He is the authority on Goethe.” Photo by Jason Smith

By Katherine Muhlenkamp (TABLEAU, the magazine of the Division of the Humanities at the U. of Chicago)

Last year, he received the prestigious Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm Prize from the DAAD, or German Academic Exchange Service. The prize recognizes lifetime contributions to the field of Germanic languages and literature; he is the second American to win the annual award since its establishment in 1995.

Tableau recently sat down with Wellbery for an update on Germanic studies at Chicago as well as his research.

You left Johns Hopkins for the University of Chicago in 2001. What drew you here?

Johns Hopkins is kindred to the University of Chicago, with an emphasis on intellectual inquiry. When the offer for a university professorship came from Chicago, it was very easy for me to make a step here.

Chicago has a deep commitment to scholarship—to scholarly exchange and dialogue. In my discussions with the president at the time, Don Randel, and with future colleagues, it was clear that there was that unified vision. And I felt that Chicago’s Department of Germanic Studies had incomparable richness in terms of its interdisciplinary bent. Part of the reason I wanted to come here was to help crystallize that interest and give it the sort of profile that it deserves.

To what does the department owe its strong reputation and high placements in the National Research Council's rankings?

Chicago is recognized nationally as a place where the great literary tradition is still studied.

In terms of what constitutes our intellectual profile and distinguishes us, there are 3 points that I believe everyone in the department would agree are extremely important. Point #1 is that we place a good deal of emphasis on the study of the canonical German literary tradition...(Point #2....we are interdisciplinary...) Our department is much smaller than those at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Berkeley. But we have situated ourselves in this University of Chicago context where we have very strong programs in German philosophy, film history and theory, music, art history, and so on.

And the 3rd Point is our robust internationalism. We train our students to participate in an international discussion of scholars. For the past 7 years, we have conducted seminars with colleagues from the Univ. of Konstanz. Graduate students from Konstanz travel to Chicago and vice-versa for these seminars. Past topics have included the concept of form, mimesis and poiesis, lyric poetry, and narrative theory. And we have an agreement with the Free University of Berlin for a series of seminars—one seminar every two years with graduate students and faculty from Chicago, the Free University of Berlin, and Cambridge in England. The first seminar in 2010 was on the limits of philology. The second in 2012 will cover atmosphere in literature and the arts. ....

In today’s globalized world, with many different countries having widespread influence, why is the field of Germanic studies still relevant and important?

The first thing I would emphasize is the importance of the German heritage in the history and self-understanding of the United States—in the articulation of our culture. More people in the United States self-identify as being of German heritage than of any other national origin. For several years after the failed 1848 revolution in the German-speaking lands, six million German immigrants came to the United States. Imagine what that number meant in terms of the populations of both countries at the time—it was a very large influx, and these people went on to play significant roles in the development of American culture and industry. You can see this in Chicago—it’s not accidental that we have a Goethe Street, a Schiller Street, and so forth.

This German heritage has been particularly important in the self-conception of the American university. The idea of a research university in its modern form was theoretically worked out in the early 1800s by linguist and educator Wilhelm von Humboldt, a close friend of Goethe’s and a central figure in the German cultural movement known as the Age of Goethe, which spawned classic intellectual and artistic work and embraces, roughly speaking, Goethe's lifetime from 1749 through 1832. Some of the other major figures in the Age of Goethe would be the writers Friedrich Schiller, E.T.A. Hoffmann, and Heinrich von Kleist; the great lyric poet Friedrich Hölderlin; the founder of modern literary criticism and theory Friedrich Schlegel; the composers Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Schubert; the painter Caspar David Friedrich; and the geographer and explorer Alexander von Humboldt, who was Wilhelm’s brother. When the University of Chicago was formed, it did so with reference to the Humboldtian tradition—an emphasis on the unity of education and research as well as on a university’s intellectual independence.

And today, Germany is important for many of the same reasons it was important in the nineteenth century: its cultural contributions, and its contributions to science in particular. In terms of economics, Germany is without question the most vital nation in the European Union and is of incredible international importance. More people in Europe speak German as their native language than any other language, and German is the second most popular language taught in Europe and Japan, after English. It’s also the third most popular foreign language taught worldwide.

Could you give examples of American scholars or artists who were influenced by German culture?

Development of an American cultural self-consciousness began in New England in the early part of the nineteenth century. Several journals articulated a uniquely American cultural view. Leading figures in this movement such as George Bancroft had studied in Germany and were deeply imbued with classical German culture, the culture of the Age of Goethe. The way that German literature was followed at that time in the United States is remarkable. The editor of the most prominent nineteenth-century journal, the Dial, was a woman named Margaret Fuller. Her essays on German literature and thought are extraordinary, displaying a depth of knowledge that compares favorably with the best European commentators.

I can also give you an example from the 20th century, one that’s particularly compelling for the Univ. of Chicago because it relates to Saul Bellow. In 1987, Bellow published a novel called More Die of Heartbreak, a central figure of which is a man who studies plant morphology and possesses an extraordinary gift of perception. It just so happens that, a few years prior, Bellow had written an essay on Goethe’s Italian Journey, a diary of Goethe’s self-education during a trip to Italy—how he came to understand the structure of plants, to see in surrounding phenomena their ideal form. In the first edition of More Die of Heartbreak, there’s a photo of Bellow pointing at a bookshelf in the background. Recently, I looked very closely and discovered that the tip of his finger is in front of a volume of Goethe’s Italian Journey. He’s offering us a clue as to the source of his novel. ...