The influence of the German university on American higher education has more often been posited than proven. To sympathetic observers like Charles Franklin Thwing, it went without saying that “the German university has helped to create and to nourish the American.” To skeptical contemporaries like F. H. Swift, imperial institutions rather exemplified “a baffling paradox of culture and brutality” whose effects on U.S. practice should be excised. This division of opinion has proven persistent. On the one hand, ethnic apologists have tended to celebrate the impact of German learning on American development, including much rhetorical praise in their efforts to revive pride in their ancestry. On the other hand, critical historians of education have resented the implication of cultural dependence and stressed native developments instead. The verdict of Laurence Veysey has become commonplace: American students “accepted the method, perhaps the vision of scholarship, but not the Qeist of German universities.” The reasons for the dispute are not only different emotional attitudes toward Central Europe, but also disagreements about the nature of the evidence and the criteria of evaluation.