Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 February 2017
More than 150 years ago, a people undertook to rebuild its wartorn country by instituting sweeping social and educational reform. This endeavor—in Prussia after the defeat by Napoleon—marks one of the few instances in which a philosophical anthropology formed the explicit basis of a successful program for social change. Its leading proponents were among the foremost statesmen, politicians and thinkers of that brilliant age: Friedrich Wilhelm III, the Prussian King; Karl Freiherr von Stein, who headed the government in 1807–1808; Fichte, whose “Addresses to the German Nation” helped to crystallize the new national consciousness; and Wilhelm von Humboldt, the philosophical scholar who was able to translate the ideal of complete and harmonious human development into a comprehensive system of educational facilities.
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