In shaping the modern academy and in setting the agenda of modern Christian theology, few institutions have been as influential as the German universities of the nineteenth century. This book examines the rise of the modern German university from the standpoint of the Protestant theological faculty, focusing especially on the University of Berlin (1810), Prussia's flagship university in the nineteenth century. In contradistinction to historians of modern higher education who often overlook theology, and to theologians who are frequently inattentive to the social and institutional contexts of religious thought, Thomas Albert Howard argues that modern university development and the trajectory of modern Protestant theology in Germany should be understood as interrelated phenomena.

This book traces the impact of German educationists, such as Froebel and Herbart, on practice in Britain while stressing the important and lasting influence of German scientists, technologists, philosophers, sociologists and historians on our educational system. This record of interplay between the two countries shows not only the influence of German innovations but also the effect on British education of the many German émigrés in the last two hundred years.