German Studies at Oxford: Past and Future

Abstract

When I gave a version of this paper as an online talk, I added to the title ‘by the last Taylor Professor’. Since the Taylor Chair was not endowed, there was a real danger that I would be its last holder, and thus the final specimen of a race doomed to extinction, like Fenimore Cooper’s Last of the Mohicans. Fortunately, however, the Chair has now been endowed by the Dieter Schwarz Foundation. For this outcome we have to thank not only the generosity of the Foundation, and the good offices of Lidl UK in facilitating the negotiations, but the three years of hard diplomatic work put in by Karen O’Brien, Chair of the Humanities Division, and Almut Suerbaum, Chair of the Modern Languages Faculty Board. Thanks to them, although I was indeed the last Taylor Professor, I ended my career as the first holder of the Schwarz-Taylor Chair, and my successor’s tenure starts with a fair wind. The history of the Taylor Chair and of German studies at Oxford, which I will survey in this paper, thus illustrates the importance of private philanthropy for university funding. In Oxford, the benefits of private funding are obvious not only in the history of the colleges but also in the names of many University buildings, starting with the Bodleian Library and the Radcliffe Camera. If one strolls through the Science Area, one passes the Dyson Perrins Laboratory of Organic Chemistry, built with a donation from the sauce manufacturer Dyson Perrins (well known for Lea & Perrins sauce) and opened in 1916. The Sir William Dunn School of Pathology was purpose-built with a donation of £100,000 from the London banker Sir William Dunn in 1922. In the German university landscape, by contrast, private funding is virtually unknown and universities are dependent on funding by the state. The original purpose of German universities was to train professional men and administrators in Germany’s numerous kingdoms and principalities. Other purposes might also play a part: the University of Göttingen was established in 1737 by an administrator in the hope of reviving a declining town and (since the Kingdom of Hanover was in personal union with the British Crown) attracting large numbers of wealthy young Englishmen who would throw their money about. There can be a range of views about whether private or state funding is more desirable; but it is arguable that to retain some intellectual independence, universities need to be able to juggle both sources of income. Oxford German Studies, 50. 4, 398–405, December 2021