Jacob Burckhardt

Swiss historian

• Born: May 25, 1818
• Birthplace: Basel, Switzerland
• Died: August 8, 1897
• Place of death: Basel, Switzerland

A uniquely gifted historian and literary artist, Burckhardt was a pioneer in the development of modern Kulturgeschichte, the study of nonpolitical aspects of civilization. His lasting contribution was in Renaissance historiography, a field in which his work became a model for the treatment of culture in the study of civilization.

Early Life

Part of an influential, aristocratic Swiss family, Jacob Burckhardt recalled his early childhood in Basel as being very happy. For three centuries, Jacob’s ancestors utilized their financial abilities to amass a considerable fortune in the silk industry and international trade, which they parlayed into political power. The Burckhardts held one of the two burgomaster positions in the city for nearly two centuries, while other members of the family served the community as professors and clergymen. Jacob’s own father, one of the less affluent Burckhardts, studied theology in Heidelberg and was pastor of the Basel ministry at the time of his son’s birth. In 1838, the senior Burckhardt became the administrative head of the Reformed church in the Basel canton. Jacob recalled his father as being pleasant, a good scholar, and a capable artist. It was his father’s artistic ability that first stimulated the youth’s enduring love for art.

The joys of early childhood turned to sorrow with the unexpected death of his mother in 1830. This experience made a lasting impression on twelve-year-old Jacob, as he became painfully aware of the transitoriness of all living things. Throughout his adult life, Jacob experienced difficulty in establishing lasting relationships, and it may well have been memories of his mother’s death that influenced his decision to remain a bachelor.

Burckhardt’s patrician heritage instilled in him an aristocratic prejudice, a sensitivity to beauty and form, a deep, abiding respect for the dignity of humankind, and a Protestant morality, all of which would be reflected in his life as a teacher and scholar. As he matured into adulthood, however, his personal appearance seemed to belie his conservative nature. As a young man, he was notable for his uniquely stylish clothes, distinct coiffure, finger rings, and excessive taste for red wine and cigars. In later years, he dropped the foppish airs but retained his taste for wine and cigars.

The public school in Basel provided Burckhardt with an excellent primary education in the classics but left him undecided as to a vocation. After a brief stay in French-speaking Neuchâtel, where he wrote an essay on Gothic architecture, he entered the University of Basel in 1837 to study theology. Eighteen months later, he experienced a prolonged religious crisis that resulted in his abandoning his orthodox religious beliefs and rejecting the ministry. Because of the support and encouragement of his father, Burckhardt attended the University of Berlin from 1839 to 1843 to pursue his historical interests.

While he was at Berlin, Burckhardt was praised by the renowned classical scholars August Boeckh and Johann Gustav Droysen for his extensive knowledge of antiquity, but Burckhardt ultimately took his degree in 1843 under the eminent scientific historian Leopold von Ranke . Burckhardt greatly admired Ranke and his seminars, but the two never established a close relationship. Although master and student have been used to illustrate two diametrically different approaches to historiography, it should be noted that Ranke had praise for his student, and in 1872 Burckhardt was offered the chair of history at the University of Berlin as Ranke’s successor—an offer that he refused because of his abhorrence of German politics.

Burckhardt’s closest association in Berlin was with the pioneer art historian Franz Kugler, who encouraged Burckhardt to combine his love for history with his love for art and directed the attention of the fledgling student to Italy and the Renaissance.

Life’s Work

In 1843, the University of Basel awarded Burckhardt a Ph.D. in absentia and the following year invited him to become a lecturer on history and art—a position he held with distinction for nearly fifty years. Because the university did not have an official vacancy until 1858, Burckhardt had to supplement his lecturing income with a variety of other jobs. For two years, he was the editor of the conservative Basler Zeitung, and he taught at the local grammar school for most of his career.

In 1846, Burckhardt was given permission by Kugler to revise the latter’s text on art history, which brought in some revenue, and he was offered a lucrative position at the Academy of Art in Berlin. Burckhardt had no desire to return to Berlin but did so out of friendship to Kugler. Over the next twelve years, Burckhardt taught at Basel, Berlin, and Zurich, with lengthy visits to Italy in 1847, 1848, and 1853.

Despite his excessive workload and extensive travels, Burckhardt was able to publish two important works during this period. His first major work, Die Zeit Konstantins des Grossen (1853; The Age of Constantine the Great , 1949), attested his love for ancient civilization. Although the study showed the important role Christianity played in the cultural life of the Middle Ages, Burckhardt’s sympathies lay clearly with the decaying ancient world. His second publication, Der Cicerone (1855; The Cicerone , 1873), was a detailed study of Italian art, and it became the most popular travel guide to Italy in Europe. In 1855, Burckhardt accepted a teaching position at the new polytechnical institute in Zurich, not only to increase his earnings but also to gain access to the rich collection of Renaissance materials housed there. Three years later, there was a vacancy at the University of Basel, and Burckhardt readily accepted that university’s only chair of history.

Family influence, formal education, work experience, and foreign travel provided Burckhardt with the inspiration for his life’s work. After observing at first hand the political turmoil in Germany, the quiet, freedom-loving Swiss was repulsed by those scholars who saw history as past politics or a chronology of state development. It was the nonpolitical past, more specifically, the moral and mental past, that fascinated Burckhardt. His objective was to undertake a meticulous study of thought and conduct, religion and art, scholarship and speculation in an attempt to penetrate the Kultur of the people and discover what he called “the spirit of the age.” Thus, in 1842 he announced that it was to Kulturgeschichte that he intended to devote his life, and the fulfillment of this self-established goal is represented par excellence in Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien (1860; The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy , 1878).

Burkhardt divided his book on the Renaissance into six sections, each of which discussed a specific aspect of Italian Kultur. The section on the state as a work of art provided the political framework, as it emphasized the conflict between emperors and popes, but it was not political history in the traditional sense. His intent was to demonstrate how the state became free of outside control and, in the process, produced what Burckhardt called the modern “state-spirit.”

Burckhardt’s phenomenon of the state-spirit has its counterpart in the evolution of modern individualism, which was explained in the second section of the book. The development of the individual was characterized primarily by the rebirth of secularism and the perception of the Italian Humanists as independent entities, free of any corporate structure, such as the Church. While rebirth was the general theme of the entire work, it was of specific concern in the third section on the revival of antiquity. Here, Burckhardt argued that while the rebirth of Humanism complemented the newly emerging spirit of secular individualism, it was the result of what was happening in Italy and not the cause. Individualism and secularity would have evolved without the rebirth of antiquity. The last three sections of the work provided evidence of how the new secular individualism operated in society and how it influenced the culture and moral life of the age.

Significance

After more than a century, Jacob Burckhardt’s history of the Italian Renaissance remains one of the most controversial works ever published. With justification, critics have stated that the work is too static and that it exaggerates the creativeness of Italy. It is too sharply delimited in time and space, as it neglects the other European countries and fails to consider the creative forces at work during the late Middle Ages. Burckhardt overemphasizes individualism, immorality, and irreligion in Italy and exaggerates the rediscovery of the classical world. Furthermore, Burckhardt’s work is limited to a study of the upper class, is devoid of any economic analysis, and is based on the debatable assumption that there was a common spirit of the age that characterized all Italy for two hundred years.

Even the most ardent critics regard Burckhardt’s book as a penetrating analysis of history and civilization. Burckhardt’s work was unique in that he was one of the first to interpret the psychology of an epoch with power and insight. His methodology was highly original, as he employed a topical approach that permitted him to study what he termed “cross sections in history” from a variety of directions. His work treated civilization as a unit in a series of parallel discussions, each approaching the central problem from a different point of view. Critics of Burckhardt should also remember that he approached history as an artist, not as a philosopher, and with regard to written history he always considered himself an “arch dilettante,” whose vocation was teaching.

Although Burckhardt lived forty more years after completing his history of the Renaissance, he never again published. With his health waning, Burckhardt requested to be relieved of his position in art history in 1885, and in 1893, suffering from acute asthmatic troubles, he surrendered his chair of history. Four years later, in August, 1897, he died in his small two-room apartment over the local bakery in Basel. Although Burckhardt never published again, three of his major historical works were published posthumously: Griechische Kulturgeschichte (1898-1902; History of Greek Culture , abridged 1963), Weltgeschichtliche Betrachtungen (1905; Force and Freedom: Reflections on History , 1943), and Historische Fragmente (1929; translated in Gesamtausgabe: Judgments on History and Historians , 1958).

Bibliography

Burckhardt, Jacob. The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy. Translated by S. G. C. Middlemore with an introduction by Benjamin Nelson and Charles Trinkaus. Vol. 1. New York: Harper & Row, 1958. The introduction contains an excellent summary and response to the critics of Burckhardt. Discusses what Burckhardt intended to do with his work as opposed to what others would have liked him to have done.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Letters. Selected, edited, and translated by Alexander Dru. New York: Pantheon Books, 1955. With none of Burckhardt’s biographies having been translated, this introduction contains the best biographical information available in English. Also included is a bibliography of all the principal editions of Burckhardt’s letters.

Ferguson, Wallace K. The Renaissance in Historical Thought. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1948. The most scholarly coverage of Burckhardt in English. Contains little on his early life but gives detailed information on his place in Renaissance historiography. Good synopsis of his major works.

Gooch, G. P. History and Historians in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Longmans, Green, 1913. Rev. ed. Boston: Beacon Press, 1959. The best work on nineteenth century historiography. Attempts to establish Burckhardt’s place among nineteenth century scholars. Apologetic in nature, containing little criticism of Burckhardt.

Gossman, Lionel. Basel in the Age of Burckhardt: A Study in Unseasonable Ideas. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. Describes intellectual life in nineteenth century Basel, focusing on four of the city’s residents, including Burckhardt and Friedrich Nietzsche.

Hinde, John R. Jacob Burckhardt and the Crisis of Modernity. Montreal, Que.: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000. Focuses on Burckhardt’s lesser known writings and how they reflected his conservative view of nineteenth century society. Describes Burckhardt’s concern about the rise of mass politics and industrial capitalism, and his fear that these developments would impede individual genius.

Howard, Thomas Albert. Religion and the Rise of Historicism: W. M. L. de Wette, Jacob Burckhardt, and the Theological Origins of Nineteenth-Century Historical Consciousness. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Describes how nineteenth century secular historic thought rose out of Europe’s religious heritage, focusing on the careers of Burckhardt and theologian de Wette.

Thompson, James Westfall. A History of Historical Writing. Vol. 2. New York: Macmillan, 1942. Reprint. Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1967. A good first source for Burckhardt. Brief, chronological, and factual, with little attempt at analysis. Must be supplemented by one of the other sources, as Thompson’s omissions can be misleading.

Weintraub, Karl Joachim. “Jacob Burckhardt: The Historian Among the Philologists.” The American Scholar 57 (Spring, 1988): 273-282. A concise, readable discussion of Burckhardt’s posthumously published history of Greek culture. Taking as his point of departure the harshly critical response to this work among scholars of Burckhardt’s time, Weintraub illumines Burckhardt’s conception of cultural history.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Visions of Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966. Second only to Ferguson in scholarly analysis of Burckhardt’s history of the Renaissance. Surpasses Ferguson in biographical information and concentrates on Burckhardt’s contribution to Kulturgeschichte.