Wilhelm von Humboldt

Wilhelm von Humboldt (born June 22, 1767, Potsdam, Prussia [Germany]—died April 8, 1835, Tegel, near Berlin) was a German language scholar, philosopher, diplomat, and educational reformer whose contribution to the development of the scientific study of language became highly valued in the 20th century. He contended that language is an activity the character and structure of which express the culture and individuality of the speaker, and he also asserted that every individual perceives the world essentially through the medium of language. He thus foreshadowed the modern development of ethnolinguistics, which explores the interrelationship of language and culture. He was the elder brother of Alexander von Humboldt.

While completing studies at the University of Jena, Humboldt formed a close lifelong friendship with Friedrich Schiller. (His correspondence with Schiller was first published in 1830.) Humboldt’s literary renown in the late 1790s helped him obtain Prussian ministerial posts at Rome (1801–08), where he was a generous patron of the arts and sciences. In 1809 he became a senior public servant within the Prussian ministry of the interior; he was responsible for religious affairs and public education, and he was chiefly instrumental in founding the Friedrich Wilhelm University at Berlin (later renamed Humboldt University). He also reformed Prussian elementary education by elevating the standards for teacher training and certification and generally helped to place Prussia in the forefront of educational progress. Discontented with his position, which was a subordinate one within the ministry, he offered his resignation in April 1810 and was appointed ambassador to Vienna soon afterward. In 1813, at the Congress of Prague, he helped to induce Austria to join forces with Russia and Prussia against France as the Napoleonic Wars continued. In 1815 he was one of the signatories of the Treaty of Paris.

During the later period of his diplomatic career (in 1817) he made notable corrections and additions, especially on the Basque language, to Johann Christoph Adelung’s Mithradates, a comparative study of languages. Humboldt’s additions brought Basque to the attention of scholars and facilitated its scientific study. He also visited the Basque region and in 1821 wrote a study on the early inhabitants of Spain. In 1828 he published Über den Dualis (“On the Dual”), in which his considerations on the dual (as distinct from singular and plural) “number” led him toward the metaphysics of language.

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Humboldt died without completing perhaps the great work of his life, a study of the ancient Kawi language of Java. The imperfect fragment, edited by his brother and J. Buschmann in 1836, contained an introduction, Über die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues: und ihren Einfluss auf die geistige Entwickelung des Menschengeschlechts (Eng. trans. On Language: The Diversity of Human Language-Structure and Its Influence on the Mental Development of Mankind), on language differences and their influence on humankind’s development, an essay that has been called the textbook of the philosophy of speech. His other linguistic writings, along with poems and essays on aesthetic subjects, were published by his brother in seven volumes (1841–52). His correspondence with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was published in 1876.