The German Classics from the Fourth to the Nineteenth Century

This meant that even elite Russians who wanted a secular education had to go abroad, especially if they wanted a graduate education in science. Going abroad was not easy, either, for it meant leaming a new language and new ways. What's more, the Russian Orthodox Church viewed all Westerners as heretics and little better than heathens. Contact with heathen ways (such as science) was at best dangerous and at worst damnation. Consequently, for a Russian to travel West for an education meant the overcoming of religious scruples as well. The Balts, however, were German in culture and Lu theran in religion and had none of these inhibitions. They shared, with the Germans of Germany itself, in the,height ening level of education-in particular, of scientific educa tion-through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. So it follows that among the great Russian scientists of the nineteenth century we not only have a man with a name like Gottlieb Sigismund Kirchhoff, but also others with names like Friedrich Konrad Beilstein, Karl Ernst von Baer, and Wilhelm Ostwald ...»