JACOB BURCKHARDT was born in 1818 into one of Basel’s most distinguished families. For generations the name Burckhardt had been synonymous with loyal service to theBasel patria.No less than eleven ancestors had served the city asBürgermeister;many others had become wealthy merchants or famous scholars at the local university, the oldest in Switzerland. The same was true of his mother’s family, the Schorndorffs,whose roots in Basel went back even further than the Burckhardts. Although Burckhardt was part of the city’s elite, his world was that of theBildungsburgertum,the educated middle class, not that of the rich...

IN SEPTEMBER 1839 Burckhardt left Basel for Germany, where he began his formal training as an historian. As a teenager he had developed a keen interest in the study of the past and had demonstrated a passion for art and architecture – in fact, at the age of eighteen he published a series of articles on the cathedrals of Lausanne, Geneva, Zürich, and Basel.¹ After finishing school in the spring of 1836 and spending a number of preparatory semesters in Neuchâtel, he entered the university in Basel. Like so many other famous nineteenth-century historians, Burckhardt originally pursued a theological career...

BEFORE RETURNING TO BASEL in early October 1843, Burckhardt embarked upon an extended journey to France. In May 1843, en route from Berlin, he attended the wedding of Kinkel and Johanna Matthieux in Bonn, before travelling on to Brussels and his final destination, Paris, which he reached June 8.¹ Once in the French capital, he began a daily routine of research and copying in the Bibliothèque Royale and other libraries, spending a great deal of time visiting churches, museums, national monuments, and theatres. In addition, he wrote a number of articles for theKölnische Zeitung,the most important of which...

CONSERVATISM AS A SELF-CONSCIOUS political movement and ideology emerged during the late years of the eighteenth century in response to the “advance of modern forces” that threatened the “institutions, conditions, and principles of theancien regime.” Its raison d’être, according to Klaus Epstein in his classic study of German Conservatism, was “conscious opposition to the deliberate efforts of the Party of Movement to transform society in a secular, egalitarian, and self-governing direction.” In the case of Germany, and, we might add, Switzerland, the essence of conservatism as a specific historical phenomenon was resistance to the challenge of radicalism and the...

IN APRIL 1841, after an exhausting, somewhat lonely, but still worthwhile trip from Berlin, Burckhardt arrived in the Rhineland city of Cologne: “Sancta Golonia.” The goal of Burckhardt’s spring journey was the summer semester at the university in Bonn. The objective of this particular trip to Cologne was the cathedral: “St. Martin’s appeared first, then out of the trees arose the Cathedral. The city took shape, everything so glorious! I quickly settled the business of my arrival and raced like mad to the Cathedral.”¹ Like many Germans, young and old, Romantic or conservative, Burckhardt’s enthusiasm for Cologne cathedral knew no...

IN THE MONTHS IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING his semester of study at the University of Bonn during the summer of 1841, Burckhardt made a decision that determined the course of his career as an historian. Instead of following in the footsteps of his mentor, Leopold von Ranke, he chose to pursue the study of cultural history. This decision effectively removed him from the historiographical mainstream as represented by the German historical school. Although there is nothing to suggest that it caused tension between Burckhardt and Ranke - on the contrary, Ranke was always supportive of his student - the decision nonetheless reveals...

THE PROBLEM OF CRISIS occupied a central role in both the life and historical work of Burckhardt. Without a doubt it shaped his historical perspective and even his unique form of cultural history. As an historian he was most concerned with periods of radical historical upheaval and crisis, such as the dissolution of the Roman Empire and the transition from paganism to Christianity, the transition from the Middle Ages to the modern world, or the era of the French Revolution. At the same time, his lived experience of modernity - first in the political, then in the cultural realms -...

IN THE BRIEF AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH written towards the end of his life, which in the Basel custom was read at his funeral, Burckhardt recalled that “besides history, the observation of art had always had a powerful attraction ... and among the rich intellectual stimulation of all kinds which Berlin provided ... the museums there were from the be-ginning a source of learning and of longed-for enjoyment.”¹ Clearly,the study of art occupied a central position in Burckhardt’s professional life. When viewed as a whole, his extensive work in the field of art history not only reflects the same diversity and wide-ranging...

IN HIS 1874 INAUGURAL ADDRESS as professor of art history at theuniversity in Basel,¹ Burckhardt announced his intention to study art from a new perspective, one that represented a departure from the established norms and practices of the discipline. This decision, the result of years of contemplation and study about the writing of art history, was consistent with his determination to chart an independent course within the academic world and to remain a dilettante. It finds an obvious parallel in his decision to write cultural history and his rejection of the underlying assumptions of conventional nineteenth-century modes of historical discourse....