Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany, 1789-1848

Becoming Citizens of Hegel’s State { 55

play a central role in publishing the Jahrbücher für Wissenschaftliche Kritik

(Yearbooks for scientific critique), the central organ of Hegelianism, launched

in 1826 , and in editing his mentor’s posthumous works. But fellow Verein mem-

bers Marcus, Moser, Wolf (who adopted the name Wohlwill in 1822 ), and Heine

also took a keen interest in Hegel and followed his lectures at the University of

Berlin.^45

Even before becoming the Verein’s president, Gans largely set its agenda;

from beginning to end, he was a driving force in the life of the association and

its visionary interpreter. He served as its secretary in January and February 1820

and insisted on prioritizing two related goals: attaining official government rec-

ognition and working out formal statutes for the association. These twin priori-

ties highlight the hopes the Vereinler invested in the institution as both a real

and a symbolic political project. Although the pursuit of a novel research agenda

was a central component of the Verein’s project, Gans and his Hegelian col-

leagues subordinated that agenda, for the first eighteen months of the society’s

four-year existence, to the pursuit of state recognition.^46 Even later, the Verein-

ler’s increasingly strained identification with the state continued to influence to

a great degree how they understood their scholarly pursuits.

The chasm between the Verein and the state opened early and only wid-

ened over time. Although they approved its pedagogical program, the Prussian

authorities denied the Verein the privileges of an incorporated society.^47 The

Prussian government’s ruling on the Verein’s petition for incorporation found

that the Verein required no special recognition, “since its purpose is chiefly

academic (ein wissenschaftlicher) .”^48 The irony of the situation boded ill: al-

though the Verein understood itself as contiguous with the state in no small

part by virtue of its devotion to and prowess in Wissenschaft, the Prussian state

declined to recognize the Verein’s need to be recognized precisely because its

chief purpose was wissenschaftlich. A further tactical maneuver also met with

equivocal results: the Vereinler decided to submit the organization’s statutes for

publication in late 1821 with the thought that the censor’s approval would imply

de facto state sanction of the Verein’s intentions. Even though the statutes had

been formally adopted, however, they were permitted to be published only with

Entwurf (draft) in the title.^49

Even as political realities increasingly strained the Vereinler’s ability to iden-

tify with the Prussian state, they were able to imagine a positive relationship

to “the state,” largely to the extent that Hegelian theory rendered “the state”

geographically, legally, and institutionally ambiguous. When the state takes up a

metaphysical residence, it ceases to be coterminous in its rules of inclusion and

exclusion with the literal state—from which, however, it can also never be extri-