Sophie's World

by Jostein Gaarder

“Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a legitimate child of Romanticism,” began Alberto. “One could almost say he developed with the German spirit as it gradually evolved in Germany. He was born in Stuttgart in 1770, and began to study theology in Tübingen at the age of eighteen. Beginning in 1799, he worked with Schelling in Jena during the time when the Romantic Movement was experiencing its most explosive growth. After a period as assistant professor in Jena he became a professor in Heidelberg, the center of German National Romanticism. In 1818 he was appointed professor in Berlin, just at the time when the city was becoming the spiritual center of Europe. He died of cholera in 1831, but not before ‘Hegelianism’ had gained an enormous following at nearly all the universities in Germany.”