As the move to create universities in France in the late nineteenth century suggested, the strongest and most developed system of higher education in Europe was to be found in Germany. It followed the ideas of Wilhelm von Humboldt, whose work in the Prussian Ministry of the Interior focused on the integration of teaching and research, the freedom of teachers to teach and students to learn what they wanted to, and the adoption of Classical ideals and the unifying intellectual principles of rationalist philosophy.
