RLTDOLPH VTRCHOW, lsin-Llto2. 



By OSCAK ISKAEL." 



Germany of tbo latter half of the nineteenth century is so entirely 

 (liHerent in almost every respect from (lermany of the period which 

 preceded it that it is difficult to realize the actual transition of the one 

 into the other. The bustling political and economic movements of 

 to-day, and the general uplifting of the whole condition of culture, 

 were preceded l)y a period when either an apathetic or a friendly 

 idealic life might be called forth according to local conditions. And 

 yet the two decades immediately preceding the 3M»ar 1S50 were ])y no 

 means a dead tune, for although but little apparent upon the surface 

 stUl there was a deep and regular, untiring and fresh mo\'ement in 

 those daj^s, the activity of work. A work for culture was being com- 

 pleted which had consciously for its purpose the awakening and prog- 

 ress of the nation. It is no accident that the generation which then 

 grew up lived to see greater changes in their fatherland than any that 

 had preceded. Pure-mind(Hl German science, untrou])lcd by chauvin- 

 istic jealousy, has never failed to recognize th(^ mighty intellectual 

 stinudus which she has ofttimes owed to foreign lands; ])ut she ever 

 recalls wdth just pride the purely national development which has gone 

 on unceasingly from the time of her own intellectual giants of the 

 eighteenth century. This movement matured its l)est I'epresentatives 

 in the years of external pressure, for it was in these very periods of 

 stress that intellectual actl\'ity found the tinit^ to ripen. Living on in 

 the traditions of the undying classics, the German s<-h()ol formed the 

 men to whom we owe the Germany of the present. One ]>y one they 

 pass away — these landmarks of the Germanic culture of the nineteenth 

 century who brought it to b(d'ore ludvnown excellence — :uid now, in 

 his turn, is Rudolf Vii'chow departed from this life. 



Rudolf Ludwig Karl Virchow was born on Octol)er 18, 1S21, in the 

 town of Schievelbein, in further Fommerania. Much of intcu'est 

 regarding his childhood is disclosed in the account which he himself 



« Translated, by periiii.ssion of author and }>ul)li8hers, from the " Deutsche Rund- 

 schau" of December, 1902. 



641 



sM ludi!' — n 



