VIRCHOW, RUDOLF CARL

(b. Schivelbein, Pomerania, Germany, 13 October 1821;

d. Berlin, Germany, 5 September 1902), pathology, social medicine, public health, anthropology. For the original article on Virchow see DSB, vol. 14.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, Virchow was the object of new historical assessments, which were mostly due to changing perspectives on science and society in the nineteenth century. While previously Virchow was primarily a subject for historians of medicine, he increasingly also became an object of interest in the history of science and in general history. Furthermore, while more traditional historical approaches to Virchow still played an important role, there emerged an important trend to consider him no longer primarily as the “great doctor” but rather as a prototype of the modern scientist and also as a forerunner of scientific expertise in politics. Subsequent historical understandings of Virchow mostly focus on four aspects:

1. medicine;
2. anthropology;
3. science and politics; and
4. science and the public.

Medicine. Virchow’s importance in the realm of pathology and physiology but also of social medicine has remained a focus of scholarly interest. He has been an important source of professional identity for the medical

community, which tries to benefit from his heritage. Under such a perspective, Virchow has been described as a harbinger of modern medicine and also of modern medical ethics.

Virchow’s role in nineteenth-century medicine, however, may also be considered an important example of modern market dynamics in science, of construction of disciplines, and also as part of state attempts to modernize Germany with the help of science. This might also help to explain why the Prussian state bureaucracy was much more reluctant to chastise the promising young scientist at the end of the revolution in 1848 than in other cases of rebellious scholars. And it also helps to explain the further steps of his astonishing career, which for some time made him to the symbol of modern German science.

In such a critical perspective, which is less interested in the “genius” and more in the institutional and social framework that made the emergence of a scientific star possible, there is also less emphasis on the originality of Virchow’s ideas, and more on the techniques he used to strengthen both the disciplinary power of pathology and physiology and his authority within these fields. Especially important in this respect are his numerous publications in scientific journals, which provided him opportunity both to disseminate his ideas and to exert control over the dissemination of the ideas of others. Virchow can be seen as a forerunner of the modern market-oriented scientist who lived under the terms of “publish or perish” and who was highly effective in organizing material resources—ranging from subjects for dissections to the funding of institutes in Wuerzburg and Berlin—to promote his research. And one might add that he also was highly effective in squeezing academic rivals such as Robert Remak out of the market.

With the establishment of his Pathological Institute in Berlin in 1856, Virchow also participated in the “institutional revolution” (Cahan,) which adapted scientific institutes to the needs of a rising industrial nation. At the Pathological Institute, where Virchow ruled for about forty-five years, a specific scientific culture emerged that molded generations of German medical students who received their professional training there. In particular, Virchow’s dissection techniques can be considered both as medical and cultural techniques. His students were trained for Accurate Observation and exact description by help of a variety of means ranging from a “microscopical Railway” where preparations were circling among them around to glasses filled with colored beans. “Learning to see,” which formed the core of Virchow’s medical educational program, was both essential to his allegedly inductive epistemology and to his liberal worldview.

Anthropology. Recent interest has grown especially in Virchow’s anthropological activities, which had moved to the center of his scientific activities in the late 1860s. Again, his role in constructing a new discipline has found special interest, since anthropology had not become a university-based science in Germany before the late nineteenth century. The decisive tool for the institutionalization of anthropology was the Berlin Anthropological Society, over which Virchow presided for decades and which provided the core of the nationwide German Anthropological Society. As in other countries, scientific amateurs were pivotal for the establishment of the new discipline of anthropology in Germany. The membership of amateurs in scientific voluntary associations served both the construction of the disciplinary identity of anthropology and the reinvigoration of a bourgeois identity.

The main interest for Virchow’s anthropological activities, however, results from the debate on the origins of modern scientific racism. For a long time, Virchow has been considered as a rock in the racist tide of his time. This point of view has been reinforced by some authors who consider that the illiberal break of anthropology could only have taken place in the generations following Virchow. Others, however, suggest that Virchow himself paved the way if not to racist ideas then to racist practices, notably by his famous anthropological examinations of hair, eye, and skin colors of German schoolchildren which he undertook in 1876. By making anthropological distinctions popular, he might have spread a racist “tacit knowledge” among ordinary Germans.

In this manner, Virchow has become a symbol of the inherent contradictions of the liberal defense against racism and anti-Semitism in the German Empire. He represents the dilemma of liberal anthropology at the fin de siècle: While anthropology finally had achieved academic recognition, it had lost all scientific criteria to define race. At the same time, however, it was not able to get rid of the stereotype of primordial races. So, on the one hand, Virchow strongly disapproved racial anti-Semitism as superstition and atavism. On the other hand, however, he stuck to a intuitive notion of race and to the stereotype of the primordial Teuton.

Science and Politics. A great deal of the interest in Virchow toward the end of the twentieth century was devoted to his political activities, which previously often had been considered a rather ephemeral aspect of his life and work. His political activities, however, should not be considered only as a time-consuming distraction from his scientific work. Rather, they were closely linked not only to his scientific self-understanding, but also to a liberal and bourgeois model of citizenship that contributed highly to the ultimate core of his personality. Therefore, Virchow is also an example for the changing feasibility in combining science and political activities as aspects of a civic lifestyle in the nineteenth century: He might be considered as a prototype of the “scientist as citizen.”

While during the revolution of 1848 Virchow had successfully claimed the identity of science and politics, in later years he became more skeptical about the compatibility of the roles of scientist and politician. Nevertheless, he remained extremely active in both fields until the end of his life, and thus he resisted the secular trend toward the “pure” scientist. Virchow never fully agreed to the autonomy of science and politics, because he believed in the validity of the laws of progress in both nature and society. So he can be considered as an outstanding exponent of “progressivism” in Germany, which during much of the nineteenth century was based on a close alliance of science and liberalism.

Virchow’s political engagement shifted from radical democratic ideas during the revolution of 1848 to a more moderate liberal stance since his political revival at the end of the 1850s. As a left liberal member of the Berlin City Council, of the Prussian Diet, and for some time also the Reichstag, he was mainly active in fields where he could make use of his scientific authority. Among them, matters of public health and education were most prominent. Also of special importance, however, was his engagement during the cultural war with the Catholic Church during the 1870s. During that conflict Virchow even became an ally of his archenemy, the conservative Prussian minister-president Otto von Bismarck, against whom he had fiercely fought during the constitutional struggle in Prussia of the early 1860s. But there exists a common element between these two struggles: In both cases Virchow fought for the authority of a scientific model of truth for which he claimed universal validity. So while Bismarck tied his assertion of “Truth” and “Trust” to an aristocratic code of honor, Virchow referred to the praxis of modern science by claiming that “truth” and “trust” in the political realm also should be based on empirical examination of facts and observing the laws of logic.

As Virchow tried to extend his scientific authority to the political field, so his political ideas influenced his scientific work. Especially important for the circulation of ideas between the scientific and political field was his use of metaphors. A classical object for the examination of the reciprocal transfer of meanings between biology and society has been Virchow’s cellular pathology. The latter generated a central metaphorical field that encompassed the notions of “cell,” “individual,” and “state.” While in his early days Virchow had defined disease as “life under modified circumstances,” at the end of his career he had adopted the growing militarization of public discourse, and now he tended to define disease as a war, where the body was a beleaguered cell state threatened by external forces.

Science and the Public. Virchow was always eager to disseminate his scientific ideas as elements of political reform. Already in his famous report on the typhus epidemic in Upper Silesia in 1848, Virchow had articulated a paternalistic scientific education program as a means for the development of a bourgeois society. While at that time he still considered the state as a close ally for the education of illiterate “masses,” later he estimated scientific education as a tool to reform the state itself. Virchow aimed at bringing society in accordance with the laws of nature, which should result from “scientific thinking”—which for him in the first instance meant an opposition to “philosophical,” deductive thinking —and “unprejudiced observation.” Thus, he considered scientific knowledge and scientific thinking as important tools for liberal reform of state and society.

As a result, after the 1860s, Virchow more and more stepped into the field of popularization of science. He became one of the most important activists of liberal national education of his time in Germany. Virchow participated in voluntary associations devoted to the education of craftsmen, he published numerous books and series devoted to national education, and he also founded several museums, ranging from the Berlin Ethnological Museum established in 1886 to the Pathological Museum at the Charité, which was opened to the public in 1901. Behind all these publication and museum projects stood the idea of “enlightenment,” which aimed at both destroying “superstition” and strengthening belief in the authority of science. And after the unification of the German Empire in 1871, Virchow even considered the popularization of German science as a device for national homogenization. Therefore, both his later attacks on Catholicism and Darwinism may be explained as consequences of his quest for national unity and scientific authority. While Catholicism in Virchow’s eyes posed a threat of division between national-oriented Protestants and Catholics devoted to a supranational power, the popularization of Darwinism in school curricula meant for him the distribution of still hypothetical knowledge—with all risk of later refutation and consequential concussion of popular trust in science.

Outlook. From the 1880s, Virchow increasingly became a public monument as a symbol of German science. However, he was also more and more criticized both for his growing authoritarianism in the field of science and for his conception of the unity of science and liberalism: The latter no longer fitted either the growing social democratic or the conservative mood in the German Empire. The gap between Virchow’s aspirations—to organize a national liberal consensus by way of the popularization of a scientific style of thought—and the real situation in the German Empire was very much widening. Consequently, already before his death, his public image became more and more defined by his role as the great doctor, while his manifold political activities for a long time came to be considered as a kind of intellectual teething troubles. However, Virchow cannot be properly understood if one does not take into account his peculiar position in the center of a “culture of progress” that for many decades played a decisive role in nineteenth-century Germany.

SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY

While the major share of the literary remains of Rudolf Virchow belongs to the Archiv der Berlin-Brandenburgischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin, an additional part can be found at the Pommersches Landesmuseum, Greifswald, Sammlung RablVirchow. Significant segments of Virchow’s publications and literary remains have become available by editions. Most important is the gargantuan project of Christian Andree, an edition of Virchow’s complete writings, which is anticipated to span seventy-one volumes: Rudolf Virchow, Sämtliche Werke, edited by Christian Andree. As of 2007, fifteen volumes had been published (and publishing houses had changed twice).

WORKS BY VIRCHOW

Die Korrespondenz zwischen Heinrich Schliemann und Rudolf Virchow 1876–1890, bearb. u. hrsg. von Joachim Herrmann und Evelin Maaß in Zusammenarbeit mit Christian Andree und Luise Hallof (Arranged and edited by Joachim Herrmann and Evelin Maaß in cooperation with Christian Andree and Luise Hallof). Berlin: Akademie, 1990.

Anton Dohrn und Rudolf Virchow: Briefwechsel; 1864–1902. Bearb. und mit einer wissenschaftshistorischen Einleitung versehen von Christiane Groeben and Klaus Wenig ( Arranged and provided with an introduction by Christiane Groeben and Klaus Wenig). Berlin: Akademie, 1992.

Beiträge zur wissenschaftlichen Medizin aus den Jahren 1846–1850. Vol. 4 of Sämtliche Werke. Edited by Christian Andree. Bern: Lang, 1992.

Politische Tätigkeit im Preußischen Abgeordnetenhaus (1861–1893). Vols. 30–37 of Sämtliche Werke. Edited by Christian Andree. Bern: Lang, resp. Berlin: Blackwell, 1992 ff.

Rudolf Virchow und Emil du Bois-Reymond. Briefe 1864–1894. Edited by Klaus Wenig. Marburg/Lahn: Basiliken, 1995.

Vorlesungs- und Kursnachschriften aus Würzburg. Wintersemester 1852/53 bis Sommersemester 1854. Vol. 21 of Sämtliche Werke. Edited by Christian Andree. Berlin: Blackwell, 2000.

Briefwechsel mit den Eltern und der Familie. Vol. 59 of Sämtliche Werke. Edited by Christian Andree. Berlin: Blackwell, 2001.

Zur Kraniologie Amerikas. Vol. 52 of Sämtliche Werke. Edited by Christian Andree. Berlin: Blackwell, 2002.

Specielle pathologische Anatomie des Menschen. In der Nachschrift von Friedrich Goll, Sommersemester 1851 in Würzburg. Vol. 20 of Sämtliche Werke. Edited by Christian Andree. Berlin: Blackwell, 2003.

OTHER SOURCES

Andree, Christian. Rudolf Virchow als Prähistoriker. 3 vols. Cologne, Germany: Böhlau, 1976–1986.

———. Rudolf Virchow: Leben und Ethos eines großen Arztes. Munich: Langen Müller, 2002. Hero worship at its best.

Boyd, Byron A. Rudolf Virchow: The Scientist as Citizen. New York: Garland, 1991. An excellent description of Virchow’s political career.

Cahan, David. “The Institutional Revolution in German Physics, 1865–1914.” Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 15, no. 2 (1984): 1–65.

David, Heinz. Rudolf Virchow und die Medizin des 20. Jahrhunderts. Munich: Quintessenz, 1993. Mostly a collection of Virchow quotations.

Goschler, Constantin. Rudolf Virchow: Mediziner, Anthropologe, Politiker. Cologne, Germany: Boehlau, 2002. A modern biography that focuses on the interrelation of science and politics.

Inspirationen der Medizin durch Virchow: Symposion am 19, Oktober 2002 in Erlangen. Ausgerichtet vom Institut für Geschichte und Ethik der Medizin und vom PathologischAnatomischen Institut der Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. Erlangen and Jena: Palm und Enke, 2003.

Massin, Benoit. “From Virchow to Fischer: Physical Anthropology and ‘Modern Race Theories’ in Wilhelmine Germany.” In Volksgeist as Method and Ethic: Essays on Boasian Ethnography and the German Anthropological Tradition, edited by George W. Stocking. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996.

Matyssek, Angela. Rudolf Virchow, das Pathologische Museum: Geschichte einer wissenschaftlichen Sammlung um 1900. Darmstadt: Steinkopff, 2002. A pioneer study on Virchow’s role as collector and displayer.

Mazzolini, Renato G. Stato e organismo, individui e cellule nell’opera di Rudolf Virchow negli anni 1845–1860. Published in the journal Annali dell’Istituto storico italo-germanico in Trento 9 (1983): 153–293. A superb study on the role of metaphors in Virchow’s scientific and political thinking.

McNeely, Ian Farrell. Medicine on a Grand Scale: Rudolf Virchow, Health Politics, and Liberal Social Reform in Nineteenth-Century Germany. London: The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London, 2002. A brilliant analysis of Virchow’s role as medical and social reformer.

Schipperges, Heinrich. Rudolf Virchow. Reinbek bei Hamburg, Germany: Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, 1994. A good overview for the general reader.

Smith, Woodruff D. Politics and the Sciences of Culture in Germany, 1840–1920. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Trautmann-Waller, Céline, ed. Quand Berlin pensait les peuples: Anthropologie, ethnologie et psychologie, 1850–1890. Paris: CNRS, 2004.

Vasold, Manfred. Rudolf Virchow: Der grosse Arzt und Politiker. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1988. Hero worship meets social history.

Weindling, Paul. “Theories of the Cell State in Imperial Germany.” In Biology, Medicine, and Society, 1840–1940, edited by Charles Webster. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1981.

Wirth, Ingo. Zur Sektionstätigkeit im Pathologischen Institut der Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin von 1856 bis 1902: Ein Beitrag zur Virchow-Forschung. Berlin: Logos, 2005.

Zimmerman, Andrew. Anthropology and Antihumanism in Imperial Germany. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001.

Constantin Goschler