Carl Jung: Bachofen, Burckhardt the City of Basel
Reminiscences of Bachofen, Burckhardt and the City of Basel
October 1, 1957
The fallowing was C. G. Jung’s response to a question of Kurt Wolff about Bachofen and Burckhardt during a visit to Bollingen.
My grandfather was from the same generation and era as Jakob Burckhardt and Bachofen.
When attending the Gymnasium [high school] in Basel I often came across both men, Burckhardt on a daily basis in fact, as he taught at the school.
He shuffied around absent-mindedly, always sunk deep in his own thoughts.
His style of dress was not particularly elegant, with his large neckties and Vatermorder collars, in contrast, drove around the city in a wonderfully fine carriage. He was very rich, a multi-millionaire, which really meant something in those days, and owned the famous “White House.”
I often saw him there, it was next to the “Blue House.”
He always wore trousers that were too tight – those thin trousers with stripes – and a kind of redingote, a fitted frock coat.
He was very elegant and had a potbelly, but his round face made him look like a little boy – he really had the face of a child.
He had a great sense of humor.
Basel was rife with stories and rumors about the two of them, such as this one: Burckhardt once had to move apartments.
As he entered the house, he came across one of the movers, a huge man who had simply hoisted Burckhardt’s baby grand piano onto his back.
Burckhardt cried out in great astonishment: “Criminy, the Atlas!” Burckhardt’s sister was the grandmother of a friend of mine – Albert Oeri.
It was he who told me all these stories and bonmots about Burckhardt – some were serious, but others were just childish nonsense.
friend had the same round face as his great uncle, and also lisped like him. Burckhardt did not appear to have close relations with women.
He was a very sensitive introvert and never married.
His sensitivity kept him at a distance, he was far too shy to initiate and develop a relationship with a woman.
Because of this, he remained childlike, infantile.
Burckhardt always made sneering comments about Bacho fen, which enticed me to become very interested in the latter.
All the derogatory remarks that Burckhardt let slip about Bachofen and Nietzsche piqued my interest in them.
I never saw Nietzsche. He had already stepped down before my family came to Basel.
But I did take an interest in him and his work before turning to psychiatry.
The parents of another friend of mine – Andreas Vischer – had realized that Nietzsche was anything but well-off and supported him financially. took infinite pains to be persuasive. All in vain. His time had not yet come.”
On his inner relationship
to the two characters, only implied by Jung, cf also the contribution by Wolff-Windegg, P.,
“C.G. Jung- Bachofen, Burckhardt, and Basel,” in Spring, An Annual of Archetypal Psychology and
Jungian Thought, Zurich, 1976, pp.137-147.
Wolff had recently published a book about Jakob Burckhardt in the USA10 and remarked that Burckhardt’s measure of aesthetic value
differed greatly from modern assessments.
Jung said the following in response:
What Burckhardt overlooked in Italy and how he perceived the country is astonishing.
He was not even able to appreciate Ravenna!
It shows how aesthetic values are conditioned by a particular time. Just as Goethe did not ‘see’ Giotto.
It is a psychological prejudice pertinent to a time period.
Even the genius succumbs to what is in vogue, as a mouthpiece of the times.
But it is astonishing how limited Burckhardt was in his judgment: this inability to grasp Ravenna!
All in all, the Basel of my childhood, youth and student years had a cosmopolitan and sophisticated atmosphere.
When I moved to Zurich, I could feel the difference: I felt like I had landed in a provincial village.
Zurich’s relationship to the world is not intellectual, but commercial.
Of course there were also businessmen in Basel, the “Bandeliherren.”
They made the necessary money for the others, who had an intellectual connection with the world.
The wealth of the Basel industrialists and money-makers was used to fund the university.
And Basel is a border town, don’t forget, which led to this curious syncretistic hybrid spirit between France, Germany and Switzerland.
The language spoken, however, even in the upper echelons, was strictly Basel German dialect and not French as in Bern, for example.
As Basel was not only geographically but also culturally somewhat isolated, its local flavor was used as a protective shield.
This phenomenon is very characteristic of the whole of Switzerland by the way.
It’s an expression of the mistrust that characterizes Swiss people.
In Basel those who live on the outskirts of the city toward the countryside are said to be from “across the Birs.”
Those who do not live in Basel must therefore be miserable.
When I went to Zurich people always asked me: “So, when are you coming back?
Can you really live in Zurich?” That is Basel! I still have a soft spot for the city, but it’s no longer like it was before.
I still belong to that time when Bachofen was part of the town, and Jakob Burckhardt.
May 4, 1957
- G. Jung also mentioned the difference between the intellectual atmosphere of Basel and Zurich on another occasion when he was
recounting some memories of his early days at Burgholzli.
I was terribly spoiled from living in Basel – there was a very cultivated tradition there which was evident in conversation.
You could tell people were well educated. There I belonged to the “intellectual aristocracy,” so to speak.
With Bleuler – who was a cross between a farmer and a schoolteacher – there was none of that.
What I appreciated about Zurich was that the air was free.
There was no centuries-old stuffiness – but the people in Zurich often seemed to me like a conglomerate of peasants.
In my early days in Zurich I mostly came across as very unlikeable to my colleagues.
A few admired me, but others hated me. I was a Basler, I had the Basel medisance – the sharp tongue – and I liked to make off-color jokes.
But they did not understand my critique and my ideas.
They had never heard of theological discussions – in Basel I was used to having ideological debates.
There, you could count on the other having had a classical education.
For example, even we medical students could debate among ourselves about the different styles of Ciceronian rhetoric.
It was taken for granted.
As medical students we argued about Schopenhauer, about Kant, about various theological approaches.
It was a cultured and intellectually stimulating environment. That did not exist in Zurich. ~Carl Jung, Reflections on the Life and Dreams of C.G. Jung, Page31-35
