Scandinavia, the Netherlands, and Switzerland — Isolated Traces and Overlooked Schools
This text is a preview of History of the Reception of Hegel, volume I, to be published in 2026 by Reflexivity Press.
Preliminary Remark: The Problem of the “Small” Countries
Hegel reception in the smaller European countries has been little researched and often underestimated. Yet it is precisely here that interesting constellations are found: the search for national identity combined with philosophical reflection, academic networks between the major centers, independent transformations in dialogue with local traditions.
Denmark: In Kierkegaard’s Shadow
Danish Hegel reception stands under the long shadow of Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855), who is regarded as the great anti-Hegelian. But this view is oversimplified. The Danish situation was more complex.
Johan Ludvig Heiberg (1791–1860) was the first Danish Hegelian. As a poet, critic, and theater director in Copenhagen, he introduced Hegel’s aesthetics to Denmark in the 1820s. His “Om den menneskelige Frihed” (On Human Freedom, 1824) and his journal “Perseus” (1837–1838) spread Hegelian ideas among educated circles. Heiberg saw in Hegel the completion of philosophy — a position that Kierkegaard later sharply attacked.
Hans Lassen Martensen (1808–1884), later Bishop of Zealand, was Denmark’s theological Hegelian. He had heard Hegel lecture in Berlin and tried to reconcile Hegel’s philosophy with Lutheran orthodoxy. His “Christliche Dogmatik” (1849) was a standard work of speculative theology. Kierkegaard’s attacks were often directed against Martensen, who embodied “the System.”
Hans Brøchner (1820–1875) represents a third position: a critical Hegelian who both studied Hegel and took Kierkegaard’s objections seriously. As professor in Copenhagen (from 1857) he attempted a mediation between systematic philosophy and existential reflection. His students — among them Georg Brandes — carried this tension into the late nineteenth century.
The paradox: Precisely because Kierkegaard became so influential, Danish Hegel reception remained in the shadows. But Kierkegaard’s attacks presupposed a lively Hegel discussion — without Heiberg and Martensen there would have been no Kierkegaard.
Sweden: The Boström School as an Alternative
Sweden developed an independent idealist tradition that distanced itself from Hegel but was influenced by him.
Christopher Jacob Boström (1797–1866), professor at Uppsala, founded the most influential Swedish philosophical school of the nineteenth century. His “rational idealism” was not Hegelianism, but arose in confrontation with Hegel. Boström criticized Hegel’s “pantheism” and set against it a theistic personalism: reality consists of persons in relation to God as the highest person.
Pontus Wikner (1837–1888) was the most productive Swedish thinker to engage directly with Hegel. As professor at Uppsala (from 1876) he tried to combine Boström’s personalism with Hegelian elements. His diaries show a person struggling between religious faith and philosophical system-building.
The Boström school dominated Swedish philosophy into the early twentieth century. It was not a Hegel school, but neither was it one that ignored Hegel — it defined itself in contrast to him.
Norway: Late Beginnings
Norwegian Hegel reception began late — Norway became independent from Denmark only in 1814 and slowly built up its own academic institutions.
Marcus Jacob Monrad (1816–1897), professor in Christiania (Oslo) from 1851, was the first Norwegian Hegelian. He had studied in Berlin and brought Hegelian systematics to Norway. His writings on aesthetics and philosophy of religion followed Hegelian patterns.
Norwegian reception remained academically limited — it did not shape a national identity discussion as in Finland (see section 12.5) and had no countermovement like Kierkegaard’s in Denmark.
The Netherlands: Bolland and Late Hegelianism
Dutch Hegel reception followed an unusual course: it reached its peak only around 1900, when Hegelianism was already declining elsewhere.
Gerardus Johannes Petrus Josephus Bolland (1854–1922) was the most important Dutch Hegelian — and one of the most flamboyant figures in the entire late reception of Hegel. As professor at Leiden (from 1896) he established a kind of “Hegelian sect” (as the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy puts it), which infiltrated all areas of Dutch intellectual life.
Bolland’s main work, Zuivere Rede (Pure Reason, 1904), was a monumental attempt to reformulate Hegel’s logic for the twentieth century. He read Hegel as an absolute rationalist and rejected all “dilutions” — whether through Marxism, philosophy of life, or Neo-Kantianism.
The Bolland school included significant students: J. Hessing (1874–1944), J.G. Wattjes (1879–1944), Esther Vas Nunes (1866–1929). They formed a dense network across universities, journals, and cultural institutions.
The decline: The Bolland school lost influence rapidly after the Second World War — for political reasons. Bolland himself had held antisemitic views; several of his students had associated with the extreme right. Dutch Hegelianism was discredited by this entanglement — a cautionary example of how philosophical schools can be brought down by political failings.
Belgium had no independent Hegel school. The dominance of Neo-Thomism — especially at the Catholic University of Leuven — left little room for German idealism. Hegel was rejected as a “pantheist,” incompatible with Catholic doctrine.
Switzerland: Dialectical Theology and Academic Neutrality
Swiss Hegel reception was modest in scope but significant in its impact — above all through dialectical theology.
Before 1914 there was no independent Swiss Hegel school. Swiss universities were internationally oriented — one studied in Germany, Paris, or Vienna — and imported philosophical currents but rarely developed them further. Neo-Kantianism (especially in Zurich) and philosophy of life dominated.
Karl Barth (1886–1968) and dialectical theology represent the most important Swiss contribution to Hegel reception — as a countermovement. Barth’s Epistle to the Romans (1919/1922) was a rejection of all mediation between God and world, revelation and reason — and thereby of Hegel’s philosophy of reconciliation. (Discussed in detail in Volume II, Ch. 2)
The irony of the name: “Dialectical theology” is so called even though it rejects Hegel’s dialectic. “Dialectic” here does not mean mediation, but the holding-fast to contradiction: God is God, man is man — and no synthesis abolishes this difference.
Basel became a refuge after 1933 for emigrated German philosophers. Karl Jaspers taught here (from 1948), after he could no longer work in Heidelberg. Swiss neutrality enabled a continuity of philosophical work that had been interrupted in Germany.
Austria-Hungary, Spain, Portugal
Austria/the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy: Here Aristotelian school philosophy in the Catholic tradition dominated. Franz Brentano and his school (Meinong, Husserl, Marty) turned explicitly against German idealism. Brentano’s Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (1874) was a rejection of speculative constructions in favor of descriptive analysis. The few Austrian Hegelians — such as Robert Zimmermann, who moved from Herbart to Hegel — remained isolated.
Czech lands and other Slavic regions: There were individual mediators of German philosophy, but no independent reception. Philosophical culture was shaped either by scholasticism (in Catholic circles) or by positivism (in liberal circles). Hegelian speculation found little resonance.
Spain and Portugal: The Iberian Peninsula was philosophically oriented toward France, and later toward Comte’s positivism. German philosophy was little known; translations of Hegel were lacking until the twentieth century. The Catholic Church, dominant in both countries, rejected German idealism as Protestant and pantheistic.
This survey shows: where institutional, cultural, or religious preconditions were absent, Hegel remained marginal. Scandinavia was too oriented toward empiricist British philosophy, Austria too Aristotelian-Catholic, Spain too shaped by French Catholicism. Productive Hegel reception required a specific constellation — and before 1914 this was found, outside the three centers (Germany, England/USA, Russia), only in embryonic form.