To answer the question as to the relation of the idea of "Bildung" and the historical and genealogical critique of contemporary culture, this article takes a detour through nineteenth-century German thought to recall the primary ideas, institutions, and processes such as the university, knowledge/scholarship ("Wissenschaft"), humanity, and humaneness as well as related ideas and values, as theorized by Wilhelm von Humboldt. In a second step, it traces the critique leveled at neo-humanism by Friedrich Nietzsche who argues that the higher education system during the Second Empire achieved the exact opposite of what was originally intended. Finally, it draws some conclusions with an eye to the present situation.