 After Napoleon’s decisive victory at Jena and Auerstedt and the resulting collapse of Prussia Humboldt returned to Germany in the fall of 1808 and reluctantly accepted the position as head of the section for ecclesiastic affairs and education in the ministry of the interior. Yet in the short period from 1809 to 1810 he was able to institute a radical reform of the entire Prussian educational system from elementary and secondary school to the University which was based on the principle of free and universal education. His idea of combining both teaching and research in one institution that guided him in establishing the University of Berlin in 1810 (today’s Humboldt University) and the structures he created for this institution would become the model not only throughout Germany but also for the modern university in most Western countries. Predictably, Humboldt soon ran into difficulties with the established landed aristocracy in Prussia when he insisted that the University be endowed with landed property in order to insure its independence from the state and the changing winds of politics. After quarreling with his superiors he was asked to resign his post and in 1810 was sent to Vienna as ambassador where, however, he soon became instrumental in convincing Austria to join the Grand Coalition of the European powers against Napoleon. But during the initial diplomatic lull in Vienna he still found time for his linguistic studies. His recently discovered Viennese note books contain sketches of grammars for several South and Central American languages written in French that were intended to become part of his brother’s American Travel account. In 1811 he produced his first extensive philosophical and methodological statement, the Essai sur les langues du Nouveau Continent (Essay on the languages of the New Continent) that was to introduce his study of the Indian grammars of the Americas (GS Vol 3: 300–341).