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In this article, I argue that chemical lectures at universities played a crucial role in the establishment of chemistry as a well-defined science in Germany around 1800. In particular, lecture demonstrations served to secure the facticity of facts. This was important, because the concept of the chemical fact was at the centre of the prevailing epistemology, which itself partly reflected the social order of chemistry as a science in Germany, and partly served to foster it. In the dialectic constellation of research and teaching, professor-chemists took the lead in the social and epistemological definition of chemistry.

The most significant outcome of an analysis of the German chemistry textbooks published between 1775 and 1820 was the emergence of the concept of theoretische Chemie. Rather than providing fundamental explanations for substances, affinities or reactions, theoretische Chemie ordered the available chemical facts. For the large group of university-based chemists who lacked technical facilities for experimental research, building these kinds of ordered systems proved an adequate way of contributing to chemistry. Furthermore, theoretische Chemie was important for the self-image of chemistry as a science by offering a framework for integrating new knowledge from various nonscientific fields of practice. In spite of this function, textbook authors discussed their very different ordered systems merely in terms of didactic appropriateness rather than in terms of scientific justification or correspondence with nature.