GRP 2011

Georg Forster and the Berlin Enlightenment

Georg Forster Colloquium 2011, University of Kassel, International House, June 17-18, 2011

When 2012 marks the 300th anniversary of Frederick the Great's birth - the anniversary has the problematic motto "Peace Risk" - the role of Prussia and Berlin within the European Enlightenment will certainly be discussed. With the renewal of the Academy and the appointment of Maupertuis, La Mettrie and Voltaire, Frederick II played his part in this. In addition, enlightened minds from Germany were attracted to Berlin early on, including Mendelssohn, Sulzer, Mylius and Lessing, before the Seven Years' War interrupted a further upswing. Through Biester, Gedicke, Moritz, Svarez and Dohm, but above all through the publisher, writer and critic Friedrich Nicolai, who became the organizational center of the late Enlightenment with his large-scale journal project Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek, the Berlin Enlightenment experienced a further high point. Like many other Berlin intellectuals, he was a member of the famous Wednesday Society, of which Moses Mendelssohn was an honorary member. Perhaps even more influential than the Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek was the Berlinische Monatsschrift, founded in 1783, in which authors such as Archenholtz, Brandes, Büsching, Campe, Dohm, Fichte, Garve, Gentz, Gleim, the Humboldts, Kant, Klein, Klopstock, Möser, Nicolai, Struensee and Svarez published.

Georg Forster, who was connected to Berlin from an early age - his Reise um die Welt was published by Haude und Spener in Berlin - knew the circles around Nicolai, Engel and Biester, with whom he repeatedly met, quite well. He appreciated Berlin's open-minded atmosphere, without welcoming the proximity of his interlocutors to the Prussian royal family. The relationship took on a special note when, in 1788, he defended the ideas of the Enlightenment against the restoration tendencies emerging with Woellner's Edict on Religion.