The invention of Enlightenment.
A history of concepts, images and metaphors from the 'saddle time' around 1700.

Daniel Fulda

Felix Meiner Verlag

In: Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte 64.1 (2022), S. 7–100.

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In an international comparison, the German Enlightenment is regarded as a latecomer and not very militant. In his recently published treatise "Die Erfindung der Aufklärung" (The Invention of Enlightenment), Daniel Fulda argues that a concept of 'Enlightenment' as an intellectual improvement and a reform process of historical significance, which could be pursued in a combative manner, emerged in the German-speaking world shortly after 1700. As he shows with methods from the history of concepts, images and metaphors, the origin from the weather vocabulary was decisive for the attractiveness of the group of words around enlighten and Enlightenment: from the original meaning of the sun breaking through the clouds, the new cognitive meaning took with it pictorial associations that suggested a natural power of the desired reforms of thought and life and a bright future.

The study of the semantics and pragmatics of enlighten and enlightenment, which extends from the early 17th to the mid-18th century, is flanked by archive-based investigations into the genesis of the Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, the monumental lexicon on the history of concepts conceived by Reinhart Koselleck. While Koselleck started from the premise that history can only be understood in terms of concepts, Fulda's article argues on a broad source basis that includes pre-terminological and metaphorical language use as well as programmatic images. In doing so, he also asks about possible influences of other languages (French, English, Latin) as well as about interferences and competitions between religious and secularly oriented language use. Finally, he compares his findings with the Enlightenment interpretations of Dan Edelstein and Antoine Lilti.

Daniel Fulda's great treatise on the "invention of the Enlightenment" around 1700 forms the core of the eponymous focus in the current issue of the renowned Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte. Carsten Zelle, Steffen Martus, Gisela Schlüter, Gideon Stiening and Carsten Dutt have contributed commentaries with reflections on the consequences for Enlightenment research on the one hand and the theory and methodology of conceptual historiography on the other. Matthias Löwe, on the other hand, made a gratifying meta-commentary: "I find the entire Enlightenment focus in the Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte extremely successful conceptually, dramaturgically and intellectually: this is humanities at its best."

Revolution meets Enlightenment research

1989/90 Heritage of the GDR and the founding of the Centre for European Enlightenment Studies

Daniel Fulda (Hg.)

mitteldeutscher verlag

IZEA – Kleine Schriften    12/2021

In June 2023, the 2nd, supplemented edition will be published with new findings on the involvement of the State Security Service of the GDR.

The upheavals around 1989 were drastic, in politics and the economy and also in private life, in cultural life as well as in science, institutionally and for many also biographically. The burdens (and not only liberations) associated with this have long been suppressed. But the not so few continuities between the GDR era and reunified Germany have also received little attention.

At the University of Halle, for example, the Interdisciplinary Centre for European Enlightenment Studie, would hardly have been founded in 1993 if had it not been for the initiative of the romanist Ulrich Ricken to establish an International Research Centre for the European Enlightenment in the Francke Foundations in 1986. Enlightenment research did not have to be introduced into East Germany from outside. Rather, it was here that there was an internationally recognised tradition of scholarly engagement with this 'progressive heritage'. This was not without ideological over-formations, but these loosened in the 1980s.

The volume Revolution trifft Aufklärungsforschung explores the mixture of upheavals, new departures and continuities over the period 1989/90 with contributions (that are partly investigative in the history of science and partly more personal) about

• Enlightenment research in the GDR and its ideological conditions, which were overcome in the pre-revolutionary period through the founding of the Enlightenment center in Halle,
• the struggle of an initially small minority for far-reaching reforms at the university, the irritations of a professor coming from the West, and the experiences of a student during the revolution times of 1989,
• some long-term trends in society and the humanities in both East and West Germany, which came to an unexpected head with the revolution of 1989/90.

Since the GDR period, the euphoric revolution of 1989/90 and the subsequent years of crisis and consolidation are sometimes associated with widely divergent or, for the individual, more or less mixed experiences, emotions and memories, this volume intentionally provides space for different perspectives.

To pick out just one aspect of the complex topic: The Enlightenment movement of the 18th century was interpreted in the GDR as preparation for the revolution of 1789 and the first step towards socialism. When a revolution under socialism occurred in 1989, the GDR Enlightenment research was in no way at the forefront. Reality turned out to be more revolutionary than scholars - in East and West Germany - could have imagined. Nevertheless, the founding of the Enlightenment center in Halle can be called an avant-garde undertaking. For it set in motion a close cooperation with Federal Republic research institutions and even donors that had seemed impossible until then. In this respect, it anticipated the reunification that became possible a little later. The history of the Enlightenment center in Halle has been an all-German one from the very beginning and not just since 1990. - Unforeseen, but full of relational sense and historical consistency: Revolution met Enlightenment research!

Since when and why have there been 'German classics'?

Daniel Fulda

Stuttgart, Leipzig: Hirzel 2021

Abhandlungen der Sächsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil.-hist. Kl., Band 85, Heft 3

Since when and why have there been 'German classics'?

The canonisation of 'German classics' is attributed in German Philology to the nationalism of the 19th century. In fact, it did not take place retrospectively, but as early as the late 18th century on the basis of a decades-long expectation that Germans would have their recognised top works and authors just like other nations of antiquity and modern times. The decisive instance of canonisation was the book market, which from 1789 onwards explicitly produced so-called series of 'German classics'. Especially for reprinting companies who resident in Vienna, the 'German classics' functioned as a brand that was as profitable as it was prestigious. Fulda's academy treatise undertakes a methodological critique of the reception paradigm dominant in research and reconstructs the expectation of 'classic writers' in the Age of Enlightenment. In the contributions of Herder, Wieland and Schiller, a new, historicised concept of classicism emerged there, distancing itself from a courtly or scholarly audience orientation. In Weimar, authors like Goethe or a publisher like Bertuch also formulated a concept of the classics based on the business interests in the expanding book market and the consumer interests of readers. As Fulda shows, economic, production-related and aesthetic value formation were closely intertwined in the production of classics around 1800, which was both discursive and bookselling. In the unmanageable mass of books that German readers increasingly faced, the classics label functioned as a distinction of the outstanding, attractive to many. 'Classics' were now available en masse, although they were set apart from the masses. This paradox made them valuable both for publishers and for the public, for whom orientation in the literary field was made easier.

Enlightenment for the eye

Another view of the 18th century

Daniel Fulda (Hg.)

mitteldeutscher verlag, 2020

Enlightenment is considered a business of words. Can it also be advanced through images? Or perhaps even particularly well through images, because they are (supposedly) immediately catchy and also reach those who have little access to written culture?

What do the images of the Enlightenment look like, what are their typical motifs and what techniques do they use? What do they put in the light, what do they present, what do they uncover and make visible? Similar to the language-based self-reflection that was so important for the Enlightenment, the question also arises as to what information images provide about themselves: Are images also capable of 'thinking' about what they are and what they do?

The authors of this volume explore these questions in order to take a new look at the epoch of the Enlightenment. How does our conception of the Enlightenment change when we examine its pictures?

University of innovation?

Novelty an innovation as historical and historiographical categories

Published by Daniel Fulda und Andreas Pečar

De Gruyter, 2020
In: Hallesche Beiträge zur Europäischen Aufklärung, 63

The University of Halle, inaugurated in 1694, is considered the birthplace of the German Enlightenment. What claims to new knowledge and the reform of science and society did the scholars working there make? This volume explores this question with a view to the various subjects and communication situations (teaching, publications, politics). Innovation was a widespread claim, but practice was more ambivalent.

Plagiarism as scientific innovation?

Plagiarism as scientific innovation? Criticism and acceptance of a plagiarism scandalises three centuries ago in the age of excerpt. In: Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 43 (2020), H. 2.

https://doi.org/10.1002/bewi.201900028   

Narratin history like a novel

Envisioned pasts at the beginning of the 21st century.

In cooperation with Elenea Agazzi                                                           Published by Daniel Fulda, Stephan Jaeger

De Gruyter, 2019

Studien und Texte zur Sozialgeschichte der Literatur, Band 148

In our present time there is a boom for narrative texts with historical themes. This can be observed in the aesthetically demanding field as well as in the popular field, and also in the area of non-fictional factual texts and family or car biography. What forms, interests and functions are associated with this? This volume, written by an international group of contributors, examines these questions, concentrating on German-language texts. Particular attention is paid to what has characterised the current situation since around 2000. These are, firstly, the hybridisation of established forms of historical narrative, such as the classical or avant-garde historical novel, and the questioning of the fact-fiction boundary, and secondly, new kinds of cultural contexts: changed social needs for orientation, the (alleged) crisis of the modern understanding of history, and the need for 'experience' that has grown in our mediatised present. Special attention is paid to the time travel motif, which is conspicuously popular both inside and outside literature. The volume provides the first extensiv study of novelistic historical narration in contemporary German-language literature.

Alliances

Alliances Political, Social and Intellectual Alliances in the Century of Enlightenment

Published by Franz M. Eybl, Daniel Fulda, Johannes Süßmann

Böhlau Verlag Wien, 2019

Alliances as voluntary connections characterise the cultural, social and political development of the 18th century from political alliance to philosophy and economics, from the establishment of friendship cult and cultural sociability to moral or subversive alliances and their networks, from poetic alliance to musical exchange. The volume explains the extensive discussion about the character and benefits of socialisation, the emergence of new social alliances and the development of traditional associations under a new sign. The guiding concept of the alliance accompanies the spread of the Enlightenment up to the almost utopian exaltation of the idea of alliance in Schiller's Ode, the anthem of the European Union.

Theatrum naturae et artium - Leibniz and the settings of the Enlightenment

Published by Daniel Fulda und Pirmin Stekeler-Weithofer

Hirzel S. Verlag, 2019

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz is considered the last universal scholar. His achievements are not limited to the field of the development of mathematics after Descartes, for example the differential and integral calculus in competition with Isaac Newton, and then also the physical natural sciences, but also include technology, linguistics and functional theory, geography and geology, library science, theology and (church) politics. Particularly noteworthy are the effects in the history of ideas and literature of the 18th century, not least mediated by the Leipzig professor Johann Christoph Gottsched. The texts assembled here under the title Theatrum naturae et artium - a conference organised by the Saxon Academy of Sciences in Leipzig in cooperation with the City and University of Leipzig, the MPI Mathematics in the Sciences and the German Society for the Study of the Eighteenth Century (DGEJ) to commemorate Leibniz in the 200th year of his death, which coincided with the 150th anniversary of Gottsched's death - still reveal surprising connections between the diverse topics. They document the modernity of Leibniz's understanding of science as a debate about correct theories in letters and essays and about their significance for a respective practice.

The narrative of the Enlightenment

Published by Frauke Berndt und Daniel Fulda

Felix Meiner Verlag, Hamburg 2018

Studien zum achtzehnten Jahrhundert, Band 38

In cooperation with Cornelia Pierstorff.

This volume contains the keynote lectures and section contributions of the annual conference of the German Society for the Study of the 18th Century 2015 in Halle a. d. Saale. Under the general theme "Narrated and Narrative Enlightenment", the volume deals with historical narrative strategies, philosophical narration, scientific and religious narratives in the Enlightenment period, deals with tradition, perspectives and media of narration as well as with theories and models of utopian narration. Five main contributions by Michel Delon, Robert E. Norton, Elisabeth Décultot, Franz M. Eybl and Fritz Breithaupt as well as an introduction by the editors Frauke Berndt and Daniel Fulda introduce the volume.

Poetics and Politics of historical dicourse in Germany and France (1789-1914)

Published by Elisabeth Décultot, Daniel Fulda, Christian Helmreich

Universitätsverlag Winter 2018

The long 19th century between the French Revolution and the First World War is regarded as an age of history and nationalism in equal measure. Focusing on historical scholarship as well as literature and the arts, the contributions in this volume ask about the poetics of historical discourse, which were the instrument, carrier or prerequisite of national perspectivisation. How did the poetics of historical discourse correlate with the rhetoric of the nation and its political implications?

German-language and French examples from Büchner to Zola, from Michelet to Karl May are examined: to what extent do the poetics of history and nation resemble each other on both sides of the Rhine, although Germans and French mostly perceived each other as enemies? Two contributions on the then and contemporary philosophy of history (Nietzsche and Hayden White) round off the volume.

History carries the torch for the Enlightenment.

German-French History of Images

Published by Daniel Fulda

Halle (mdv) 2016

IZEA – Kleine Schriften 7/2016

In the early Enlightenment, history - the knowledge of what has been and what has come to be - was upgraded to an indispensable prerequisite for progress in knowledge and purposeful action. History is supposed to illuminate the path that leads to a better future, and is therefore addressed as a torch or depicted figuratively with a torch. Where history-related torch symbolism comes from and how it evolved over the course of the 18th and early 19th centuries is traced in the book through a wide range of texts and images from historiographical and literary classics to revolutionary newspapers.

Historiographiegeschichtliche Revisionen

Herausgegeben von Elisabeth Décultot und Daniel Fulda

De Gruyter 2016

Hallesche Beiträge zur Europäischen Aufklärung, Band 52