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The German Enlightenment
(2017)
The term Enlightenment (or Aufklärung) remains heavily contested. Even when historians delimit the remit of the concept, assigning it to a particular historical period rather than to an intellectual or moral programme, the public resonance of the Enlightenment remains high and problematic—especially when equated in an essentialist manner with modernity or some core values of ‘the West’. This Forum has been convened to discuss recent research on the Enlightenment in Germany, different views of the term and its ideological use in public discourse outside academia (and sometimes within it).
“Mason without apron”
(2019)
While the lack of religion in Alexander von Humboldt’s work and the criticism he received is well known, his relationship with Freemasonry is relatively unexplored. Humboldt appears on some lists of “illustrious Masons,” and several lodges carry his name, but was he really a member? If so, when and where did he join a lodge? Are there any comments by him about Freemasonry? Who were the renowned Masons he was surrounded by? This paper examines these questions, but more importantly it analyzes what a membership might have meant for Humboldt’s scholarly work. It looks particularly at the unprecedented success he enjoyed in the United States in the early 19th century and the factors behind it. What could he have gained from these connections and how was he viewed by Masonic leaders and lodges in the trans-Atlantic world?
This article offers a theoretical overview of transnational history in relation to the history of ideas, a field that certain specialists of transnational history have singled out as a promising field of future transnational research. Recent historiographical discussions within Enlightenment studies are offered to throw light about the actual novelty that a transnational perspective would offer for the history of ideas. Rather than being an entirely new outlook, transnational types of analysis can be understood as lying at the heart of classical, universalistic Enlightened scholarship, a perspective that was challenged according to the fundamental problem of context.
Vom Nutzen der Aufklärung
(2000)
Isaak Euchel (1756-1804) war nach seinem Studium bei Kant einer der bedeutendsten Vorkämpfer und hebräischen Schriftsteller der jüdischen Aufklärung in Mitteleuropa. Die jüdische Aufklärung, hebräisch: Haskala, entstand ab 1770 in Berlin. Diese Aufklärungsbewegung der jüdischen Minderheit setzte sich für die Bildung und Ausbildung, bürgerliche Gleichberechtigung und intellektuelle Anerkennung der Juden in der europäischen Aufklärung ein.
Dieser Band vereint in kommentierter Erstübersetzung Euchels programmatische Aufsätze zur Haskala, seine Prosa, Briefe und satirischen Schriften; mit den seltenen hebräischen Originaltexten im Anhang.