Manfred Beetz – författare

When the University of Halle-Wittenberg founded the Interdisciplinary Centre for European Enlightenment Studies in 1993, it was following the destiny of its history as a centre of the early Enlightenment in Germany which affected the whole of Europe. Research foci of the Centre are at the moment aesthetics, discourses of history, cultures of learning and erudition, university history and not least the wide field of early Enlightenment as a field of experimentation and the foundation of cultural models for the Modern Age. The results of this research have been published since Autumn 1995 in the Centres’ research publications series entitled University of Halle Series on the European Enlightenment. In addition, there have been relevant works produced outside the Centre. Two to four volumes are published annually (monographs, collected volumes, commentaries on sources).

Um zu wissen, was der Mensch sei, notiert J. G. Hamann 1759 in den „Brocken“, müsse man die Verhältnisse befragen, in denen er lebe. Die 24 Beiträge des vorliegenden Bandes zeigen Hamann im Schnittpunkt gesellschaftlicher Konstellationen und stellen neue Fragen der Sozial- und Religionsgeschichte, der Gesellschaftstheorie, Ökonomie, Philosophie, Politik- und Religionswissenschaft an den Königsberger Gelehrten. So ermöglichen sie eine präzisere Positionsbestimmung Hamanns innerhalb zentraler Diskurse der Aufklärung.

The Königsberg writer Johann Georg Hamann (1730–1788) was a dialogical thinker. He was inspired and challenged in myriad ways by contemporary literature, but his thoughts were also an inspiration and a challenge to his dialectical partners. This is particularly reflected in his correspondence with Kant, Herder, Jacobi, Lavater, Claudius and others. Hamann and his correspondents struggled with fundamental questions of human existence straddling the poles between everyday experience, wisdom, sensuality and reason. The essays collected in this book elucidate Hamann''s correspondence from a literary, philosophical and theological perspective, whilst providing insights into Hamann''s difficult-to-understand work as well as into the letter-writing culture of the 18th century.