The Reception of Burke`s Enquiry in the German

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The Reception of Burke’s Enquiry
in the German-language Area
in the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century
(A Regional Aspect)
TomበHlobil
E
S T E T I K A
/
R
O â N Í K
XLIV
The reception of Edmund Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of
our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) in the German-language area
has been discussed in scholarly literature for almost 200 years.1 The most
important studies to date are Frieda Braune’s Edmund Burke in Deutschland
(1917) and the introductions to one English edition of the Enquiry and
to two German translations, which were written by James T. Boulton,
Werner Strube, and Manfred Kuehn.2 These contributions can be
usefully divided into two thematic groups. The first has concentrated on
illuminating how Burke’s aesthetics was disseminated in practice; in this
context, researchers have pointed to the long absence of a German
This article was written with the generous support of the Grant Agency of the
Czech Republic (grant no. 408/07/0448) and is part of the research proposal of the
Ministry of Education of the Czech Republic no. 0021620824. I am also indebted to
the Herzog-August-Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel, which enabled me to research the
pertinent sources.
1
The earliest historical mention I could find of the influence that Burke’s Enquiry
had on German aesthetics is in Amadeus Wendt’s ‘Ästhetik’ entry in Johann
Samuel Ersch and Johann Gottfried Gruber, Allgemeine Encyclopädie der Wissenschaften und Künste in alphabetischer Folge von genannten Schriftstellern bearbeitet, Part 2,
Leipzig: Gleditsch, 1819, pp. 87–93.
2
Frieda Braune, Edmund Burke in Deutschland. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des historisch-politischen Denkens, Heidelberg: Winter, 1917, pp. 4–15; Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, ed. with an
introduction and notes by James T. Boulton, London: Routledge, 1958,
pp. cxx–cxxvii; trans. into German by Friedrich Bassenge as Philosophische Untersuchung über den Ursprung unserer Ideen vom Erhabenen und Schönen, ed. and with
a new introduction by Werner Strube, Hamburg: Meiner, 1980, pp. 24–26; and as
Philosophische Untersuchungen über den Ursprung unsrer Begriffe vom Erhabnen [sic]
und Schönen, trans. by Christian Garve, with an introduction by Manfred Kuehn,
Bristol: Thoemmes, 2001, pp. v–xi.
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translation, the mediation of Burke’s ideas by Mendelssohn’s extensive
review, Herder’s unfulfilled intention to publish the Enquiry in German,
and the translation by Christian Garve in 1773. The second and larger
thematic group has examined the way in which German aesthetics
responded to Burke’s views. Employing as its examples chiefly
Mendelssohn, Herder, and Kant, Strube has shown that the Enquiry
served German authors mainly to stimulate a more precise formulation
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of their own points of view. In other words, in the German-language area
the Enquiry was generally not seen as a model of correct and profound
philosophical thinking, but primarily as merely a collection of suitable
examples. German philosophers time and again also resisted Burke’s
main idea (that is, the consistent separation of the Sublime and the
Beautiful), seeking rather to harmonize contradictions than to sharpen
them.3
If we were to generalize the results of research conducted so far, the
reception of Burke’s Enquiry in the German-language area in the second
half of the eighteenth century would emerge as a discontinuous process
with four distinct peaks. The first comprises Lessing and Mendelssohn’s
treatment of the Enquiry in the late Fifties and early Sixties of the
eighteenth century; the second, lasting from the middle of the 1760s to
the beginning of the 1770s, consists mainly in Herder’s interest in Burke’s
aesthetics; the third is the critical reception of Burke in Kant’s Kritik der
Urteilskraft (1790); and the fourth comprises the polemical position
expressed in German post-Kantian philosophy, particularly in its idealistic
branch. This last phase crossed over into the first half of the nineteenth
century.
Although research to date has helped in important ways to shed light
on the penetration of Burke’s Enquiry into the German-language area,
a comprehensive treatment of this reception as a process distinguished
not only by changes over time, but also characterized by regional
variations, remains lacking. Based on the lectures on aesthetics by
3
It makes sense to include other topics in this thematic group, for example the
point, raised by Boulton, that in his Laokoon Lessing did not mention Burke,
though Burke, his predecessor, had before him also investigated the relationship
between painting and poetry.
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August Gottlieb Meißner (1753–1807)4 at Prague University in the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, my paper seeks to shed light
on this regional aspect.5
The first phase of the reception of the Enquiry (and here one can safely
omit Burke’s name, for clearly none of the decisive actors knew the
author of this anonymously published treatise) relates to the English
original and took place in Leipzig and Berlin immediately after its
publication in London in 1757. Nevertheless, the roles of the two German
cities during this phase of reception differed considerably. Although
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–1781) first informed his friends Moses
Mendelssohn (1729–1786) and Friedrich Nicolai (1733–1811) of the
existence of the Enquiry in letters sent from Leipzig in 1757,6 and
4
For more about Meißner, see Arnošt Kraus, ‘August Gottlieb Meissner’,
Athenaeum 5 (1888), no. 5, pp. 125–35, no. 6, pp. 153–63; Rudolf Fürst, August
Gottlieb Meißner. Eine Darstellung seines Lebens und seiner Schriften, Stuttgart:
Göschen, 1894 (still the best biography); Stefan Hock, ‘Zur Biographie August
Gottlieb Meißners’, Euphorion 6 (1899), pp. 544–47; Hans-Friedrich Foltin,
‘Nachwort’, in August Gottlieb Meißner, Kriminalgeschichten, Hildesheim etc.:
Olms, 1977, pp. 533–66; Fotis Jannidis, ‘August Gottlieb Meißner (1753–1807)’,
Aufklärung vol. 8.1, 1994, pp. 121–23; Helena Lorenzová, ‘Osvícenská estetika
na pražské univerzitě (Seibt a Meissner)’, Estetika 34 (1997), no. 3, pp. 27–40;
Eva Foglarová, ‘Od krásných věd ke krásovědě (příspěvek k počátkům české
estetiky)’, in Vlastimil Zuska (ed.), Estetika na křižovatce humanitních disciplín,
Prague: Karolinum, 1997, pp. 161–92; and Alexander Košenina, ‘Nachwort’, in
A. G. Meißner, Ausgewählte Kriminalgeschichten, St. Ingbert: Röhrig Universitätsverlag, 2003, pp. 91–112. Tomáš Hlobil, ‘Die Prager Ästhetiker Seibt und Meißner
in der Korrespondenz Wielands’, in Michal Sýkora (ed.), Kontexty IV, Olomouc:
UP, 2004, pp. 19–28.
5
The regional point of view I have selected compels one to emphasize the particular
nature of each individual centre of interest in Burke’s Enquiry, which is why one
must reiterate that emphasis on local particularity in no case excludes the
existence of mutual relations between the individual centres. These relationships,
for example, between the Riga publisher Hartknoch and the Leipzig authors
Weiße and Garve, undoubtedly existed. For more on this, see below.
6
Lessing remarked on Burke’s Enquiry for the first time in a letter to Nicolai dated
2 November 1757. Lessing’s, Mendelssohn’s, and Nicolai’s discussions concerning
Burke have been summarized by Fritz Bamberger and Eva Engel. See Moses
Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 3.1 Schriften zur Philosophie und Ästhetik,
str. / 127
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although it was in Leipzig that a key text of the first phase of the
reception, Mendelssohn’s review, was published, this Saxon town cannot
reasonably be described as more than a mere mediator. The fact that the
Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften und der freyen Künste, the journal in
which Mendelssohn’s large review appeared in 1758,7 was published in
Leipzig by Johann Gottfried Dyck (1750–1815) was largely coincidence.
After Nicolai failed to find a Berlin publisher for his project of a new
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German review journal for fine arts and belles-lettres, Lessing, who was
residing in Leipzig at the time, won Dyck over for it.8 The chief editing
of the journal was, until the fifth volume (1759), done in Berlin by
Nicolai and Mendelssohn and, moreover, the most important
contributions were written in the Prussian capital as well. The great
intellectual ferment that the Enquiry awakened in Lessing and
Mendelssohn culminated in works by the Jewish scholar, which related
directly to Burke or expressed his own theory of feelings,9 and in
Lessing’s continuously postponed and ultimately unfulfilled intention
to translate the Enquiry.10 This first phase of reception, which ends in the
ed. by Fritz Bamberger and Leo Strauss, Berlin: Akademie, 1932, pp. xli–xlv.
Moses Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 4 Rezensionsartikel in Bibliothek
der schönen Wissenschaften und der freyen Künste (1756–1759), ed. by Eva J. Engel,
Stuttgart, Bad Cannstatt: Frommann, 1977, pp. lxxiii–lxxv.
7
8
Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften und der freyen Künste, vol. 3, pt 2, 1758,
pp. 290–320; reprinted in Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 4, pp. 216–36.
For the fate of the Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften und der freyen Künste, see Eva
J. Engel, ‘Einleitung’, ibid., pp. xxiv–xxx.
9
Of Mendelssohn’s contributions on Burke, apart from the review of the Enquiry,
see ‘Anmerkungen über das englische Buch: On the Sublime and the Beautiful’,
in Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 3.1, pp. 237–53, and ‘Zu Lessings
Anmerkungen über Burkes Enquiry’, ibid., pp. 254–58. See also Mendelssohn’s
‘Rhapsodie oder Zusätze zu den Briefen über die Empfindungen’ (1761). For
Mendelssohn’s and Burke’s views of the Sublime, see Werner Strube, ‘Teoria
wzniosłości Mendelssohna albo jak pisać historię estetyki’, Principia 21–22, 1998,
pp. 109–17.
10
Of Lessing’s writing related to Burke, the notes ‘Bemerkungen über Burke’s
Philosophische Untersuchungen über den Ursprung unserer Begriffe vom
Erhabenen und Schönen’ has survived; see Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Werke
1758–1759, vol. 4, ed. by Gunter E. Grimm, Frankfurt on Main: Deutscher Klassikerverlag, 1997, pp. 448–52.
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early 1760s,11 was intellectually a matter primarily of Berlin, not of
Leipzig.12
The second phase of interest in the Enquiry was mainly in the northern
maritime centres of German culture, particularly Königsberg, Riga,
Hamburg and Copenhagen. This renewed interest was sparked by
Johann Georg Hamann’s review of Kant’s early, pre-critical writing
Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönen und Erhabenen (1764), published
in the Königsbergsche Gelehrte und Politische Zeitungen, 30 April 1764.13 It was
14
only thanks to Hamann (1730–1788),
who owned an original copy of
15
the Enquiry (without knowing who the author was)16 and summarized
11
Echoes of this first wave of interest in Burke’s Enquiry could still be heard in the
late Sixties, when Lessing, in a letter to his brother Karl (dated 28 October 1768),
stated that he had not yet completely given up the translation. See Lessing,
Werke 1758–1759, vol. 4, p. 1045.
12
Lessing stayed in Berlin from May 1758 to 7 November 1760. See Mendelssohn,
Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 4, p. lxxiv.
13
The review is reprinted in Johann Georg Hamann, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 4 Kleine
14
Schriften 1750–1788, ed. by Josef Nadler, Vienna: Morus, 1952, pp. 289–92.
Although thanks to Mendelssohn north-German authors had an opportunity to
acquaint themselves with the Enquiry even before Hamann’s review, there is no
direct evidence of this. Hamann is believed (as Giordanetti argues) to have
bought a copy of the Enquiry while sojourning in England; if this did indeed
happen, he must have got hold of it without knowing Mendelssohn’s review,
because the latter was not published till 1759, that is, after Hamann had returned
from England. Herder’s reference to Mendelssohn’s contribution to the
dissemination of Burke’s ideas is later than Hamann’s Kantian review, which
Herder clearly knew (Kalligone, 1800). The only such reference I could find is in
Viertes Wäldchen (1769–1772) and it cannot therefore be considered conclusive.
Piero Giordanetti, ‘Zur Rezeption von Edmund Burkes Schrift “A Philosophical
Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful” bei Hamann
und Kant’, in Bernhard Gajek (ed.), Johann Georg Hamann und England. Hamann
und die englischsprachige Aufklärung, Frankfurt on Main etc.: Lang, 1999, pp. 295–303,
especially 295; Johann Gottfried Herder, Werke, vol. 2 Schriften zur Ästhetik und
Literatur 1767–1781, ed. by Gunter E. Grimm, Frankfurt on Main: Deutscher
Klassikerverlag, 1993, p. 349; Johann Gottfried Herder, Werke, vol. 8, Schriften zur
Literatur und Philosophie 1792–1800, ed. by Hans Dietrich Irmscher, Frankfurt on
Main: Deutscher Klassikerverlag, 1998, p. 864.
15
Ownership is most convincingly demonstrated by the catalogue of Hamann’s
library – in Johann Georg Hamann, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 5 Tagebuch eines Lesers,
str. / 129
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Burke’s theory in the review, that a professor of philosophy at Königsberg,
East Prussia, Immanuel Kant (1724–1804),17 and his pupil, Johann Gottfried
Vienna: Herder, 1953, p. 77. See also Herder’s letter of 22 November 1768 to
Hamann, in Johann Gottfried Herder, Briefe, vol. 1 April 1763–April 1771, ed. by
Wilhelm Dobbek and Günter Arnold, Weimar: Böhlau, 1977, pp. 113–17. For the
English works that formed part of Hamann’s library and made it famous, see
Bernhard Fabian, ‘English Books and Their Eighteenth-Century German
str. / 130
Readers’, in Bernhard Fabian, Selecta Anglicana. Buchgeschichtliche Studien zur Aufnahme der Englischen Literatur in Deutschland im achtzehnten Jahrhundert, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1994, pp. 11–94, particularly pp. 32, 53–54, and 67, and also
Nora Imendörffer, Johann Georg Hamann und seine Bücherei, Königsberg and Berlin:
16
Ost-Europa-Verlag, 1938.
Two printed versions of a letter from Hamann to Herder, dated 17 January 1769,
reveal Hamann’s opinion about the authorship of the Enquiry. According to the
first (see Emil Gottfried Herder), Hamann almost believed that David Hume
had written it; according to the second, it was Henry Home, Lord Kames (see
Walther Ziesemer and Arthur Henkel). Only Herder, who had worked with the
French translation (1765), which first gave the author’s name, told Hamann, in
a letter of 22 November 1768, that the Enquiry was Burke’s work. The difference
between the two versions was projected into the secondary literature. Rudolf
Unger, following on from Emil Gottfried Herder, assumed Hume to be the
author; Günter Arnold, following on from Hamann’s collected correspondence,
wrote that the author was Home. The first English edition of the Enquiry to bear
Burke’s name was published in Oxford only in 1796; see Mendelssohn, Gesammelte
Schriften, vol. 4, p. 467, with reference to p. 216, line 4; see also Johann Gottfried von
Herder’s Lebensbild, vol. 1.2, ed. by Emil Gottfried von Herder, Erlangen: Bläsing,
1846, p. 420; Johann Georg Hamann, Briefwechsel, vol. 2 1760–1769, ed. by Walther
Ziesemer, Arthur Henkel, Wiesbaden: Insel, 1956, p. 432; Rudolf Unger, Hamann
und die Aufklärung. Studien zur Vorgeschichte des romantischen Geistes im 18. Jahrhundert,
vol. 1 Text, 2nd ed., Halle: Niemeyer, 1925, p. 671, note 206; and Johann Gottfried
Herder, Briefe, vol. 11 Kommentar zu den Bänden 1–3, ed. by Günter Arnold, Weimar:
Böhlaus Nachfolger, 2001, p. 73.
17
In the literature (Braune and Engel) one encounters the view that Kant knew
Burke’s Enquiry before writing his early treatise on the Sublime and the Beautiful,
though only thanks to Mendelssohn’s review (Boulton, Kuehn). The predominant
view at present (Giordanetti and Irmscher) is that he became acquainted with it
only after reading Hamann’s review, for only in the MS notes to the published
text (see Rischmüller) is there a clear effort to take Burke’s positions into
consideration. See Braune, Burke in Deutschland, p. 13; Mendelssohn, Gesammelte
Schriften, vol. 4, ed. by Engel, p. lxxxi. James T. Boulton, ‘Introduction’, in Burke,
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Herder (1744–1803), became acquainted with Burke’s views on the Sublime
and the Beautiful. North-German interest in the Enquiry, whose author
was identified only thanks to the French translation of 1765,18 was longer
lasting, continuing for more than twenty five years, and had two clear
peaks. The lead up to both was interest in the Enquiry in the late Sixties
and early Seventies, evidence of which is found both in the published
and unpublished works of several scholars, in particular the review of the
Enquiry by the Copenhagen-based Heinrich Wilhelm von Gerstenberg
(1737–1823), published in the Hamburgische Neue Zeitungen on 13 February
1769,19 Herder’s excerpts from this review,20 his unpublished ‘Viertes
Wäldchen,’ on which he worked in 1769–72,21 and his correspondence
with Hamann, Kant, Johann Friedrich Hartknoch (1740–1789), and
Christian Heinrich Boie (1744–1806) between 1768 and 1772.22 One of
the main themes of these north-German essays was a repeated call for the
A Philosophical Enquiry, p. cxxi; Manfred Kuehn, ‘Introduction’, in Burke,
Philosophische Untersuchungen, p. vii. Piero Giordanetti, ‘Zur Rezeption von
Edmund Burkes Schrift “A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas
of the Sublime and Beautiful” bei Hamann und Kant’, in Gajek (ed.), Hamann
und England, pp. 295–303; Herder, Werke, vol. 8, ed. by Irmscher, p. 1224, with
reference to p. 863, line 21; Immanuel Kant, Bemerkungen in den “Beobachtungen
über das Gefühl des Schönen und Erhabenen”, ed. by Marie Rischmüller, Hamburg:
Meiner, 1991.
18
Recherches philosophiques sur l’origine des idées que nous avons du beau & du sublime:
précédées d’une dissertation sur le gohut, trans. from the English by L./A. Des Frandcois,
London (sic; perhaps Paris), 1765, 2 vols. The name of the French translator
appears in a note by Eva J. Engel in Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 4,
p. 467. Herder’s letters demonstrate his knowledge of the French translation; see
Herder, Briefe, vol. 1 April 1763–April 1771, pp. 115, 119–20.
19
Reprinted in Heinrich Wilhelm von Gerstenberg, Rezensionen in der Hamburgieschn [sic] neuen Zeitung 1767–1771, ed. by O. Fischer, Berlin: Behr, 1904,
pp. 156–61.
20
Johann Gottfried Herder, Sämmtliche Werke, vol. 8, ed. by Bernhard Suphan,
Berlin: Weidmann, 1892, pp. 108–10.
21
Herder, Werke, vol. 2 Schriften zur Ästhetik und Literatur 1767–1781, pp. 349–50.
22
Herder, Briefe, vol. 1 April 1763–April 1771, pp. 115, 119–20, 147; vol. 2 Mai
1771–April 1773, ed. by Wilhelm Dobbek and Günter Arnold, Weimar: Böhlaus
Nachfolger, 1977, p. 146; vol. 9 Nachträge und Ergänzungen 1763–1803, ed. by
Günter Arnold, Weimar: Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1988, pp. 75, 148, 151.
str. / 131
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translation of Burke’s Enquiry, because, the authors argued, it was not yet
sufficiently known to the German public. Herder even took concrete
steps in this direction when he urged the Riga theologian Johann Jakob
Harder (1734–1775) to translate the Enquiry. He himself intended to add
the commentary and notes to the translation. The whole project was
ultimately abandoned when, in 1769, the Riga publisher Hartknoch asked
the Leipzig editor of the journal Neue Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften
str. / 132
und der freyen Künste, Christian Felix Weiße (1726–1804), to find him
a suitable translator for Burke’s book.23 This ended up being Christian
Garve (1742–1798), whose translation was published anonymously by
Hartknoch in Riga in 1773 and constitutes the first peak of north-German
interest in Burke’s Enquiry.24
The second peak25 is linked with Kant’s Critique of Judgment. The fact
that Kant defined the distinctiveness of his own transcendental conception
of aesthetic judgment against the backdrop of Burke’s views must be
understood as the logical extension of the previous development of
Burke’s reception in northern centres of German culture, in which not
only Hamann, but also Herder criticized Kant’s early discussion of
aesthetics with the help of Burke’s sensualist arguments. Unlike the Riga
translation, which represents the peak of interest in Burke’s Enquiry in
‘material’ terms (it was plain text, without scholarly commentary or
footnotes), Kant’s inclusion of Burke in the Critique of Judgment as
a typical example of the empirical theory of the Sublime and the Beautiful,
23
Herder’s Lebensbild, vol. 2 Von Anfang Juni 1769 bis Ende Februar 1770, Erlangen:
Bläsing, 1846, p. 140. See footnote 41.
24
Concerning Herder’s plans for Burke’s Enquiry, see, apart from the letters of
22 November 1768 to Hamann and the letter of late February 1772 to
Hartknoch, the letter of Johann Jakob Harder, of 25 September 1770, to the
Halle professor Christian Adolf Klotz (1738–1771), in Johann Jost Anton von
Hagen (ed.), Briefe deutscher Gelehrten an den Herrn Geheimen Rath Klotz, Halle:
Curt, 1773, pp. 56–59.
25
Burke’s views, rejecting the theory of the Beautiful based on unity in diversity,
are recorded also in the works of other North German authors, for example
Johann Nicolaus Tetens, Philosophische Versuche über die menschliche Natur und ihre
Entwicklung (Leipzig: Weidmann, 1777, p. 206.). Tetens (1736–1807) was Professor
of Philosophy at Kiel.
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which Kant had rejected, forms its apex in intellectual terms.26 Both
peaks, however, are interconnected, because only Garve’s translation
allowed Kant to become acquainted with the full scope of Burke’s views
and to quote them in the first place.27
The intense reception of the Critique of Judgment within German
aesthetics from about 1800 onwards led to the polemic with the British
author becoming a part of Idealist interpretations for the next few
decades.28 At the same time, Burke’s views, as is clear from Herder’s
Kalligone (1800), continued to be used even by Kant’s opponents,
particularly in the controversy over his attempt to downplay the sensuous
dimension of aesthetic judgment.29 An upshot of this development
was that concern with Burke’s Enquiry no longer developed chiefly in
narrowly defined regions, but spread wherever philosophical Idealism
was cultivated or became a matter of contention.30 With that, the
reception or, to be more precise, the dissemination of Burke’s Enquiry
in the German-language area entered a new phase, crossing over into
26
Werner Strube, ‘Burkes und Kants Theorie des Schönen’, Kant-Studien 73, 1982,
pp. 55–62.
27
See the quotation of Burke in Garve’s translation in Immanuel Kant, Kritik der
Urtheilskraft, § 29, in Kant’s gesammelte Schriften, vol. 5, Pt 1, Werke, Berlin: Reimer,
1913, pp. 277–78. The importance of the Enquiry in the 1780s and 90s was surely
increased not only by the German translation, but also by the fact that it soon
began to be mentioned regularly in the textbooks and encyclopaedias on
aesthetics. See, for example, Johann Joachim Eschenburg, Entwurf einer Theorie
und Literatur der schönen Wissenschaften. Zur Grundlage bey Vorlesungen, Berlin and
Stettin: Nicolai, 1783, p. 22, and Johann August Eberhard, Theorie der schönen
Künste und Wissenschaften. Zum Gebrauche seiner Vorlesungen, 3rd, revised edition,
Halle: Waisenahus, 1790, p. 53.
28
Werner Strube, ‘Einleitung’, in Burke, Philosophische Untersuchung, pp. 24–26.
Apart from works listed by Strube, see August Wilhelm Schlegel, Vorlesungen über
Ästhetik I, 1798–1803, ed. by Ernst Behler, Paderborn etc.: Schöningh, 1989,
pp. 224–28; Adam Müller, Kritische, ästhetische und philosophische Schriften, vol. 2,
ed. by Walter Schroeder and Werner Siebert, Neuwied and Berlin: Luchterhand,
1967, pp. 97–99.
29
30
Herder, Werke, vol. 8, pp. 863–64.
Schiller was concerned, for example, with Burke’s Enquiry in Jena (see his
correspondence with Friedrich Körner, of January 1793), Herder in Weimar, and
others elsewhere.
str. / 133
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the first half of the nineteenth century; this phase, however, is beyond
the scope of my analysis.31
Outlining the three centres (and the three corresponding phases) of
the German reception of Burke’s Enquiry in the second half of the
eighteenth century – spreading from Berlin and north Germany to the
wider German cultural sphere32 – begs the question of which of them
should be connected with Meißner’s remarks on Burke’s ideas as expressed
str. / 134
in his Prague lectures on aesthetics.
Meißner, one of the most popular German writers of his day, was
appointed Ordinarius of Aesthetics and Classical Literature at Prague
University by the Austrian Emperor Joseph II in 1785. He was the first
Protestant to be employed at the Faculty of Philosophy since the Thirty
Years’ War, leaving Prague for Fulda at the end of 1804 after two decades
of service. In his regular annual lectures on aesthetics, as is evident from
notes made by students who attended them,33 Meißner included excerpts
31
For a brief outline of the German reception of Burke’s Enquiry in the nineteenth
century, see Werner Strube’s entry ‘Edmund Burke’, in Julian Nida-Rümelin and
Monika Betzler (eds), Ästhetik und Kunstphilosophie. Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart in Einzeldarstellungen, Stuttgart: Kröner, 1998, pp. 151–56.
32
Although the reception of Burke’s Enquiry in the German-language area occurred
in waves, concentrated in certain regions at certain periods, interest in the essay
was not manifested solely in these centres. See, for example, [Johann Heinrich
Merck], ‘Ueber die Schönheit. Ein Gespräch zwischen Burke und Hogarth’, Der
Teutsche Merkur, first quarter of the year, February 1776, pp. 131–41, and Sophie
von La Roche, Mein Schreibtisch, vol. 1, Leipzig: Graff, 1799, reprinted Karben:
33
Wald, 1997, p. 128.
Meißner himself never published his lectures, nor have any manuscripts of them
survived. The most complete extant notes from Meißner’s lectures on aesthetics
were made by the writer, scholar, and key intellectual of the second stage of the
Czech National Revival, Josef Jungmann (1773–1847), while a third-year student
of philosophy in 1794/95. Jungmann’s manuscript containing remarks on Burke’s
theory is deposited in the Literature Archive of the Museum of Czech Literature
(Památník národního písemnictví – the LA PNP), Strahov Monastery, Prague, in
the Josef Jungmann papers, under ‘Meissner, A.G., Aesthetik… 1794; hereafter
I cite these lecture notes as Jungmann, ‘Aesthetik’. For Meißner’s lectures on
aesthetics, see Tomáš Hlobil, ‘Pražské univerzitní přednášky z estetiky a poetiky
Augusta Gottlieba Meißnera podle zápisků Josefa Jungmanna’, Česká literatura
52 (2004), pp. 466–84.
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from the Enquiry and repeatedly praised it. If we disregard his brief remarks
in introductions where he discusses taste34 and the Sublime,35 the longest
passage is an explanation of the feeling of the Beautiful (Empfindung des
Schönen).36 Here, replicating the plan of Part III of the Enquiry, Meißner
first presents in detail Burke’s reservations about three traditional
theories identifying Beauty with proportion, fitness, and perfection. In
this connection he concentrates – in accord with the overall character of
the lectures – on the fact that the criticized theories do not sufficiently
consider the bond between Beauty and the feelings. From this it is clear
why Meißner fully accepted the dichotomy between the Beautiful and
the Sublime, which Burke claimed was rooted in human nature, specifically
in the various passions. From Burke’s ideas Meißner stressed two passions –
the passion directed to the reproduction of the species (he himself most
often talks about Geschlechtsempfindung) and the passion concerning
self-preservation. Meißner presented the first passion as the source of
the Beautiful, the second as the source of the Sublime. He identified also
with Burke’s conviction that we react differently to the Beautiful than we
do to the Sublime. Beautiful objects engender love in us, whereas the
sublime evokes admiration. He repeated Burke’s enumeration of the
properties evoking the Beautiful and included among them ‘smallness’,
‘smoothness’, ‘gradual variation’ and ‘delicacy’. He summarized Burke’s
views on virtue. The virtues, in which tender feelings (sanfte Empfindungen)
related to the sex drive hold sway, are also beautiful. Similarly, in the
definition of kinds of Beauty in relation to the individual senses Meißner
advocated Burke’s views based on previous conclusions.
Although Meißner only paraphrased Burke’s views on the Sublime and
the Beautiful, rather than developing or refuting them in any profound
Other archive materials relating to Meißner’s lectures concerning Burke’s views
on aesthetics in manuscripts can be found in the LA PNP, Bernhard Bolzano
papers, ‘Zlomek přednášek z estetiky I–II’ (the MS comes from the 1798/99
academic year); the MS of Joseph Liboslaw Ziegler, ‘A.G. Meißner’s Aesthetik
vorgetragen im Jahre 1802’, in the Museum Library, Chrudim, shelfmark 28 F 9;
34
hereafter, Ziegler.
Jungmann, ‘Aesthetik’, III, p. 4.
35
Jungmann, ‘Aesthetik’, IV, p. 30.
36
Jungmann, ‘Aesthetik’, V, pp. 11–21; Ziegler, pp. 222–32.
str. / 135
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way, his lectures are important because they enable us to complement
what we already know about the reception of Burke’s Enquiry in the
German-language area during the last third of the eighteenth century.
Meißner’s remarks shift the focus of investigation from the Protestant
north of Germany, which previous research had been exclusively
concerned with, to the Roman Catholic, and specifically to Prague, the
capital of Bohemia, then part of the Austrian monarchy.
In trying to determine who initiated Meißner’s interest in the Enquiry
str. / 136
and knowledge of it, the regional dynamics of Burke’s reception history
becomes crucial. Meißner, after all, was a student at Leipzig from 1774 to
1776, that is to say, immediately after Garve’s translation had been
published in 1773. This makes it necessary to question whether in the
late Sixties and early Seventies, Leipzig was not another important
centre of mediation and dissemination of Burke’s aesthetics.
In the second half of the eighteenth century Leipzig was of course the
centre of the German book trade and an important centre of higher
learning. The local publishing houses played as decisive a role in the
dissemination of British literature, both scholarly literature and belles-lettres,37 as did the Faculty of Philosophy at Leipzig with its continued
interest in literature written in English, including essays on aesthetics.38
37
Fabian, ‘English Books and Their Eighteenth-Century German Readers’, in Fabian,
Selecta Anglicana, pp. 20–21. From the bibliographies providing information on
the place of publishing of German translations of English works, see Mary Bell
Price and Lawrence M. Price, The Publication of English Humaniora in Germany in the
Eighteenth Century, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press,
1955. For the methods of translating English works into German and of learning
English, see Eva Maria Inbar, ‘Zum Englischstudium im Deutschland des
XVIII. Jahrhunderts’, Arcadia 15 (1980), pp. 14–28, and Marie-Luise Spieckermann, ‘Übersetzer und Übersetzungstätigkeit im Bereich des Englischen in
Deutschland im 18. Jahrhundert’, in Konrad Schröder (ed.), Fremdsprachenunter-
38
richt 1500–1800, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1992, pp. 191–203.
Concerning the teaching of English language and literature, and other areas
of culture at universities in the German-language area, including Leipzig, see
Konrad Schröder, Die Entwicklung des Englischunterrichts an den deutschsprachigen
Universitäten bis zum Jahre 1850. Mit einer Analyse zu Verbreitung und Stellung des
Englischen als Schulfach an den deutschen höheren Schulen im Zeitalter des Neuhumanismus, Ratingen: Henn, 1969.
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The dissemination of British culture was also considerably furthered by
the most important Leipzig journal on the arts, Neue Bibliothek der
schönen Wissenschaften und der freyen Künste, edited by Weiße as of 1765;39
this series became the German bastion of sensualist aesthetics, acquainting
its German readers with British ideas.40
Little is known about the actual circumstances surrounding the
translating of Burke’s Enquiry. The only source of information concerning
the actual translating of the Enquiry is the relatively modest one contained
41
in the correspondence between Hartknoch and Herder.
39
When the
The original Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften und der freyen Künste was published
in 1757–65 and 1767; its successor, the Neue Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften
und der freyen Künste, was published in 1765–1806.
40
Anneliese Klingenberg, ‘Die “Neue Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften und
der freyen Künste” – Programm für eine europäische République des Lettres’;
Klaus Rek, ‘Englandrezeption und Aufklärungskonzeption in der “Neuen
Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften und der freyen Künste”’, in Anneliese
Klingenberg, Katharina Middell, and Ludwig Stockinger (eds), Sächsische
Aufklärung, Leipzig: Universitätsverlag, 2001, pp. 173–96, 197–210. See also
Fabian, ‘English Books and Their Eighteenth-Century German Readers’, in Fabian,
Selecta Anglicana, pp. 44–45. Another source, which I was unfortunately unable to
obtain, is Richard Francis Wilkie, Jr, ‘Christian Felix Weiße and His Relation to
French and English Literature’, Dissertation, University of California, 1953, and
‘Weisse’s Borrowings for the Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften’, Modern
Philology, 53 (1955–56), pp. 1–7. For the role of periodicals in the dissemination
of British literature in general, see Helmut Peitsch, ‘Die Rolle der Zeitschriften
bei der Einführung englischer Literatur in Deutschland im 18. Jahrhundert’,
in Richard F. M. Byrn and K. G. Knight (eds), Anglo-German Studies, Leeds:
Philosophical and Literary Society, 1992, pp. 27–61.
41
See, in particular, Emil Gottfried von Herder (ed.), Johann Gottfried von Herder’s Lebensbild, vol. 2, p. 140 (Hartknoch to Herder, 14/25 November 1769: ‘Von
dem Gelehrten weiß ich Ihnen nichts zu sagen; Weiße’n habe gebeten, mir eine
Uebersetzung von Burke zu verschaffen, er verspricht mir eine zu verschaffen,
weil er nicht Zeit und nicht philosophischen Kopf dazu hat, und ich habe ihm
Stellen aus Ihrem Briefe an Harder abgeschrieben, damit er sieht, welchem Plane
Sie bei der Ausgabe gefolgt seyn würden. Ich sehe, daß Dodsley eine Uebersetz.
[sic] eben dieses Werks im Meßkataloge ankündigt; ich werde mich also herumbeißen, oder das Buch liegen lassen müssen.’); Herder, Briefe, vol. 2, p. 146 (Herder to Hartknoch, late February 1772: ‘Was macht die Enquiry on the Origine of
the Sublime and Beauty, die Garve übersetzte?’); Heinrich Düntzer and Ferdinand
str. / 137
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publisher Hartknoch (through Weiße) invited him to undertake the
translation, Garve was a professor of philosophy at Leipzig (a position
he held from 1768 to 1772). He was intensively researching English
literature particularly during the ten years 1767–78.42 A consequence of
his interest was a number of translations, including works concerned
with aesthetics and other areas of philosophy.43 Before completing Burke’s
Enquiry, Garve helped, among other things, to revise a translation of
str. / 138
Home’s Elements of Criticism, originally done by Johann Nikolaus Meinhard
(1727–1767); this revision was carried out in collaboration with his Leipzig
friend Johann Jakob Engel (1741–1802).44
Gottfried von Herder (eds), Von und an Herder. Ungedruckte Briefe aus Herders
Nachlaß, vol. 2 Herders Briefwechsel mit Hartknoch, Heyne und Eichhorn […], Leipzig:
Dyk, 1861, pp. 26 (Hartknoch to Herder, 10 May 1772: ‘Garve hält mich mit der
Uebersetzung von Burke, der Abhandlungen wegen, die dazu kommen sollen,
auf; Michael verspricht er diese zu liefern.’), ibid., pp. 39–40 (Hartknoch
to Herder, 12 February 1773: ‘Mein Burke ist fertig, aber ohne Abhandlung.
Harder wird sehr böse werden, wenn er sieht, daß es nicht seine Uebersetzung
ist, und so wie das Buch jetzt da ist, so ohne Kopf und Schwanz, dünkt mich,
war es gleich gut, ob nach Harders oder Garvens Uebersetzung, der seine
24 Ducaten unverdient erhalten und mich zwei Jahre lang auf seine Abhandlung
hat warten lassen und sich jetzt mit seiner Krankheit entschuldigt.’). For
information concerning Hartknoch’s letters, I am indebted to Dr Günter
Arnold.
42
Robert Van Dusen, Christian Garve and English Belles-Lettres, Berne: Lang, 1970. It
is not entirely clear who awakened Garve’s interest in English literature. Van
Dusen maintains that it was connected chiefly with Leipzig, not with any people in
particular. In this connection Weiße and Gellert are mentioned by Oz-Salzberger.
Doubts about Gellert’s knowledge of English are raised, however, in the memoirs
of James Boswell, who during his Leipzig sojourn in October 1764 had to speak
German with the Leipzig professor, since Gellert ‘spoke bad Latin and worse
French’. Boswell clearly did not even try to make himself understood in English.
See Fania Oz-Salzberger, Translating the Enlightenment: Scottish Civic Discourse in
Eighteenth-Century Germany, Oxford: Clarendon, 1995, p. 192, and Frederick
A. Pottle (ed.), Boswell on the Grand Tour: Germany and Switzerland 1764, Melbourne
etc.: Heinemann, 1953, p. 123.
43
Annalisa Viviani, ‘Christian Garve-Bibliographie’, Wolfenbütteler Studien zur Aufklärung, vol. 1, 1974, pp. 306–27.
44
Heinrich Home, Grundsätze der Kritik, 2 vols, after the fourth, revised English
edition, Leipzig: Dyck, 1772. We learn of Engel and Garve’s revision from the
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In Garve’s published correspondence with the Leipzig cleric Georg
Joachim Zollikofer45 (1730–1788) and Weiße,46 conducted between 1772
and 1774, there is surprisingly no mention at all of his work relating to
the anonymously published translation. Considering the work-related
nature of his exchange with the Leipzig editor Weiße, in which Garve
repeatedly asks him to find more translation work for him and negotiates
the proofreading of the translations, fees, numbers of copies, and the
distribution of them, one might be well justified in taking the silence to
mean that the whole translation process, including the proofreading,
must have been completed before he left Leipzig for Breslau in Silesia, in
October 1772. The letters also make apparent how much Garve, once in
Breslau missed the intellectual climate of Leipzig, especially the
meetings with such friends as the professor of medicine and philosophy
Ernst Platner (1744–1818), Weiße, Zollikofer, and Engel.47 The fact that
Engel almost never wrote to Garve was a frequent source of complaint,
which Garve gave vent to in letters to his other friends.48 Garve’s close
ties with Engel and probably the completion of the translation of the
Enquiry while still in Leipzig are important facts, because they support
the conjecture that Engel had thoroughly acquainted himself with the
contents of Burke’s essay once Garve had translated it. Considering their
close contacts and their previous collaborative revision of Home’s Elements,
it is difficult to imagine that Garve and Engel would not have discussed
Burke at all.49
The share of Leipzig in the dissemination of Burke’s Enquiry was not
limited solely to Garve’s translation. It was in Weiße’s Neue Bibliothek that
later edition by Georg Schaz: Heinrich Home, Grundsätze der Kritik, 3 vols, 2nd,
45
revised and expanded edition, Leipzig: Dyk, 1790–91, p. xiii.
Briefwechsel zwischen Christian Garve und Georg Joachim Zollikofer nebst einigen
Briefen des erstern an andere Freunde, Breslau: Korn, 1804, reprinted Hildesheim
46
etc.: Olms, 1999.
Briefe von Christian Garve an Christian Felix Weiße und einige andere Freunde, pt I,
Breslau: Korn, 1803, reprinted Hildesheim etc.: Olms, 1999.
47
48
49
Briefwechsel zwischen Garve und Zollikofer, pp. 46–47.
Ibid., pp. 47, 126–27, 139.
In view of the absence of sources there is no point in speculating about the
extent of Engel’s possible share in the translation.
str. / 139
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the longest and most detailed review of the translation appeared in 1774.50
In it, the anonymous author51 first expresses his regret that he had not
known the large excerpt of Burke’s Enquiry published in Mendelssohn’s
1758 review in the third volume of the previous issue of Bibliothek der
schönen Wissenschaften und der freyen Künste. If he had known this earlier
review, he claims, he would never have agreed to write his own. The
strictly informative nature of Mendelssohn’s contribution compelled the
str. / 140
reviewer to rewrite the text, considerably shortening the excerpt and
focusing on the changes that Burke had made in later editions,
particularly in the introduction, which deals with the question of taste. It
was precisely this last matter that the reviewer took issue with.52 Nor was
he satisfied with Burke’s absolute separation of the Sublime from the
Beautiful; Burke’s idea that the Sublime is ultimately based on terror
seemed to him to be particularly untenable because encounters with
supreme kinds of the Sublime elevate the human soul rather than bring
it down. In his conclusion, the reviewer divulges the name of the
translator, Garve, and expresses regret that, owing to health problems,
the former Leipzig professor had been unable to add notes to his
outstanding translation as he had originally intended.
The attention that the Leipzig Neue Bibliothek pays to Garve’s
translation of the Enquiry stands in contrast to the other review journals
of the day. Reviews of Burke in German translation were on the whole
scarce. One (signed ‘h’) appeared in Gottlob Benedict von Schirach’s
(1743–1804) Magazin der deutschen Critik published in Halle (vol. 2, pt. 2,
1773, pp. 277–84),53 another, by an anonymous reviewer, appeared in the
50
51
Neue Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften und der freyen Künste vol. 16 (1774), no. 1,
pp. 53–68.
I thank Professor Anneliese Klingenberg for confirming for me the anonymity of
the author of the review.
52
The reviewer presented his own conception in which he distinguished two
subjects in taste: the idea (Vorstellung) and feeling (Empfindung). By means of
ideas we judge the sensual properties of the thing; by means of feelings we note
53
the relationship of these things to our own natures.
According to information in the Systematischer Index zu deutschsprachigen Rezensionszeitschriften des 18. Jahrhunderts, the reviewer may have been H. P. K. Henke.
I am indebted to Mr Thomas Habel for bringing this to my attention.
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Jenaische Zeitungen von Gelehrten Sachen (vol. 10, no. 34, 29 April 1774,
pp. 281–84) and was eventually republished in the Erlangische gelehrte
Anmerkungen und Nachrichten (Beytrag, 27. Woche, 9 July 1774, pp. 426–29),
and a third review appeared in the Russische Bibliothek, zur Kenntnis des
gegenwärtigen Zustandes der Literatur in Rußland (vol. 2, 1774, pp. 137–38),
edited by Hartwich Ludwig Christian Bacmeister (1730–1806) in Riga.
In this regard, the role of Berlin is particularly revealing: whereas in
the late Fifties and early Sixties it was Mendelssohn, Lessing, and
Nicolai, figures connected with Berlin who repeatedly dealt with
Burke’s Enquiry, now only marginal attention was paid to Garve’s
translation in the Prussian capital. This becomes most evident when
one looks at the space devoted to it in the most prestigious Berlin
review journal, Nicolai’s Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek; Garve’s translation
was not even noted in its regular numbers. Only in the summarizing
supplement of 1777 (Anhang zu dem dreyzehnten bis vier und zwanzigsten
Bande der allgemeinen deutschen Bibliothek, pp. 1240–41) was the
translation ever mentioned, namely by a certain Müller, a contributor
from Cassel who signed his piece ‘Rz’. 54 It is typical of this kind of
brief mention55 that in it the author pays more attention to Burke’s
current political activities and speeches about American independence
than to a discussion of aesthetics, for which he reserved only two
sentences. He expresses his conviction, ‘daß eines so großen Redners
Gedanken über eine solche Materie jedermann interessieren müssen.
54
For the names of the reviewers in the journal Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek behind
these initials, see [Gustav C. F. Parthey], Die Mitarbeiter an Friedrich Nicolai’s
Allgemeiner Deutscher Bibliothek nach ihren Namen und Zeichen in zwei Registern
geordnet. Ein Beitrag zur deutschen Literaturgeschichte, Berlin: Nicolai, 1842, reprinted
Hildesheim: Gerstenberg, 1973.
55
The brevity with which the Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek dealt with the German
translation of Burke’s Enquiry cannot be justified even with Nicolai’s stated
intention in starting up his journal: ‘Schriften von minderer Wichtigkeit, und
Uebersetzungen wird man nur kürzlich anzeigen, doch mit Beyfügung eines
kurzen Urtheils, über den Werth derselben’ (works of lesser importance and
translations will be only briefly annotated, with, however, the addition of a short
judgment about the worth of the actual work); Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek I,
1765, ‘Vorbericht’, p. i.
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Diese übrigens gute Uebersetzung bedarf also keiner weitern
Empfehlung’.56
If we take all these elements into consideration, Garve’s translation, its
subsequent review in the Neue Bibliothek, and the general Anglophilia in
Leipzig, we can confidently call this Saxon town one of the German-language centres disseminating knowledge of Burke’s Enquiry, especially
in the first half of the Seventies. Leipzig is all the more important for the
str. / 142
dissemination of Burke’s aesthetics, if we accept that it was the decisive
intermediary for the penetration of the Enquiry into the south-German
Roman Catholic areas, Prague in particular, as is shown by Meißner’s
example.
No documentary information is available about how Meißner became
acquainted with the Enquiry; it is quite likely, however, that as an
enthusiastic student of belles-lettres and fine arts at Leipzig he obtained
a copy of Garve’s translation, which had been published just before his
arrival in Leipzig in 1774.57 In addition, his interest in Burke’s book
could have been piqued by his Leipzig patron Ernst Platner,58 whose
university lectures on aesthetics mention Garve’s German translation;
Platner makes particular reference to Burke’s ‘Introduction on Taste’ and
also takes issue with his theory of the Sublime.59 Meißner came into close
contact with another friend of Garve’s – Weiße. In his autobiography,
Weiße later calls Meißner one of the core contributors to the Neue
56
That is to say, ‘that the thoughts of such a good orator must be of interest to
everyone. This fine translation therefore needs no further recommendation’.
57
Meißner probably never met Garve personally because he arrived in Leipzig only
after Garve’s departure for Breslau.
58
Fürst, August Gottlieb Meißner, pp. 5, 39.
59
Anonymous, ‘Ernst Platner uiber die Aesthetik, Vorlesungsnachschrift 1777/78’,
MS 426 pp, University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign; on Burke, pp. 100
(‘Burks [sic] philosophische Untersuchungen über den Ursprung unserer
Begriffe vom Erhabenen und Schönen hat eine Abhandlung vorgesetzt vom
Geschmacke. Ist übersetzt aus dem englischen von Garve.’), 141–42 (Platner
here mentions Burke’s Enquiry in the survey of literature on the Sublime, he
emphasized its importance for Kant and Mendelssohn, he also notes what is
allegedly Mendelssohn’s translation of the Enquiry and the review in the Bibliothek
der schönen Wissenschaften.). I thank Professor Alexander Košenina (University of
Bristol) for lending me a copy of the manuscript.
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Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften und der freyen Künste.60 Moreover,
Meißner’s closest Leipzig friend was Johann Jakob Engel, who had
helped Garve to translate Home’s Elements of Criticism and was probably
also familiar with the translation of the Enquiry. It was his conversations
with Engel, as Rudolf Fürst points out, that inspired Meißner to study
literature and art, leading subsequently to his literary career.61 It seems
more than probable that Burke’s name would have come up in discussions
amongst these men. No doubt Meißner’s Leipzig circle of friends and
acquaintances were behind his lasting interest in Burke’s Enquiry, which
was later projected in his Prague lectures.62
Even though he discussed them without originality, one should not
underestimate the importance of Meißner’s acquainting his Prague
students extensively with Burke’s views on aesthetics. The Prague
University milieu was noticeably less liberal and less open to alien ideas
than was common at the German universities in the Protestant regions
and countries. Indeed, to include Burke’s ideas in one’s lectures was
rather daring, since it was at variance with a decree of Joseph II by which
the teaching of aesthetics at all universities in the Austrian monarchy was
meant to be done solely on the basis of the textbook by Johann Joachim
Eschenburg (1743–1820), Entwurf einer Theorie und Literatur der schönen
Wissenschaften. Zur Grundlage bey Vorlesungen (Berlin and Stettin: Nicolai,
60
Christian Felix Weißens Selbstbiographie, ed. by Christian Ernst Weiße and Samuel
Gottlob Frisch, Leipzig: Voß, 1806, p. 82. This collaboration is supposed to have
peaked while Meißner was a student, in 1773–76. Fürst has cast doubt on
Meißner’s part in Weiße’s Neue Bibliothek. Basing himself on the claim by Jakob
Minor, he supposes that Meißner contributed to the periodical only during his
Leipzig sojourn. Fürst, August Gottlieb Meißner, pp. 7–8, 322; Jakob Minor,
Christian Felix Weiße und seine Beziehungen zur deutschen Literatur des achtzehnten
Jahrhunderts, Innsbruck: Wagner, 1880, p. 312.
61
Fürst, August Gottlieb Meißner, p. 7. Meißner and Engel remained in close contact
even after Engel left Leipzig for Berlin in 1776; see Alexander Košenina and Dirk
Sangmeister, ‘Briefe Johann Jakob Engels an Betram, Friedrich Wilhelm II und III,
Meißner und Merkel’, Zeitschrift für Germanistik XII (2002), no. 1, pp. 112–22.
62
Indeed Meißner’s interest in British culture increased so much during his Leipzig
sojourn that he himself began to translate from the English, as is demonstrated
by his adaptation of Hume’s history of England (Geschichte Englands, nach Hume
von A.G. Meißner in two volumes, Leipzig: Dyk, 1777 and 1780).
str. / 143
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1783). Although Burke’s Enquiry is listed in the bibliographies,63 it is
disregarded elsewhere.64 Moreover, interest in Burke came up against the
general Habsburg mistrust of English culture, which is pithily summarized
in a 1778 decision by Empress Maria Theresa not to permit the instruction
of English at Austrian universities, as it was a ‘gefährliche Sprache wegen
religions- und sittenverderblichen Principiis’.65 Meißner eventually had
to come to terms with the negative attitude towards Burke as an author
str. / 144
writing about the French Revolution, a topic that was unacceptable in
any form in Austria, and as a result the censor at Vienna designated his
works undesirable.66 The fact that Meißner included British authors,67
particularly Burke, in his Prague lectures on aesthetics despite the decree
and the attitudes of the court at Vienna, even after the outbreak of the
French Revolution, testifies to his extraordinarily strong interest in
Burke’s Enquiry. It was this orientation towards British aesthetics that
distinguished Meißner’s lectures from the lectures of his predecessor,
Carl Heinrich Seibt (1735–1806), who based his lectures on such the
French classicist as Charles Batteux (1713–1780) and the neo-humanist
Charles Rollin (1661–1741). Meißner’s leaning towards Burke was so
striking and lasting that even his pupil and, later, successor in the Chair
of Aesthetics at Prague, Joseph Georg Meinert (1773–1844), felt a need,
in 1805, to present his own conception of the Beautiful, which formed
63
64
Eschenburg, Entwurf, pp. 22, 25, 29.
For the influence that the reforms of Joseph II had on aesthetics at Prague and
for the way Meißner used Eschenburg’s textbook in his lectures, see Tomáš
Hlobil, ‘Pražské přednášky z estetiky a poetiky Augusta Gottlieba Meißnera
podle Johanna Joachima Eschenburga (S přihlédnutím k výuce estetiky na univerzitách ve Vídni a Freiburgu)’, Estetika, vol. 40 (2004), nos 3–4, pp. 1–18; ‘Die
Anfänge des Ästhetikunterrichts an den wichtigsten Universitäten der österreichischen Monarchie (1763–1805)’, Aufklärung, forthcoming.
65
That is to say “a dangerous language because of its principles corrupting religion
and mores.’ Cited after Rudolf Kink, Geschichte der kaiserlichen Universität zu Wien,
vol. 1, Vienna: Gerold, 1854, p. 516, footnote 690.
66
See Braune, Burke in Deutschland, pp. 5–6.
67
Meißner’s Prague lectures discussed not only Burke, but also Young, Blair, Gerard,
Hogarth, Shaftesbury, Hurd, and especially Home. He devoted attention also to
British writers of belles-lettres, particularly Ossian. See Tomáš Hlobil, ‘Ossianism
in the Bohemian Lands’, Modern Language Review, vol. 101 (2006), pp. 789–97.
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part of his application to succeed Meißner, in confrontation with Burke’s
theory, which was by then nearly fifty years old.68
Translated by Derek Paton
str. / 145
68
The information about Meinert’s definition of his own conception of the Beautiful
as opposed to Burke’s is from Eugen Lemberg, Grundlagen des nationalen Erwachens
in Böhmen, Geistesgeschichtliche Studie, am Lebensgang Josef Georg Meinerts (1773–1844),
Reichenberg: Stiepel, 1932, p. 95 and footnote 74: ‘Zur Kennzeichnung seiner
Lehrmethode fährt Meinert fort, im 3. Jahrgang habe er “mit Verwerfung der
ebenso seichten als bedenklichen Definition des Schönen, die zuerst der Engländer Burke aufstellte: ‘Schön ist, was die feineren Geschlechtsempfindungen
anregt und gelinde Aufwallungen hervorbringt’,” seine Ästhetik auf den seines
Bedünkens weit richtigeren und für die Anwendung fruchtbareren Begriff gebaut: “Schönheit ist Gefälligkeit eines Ganzen, durch formale Ähnlichkeit mannigfaltiger Teile.”’ I have so far been unable to find in the archives the MS which
Lemberg quotes from.
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Recepce Burkova Filozofického zkoumání pÛvodu idejí
vzne‰ena a krásna v nûmecké jazykové oblasti
druhé poloviny 18. století (Regionální aspekt)
TomበHlobil
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Studie se dělí do dvou částí. První ukazuje, že recepce Burkova pojednání o vznešenu a krásnu v německé jazykové oblasti ve druhé polovině 18. století zaznamenala
čtyři vrcholy: první spjatý s Lessingem a Mendelssohnem, druhý s Herderem, třetí
Kantem a čtvrtý s postkantovskými idealisty. První vrchol se odehrával v Berlíně,
druhý a třetí v severoněmeckých kulturních střediscích na čele s Královcem, čtvrtý
byl rozptýlen tam, kde se šířil filozofický idealismus. Druhá část studie zkoumá, jak
proniklo Burkovo pojednání do jihoněmecké oblasti, zejména do Čech. Ukazuje, že
důležitou roli v českém šíření Burka sehrály pražské univerzitní přednášky z estetiky Augusta Gottlieba Meißnera, literáta vyškoleného v Lipsku, významném centru
německé anglofilie.