GRP 2006

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"Georg Forster in Mainz:
Literary Production and Media Center before and during the Revolution".

Georg Forster Colloquium on June 23-24, 2006.

From 1788 to March 1793, Forster unleashed a tremendous literary productivity in Mainz, of which Views from the Lower Rhine is only the best-known work. Others, however, have often remained in the shadows, including his memoirs from 1790, essays, and his scientific writings and experiments, which remained unpublished in Forster's time. This production, however, also includes countless reviews, which have never been systematically examined, as well as his well-known "translation workshop," which has also not been sufficiently examined for a long time. The Forsters in Mainz were an intellectual center, which not only included other people from the surrounding circle, but which was also deliberately visited by many, sometimes hardly less illustrious contemporaries from Germany and Europe, in order to exchange ideas with Forster: a communication center avant la lettre, of which we still know far too little about how it really functioned.

Besides all this, it is all too easily forgotten that Forster was a librarian and had to take care of the university library, so he was at a center of book distribution and acquisition, about which our knowledge is little to nil. With the arrival of the Revolution, Forster is actively involved in the procurement and distribution of political news through his own newspaper. This is another area that has been far too little explored. How does this whole media center, in which Forster played such a central role, function?

Enough questions about the structures of knowledge acquisition and dissemination under changing political conditions and Forster's role in them, and a direct follow-up and continuation of the successful 2005 colloquium on Georg Forster in the intellectual networks of his time.

Program

Friday, 23.6.2006
International House of the University of Kassel

9.00 a.m.Welcome
9.15 a.m.Jost Schneider, Bochum
Truthfulness and Usefulness in Forster's Essay 'Ueber historische Glaubwürdigkeit' (On Historical Credibility)
10.15 a.m.Coffee break
10.30 a.m.Ludolf Pelizaeus, Mainz
Knowledge in book form. An Attempt to Reconstruct Georg Forster's Actuation as Librarian in Mainz
11.30 a.m.Christine Haug, Munich
"This work entertains me without tiring me." Georg Forster's lucrative business with translation work
12.30 p.m.Lunch break
2:00 p.m.Marita Gilli, Besançon
From science to philosophy and politics: 'Ueber Leckereyen' and 'Ueber die Schädlichkeit der Schnürbrüste'
15.00Laura Anna Macor, Padua
Hölderlin and Forster. Some reflections on the development of political thought towards the end of the 18th century
16.00Coffee break
16.15Anke Gilleir, Leuven
"Therese was clever while Forster was brilliant." Therese Heyne-Forster-Huber (1764-1829) between memory and repression.
5:15 p.m.Robert J. King, Canberra
The Call of the South Seas: Georg Forster and the expeditions to the Pacific of Lapérouse, Mulovsky and Malaspina
8:00 p.m.Dinner together

Saturday, 24.6.2006
International House of the University of Kassel

9.15 a.m.Karol Sauerland, Thorn
Two conceptions of revolution - Forster on the one hand, Goethe on the other hand
10.15 a.m.Coffee Break
10.30 a.m.Stephan Wendehorst, Leipzig
Georg Forster and the Empire as Republic: Political Discourses of Participation at the Turn of the 18th and 19th Century
11.30 a.m.Horst Dippel, Kassel

 

Georg Forster and the Reichsacht

ca. 12.30 p.m.End of the colloquium