CSF 2008

"World Traveler or Revolutionary?
Continuities and Discontinuities in the Life and Work of Georg Forster."

University of Kassel, International House, 20-21.6.2008

Commonly one finds the characterization "world traveler and revolutionary" for Georg Forster. Is this to be understood purely additively, without one side of Forster's person having anything essential to do with the other? Or do the two have to be seen in a closer context? From when, in other words, does the revolutionary Georg Forster date, a question that is highly controversial in research and has so far ultimately remained unanswered. Was he revolutionary in his outlook long before the French invaded Mainz? Or did he, and this thesis is also widespread, just stumble into the revolution? Or, and this view goes back to the 1790s, was he ultimately "driven into" it by the women around him? Forster himself justified himself in a letter to his father-in-law on November 10, 1792, with the words: "I cannot emigrate without sacrificing everything I have, my good name to boot, since my way of thinking is clearly evident in my works." So what about the continuities and discontinuities in Forster's thought and action? How rooted are his revolutionary views in his cultural anthropology and in his scientific thinking of the 1770s and 1780s? What new explanatory approaches do his recently made accessible scientific writings offer?

Lectures