The company

"To honor the freedom impulses of German history" and thus "to link more attentively and energetically to its buried memory" - in the spirit of these words of Gustav Heinemann, people interested in Georg Forster came together more than a decade ago in Kassel, one of the places of his work. At the beginning of 1989, the Georg Forster Society was founded as a scientific society.

Its work serves - in the wording of the statutes - both the "cultivation of the philosophical, political and scientific ideas and research represented by Georg Forster and his comrades-in-arms", and the "mediation between this tradition of unaltered freshness and the tasks posing themselves in our time; among these is decisively the commemoration of the political exiles of the German intelligentsia and the appreciation of their contributions to German culture".

Today's approach to Georg Forster, especially after the years of Forster's political instrumentalization by the former GDR, aims at his entire personality and includes the circumnavigator, ethnologist and cultural researcher as well as the essayist and travel writer, the naturalist, the founder of German Indology as well as the art observer and art critic, but also the democrat and revolutionary.

The immense breadth of his scientific interests and his enlightenment activities, his work as a cultural mediator and the conscious step he took from theory to practice; from today's perspective, all this characterizes Georg Forster and justifies the interest in the work and person of a contemporary of Goethe and the French Revolution who was long suppressed and misunderstood.

To convey and promote the work and spirit of Georg Forster is the goal of the Georg Forster Society. In this sense, it regularly organizes scientific conferences, symposia and public lectures. It organizes exhibitions and generally promotes research on Georg Forster.

Since 1997 it has been publishing the Georg Forster Studies, to which supplements have been added since 1998.

All "natural persons" interested in Georg Forster can become members of the Georg Forster Society, as well as associations, scientific institutes, authorities, etc. The annual membership fee for active members is EUR 25,- or reduced EUR 15,- (e.g. students, unemployed etc.). Included in the membership fee is the annual free delivery of the latest volume of the Georg Forster Studies as well as the possibility to purchase additional copies and older volumes at a reduced member price.

The Georg Forster Society is recognized as a non-profit organization by the tax office Kassel-Hofgeismar. Membership fees and donations are tax deductible. A corresponding certificate will be issued at the beginning of the following year.

We would be pleased to welcome you as a member of the Georg Forster Society.
Statutes of the Georg Forster Society