Friedrich Karl Forberg

Illustration by Édouard-Henri Avril to Forberg's De Figuris Veneris

Friedrich Karl Forberg (born August 30, 1770 in Meuselwitz , † January 1, 1848 in Hildburghausen ) was a German philosopher and philologist .

Life

Friedrich Karl Forberg, who came from a Protestant parsonage in Meuselwitz , was a student of Ernst Platner in Leipzig, later Karl Leonhard Reinhold's in Jena . From April to September 1791 he traveled with Franz Paul von Herbert to Klagenfurt and sent a few letters to Reinhold, which revealed that there was also sympathy for the French Revolution in Carinthia . “I am completely convinced that the herbertische hauß may find few of its kind in all of Germany and that it is the most lively evidence of the benevolent influence which Critical Philosophy expresses not only on the head, but mainly on the hearts of the admirers. “ In his autobiography, the Kantian reports on the young women in Klagenfurt who had the Kant editions bound in black like prayer books in order to read them during Sunday mass, and on the seminary students who took part in the lectures.

From 1792 to 1796 he worked as a lecturer in philosophy at the University of Jena , where he mainly gave lectures on moral philosophy , anthropology and critical philosophy. Since he could not finance himself from the teaching position alone, he worked from 1794 to 1796 in a commission publishing house with the bookseller Christian Ernst Gabler , where he published, among other things, Fichte's writings. At the end of October 1795 he published "Fragments from my Papers", which give an intensive insight into the changes in the philosophical constellations in Jena between Karl Leonhard Reinhold and Johann Gottlieb Fichte . Since neither the lectureship nor the publishing business offered a perspective in life, Forberg left Jena in the summer of 1796 and wanted to go to Switzerland to see Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi . While passing through, he was offered a position as vice rector of the Lyceum in Saalfeld / Saale in 1797 , which he accepted. When the rector fled because of a love affair in Saalfeld / Saale, Forberg was offered the prospect of running the Lyceum. However, there was a two-year delay because of his philosophical and educational beliefs. Because in 1798 the Saalfeld vice-principal sparked the atheism controversy when he published the article “Development of the Concept of Religion” in Friedrich Immanuel Niethammer's and Fichte's “Philosophical Journal”, which Fichte defended with an afterword. Forberg, religion is a practical belief as a prerequisite for moral action. This belief is merely that the good in the world should prevail. Forberg, according to Immanuel Kant's criticism of the proofs of God , the existence of God can not be justified by revelation or theoretical speculation and can therefore only be assumed in the sense of an as-if existence in the service of moral philosophy. Theology is equated with the philosophy of religion .

After he failed with his Kantian ideas in everyday school life and the parents withdrew their children from school, Forberg worked from 1801 to 1807 as a ducal civil servant in Coburg , where he dealt with the school reform, among other things. In January 1806 there was a dispute with the state government over an article in the Coburg weekly newspaper that glorified Napoleon. The edition has been confiscated and censored. Nevertheless, Forberg became a secret chancellery councilor in church and school matters in March of that year. From 1807 he took over the supervision of the court library , which he reorganized. From 1820 he was also the supervisor of the ducal copper engraving collection and the coin cabinet , which he re-cataloged each time. In 1824 he edited the hermaphroditus by Antonio Beccadelli (Panormita), a work of erotic literature of the Renaissance, and added a text "De Figuris Veneris" for understanding. This manual of classical erotology, written in Latin, gathers and classifies ancient as well as early modern text passages, which in their entirety realistically describe the diversity of sexual behavior. As such, it is a standard work in sexology . In 1827 Forberg moved to Hildburghausen and became an extraordinary assessor in the police department of the ducal state government. In 1829 he was retired on full pay . In 1840 his “Lebenslauf eines Verschollens” appeared. In 1848 Forberg died after a six-week illness at the age of 77 as a secret chancellery of the Duke of Saxony-Meiningen in Hildburghausen.

The critical enlightener, who remained committed to Kantianism in Fichte's age , is often wrongly referred to in the history of philosophy as a pupil of Fichte, whom he attacked in 1797 in the "Letters on the Latest Philosophy". Fritz Mauthner described him as "for religious liberation ... the only real student of Kant".

Fonts

• (anonymous :) Fragments from my papers , Jena 1796
• Letters on the latest philosophy. In: Philosopher. Journal 6th Vol., 1st H., (1797), pp. 44-88 u. 7th vol., 4th volume, (1797)
• Development of the concept of religion. In: Philosopher. Journal 8th Vol., 1st H. (1798), pp. 21-46
• Werner Röhr: Appellation to the audience ... documents on the atheism dispute over Fichte, Forberg, Niethammer. Jena 1798/99, Leipzig 1987
• (anonymous :) CV of a missing person , Hildburghausen a. Meiningen 1840
• Antonii Panormitae Hermaphroditus , Coburg 1824
• Friedrich Karl Forberg: Manual of Classical Erotology (De Figuris Veneris) [1884], Latin / English , Honolulu 2003
• Friedrich Karl Forberg: Manuel d'érotologie classique (De Figuris Veneris) [1906], French translation with illustrations by Paul Avril ; later editions with an afterword by Pascal Pia [1959], also Paris 1995.
• Antonio Panormita: Hermaphroditus with Apophoreta by Friedrich Carl Forberg [1908], ed. u. comment v. Wolfram Körner u. Steffen Dietzsch, Leipzig 1986
• Friedrich Karl Forberg: De Figuris Veneris (Manuale di erotologia classica) , Latin text, Italian foreword, Catania: Libreria Tirelli di F. Guaitolini 1928
• Friedrich Karl Forberg: Classic love games / lust in the villas of Rome , trans. u. ed. v. Johanna Fürstauer , Konstanz 1969
• Friedrich Karl Forberg: Manual de erótica clássica , Spanish translation, ed. by Luis Parra u. José M. Ruiz. Madrid 2007.

literature

• Wilhelm Baum (Ed.): Weimar - Jena - Klagenfurt. The Herbertkreis and the intellectual life of Carinthia in the age of the French Revolution. Kärntner Druck- u. Verlags-Ges., Klagenfurt 1989, ISBN 3-85391-083-1
• Wilhelm Baum: The Klagenfurt Herbert Circle between Enlightenment and Romanticism. In: Revue Internationale de Philosophie 197, (1996), pp. 483-514.
• Manfred Frank: Friedrich Karl Forberg - portrait of a forgotten fellow student of Novalis. In: Athenaeum. Jahrbuch für Romantik 6 (1996), pp. 9-46.
• Manfred Frank: "Infinite approach." The beginnings of early philosophical romanticism. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt a. M. 1997, ISBN 3-51828-928-4 , pp. 623-661.
• Guido Naschert:  Friedrich Karl Forberg. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 32, Bautz, Nordhausen 2011, ISBN 978-3-88309-615-5 .
• Guido Naschert: Fichtes Jena publisher. Friedrich Karl Forberg's company with Christian Ernst Gabler and the difficult business with the revolution. In: Christine Haug, Franziska Mayer u. Winfried Schröder (Ed.): Secret literature and secret book trade in Europe in the 18th century. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2011, pp. 127–155.
• Peter Struck: Two letters from Friedrich Carl Forberg from 1794. In: Yearbook of the Coburg State Foundation (1994), pp. 45–60.
• Peter Struck: Friedrich Carl Forberg. Who contributed the newspapers from different German cities to Forberg's "Klatschrosen"? LEIBNIZ bookkeeper, Bad Münder am Deister, 2007. ISBN 978-3-925237-21-8 .
• Günther E. Thüry: The Coburg scholar Friedrich Karl Forberg (1770–1848) and research into ancient sexual history. In: Yearbook of the Coburger Landesstiftung 55 (2010/2011), pp. 71–86.

Web links

Commons : Friedrich Karl Forberg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Friedrich Karl Forberg in the catalog of the German National Library
• SWR2 broadcast by Marianne Thoms about Forberg