Johann Gottfried Herder

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Johann Gottfried Herder, painting by Anton Graff , 1785, Gleimhaus Halberstadt .

Herder's signature:
Signature Johann Gottfried Herder (cropped) .jpg
Johann Gottfried Herder

Johann Gottfried Herder , from 1802 by Herder (nickname Gottfried , born August 25, 1744 in Mohrungen , East Prussia , † December 18, 1803 in Weimar ), was a German poet , translator , theologian and history and cultural philosopher of the Weimar Classics . He was one of the most influential writers and thinkers of the German language in the Age of Enlightenment and, along with Christoph Martin Wieland , Johann Wolfgang Goethe and Friedrich Schiller, is one of the classic four stars of Weimar .

Life

Childhood and early adolescence

Johann Gottfried Herder was born as the son of the cantor and school teacher Gottfried Herder (* May 9, 1706; † September 26, 1763) and his second wife Anna Elisabeth, b. Peltz (* 1717; † October 3, 1772) was born in Mohrungen, a town with barely 2000 inhabitants in the Prussian province of East Prussia. Religiously shaped by his pietistic parents, he should study theology. When the younger brother Carl Friedrich died, his first poem On my first dead! the dearest thing I've lost in this world .

His parents' circumstances were modest, but not so poor that the children would have had to do without a good upbringing. Herder attended the city school in his hometown. He was particularly influenced by the deacon Sebastian Friedrich Trescho , also a pietist, whose factotum he became. In return, he was allowed to freely use its extensive library. On the initiative of the Russian regimental surgeon JC Schwarz-Erla, Herder left Mohrungen in the summer of 1762 and went to Königsberg to become a surgeon. He never saw his hometown, parents and friends again.

Studied in Königsberg

In Königsberg, Herder soon realized that he was unsuitable for the profession of surgeon and enrolled as a theology student at the University of Königsberg . He won a patron in the bookseller Johann Jakob Kanter (1738–1786), who was impressed by his anonymous work Gesang an Cyrus - Herder had secretly given it to Tsar Peter III, who was sympathetic to the Enlightenment . sent. Kanter found him a position as assistant teacher at the elementary school of the Collegium Fridericianum , and so Herder was able to devote himself to his education on a reasonably secure basis.

Of the university teachers , only Immanuel Kant was influential, and outside the university circles, Johann Georg Hamann was particularly influential . Herder was also very impressed by the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau . He joined a learned group that included Theodor Gottlieb Hippel , Hamann, Johann George Scheffner and Kant. Herder, who had attended Kant's lectures on astronomy , logic , metaphysics , moral philosophy , mathematics and physical geography from 1762–1764 , later wrote about it:

“With grateful joy I remember the acquaintance and lessons of a philosopher who was a true teacher of humanity to me (...) His philosophy awakened my own thinking, and I can hardly imagine anything more exquisite and effective than his lecture was. "

Hamann and Herder's criticism of Kant gained importance , who complained that he had neglected language as an original source of knowledge. Herder also pointed out that humans already “metaschematize” during perception, thereby anticipating insights from Gestalt psychology .

First literary works

A monument to Herder in Riga

Herder first wrote poems and reviews for Kanter's Königsbergische Zeitung . In 1763 he received the Hochgräflich-Dohnasche scholarship at his request and participated in the award of the Swiss Patriotic Society "How can the truths of philosophy become more general and useful for the good of the people?" In his philosophy work - as also by Immanuel Kant, later also by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Johann Gottlieb Fichte - is declared a condition of existence and a moral duty.

The fact that Herder was appointed to the cathedral school in Riga in the autumn of 1764 was convenient for him because of the threat of military service. A devastating fire inspired him shortly before his departure to write the poem Ueber die Assche Königsberg. A song of mourning . Until 1769 he worked as a collaborator in Riga ; later he was also employed as a parish clerk at two suburban churches (Jesus and Gertruden Church), so that he found an important sphere of activity in the old capital of Livonia , which at that time still enjoyed republican independence, and was respected in the administration and " knighthood " . The circles of the urban patriciate opened up to him, and above all through the house of councilor Johann Christoph Berens and his brothers Gustav, Karl and Georg, to whom he was recommended by Hamann, he had made good friends in the middle-class merchant circles.

In 1764, the Rigaer Blatt published his first extensive study on diligence in several learned languages , which already contained the vocabulary "national character" and "genius" that were typical for him.

In June 1766 he was accepted into the Freemasons ' Union in the lodge "Zum Schwert" in Riga . Not only Herder's oldest document of the human race shows after-effects on this. In his lodge brother, the writer Rector Johann Gotthelf Lindner , he found a key figure for his future life.

Now the first larger works were created, which his friend Johann Friedrich Hartknoch published : Fragments on modern German literature (1766–1767), About Thomas Abbts writings (1768) and in 1769 the most important of these studies anonymously: Critical forests, or considerations of science and art concerning the beautiful . It was a deepening and expansion of his philosophy of language , which he based on Hamann's sentence, according to which “poetry is the mother tongue of the human race”. According to Herder, the literary products of all nations are conditioned by the particular genius of the type of people and language. Here he also coined the term zeitgeist .

At that time he was in correspondence with Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim and Friedrich Nicolai . At Nicolai's request, he became an employee of the General German Library (ADB) , for which he wrote about 40 reviews by 1773. In literary terms he soon drew criticism from Nicolai, who later turned against the entire literature of the Sturm und Drang , the Classical and the emerging Romanticism.

Herder passionately criticized on the one hand the orthodox attitude of the theology of the time and on the other hand the defensive stance against his reformist school plans. Among other things, he polemicized against the continuing preponderance of Latins in German-speaking countries.

He was attacked by Christian Adolph Klotz , a professor in Halle , and his followers, which ruined his time in Riga. He did not accept a call to a Petersburg school in 1767. The protests that followed prompted him to request his dismissal from office in Riga in the spring of 1769 in order to work in Central Europe. His work as an assistant pastor at the Jesus Community in Riga was also ended.

Traveling prince educator

Karoline Herder, b. Flachsland, copy by Anna Gerhardt (1941) after a watercolor from 1770, Gleimhaus Halberstadt

With the help of a few friends, namely his Riga publisher Johann Friedrich Hartknoch , who was a Freemason and confidante of Hamann, Kant and Kanter, he started a journey in 1769, which he initially followed with his friend Gustav Berens (approx. 1725 - approx. 1780) Nantes led. On the way, the journal of my journey was created in 1769 (published only in 1846). He left Nantes for Paris. Here he maintained a lively exchange of ideas with the encyclopedists and became acquainted with Denis Diderot and d'Alembert .

Since he did not want to travel for several years at the expense of his friends, the request of the prince-bishop of Luebian court to Eutin to accompany the Hereditary Prince of Holstein-Gottorp Peter Friedrich Wilhelm (1754-1823) as travel preacher came in handy. In December 1769 he traveled via Brussels, Antwerp, Amsterdam and Hamburg to Eutin, where he arrived in early 1770. In Hamburg he got to know Gotthold Ephraim Lessing , Johann Joachim Christoph Bode , Johann Bernhard Basedow , senior pastor Johann Melchior Goeze and Matthias Claudius . In July he left Eutin in the prince's suite. The first stops on the trip were Hanover and Kassel; in Göttingen he made the acquaintance of Heinrich Christian Boie .

Before he left, he had received a call from Wilhelm Graf zu Schaumburg-Lippe from Bückeburg . During a short stay in Darmstadt he got to know the war councilor Johann Heinrich Merck and through him Maria Karoline Flachsland , with whom he fell in love. They finally married in 1773. This mutual affection aroused the desire for stable living conditions in Herder. He followed the prince via Mannheim to Strasbourg , where he met the young Johann Wolfgang Goethe for the first time. Herder asked the Eutinian court to be dismissed (granted in October), accepted the position offered by Count zu Schaumburg-Lippe as chief preacher in the small Bückeburg residence and as consistorial councilor, but initially stayed in Strasbourg because of his eye problems.

Here he made Goethe, who was five years his junior, aware of Homer , Pindar , Ossian , Shakespeare , Hamann, folk poetry and the high-Gothic cathedral . Together they dealt with Laurence Sterne , Oliver Goldsmith , Johann Joachim Winckelmann , Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock , Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury , Rousseau, Voltaire and Paul Henri Thiry d'Holbach . In the Darmstadt district, Herder criticized the original version of Goethe's Götz von Berlichingen , entitled Gottfried von Berlichingen with the Iron Hand , that it was based on a misunderstanding of Shakespeare .

Court preacher in Bückeburg

Since 1908, a memorial on the
town church has commemorated Herder's stay in Bückeburg

At the end of April 1771 Herder took up his new position as senior preacher and consistorial councilor in the royal seat of the county of Schaumburg-Lippe , in Bückeburg, through the mediation of the Westfeld Chamber of Commerce . The relationship with the sovereign and military theorist Count Wilhelm , who was a soldier through and through and who would not tolerate any contradiction , was difficult, also because his wife Maria became friends with Herder.

Herder's actual Sturm und Drang period was during his stay in Bückeburg . His treatise on the origin of the language , which he had begun in Strasbourg and which was awarded by the Berlin Academy in 1772 , opened a series of writings with which he was to become groundbreaking for young German literature and linguistics. Together with Goethe, he wrote advertisements for the Frankfurt scholars edited by Merck in 1772 , a critical and programmatic organ of German bourgeois-oppositional intelligentsia, to which he contributed many reviews on historiography, philosophy and religion. In 1773 his friendship with Merck broke up.

Herder put the essays Ossian and the songs of old peoples , Shakespeare in the flying leaves Von deutscher Art und Kunst (Hamburg 1772) and his writing The Cause of Sinking Taste in Different Peoples, Since He Blossomed (1775 Award -Winning by the Berlin Academy ) The center of the Sturm und Drang movement, which wanted to regain poetry that originated in life and had an effect on life. He rated poetry higher the closer it was to nature. The most glorious poetry was created by the oldest peoples, by "wild sons of nature". Culture is harmful to natural poetry in the Herderian sense. Based on Homer's and Shakespeare's poems, he pointed out that poetry is the focal point for humane forms of society even among “uncivilized” peoples. He saw this quality not only in Homer, but also in the Old Testament in Moses , who handed down the 10 commandments, and in the Edda . This resulted in his pioneering efforts to collect not only German songs, but also Old Norse myths and the poems of the minstrels. Matthias Claudius published the Wandsbecker Bote until 1775, in which Goethe, Herder and Gottfried August Bürger participated.

With the writing Also a Philosophy of History for the Education of Humankind, he fought in 1774 against what he believed to be a dreary and unrealistic contemporary education. At the same time, it opened the way for a new conception of history that was neither based on historical pessimism nor adhered to an unqualified belief in progress. According to this, history is divided into epochs that are organically built on one another and a variety of cultures that coexist at the same time, each of which has its own right and value and which cannot be judged by external standards. Herder is skeptical of the state as a supposedly highest form of organization and ultimate goal of human life as a mere abstraction, whereas living human relationships that can be experienced directly in the context of family, relatives, friendship and hospitality are of the highest value as a source of human happiness.

He designed Brutus . A drama about music that was set to music by Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach , with whom he was a close friend. The oratorios The Childhood of Jesus and The Resurrection of Lazarus (1773) as well as some cantatas and two dramatic works (the aforementioned Brutus and Philoctetes , both 1774) come from their joint work , whereby the critical Herder evidently developed his music-aesthetic works in close collaboration with Bach Saw views put into practice. This phase ended for the time being in 1776.

If even the scripture had a decided contradiction, this was even more the case with his (semi-) theological writings, the oldest document of the human race (1774–1776), the letters of two brothers of Jesus in our canon (1775), the explanations of the New Testament, from a newly opened oriental source (1775) and the 15 provincial papers An Prediger (1774). The attacks caused him to withhold his collection of “folk songs”, which had already been prepared for printing. They increased his irritability and a mistrust that had awakened in him early on.

Johann Kaspar Lavaters Physiognomic fragments for promoting human knowledge and philanthropy with smaller contributions Herder published 1775–1778. From 1780, however, he distanced himself from Lavater's religious mysticism , for similar reasons he also rejected the studies of Emanuel Swedenborg .

General superintendent in Weimar

The city church St. Peter & Paul in Weimar ( Herderkirche )
Herder's house behind the
Herder Church in Weimar
Memorial plaque of his house at Herderplatz 8

Herder was negotiating an appointment at the University of Goettingen (where one him Colloquium wanted to impose to test his orthodoxy) than it by Goethe mediation Duke Karl August of Saxe-Weimar in the spring of 1776 to the General Superintendent , member of Oberkonsistorial- and church council, rector and first preacher to the city ​​church of St. Peter and Paul in Weimar , the residence of his duchy . After the death of his Bückeburg patroness, Countess Maria, he decided to answer the call and arrived in Weimar on October 2nd, 1776. Immediately behind the town church, which was later to be known as the “Herder Church”, he and his family moved into the baroque rectory at Herderplatz 8 , where he lived and worked until his death. From 1776 to 1803, in addition to his activities in the city church, he was director of the neighboring Wilhelm-Ernst-Gymnasium for many years as well as " Ephorus of schools" in the entire Duchy of Saxony-Weimar and Eisenach .

Close contact developed with Karl Ludwig von Knebel , August von Einsiedel and Christoph Martin Wieland , for whose Teutscher Merkur (1773–1789) essays were written on Hutten , Copernicus , Reuchlin , Savonarola , Sulzer , Winckelmann and Lessing . The so-called Laocoon dispute between Herder and Lessing was a dispute about the theses in Lessing's work Laocoon , published in 1766, or about the limits of Mahlerey and poetry . Herder represented a current within neo-humanism that was linked to Rousseau's cultural criticism.

Although his literary productivity increased, Herder felt depressed by the perceived tightness of the situation in Weimar. He said about his position in Weimar:

“I am generally popular here, with the court, the people and the great, the applause is exaggerated. In the vortex of my business I live lonely and more withdrawn than I ever lived in Bückeburg. "

The process by which the most outstanding representatives of Sturm und Dranges transformed into the protagonists of the Weimar Classic began at Herder in the late 1770s. The treatises of the knowledge and feeling of the human soul . Remarks and dreams , plastic. Some perceptions about form and shape of Pygmalion -forming dream and the publication of Songs of Love , with translation of the Song of Solomon and the long-prepared folk songs were in 1778 his first publications in Weimar. With his treatise On the Effect of Poetry on the Morals of Peoples in Old and New Times , he wanted to prove once again that real poetry is the language of the senses. His carefully selected and translated folk songs were intended to convey this to a wide audience.

Friendship with Goethe, major work

JG Herder often stayed in the Gleimhaus in Halberstadt

The good relationship with Goethe had been restored since the beginning of the 1780s. His views on organic development in natural history were similar to his earlier ideas on the morphology of cultural development. He also found a friend in the originally Catholic Carl Leonhard Reinhold . In 1780 his work On the Influence of the Government on the Sciences and the Sciences on the Government in Berlin received an award. In these years, which were also burdened by illness and financial problems, his letters, the study of theology (1780–1781) and a number of sermons, as well as his unfinished work On the Spirit of Ebrean Poetry (1782–1783) were written the Hebrew poetry. His biographer Rudolf Haym wrote that it “did something for the customer and understanding of the Orient as Winckelmann's writings did for art studies and archeology”.

In 1783 Herder traveled to Hamburg and got to know Klopstock , visited Matthias Claudius , Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Jerusalem in Braunschweig and Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim in Halberstadt; a friendship developed with Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi .

His main work, Ideas for the Philosophy of Human History (1784–1791), is based on the ideas that he had already published in smaller writings. It is a summary of his knowledge about the earth and man, "whose sole purpose of existence is directed towards the formation of humanity , which all the low needs of the earth should only serve and lead to it". He presented his views on languages, customs , religion and poetry, on the nature and development of the arts and sciences, on the origins of peoples and historical processes. He considered reason and freedom to be the products of the "natural" original language, religion the highest Expression of human humanity. The different natural, historical, social and psychological circumstances lead to the multilayered differentiation of the peoples, which are different but nevertheless equal.

"[Herder] interprets human history as the rational continuation of natural history: just as the way a living being is organized is determined by its organic power and its environment, the cultural development of a people, if it is to succeed, must also be determined by the ' Character 'or' genius of a people 'and through the physical conditions (' climate ') of the' land 'or' earth 'in which it lives. These two determinants influence each other: the respective 'climate' shapes the sensuality and way of thinking of the people, the people shape their country by designing it in a functional way, ie by cultivating it. In the course of its history, every culture forms an organic unit that encompasses man and nature, which is unique because every people has special facilities and every country requires specific adaptations or offers possible uses. [...] On earth a variety of unique, incommensurable, equal forms of culture emerges and this is precisely what Herder emphasizes against the enlightenment idea of ​​a universal history, the goal of human history; 'Part of the perfection of human nature is that it organizes and shapes itself anew under every sky, according to every time and way of life' […] A variety of landscapes with individual character is the spatial-material aspect of this cultural diversity. "

From 1785 to 1797 he published the Scattered sheets with treatises and literary translations. In 1787 he became an honorary member of the Berlin Academy of Sciences . In the same year his writing appeared to God. Some conversations , an interpretation and defense of Spinoza . He also wrote a letter and reader . Goethe's Roman elegies , which had shocked Weimar society with their sensuality, found his recognition.

Trip to Italy, falling out with Goethe

In the years 1788–1789, Herder undertook a trip to Italy as the companion of Canon Johann Friedrich Hugo von Dalberg and Sophie von Seckendorff . After separating from the travel company in Rome, as a result of an upset, he found a connection with the company of Duchess Anna Amalie von Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach , who was also traveling, and became friends with the painter Angelika Kauffmann . Johann Friedrich Reiffenstein , Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein and Johann Heinrich Meyer took him through Rome. There he received an appointment to Göttingen that interested him. He went on to Naples, returning via Florence, Venice and Milan.

Goethe worked for Herder to stay in Weimar and, in agreement with the Duke, was able to make promises for the future. Herder reluctantly agreed to it. Marked by illnesses, his material problems only temporarily alleviated, his claims led to a final break with Goethe due to the agreements. In addition, both had very different views on the social upheavals of the era. They disagreed over the French Revolution of 1789, which Herder welcomed. In addition, Herder had previously viewed the growing intimacy between Goethe and Schiller with jealousy . Gradually a state of isolation and a bitter judgment of all life around him set in.

In 1792 Herder's essay On an Oriental Drama was published , an enthusiastic response to Johann Georg Adam Forster's Sakontala . The fifth part of the ideas ... remained unwritten, and the letters on the advancement of humanity (1793–1797) were already marked by a pessimistic attitude. The intellectual contradictions in which he stood with Kant's philosophy, Schiller’s classicism and Goethe’s classicism now emerged more and more in Herder’s literary works.

He met the young Novalis , who later became enthusiastic about the idea of ​​founding a cosmopolitan, republican order. While he had openly expressed his sympathy at the beginning of the French Revolution, he changed his view - like Schiller - at the latest with the September murders in 1792. He had reworked his ideas on the philosophy of human history several times in a kind of self-censorship and because of apparent pressure from above and was therefore not a prince friend.

To classify people into races

According to rationalist theories , classical racism emerged in the 18th century. Leading theorists of the western world (like Immanuel Kant and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel ) tried to explain the racial differences scientifically. They assumed that the human races show not only biological (predominantly physical) differences, but also fixed and unchangeable characteristics in terms of their mentality and character. Later, modern biology and genetics in the wake of Charles Darwin seemed to provide clues. Johann Gottfried Herder and a few other representatives of the Enlightenment, on the other hand, clearly distanced themselves from the division of people into races. Herder wrote:

I don't see any reason for this naming. Race leads to a difference in descent, which here either does not take place at all, or in each of these world lines includes the most diverse races under each of these colors. […] In short, there are neither four or five races, nor exclusive varieties on earth.

Late work

Herder's Christian writings (1796–1799), in which he expressed his feeling for the core of Christianity, and the essays for Schiller's Horen built on his successful writings. With his metacriticism of the Critique of Pure Reason (1799) and the aesthetic theory presented in the Kalligone (1800) he decisively turned against the transcendental philosophy of Kant: Reason itself is dependent on experience and must first be acquired; it cannot be postulated before all experience. Beauty is not a subjective judgment based on a disinterested pleasure, but "the representation, that is, the sensual, perceptible expression of a perfection" - Herder's Adrastea (1801–1803) should hit the classicist tendency of German " poets and thinkers " as a whole. He feared that they would carry off all the fame and described himself as a "dry tree and sore spring" or a "packhorse and blind millhorse". In a time of economic hardship, Iduna or The Apple of Rejuvenation appeared as a contribution from the Horen , which Schiller contradicted. Herder emphasized the didactic task of poetry and thus stood in opposition to the theory of the autonomy of art, which he had co-founded a few decades earlier. A friendship developed with Jean Paul , who visited him frequently from 1798 to 1800. Even Christoph Martin Wieland supported him.

After spa stays in Aachen and Eger in the summers of 1802 and 1803 because of the worsening of his illnesses, he suffered a relapse in autumn 1803, which he finally succumbed to on December 18th. Last works were the legends , the transcription of the romances The Cid and the dramatic poems Der unleashed Prometheus ( intended as a continuation of Aeschylus ' Der gefesselte Prometheus ) and Admetus ' Haus . In 1802 the Elector of Bavaria Maximilian Joseph awarded him a nobility diploma . He was also appointed President of the Upper Consistory.

Freemasonry and membership in the Illuminati Order

Herder's grave with the symbol of Ouroboros light, love and life

Herder was accepted into the Masonic Lodge Zum Schwert in Riga in 1766 . There he was secretary and later a speaker. He supported Friedrich Ludwig Schröder in his ritual reform and gave him suggestions.

In an initial “ conversation ” he describes his idea of ​​an “invisible-visible society” that ties in with Lessing's Ernst and Falk - Conversations for Freymäurer . His lodge is an assembly of all thinking people in all parts of the world. Faust or Gutenberg are their masters of the chair . Humanity is the driving force behind this global society .

In the 8th edition of the Adrastea Herders magazine , which appeared in April 1803, he wrote further treatises on “Freemasons”: Analogous to Lessing's Ernst and Falk - Conversations for Freymäurer , he wrote a conversation between Faust, Horst and Linda, and continued with the Story of Solomon's signet ring continued and concluded with Solomon's throne . His deep interest in Freemasonry emerges from his correspondence with Friedrich Ludwig Schröder.

He was also one of the around 1500 known members of the so-called Bavarian Illuminati . In this order he was initiated on July 1, 1783 under the name "Damasus Pontifex" as "dean" of the Weimar Illuminati branch by Johann Joachim Christoph Bode , about four months after Goethe's admission to the association.

In February 1784, Herder, along with Bode, Goethe and the Duke, took part in an arbitration tribunal of the order, which was supposed to resolve the conflicts between the order's founder Adam Weishaupt and his most zealous agitator Adolph Knigge . He had hoped for support for his position from the Weimar people, but this did not materialize. Knigge left the Order of Illuminati on July 1, 1784.

The family

Maria Karoline Herder, b. Flax land.

On May 2nd, 1773 Johann Gottfried Herder and Maria Karoline Flachsland married in Darmstadt . His wife supported him in the background, edited his writings, arranged his estate after his death and published his works. The mutual correspondence and her biography, memories from Herder's life, became known . The marriage resulted in seven children, six sons and one daughter. The first two sons were born in Bückeburg, all other children in Weimar.

The eldest son, Wilhelm Christian Gottfried , was born in Bückeburg in 1774, studied medicine in Jena, became a provincial Akkoucheur (obstetrician) in 1800 and court medicus in Weimar in 1805. Together with Wilhelm Ernst Christian Huschke, he autopsied the body of Friedrich Schiller . He wrote the work on the extension of obstetrics (Leipzig 1803) and was involved in the publication of his father's works. In 1797 Gottfried Herder married a sister of the actor and theater director Heinrich Schmidt, who was born in Weimar in 1779 : Maria Henrietta Carolina (1775-1837). After the early death of her husband in 1806, she married their mutual friend, the lawyer Christian Gottlob Voigt (1774-1813), son of Christian Gottlob von Voigt , who was taken prisoner in France in spring 1813, from which he could be freed However, the consequences of which he died shortly afterwards due to a febrile illness.

The second son, Sigismund August Wolfgang , born in 1776, embarked on a career as a geologist and eventually became Saxon chief miner. In 1816 he was raised to the baron status for his services .

The third son, Wilhelm Ludwig Ernst, born in 1778, became a businessman and settled in Saint Petersburg for many years .

On August 25, 1779 (Johann Gottfried Herder's birthday), his fourth son, Karl Emil Adelbert, was born . He later bought the Stachesried estate in Bavaria, which, according to the law at the time, would have returned to the property of the aristocratic seller at the same price a year later , had it not been for his father, the famous philosopher and writer, to successfully obtain the nobility from the Bavarian elector asked.

Luise Theodore Emilie was born in 1781 as the fifth child of the now aristocratic von Herder family. She married Constantin Stichling after his first wife Juliane, a daughter of Wieland , died. A son of Luise and thus a grandson of Herder was the Weimar Minister of State Stickleback .

Emil Ernst Gottfried , born in 1783, worked for the government for Swabia and Neuburg until 1839, after which he was Bavarian Forestry and Government Councilor in Erlangen. In Herder's Life Picture (Erlangen 1846–1847, 24 volumes) he gave a description of the life and work of his father.

The youngest son, Rinaldo Gottfried , born in 1790, worked as a royal Bavarian forester.

Significance and aftermath

Letter from the young Herder to the writer JG Hamann (1764)

Herder played an important role in the change in the cultural life of educated Germans towards the end of the 18th century: His traces can be traced back to literature, philosophy, theology and historical studies. He made a major contribution to the development of linguistics and was an important literary translator. The demand for “humanity” and training to become “deified” human beings ( cult of genius ) as an ideal of life and education are fundamental principles of his writings.

He combined his ethical pathos with moods and feelings from the poetry of different times and peoples, which he made accessible to an enlightened audience through translations into German. In doing so, he prepared the ground for a modern literary history that went beyond the previous “history of scholars” . In addition to the voices of the peoples in songs , the cid , the epigrams from the Greek anthology , the doctrines from Sadi's "Rose Garden" and the whole series of other poems and poetic ideas which Herder contributed to German literature, there are those oriental stories, myths and fables which he recounted in the sense of his own views of his doctrine of humanity.

He gained influence as a cultural historian, religious philosopher, philosophical anthropologist , aesthetician, essayist and critic. Philosophically, he referred in particular to Giordano Bruno , Baruch de Spinoza , Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury , but also to contemporaries such as his friends Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi and Johann Georg Hamann , his teacher, the early Kant and Jean-Jacques Rousseau . Many of his expressions and insights quickly became general knowledge in German-speaking countries.

As a theologian, he turned against traditional, dogma-based Christianity. His studies in the history of literature deal with the Bible. He taught that the biblical narratives are to be understood from their time and the respective "national character".

In his book Also a Philosophy of History for the Education of Humanity , he formulated the thesis that the “forces of history” such as nations and epochs each have their own value and are to be judged independently of the observer. Herder is considered to be the inventor of the concept of nation. His conception of the nation, however, differed from the concept of nationalism in the 19th century. According to Herder, equivalence and diversity determine the character of nations. When asked "What is a nation?" He replied:

“A large, unheeded garden full of weeds and weeds. Who would want to accept this gathering place of follies and mistakes as well as of excellence and virtues without distinction and ... break the spear against other nations? ... Obviously the disposition of nature is that like one man, so also one sex, so One people also learn from and with the other ... until everyone has finally learned the difficult lesson: no people are God's only chosen people on earth; the truth must be sought by everyone, the garden for the common good must be built by everyone. "

Herder applied the idea of tolerance , which was important to the Enlightenment , to other peoples and historical epochs. He thus laid the foundation for historicism . With his cultural theory and philosophy of history, which, contrary to the universalism of the Enlightenment, understands the development of unique units of people and country as the goal of human history, Herder has developed an essential foundation of conservative cultural theory (see e.g. Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl ) and also the basis for the research program of classical regional and landscape geography that Carl Ritter formulated, with explicit reference to borrowings from Herder.

In literary history, his view of national influence led to the much-quoted saying about Shakespeare that a drama had come about in Greece that could not have come about in the north.

His works were significant for the philosophers of German idealism Johann Gottlieb Fichte , Friedrich Hegel and Friedrich Schelling . The romantic poets also resorted to Herder, who recommended an intensive study of folklore . Joachim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano , among others, dealt with folk songs and the Brothers Grimm , largely influenced by him, with fairy tales and legends . In the spirit of Herder, the latter were not limited to German-language sources, but instead included English, Scottish and Irish, which was already common. They also expanded their work area to Scandinavia, Finland, the Netherlands, Spain and Serbia.

During the time of National Socialism , Herder's concept of the nation, his polemics against the late Kant, his ideas about national character, among other things, were reinterpreted and instrumentalized in order to spread the Nazi ideology also in the earlier educated middle class .

Herder used a grammatical-rhetorical style that contained many anacoluts , aposiopeses , brachylogies , chiasms , Hendiadyoine , Oxymora and Hystera-Protera . He was a master of neologisms - many of his word creations have entered common usage. The German term Volkslied , as a translation of the English term popular song , comes from his 1773 review of a collection of English and Scottish ballads published in the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1765. Also Zeitgeist (eg Michael Zaremba in his speech on 31 October 2003 in Weimar Herder Church) or world market are term imprints of the Weimar Classic. The phrase Elbflorenz is also closely linked to it. About the “ imagination ” (cf. imagination ) he led disputes with Kant; He also postulated a “genetic force” that should exist regardless of the respective “race” of the people and the time in which they lived; as a modern thinker he was "against hereditary governments".

Long before Wilhelm Dilthey , he developed ideas about the “historical essence”; "The newer Ethnology , the newer cultural anthropology , the newer cultural studies , what is cultural turn calls, [is] without Herder unthinkable [...]. There are two reasons for this, on the one hand the conditionality on climate , milieu , people and on the other hand , and that is important, that Herder accepts all peoples equally, that is decisive. Heine says that for Herder the peoples are like a harp, like the strings on a harp and the harp is played by God ”. This is how the cultural and literary critic Georg Bollenbeck put it in 2003 on the 200th anniversary of Herder's death.

“From Germans from all over the world”, Herderplatz in Weimar

Two years later, the then President of the Bundestag, Wolfgang Thierse, said: “The German cultural nation - that was once a nice big word that made hearts beat faster. And since I already suspect the objections, I would like to add: it was also an innocent word. What was later called the 'German cultural nation' is connected with Friedrich Schiller, albeit without his active involvement, and even more so with his contemporary and Weimar fellow citizen Johann Gottfried Herder. "

Honors

Monument in front of the Herder Church in Weimar
The Herder monument in Mohrungen
Special postage stamp for the 250th birthday

During his lifetime, a bust of Herder was erected in the Seifersdorfer Valley in honor of his person . His bust was placed in the Walhalla in his honor . On his 106th birthday, his bronze statue, modeled by Ludwig Schaller , was unveiled in front of the Herder Church in Weimar ; on this occasion Franz Liszt set scenes from Herder's drama The Unleashed Prometheus to music . This memorial was the first in Weimar to commemorate one of the classics. The square in front of the church is named after Herder, which was partially destroyed in February 1945 and rebuilt in 1953 with, among other things, the money from Thomas Mann that he had received and donated for the Goethe National Prize of the GDR. His grave is located inside the church next to the three bells, which have been called "Luther - Bach - Herder" since 1922. The grave slab produced by the Berlin Prussian Iron Foundry has been lying on the grave site since 1819 and adorns a snake that bites its tail ( ouroboros ). This is an ancient-mystical-gnostic symbol of eternity, which is based on its seal . The signs Alpha and Omega can be seen in the middle of the serpent , because the revelation of John was his favorite work of the Bible (John 22:13: “I am the Alpha and Omega , the first and the last, the beginning and the Target"). Herder's motto, which was also on his seal , adorns the inside of the snake : " Light - Love - Life " (John 8:12; First John 2:10; 4:16).

The Evangelical Church honored him by including an Epiphany chorale in its hymn book in 1882 based on his poem Du aller Sterne Schöpfer Licht , which can be found slightly changed in the original edition of the Evangelical Hymnal from 1994 under number 74.

In his East Prussian hometown of Mohrungen , a bust monument was unveiled on August 25, 1854, based on a design by the sculptor Friedrich Wilhelm Wolff . The base was donated by the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV. During the Second World War, the bust was dismantled and melted down. After the war, the monument was completed by a new bust. The monument has been preserved.

In the castle of the city of Mohrungen there is an exhibition on his life and work with explanations in Polish and German. In addition, squares and streets are named after him in many cities, and schools are often associated with his name. In particular, the Herder Institute for Historical East Central European Studies at the University of Marburg, the Johann Gottfried Herder Gymnasium in Cologne and the Herder Institute at the University of Leipzig with a branch in Radebeul were named after Johann Gottfried Herder . From 1921 to 1939 the Herder Institute in Riga was a private university.

Herderstrasse in Bremen with the Herderstrasse residential group and Herderstrasse in Hamburg bear his name.

After him, in 1829, Herderia Cass became a genus of plants . named from the sunflower family (Asteraceae). It is not named after the botanist Ferdinand Gottfried Maximilian Theobald von Herder , because he was only about a year old at the time.

Edition history

Johann Gottfried von Herder's “Complete Works” first appeared in an edition published by J. Georg Müller, Johannes von Müller and Heyne with the help of Herder's widow and son.

The alienation of the public brought about the "Selected Works" in one volume (Stuttgart 1844), "Geist aus Herder's Works" (Berlin 1826, 6 volumes), "Selected Works" (edited by H. Kurz, Hildburghausen 1871, 4 volumes) , "Selected works" (edited by Ad. Stern, Leipzig 1881, 3 volumes).

Two further editions strived for completeness: on the one hand the one in the Hempelschen " Nationalbibliothek " (Berlin 1869–1879, 24 parts, with biography of Heinrich Düntzer ) and on the other hand the big critical edition of "Herder's works" directed by Bernhard Ludwig Suphan (das. 1877 to 1887, 32 volumes).

The latter is a sample work of the first order, a testimony to the utmost piety, conscientiousness and critical care: Suphan designed and implemented with it the plan for a historical-critical edition of the works of Johann Gottfried Herder. In genetic-historical order, he published every single work of Herder from the preliminary work, sketches and new versions to the finished form. Herder's grandson Theodor Stichling had generously made his grandfather's estate available to him. And so appeared under Suphan's editorship and together with Rudolf Haym , Carl Redlich and Johannes Imelmann Herder's "Collected Works" between 1877 and 1908 in a total of 33 volumes. During this work, Suphan also found information about the collaboration between Goethe and Herder, which was still unknown at the time. He was able to demonstrate that Goethe's early poems were written under the intense influence of Herder. How important his preoccupation with Herder was for Suphan - after all, director of the Goethe-Schiller Archive in Weimar from 1887 to 1910 - is shown by the following transcript dated September 12, 1901, dictated by Suphan: “Should it say in an obituary: BS Herderum edidit. Obiit. Released the Herder, then blessed the time, it should be fine with me. "

On the basis of the latter edition, Suphan and Redlich published “Herder's selected works” (Berlin 1884 ff.) In 9 volumes.

An uncrowned Herder award: “Johann Winckelmann's Monument” from 1778 was given by Alb. Duncker (Kassel 1882).

Collections publish letters Herder Heinrich Diintzer and FG v. Herder in the works: "From Herder's estate" (Frankfurt 1856–1857 3 volumes), "Herder's correspondence with his bride" (that 1858), "Herder's trip to Italy" (Gießen 1859) and "From and to Herder" ( Leipzig 1861–1862, 3 volumes) Cf. also Suphan, Goethe and Herder (“Prussian Yearbooks” 1878).

The Royal Library in Berlin bought a very rich literary estate from Herder, which was probably used by Suphan and his colleagues for the critical edition.

Of biographical-critical writings about Herder, apart from the “memories” collected by his wife (see below) and the “life picture” written by his son Emil Gottfried von Herder (Erlangen 1846–1847, 3 volumes), the main biographical work should be mentioned Leaves all earlier attempts far behind: R. Haym, Herder after his life and works (Berlin 1880 to 1885, 2 vols.), a masterpiece of strictly professional and at the same time loving portrayal and assessment of life. Cf. also Werner, Herder als theologe (Berlin 1871).

In 1984, Wolfgang Proß re-published Herder's works as a study edition in three volumes (Munich 1984 ff.); the editorial side of this edition was subject to some criticism, but with its source-critical commentary offered new insights into Herder's intertextuality .

The ten volumes of the extensively commented edition of the Deutsche Klassiker Verlag are also available (ed. By M. Bollacher, J. Brummack, U. Gaier, GE Grimm, HD Irmscher, R. Smend, among others, Frankfurt am Main 1985) as well as well commented single editions of the Aufbau-Verlag (Berlin and Weimar 1985/1990).

Works

literature

For biography and introductions
  • Bernhard M. Baron : Stachesried Castle near Eschlkam. Where the philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder planned his retirement home in the “distant corner of Germany” , In: Oberpfälzer Heimatspiegel 2020, 44th year, publ. by district home nurse Dr. Tobias Appl, Pressath 2019, pp. 80-84, ISBN 978-3-947247-29-5 .
  • Rolf Engert: Herder. 13 lectures. Max Stirner Archive, Leipzig 2004, ISBN 3-933287-56-1 .
  • Stefan Greif, Marion Heinz, Heinrich Clairmont (eds.) With the collaboration of Violetta Stolz, Tobias Bender, Anna Meywirth and Nils Lehnert: Herder Handbuch. Wilhelm Fink, Paderborn 2016, ISBN 978-3-7705-4844-6 .
  • Peter von Gerhardt, Hans Schauer: Johann Gottfried Herder - his ancestors and his descendants. Leipzig 1930.
  • Jens Heise : Johann Gottfried Herder as an introduction. 2nd Edition. Junius, Hamburg 2006, ISBN 3-88506-628-9 .
  • Hans Dietrich Irmscher: Johann Gottfried Herder . Reclam, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-15-017630-1 .
  • Friedrich Wilhelm Kantzenbach : Johann Gottfried Herder with self-testimonies and photo documents . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1999, ISBN 3-499-50164-3 .
  • Martin Keßler, Volker Leppin : Johann Gottfried Herder. Aspects of his life's work. de Gruyter, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-11-018427-3 .
  • Michael Maurer: Johann Gottfried Herder. Life and Work , Böhlau, Cologne 2014, ISBN 978-3-412-22344-1 .
  • Michael Zaremba : Johann Gottfried Herder - preacher of humanity. A biography . Böhlau, Cologne 2002, ISBN 3-412-03402-9 .
  • Marie-Elisabeth Lüdde: Johann Gottfried Herder: Light - Love - Life , [Wiesbaden]: Weimar publishing company in the publishing house Römerweg GmbH, [2016], ISBN 978-3-7374-0229-3 .
Special topics
  • Hans Adler: World literature - national literature - folk literature. Johann Gottfried Herder's attempt at mediation as a cultural-political idea. In: Regine Otto (Ed.): Nations and Cultures. For the 250th birthday of Johann Gottfried Herder. Würzburg 1996, pp. 271-284.
  • Hannah Arendt : Enlightenment and the Jewish question . In: Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland, Jg. 4, Nr. 2/3, Berlin 1932. (Reprinted in Die Verborgene Tradition. Eight Essays. Suhrkamp TB, Frankfurt a. M. 1976, ISBN 3-518-06803-2 , Pp. 108-126).
  • Claus Arnold , "Considerable rubble". Aspects of the Catholic Herder reception. In: Wilhelm-Ludwig Federlin / Markus Witte (eds.), Herder-Gedenken (Theion. Yearbook for Religious Culture 15), Peter Lang, Frankfurt a. M. 2005, pp. 1-18.
  • Tilman Borsche (Ed.): Herder in the mirror of the times. Distortions in the history of reception and chances of a re-reading. Fink, Munich-Paderborn 2006, ISBN 978-3-7705-4313-7 .
  • Jürgen Brummack: Herder's polemics against the 'Enlightenment'. In: Jochen Schmidt (Hrsg.): Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment in European literature, philosophy and politics from antiquity to the present. Darmstadt 1989, pp. 277-293.
  • Claas Cordemann: Herder's Christian Monism: a study on the foundation of Johann Gottfried Herder's Christology and ideal of humanity . Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-16-150408-2 .
  • Franz-Josef Deiters : The people as an author? The origin of a cultural-historical fiction in the work of Johann Gottfried Herder. In: Heinrich Detering (Ed.): Authorship. Positions and Revisions. DFG Symposium 2001. Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-476-01850-4 , pp. 181-201.
  • Franz-Josef Deiters : "... over a board, on open all-wide seas ...". Johann Gottfried Herder's concept of poetry as a medium of cultural identity and the problem of a hermeneutical cultural anthropology. In: Fernando Magallanes Latas (ed.): Estudios Filológicos Alemanes. 8, Sevilla 2005, ISSN  1578-9438 , pp. 155-168.
  • Ulrich Gaier, Ralf Simon (ed.): Between image and concept: Kant and Herder on the scheme . Fink, Paderborn - Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-7705-5040-1 .
  • Sabine Groß (ed.): Herder challenge. Selected Contributions to the Conference of the International Herder Society, Madison 2006 . Synchron, Heidelberg 2010, ISBN 978-3-939381-24-2 .
  • Ralph Häfner: Johann Gottfried Herder's theory of the development of culture. Studies of the sources and method of his historical thinking. Hamburg 1995, ISBN 3-7873-1178-5 . (= Studies on the 18th century, 19)
  • Marion Heinz (Ed.): Herder's “Metakritik”: Analyzes and Interpretations . Frommann-Holzboog, Stuttgart- Bad Cannstatt 2013, ISBN 978-3-7728-2599-6
  • Günther Jacoby: Herder as Faust. Leipzig 1911.
  • Martin Keßler: Johann Gottfried Herder - the theologian among the classics. The office of general superintendent of Saxe-Weimar. 2 vol. De Gruyter, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-11-019152-3 . (Zugl. Jena , Univ., Diss. Theol. 2005) (Works on Church History 102)
  • Yann Philipp Leiner: Creative story. Philosophy of history, aesthetics and culture with Johann Gottfried Herder . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-8260-4575-2 .
  • Anne Löchte: Johann Gottfried Herder: The theory of culture and the idea of ​​humanity in the “Ideas”, “Humanitarian Letters” and “Adrastea” . Königshausen and Neumann, Würzburg 2005, ISBN 3-8260-3105-9 .
  • Tino Markworth: Immortality and Identity in the Early Herder. Schöningh, Paderborn 2005. ISBN 978-3-506-71686-6 ( digitized version ).
  • Ralf Simon: The memory of the interpretation. Memory theory as a foundation for hermeneutics, aesthetics and interpretation with Johann Gottfried Herder. Hamburg 1998.
  • Claudia Taszus (ed.): Reason - Freedom - Humanity. About Johann Gottfried Herder and some of his contemporaries. Ceremony for Günter Arnold. Lumpeter & Lasel, Eutin 2008, ISBN 978-3-9810674-7-7 .
French title
  • Antoine Berman : L'épreuve de l'étranger. Culture et traduction dans l'Allemagne romantique: Herder, Goethe, Schlegel, Novalis, Humboldt, Schleiermacher, Hölderlin . Paris, Gallimard 1984. ISBN 978-2-07-070076-9 .
  • Pierre Pénisson and Norbert Waszek (eds.): Herder et les Lumières. Paris 2003, ISBN 2-13-053370-1 . (Revue Germanique Internationale. No. 20)
Basque title

Web links

Wikisource: Johann Gottfried Herder  - Sources and full texts
Commons : Johann Gottfried Herder  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files
Texts

Remarks

  1. Duden - The large first name dictionary, by Rosa and Volker Kohlheim. 5th edition 2016, keyword Johann
  2. See in particular Johann Gottfried Herder: Complete Works, 33 vols. Edited by Bernhard Suphan. Olms, Hildesheim 1967: Vol. XXI (Metacritic of the Critique of Pure Reason, written in 1799), Vol. XX (Kalligone, written in 1800); see. Marion Heinz: Herder's metacriticism . In this. (Ed.): Herder and the philosophy of German idealism . Rodopi, Amsterdam: pp. 89-106.
  3. Jürgen Holtorf: Die Logen der Freemaurer, Nikol Verlags GmbH, Hamburg undated , ISBN 3-930656-58-2 , p. 146
  4. Die Jesuskirche in Riga, p. 8 f., Editor: Evangelical-Lutheran Jesusgemeinde in Riga, ISBN 978-9984-39-258-5 .
  5. Gerold, Karl-Gustav: Herder and Diderot. Moritz Diesterweg, Frankfurt am Main (1941) pp. 17–33
  6. Köhler, Rafael: Nature and Spirit. Franz Steiner, (1996) ISBN 3-515-06818-X , p. 48ff.
  7. until 1807 by his friend Johannes Muller , entitled Voices of the people in songs provided
  8. Rudolf Haym: Herder: illustrated after his life and works, 2 volumes, 1877/85.
  9. Johann Gottfried Herder: Complete Works, 33 vol. Edited by Bernhard Suphan. Olms, Hildesheim 1967: Vols. XIII + XIV.
  10. Johann Gottfried Herder: Complete Works, 33 vol. Edited by Bernhard Suphan. Olms, Hildesheim 1967: here vol. XII: 8.
  11. Thomas Kirchhoff, Ludwig Trepl: Landscape, Wilderness, Ecosystem: on the culturally determined ambiguity of aesthetic, moral and theoretical conceptions of nature. Introductory overview . In the S. (Ed.): Ambiguous nature. Landscape, wilderness and ecosystem as cultural-historical phenomena . Bielefeld, Transcript: pp. 13–66, here: 40 f .; see. Ulrich Eisel: Individuality as a unit of concrete nature: the cultural concept of geography . In: B. Glaeser, P. Teherani-Krönner (ed.): Human and cultural ecology: Basics, approaches, practice . Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1992: pp. 107–151.
  12. http://www.diss-duisburg.de/disslit/kant-und-rassismus-literaturliste/
  13. Karin Priester: Rassismus - Eine Sozialgeschichte , Reclam, Leipzig, 2003, ISBN 3-379-20076-X , p. 85.
  14. ^ Johann Gottfried Herder: Ideas for the Philosophy of the History of Mankind , Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1989, ISBN 3-618-60760-1 , Ideas II 7.1, pp. 255 and 256.
  15. See Hans Dietrich Irmscher: On the aesthetics of the young Herder . In: G. Sauder (Ed.): Johann Gottfried Herder: 1744–1803 . Meiner, Hamburg: pp. 43–76; Hans Adler: The conciseness of the dark. Gnoseology - Aesthetics - Philosophy of History with Johann Gottfried Herder . Meiner, Hamburg 1990; Hans Adler: Herder's aesthetics as a type of rationality . In: Martin Bollacher (ed.): Johann Gottfried Herder: History and culture . Königshausen and Neumann, Würzburg 1994: pp. 131–139.
  16. Johann Gottfried Herder: Complete Works, 33 vol. Edited by Bernhard Suphan. Olms, Hildesheim 1967: here vol. XXII: p. 104.
  17. Herder: The Cid . Sung about from Spanish romances. Cotta, Tübingen 1805.
  18. a b Eugen Lennhoff, Oskar Posner, Dieter A. Binder: Internationales Freemaurer Lexikon. 5th edition. 2006, Herbig Verlag, ISBN 978-3-7766-2478-6 , Lemma Herder
  19. Robert Fischer: Herder's conversations about “Freemasons.” Gera 1877. Separate print from the Freemason newspaper, self-published by the author.
  20. Hans-Jürgen Schings : The brothers of the Marquis Posa. Schiller and the Illuminati secret society . Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 1996, ISBN 3-484-10728-6 , p. 91 f. (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  21. Ed. By JG Müller, Stuttgart 1820, 2 volumes .; new edition 1830, 3 volumes
  22. ^ Page 308 in Caroline Jagemann: Self-productions in the classic Weimar reading sample on Google Books
  23. see Schmidt's memories of a Weimar veteran from the social literary and theater life , Verlag FA Brockhaus, Leipzig, 1856, p. 9, at Google Books
  24. ^ Letter texts , index p. 691 at Google Books
  25. ^ Christian Gottlob von Voigt in the German biography
  26. ^ Marriage and death of Voigt's son in Goethe's letters to CG von Voigt , 1968, pp. 99-103 at Google Books
  27. His theses on the importance of language for the science of history were based, among other things, on the considerations of the Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico .
  28. The friendship with Jacobi ended in an argument.
  29. See FM Barnard: Herder on nationality, humanity, and history . McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal 2003.
  30. ^ Siegfried H. Sunnus (Ed.), Frankfurt a. M., Leipzig 1994, p. 268 f.
  31. Ulrich Eisel : Individuality as a unit of concrete nature: The cultural concept of geography . In: B. Glaeser, P. Teherani-Krönner (ed.): Human and cultural ecology: Basics, approaches, practice. Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1992: pp. 107–151; Vicki Spencer: Towards an ontology of holistic individualism: Herder's theory of identity, culture and community . History of European Ideas 1996/22 (3): pp. 245-260; Isaiah Berlin: Three critics of the enlightenment: Vico, Hamann, Herder . Princeton University Press, Princeton 2000; Thomas Kirchhoff: Culture as an individual human-nature relationship. Herder's theory of cultural individuality and diversity . In: M. Weingarten (Ed.): Structuring of space and landscape. Concepts in ecology and the theory of social relations to nature . Münster 2005: pp. 63-106.
  32. Ulrich Eisel: The development of anthropogeography from a "spatial science" to social science . University Library, Kassel 1980; Ulrich Eisel: Individuality as a unit of concrete nature: the cultural concept of geography . In: B. Glaeser, P. Teherani-Krönner (ed.): Human and cultural ecology: Basics, approaches, practice. Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1992: pp. 107–151.
  33. The journalist Ulrich Grober points out that the origin of the expressions going back to Herder is generally no longer known today.
  34. See: Manfred Koch : Weltliteratur. A nation of translators claims universality . Lecture at the thematic congress of the Evangelical Academy Thuringia on the 200th anniversary of the death of Johann Gottfried Herder in cooperation with the Kulturstadt Weimar GmbH from November 13th - 16th, 2003. Main ideas for the herd honor 2003 ( Memento from July 19th, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) on Johann gottfried-herder.de
  35. ^ Georg Bollenbeck (on the 200th anniversary of Herder's death): The birth of cultural criticism from the spirit of Herder. In: Deutschlandfunk (DLF) (Kultur Heute) , December 18, 2003.
  36. The birth of cultural criticism from the spirit of Herder. In: DLF. December 18, 2003.
  37. In the Third Reich
  38. Deutschlandradio (DLR), culture, signals. on April 3, 2005 in: Die Kulturnation. “Learn from Schiller?” (Online) .
  39. Lotte Burkhardt: Directory of eponymous plant names . Extended Edition. Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin, Free University Berlin Berlin 2018. [1]
  40. Walter Erhardt among others: The great pikeperch. Encyclopedia of Plant Names . Volume 2, page 1951. Verlag Eugen Ulmer, Stuttgart 2008. ISBN 978-3-8001-5406-7
  41. Jutta Hecker : Bernhard Suphan or the victims in the castles of the spirit . P. 41 ff in: Jutta Hecker: Wunder des Worts. Life under the spell of Goethe . Berlin 1989, ISBN 3-373-00322-9
predecessor Office successor
Johann Christian Wilhelm Meier Superintendent of the Lutheran State Church of Schaumburg-Lippes
1775–1776
Christoph Ludwig Bernhard Peithmann
Sigismund Basch General Superintendent of Saxe-Weimar
1776–1803
Johann Ludwig Gottfried Vogt