Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi: Briefwechsel. Text - Kommentar - Wörterbuch

Links to the project

• www.saw-leipzig.de/forschung/p...
• jwo.saw-leipzig.de...

The exchange of letters between the philosopher, poet, writer and economic reformer Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743–1819) has a unique significance for the understanding of the era of Classical German Philosophy – both because of its philosophical orientation, which reflects the discourse of the era in its entire breadth and diversity, and also because of the circle of pen pals. Jacobi’s correspondence reflects these personal contacts. He does not write as a “philosopher of profession” in the sense of a bourgeois profession, but as a “philosopher of profession” in the sense of a committed ‘homme de lettres’ who loves, seeks and promotes conversation – and last but not least the intensifying argument.

In his letters, he picks up on all the impulses of his time both sensitively and critically and illuminates them with a clear-sighted gaze, which remains completely unbiased by the fixation on school positions. It is precisely this sovereign and also materially favoured distance of Jacobi from the professional integration into specific political, philosophical, and literary contexts that makes his correspondence a focus of intellectual and cultural interest in the era. In the interests of the world bourgeoisie, it corresponds with those who represent the world of bourgeoisie around 1800. The high rank of this letter corpus may be illustrated by a few outstanding names in deliberately colorful order: Wieland, Goethe, Klopstock, Gleim, Heinse, Lessing, Mendelssohn, Lavater, Dohm, Garve, Princess Amalia von Gallitzin, Hemsterhuis, Hamann, Herder, Forster, Soemmerring, Johannes Müller, Matthias Claudius, the Reimarus family, Pestalozzi, Friedrich Leopold Graf zu Stolberg-Stolberg, Johann Heinrich Voß, Kant, Fichte, Reinhold, Alexander and Wilhelm von Humboldt, Schiller, Georges-Louis Le Sage, Jean François de La Harpe, Jacques Necker, Karl Friedrich Reinhard (temporary French Foreign Minister), Madame de Staël, Jean Paul, Bouterwek, Schelling, Friedrich Schlegel, and Schleiermacher.

The correspondence from Jacobi’s years in Düsseldorf (1762 to September 1794) has been edited and annotated in recent years. In the current phase of the project, correspondence from two further periods of his life is being edited: his years in Hamburg and Holstein (October 1794 to July 1805) and his years in Munich (August 1805 to March 1819).

Since 2017, the edition of the posthumous collection “Die Denkbücher Friedrich Heinrich Jacobis” has also been part of the editorial project.

The volumes “Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi: Correspondence” and “Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi: Posthumous Collection” are published by frommann-holzboog in Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt.

To complement the edition of Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi’s correspondence, the “Jacobi Dictionary Online” has been under development since 2019. The textual basis of the dictionary consists of Jacobi’s philosophical and literary writings, his entire correspondence, and his “Denkbücher.” The dictionary’s entries explore both the internal connections within his work and its integration into the central philosophical and political debates of the era. The goal is to create a working tool that is of systematic importance not only for Jacobi research but for research on the era around 1800 as a whole.

The Jacobi Dictionary is freely accessible at jwo.saw-leipzig.de and is being successively expanded through the regular publication of new entries.

This initiative is co-funded by tax revenues based on the budget approved by the Saxon State Parliament.