German Trans-Imperial Literature: Johann Gottfried Herder revisited

Johann Gottfried Herder, the famous protestant scholar, mentor of the young Goethe and representative of Weimar classicism led a paradigmatically trans-imperial life. He was born in the peripheral Mohrungen in East Prussia, then studied in the Prussian cultural centre Königsberg, held his first position in Riga, Livland, a city under the governance of the Russian Empire, failed to establish himself in the French Empire, spent time in the garrison city Strasbourg and then moved to the Holy Roman Empire, to Bückeburg and finally to Weimar. The talk revisits the case of Herder and asks: What is literature, if we do not consider literature according to post-war Literary Theory as a universal concept carried by national literatures but as based on changes in local practices of expert groups that converge in trans-imperial networks of literati?

Speaker

Frederic Ponten teaches German Literature as Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter at the University of Regensburg, Germany. He studied in Siegen, Barcelona, Berlin and Baltimore, and holds a PhD from Princeton University. He is currently finishing a book manuscript on the American Analysis of National Socialism during World War II (Cambridge University Press). His new research focusses on 18th century cosmopolitanism and on the history of German literature in a global context.

Image credit: Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz