Frederick the Great

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X20000473

Frederick II's writings have conventionally been viewed either as political tools or as means of public self-fashioning – part of his campaign to raise the status of Prussia from middling principality to great power. This article, by contrast, argues that Frederick's works must also be taken seriously on their own terms, and interpreted against the background of Enlightenment philosophy. Frederick's notions of kingship and state service were not governed mostly by a principle of pure morality or ‘humanitarianism’, as argued influentially by Friedrich Meinecke. On the contrary, the king's views were part and parcel of an eighteenth-century vision of modern kingship in commercial society, based on the benign pursuit of self-love and luxury. A close analysis of Frederick's writings demonstrates that authorial labour was integral to his political agency, publicly placing constraints on what could be perceived as legitimate conduct, rather than mere intellectual window-dressing or an Enlightened pastime in irresolvable tension with his politics.

Frederick II of Prussia (1712–1786), best known as Frederick the Great, was a prolific writer of philosophical discourses, poems, epics, satires, and more, while maintaining extensive correspondence with prominent intellectuals, Voltaire among them. This edition of selected writings, the first to make a wide range of Frederick’s most important ideas available to a modern English readership, moves beyond traditional attempts to see his work only in light of his political aims. In these pages, we can finally appreciate Frederick’s influential contributions to the European Enlightenment—and his unusual role as a monarch who was also a published author.

In addition to Frederick’s major opus, the Anti-Machiavel, the works presented here include essays, prefaces, reviews, and dialogues. The subjects discussed run the gamut from ethics to religion to political theory. Accompanied by critical annotations, the texts show that we can understand Frederick’s views of kingship and the state only if we engage with a broad spectrum of his thought, including his attitudes toward morality and self-love. By contextualizing his arguments and impact on Enlightenment beliefs, this volume considers how we can reconcile Frederick’s innovative public musings with his absolutist rule. Avi Lifschitz provides a robust and detailed introduction that discusses Frederick’s life and work against the backdrop of eighteenth-century history and politics.

This new comprehensive study of Frederick II’s Fusilier and Garrison Regiments is organised by province reflecting contemporary practice rather than using the regimental number. It combines sources from the earliest available to the most recent studies, details their Chef (colonel-in-chief), campaign history, organisation, uniforms, flags and equipment.

The strength of this study lies in the lavish number of illustrations. There are over 750 colour illustrations, including over 315 drawings by Dessauer (1729, 1737), Accurate (1759), Stammliste (1762), Etat Militaire (1770), and Menzel (1857) with schematics from Hans Bleckwenn, Eduard Bolz, Hans Brauer and Richard Knötel.

The uniform and equipment chapters have 250+ uniform details, equipment, fusilier caps, lace and weapons plus 92 Flags. In addition there are 8 maps, 15 tables and 16 orders of battle. 

This is the companion volume to the author’s acclaimed study of Prussian Musketeers of the War of Austrian Succession and Seven Years War.

El propósito de este artículo es analizar, contrastando obras de época con estudios actuales, el surgimiento de Prusia como potencia militar en las décadas centrales del  siglo XVIII. Para ello, es necesario poner el foco de nuestra investigación en la figura de Federico II, rey de Prusia, aunque no será nuestro objetivo sumergirnos en profundidad en su vida y personalidad, sino estudiar su política militar, la estructura y organización de sus ejércitos y sus hechos de armas más destacados, con la idea de que éstos nos sirvan de evidencia para comprender el calado de la aplicación de sus decisiones. Este texto, asimismo, pretende estudiar el funcionamiento práctico del ejército prusiano, al tiempo que tiene como inquietud secundaria explorar los posibles nexos entre los ejércitos prusiano y español en el marco político europeo de la centuria que estudiamos.

ABSTRACT in English (résumé en français plus bas): "Light artillery in the field during the 18th century: new reflections".
This article describes in depth the place of light artillery in military thinking and in military campaigns throughout the 18th century; it widens the question dealt with another article of ours (in the Journal: ‘Carnet de la Sabretache’, June 2001) by extending it to the battle, and by studying the Prussian example besides the French one. Light artillery in the 18th century is indeed an important topic, since what then left a mark in Europe regarding artillery was, on one hand, the search for weight reduction of artillery systems in general; and on the other hand, the appearance in several European countries of very light artillery pieces, not only due to their calibre (ie the weight of the cannonball), but with the mass of the pieces themselves. After having defined what was understood at that time with the expression "light artillery", the article develops the reasons and the conditions of the use of light artillery: an increase of manoeuvre capabilities for regular warfare, and a preservation of the surprise effect in the "petite guerre". While France was pioneer in Europe for the theoretical reflection about the use of light artillery, especially for the "petite guerre", other nations like Austria, Prussia and Saxony did use this artillery in the field earlier than France. The operational use of light artillery in battle is described through the examples of Fontenoy and the thought of King Frederick II of Prussia. The article reminds also about the other circumstances for the use of light artillery during a military campaign.

RESUME en français :
« L’artillerie légère en campagne au long du XVIIIe siècle : nouvelles réflexions »
L’article approfondit la place de l’artillerie légère dans la pensée militaire et dans les campagnes militaires tout au long du XVIIIe siècle ; il élargit la question traitée dans un autre de nos articles (dans la revue : ‘Carnet de la Sabretache’, juin 2001) en l’étendant à la bataille, et en étudiant, outre l’exemple français, celui de la Prusse. Le thème de l’artillerie légère au XVIIIe siècle est en effet important, parce que ce qui a marqué alors l’Europe en matière d’artillerie est, d’une part, la recherche de l’allégement des systèmes d’artillerie en général ; d’autre part, l’apparition, dans plusieurs pays d’Europe, de pièces très légères, non plus seulement par le calibre des pièces (ie le poids du boulet tiré), mais par la masse même des pièces. Après avoir défini ce que l’on entendait à l’époque sous l’expression d’« artillerie légère », l’article développe les raisons et les conditions de l’emploi de l’artillerie légère : augmentation de la capacité de manœuvre dans la « grande » guerre, préservation de l’effet de surprise dans la « petite guerre ». Si la France fut pionnière en Europe par la réflexion théorique sur l’emploi de l’artillerie légère, notamment à la petite guerre, d’autres pays, Autriche, Prusse, Saxe, précédèrent la France dans l’usage de cette artillerie sur le terrain. Les modalités d’emploi de l’artillerie légère dans la bataille sont abordées à travers les exemples de Fontenoy et de la pensée du roi Frédéric II de Prusse. L’article rappelle enfin les autres circonstances d’emploi de l’artillerie légère au cours d’une campagne militaire.

Graun's Montezuma, first performed in Berlin's Royal Theater in January 1755, is among the finest and most interesting of the operas produced under the supervision of Frederick the Great. Neither the first nor the last opera to depict Hernando Cortés’s conquest of Mexico, Montezuma presents a particularly striking interpretation of the events. Frederick’s theater poet Giampietro Tagliazucchi based the libretto on a sketch by the king in French prose, which he in turn based in part on Voltaire's play Alzire and on a Spanish history of the conquest that had been published in French translation. From these sources Frederick derived a dramatic framework onto which he projected his own ideas—especially ideas about religion—and his own family history.

For more on opera at the court of Frederick the Great see Bruno Forment, "Frederick's Athens: Crushing Superstition and Resuscitating the Marvellous at the Königliches Opernhaus, Berlin," Cambridge Opera Journal 24 (2012), 1–42.

Dieser Text stellt eine gemäß dem "SHIn-Ken"-Prinzip erstellte Zusammenfassung über Moritz von Sachsens „Reveries Upon the Art of War“dar.
Daher enthält diese Zusammenfassung nicht nur die Lehre des Moritz von Sachsen, sondern wird im Sinne der japanischen vergleichenden Geisteswissenschaft „SHIn-Ken“ mit geballtem Führungswissen sowohl der östlichen als auch der westlichen Welt der vergangenen 2.500 Jahre kombiniert, da eine einzelne „reine“ Lehre wie eine rohe Kartoffel ist, zu der man Wasser, Salz, Pfeffer, Petersilie und Hitze hinzufügen muss, um daraus etwas nützliches zu kreieren, damit beim Leser kein neunmalkluges Kopfwissen, sondern eigenes Verstehen entsteht.

Für diese Arbeit bezüglich Friedrich des Großen Antwort an Niccolò Machiavellis "Der Fürst" wurde die japanische "SHIn-Ken"-Technik verwendet, bei der nicht Gegensätze sondern Ähnlichkeiten großer Geister herausgearbeitet werden, wodurch das Einzelwerk vertieft wahrgenommen wird.
Ziel dieser Technik ist primär Verständnis mithilfe von Vernetzung zu vermitteln. Wissen wird zwar ebenfalls vermittelt, aber das Erschaffen kerygmatischer Denker steht im Vordergrund.

This comprehensive study of the Musketeer Regiments is uniquely structured by Province. This reflects contemporary practice and Frederick’s own grading of his troops. It combines sources from the earliest available to the most recent studies, every regiment’s campaign history, organization, uniforms, flags and equipment.

The strength of this study lies in the lavish extent of its illustrations. There are over 800 colour drawings, including over 320 contemporary illustrations from Accurate (1759), Stammliste (1762) and Etat Militaire (1770) and later schematics drawn from Hans Bleckwenn, Eduard Bolz and Hans Brauer.

Depicted are 120 Leibfahne and Kompaniefahne flags including 40 M1713 flags used during the War of Austrian Succession. The 330 illustrations of uniform details and equipment include 170 drawings from the 1755 Lace Book. There are also 8 maps, 20 Orders of Battle and 18 Tables.

From 1748 onwards, the marvellous made a comeback in opera seria via the Königliches Opernhaus in Berlin. The striking resurgence of myth and magic in the predominantly historical operatic genre appears to bespeak a growing interest in Lullian tragédie en musique, which in turn can be associated with Frederick II’s French orientation in literary and philosophical matters. But how did deities, sorcerers and Louis quatorzien imports chime with Frederick’s notorious resistance to superstition and divinely ordained kingship? The juxtaposition of the relevant operas with theoretical writings from Friderician Prussia yields a multi-faceted, somewhat paradoxical answer, revealing that the marvellous, alongside nourishing a new type of operatic spectacle, served Frederick as a vehicle to impart his philosophical agenda to his state, a former centre of Pietism.

On Julian the Apostate in Venetian writers at the end of the Republic of Venice and under the foreign dominations, especially on the poet Giambattista Armani (1768-1815) and Chateaubriand's influence on him. Draft of the article published in  “Quaderni Veneti”, n. 45 (giugno 2007), pp. 87-103 [ISSN 0394-2694]

The history of royal Prussian music was shaped not only by its kings, but also by its queens. Although there were famously patterns of crisis and prosperity in the kingdom's eighteenth­century history, strands of continuity provided by Prussia's early Hanoverian queens often go unobserved and therefore undescribed. The first Prussian queen, Sophie Charlotte of Hanover, set a precedent for sophisticated music cultivation, which is apparent in Corelli's dedication to her of the Op. 5 violin sonatas—a collection of chamber pieces. Her legacy—and that of her homeland, Hanover—lived on through the private efforts of her daughter­in­law and successor, Sophie Dorothea, whose own legacy is evident in the musical activities of her children. <1> Kings are unquestionably important in the histories of kingdoms but queens also had roles to play in creating a reign's culture. Early in Prussia's royal history, two of its queens were the real forces behind music cultivation within the ruling family. Queens Sophie Charlotte (r. 1701 to 1705) and Sophie Dorothea (r. 1713 to 1740) both came originally to Prussia from Hanover and shared more than just their bloodline with the Prussian royal family: they also infused it with a discerning passion for music. Prussia's first queen, Sophie Charlotte, achieved a very high standard of elite music making, setting an impressive precedent for the royal family. Memory of her musicianship remained alive in her descendants, female as well as male. When Sophie Charlotte's own son, King Friedrich Wilhelm I (r. 1713 to 1740), proved a surprisingly destructive force to the cultural achievements of his parents' reign, it took the heroic efforts of her niece and daughter­in­ law, Sophie Dorothea (also of Hanover), to secure a musical future for Prussia's royal children. <2> The Electorate of Hanover is perhaps best known today outside of Germany for having produced England's monarchs and for employing Georg Friedrich Handel (1685–1759), but he was only the most famous musician in what was one of Europe's most musically sophisticated courts. Sophie Charlotte had been brought up by her mother, the famous Electress Sophie of Hanover (b.1630–d.1714), to enjoy all the privileges of rank and fortune and was surrounded from birth by the highest caliber of music for church, chamber, and theater – French style for divertissements and Italian for opera. Due to internal conflicts within the family, Electress Sophie raised the future Prussian queen Sophie Dorothea, her granddaughter, as well. Thus, two queens of Prussia were brought up in remarkably similar circumstances. Hanover was a place of high culture. Because the Electorate married its daughters to successive kings of Prussia, Hanover's intellectual and artistic achievements became part of Prussian royal culture, too. <3> This article focuses on Sophie Charlotte's musical legacy in Prussia in the context of gifts received and gifts given: Corelli's dedication to her of the Op. 5 violin sonatas provides a new view of her as patron and political Lizenzhinweis: Dieser Beitrag unterliegt der Creative­Commons­Lizenz Namensnennung­Keine kommerzielle Nutzung­Keine Bearbeitung (CC­BY­NC­ND), darf also unter diesen Bedingungen elektronisch benutzt, übermittelt, ausgedruckt und zum Download bereitgestellt werden. Den Text der Lizenz erreichen Sie hier: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by­nc­nd/4.0/

This essay attempts to identify the various qualities that made Frederick II of Prussia's just appellation 'the Great'. Frederick employed a completely new type of rule, which was not only unique in the eighteenth century but also prefigured modern governance in many respects. Frederick personified the raison d'etat and came to exemplify the rational use of state power for the creation of a completely new standard of judicious kingship. As a visionary ruler of his day, Frederick foreshadowed modern principles of the state. To highlight Frederick's innovations, the essay not only shows Frederick's brilliant leadership in the scene of eighteenth-century Europe, but it also refers to rarely quoted contemporary sources; by doing so, the essay contrasts the prodigious divide between the crumbling culture of the Ancien Régime and that of Frederick's Prussia—the former still feudal and the latter possessing a vision that rulers are the 'first servants of the state'.

This article asks if the role of the Enlightenment philosopher was, as understood by contemporaries, to work against elites, or to underpin them. Concentrating particularly on the arch-elitist Frederick the Great and his court philosophers, we will track the notion of the elite and their position as holders of truth and enlighteners. The central tenet of the debate will concern the notion of lying to the masses and the utility of truth. It will be shown that advocacy of absolute truth was rare and often dissimulated by philosophers keen to avoid censure. This dividing line will be used to show the cultural transfer of Francophone debates to the German intellectual sphere.

der Halberstädter Canonikus, ist eine zentrale Figur des literarischen Lebens im 18. Jahrhundert. Davon zeugt sein ausgesprochen umfangreicher Briefwechsel mit zahlreichen Zeitgenossen, 1 seine Büchersammlung, 2 aber auch der berühmte Freundschaftstempel, eine eindrucksvolle Sammlung von Porträts zeitgenössischer Dichter und Gelehrter, die in Verbindung mit Gleim standen. 1719 geboren und 1803 gestorben, umspannt Gleims Leben das achtzehnte Jahrhundert in allen wesentlichen Aspekten. Er war Förderer vieler jüngerer Dichter und dabei oft verständnisvoller als etwa Wieland, wie im Falle Wilhelm Heinses. 3 1 Siehe dazu auch Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim -der verkannte Briefschreiber / Uwe Hentschel. // In: Vom Lieblingsautor zum Außenseiter : ein Beitrag zur Kanondebatte des 18. Jahrhunderts / Uwe Hentschel. -Frankfurt am Main [u.a.] : PL Academic Research, 2015. -314 S. ; 21 cm. -ISBN 978-3-631-65782-9 : EUR 59.95 [#4019], S. 121 -142. -Rez.: IFB 15-1 http://ifb.bsz-bw.de/bsz425994031rez-1.pdf 2 Frühneuzeitliche Bibliotheken als Zentren des europäischen Kulturtransfers / Claudia Brinker-von der Heyde H (Hg.). -Stuttgart : Hirzel, 2014. -281 S. : Ill., graph. Darst., Kt. ; 24 cm. -(Germanistik). -ISBN 978-3-7776-2251-4 : EUR 49.00 [#3883]. -Rez.: IFB 14-4 http://ifb.bsz-bw.de/bsz403372224rez-1.pdf sowie weiterhin die grundlegende Studie Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim und die gesellige Sammlungspraxis im 18. Jahrhundert / Diana Stört.

The article addresses the practice of archival editing in Berlin around 1850. The archive as a contested space of knowledge, to which researchers demanded entry and which government authorities only reluctantly made accessible, provides the frame for the study. It aims to examine the strategies and arguments, with which this contest was fought out. How did archival research projects shape the roles of the project coordinators, of the researchers and of the archivists? Which role was assigned to the public in the struggle for access to state archives? The specific project, by which these questions are explored, is the thirty-volume edition of the works of Frederick the Great produced under the auspices of the Prussian Academy of Sciences from 1840 to 1856. The article first outlines the historical background of the research project, starting with a brief biography of Johann David Erdmann Preuß, a scholarly outsider who had initiated the edition. Second, the article addresses the Academy’s efforts in gaining access for Preuß to the Prussian state archives, with particular attention to the self-narratives of the various scholarly personae involved in this discussion on archival accessibility.

This paper deals with Herder’s first acquaintance with Machiavelli and Machiavellianism. To achieve this end, it analyzes Herder’s relevant writings (Haben wir noch jetzt das Publikum und Vaterland der Alten? and Journal meiner Reise im Jahr 1769) and his sources (Frederick the Great’s controversial Anti-Machiavell as well as David Hume’s radical History of Natural Religion). As a result, two issues arise which characterize Herder’s enduring interest in Machiavelli’s work and personality as well as his aftermath from the second half of the 1760s onwards: 1) Frederick the Great’s machiavellianist antimachiavellianism; 2) the model of ancient-Rome civil religion and its adaptation to modern times.

This paper deals with Herder's first acquaintance with Machiavelli and Machiavellianism. To achieve this end, it analyzes Herder's relevant writings (Haben wir noch jetzt das Publikum und Vaterland der Alten? and Journal meiner Reise im Jahr 1769) and his sources (Frederick the Great's controversial Anti-Machiavell as well as David Hume's radical History of Natural Religion). As a result, two issues arise which characterize Herder's enduring interest in Machiavelli's work and personality as well as his aftermath from the second half of the 1760s onwards: 1) Frederick the Great's machiavellianist antimachiavellianism; 2) the model of ancient-Rome civil religion and its adaptation to modern times.

EDITION 21-1 "Nehme mir die Freiheit, meiner viellieben Mama, einige Früchte zu senden" : der Briefwechsel zwischen Friedrich II. und seiner Mutter Sophie (7. Februar 1732-Mai 1757) = "Je prends la liberté d'envoyer quelques fruits à ma très-chère ma-man".-Berlin : Europolis, 2020.-27, 27 S. ; 19 cm.-(Essays zum neuen und alten Europa).-Kehrdruck.-ISBN 978-3-9820256-2-9 : EUR 9.00 [#7377] Der preußische König Friedrich II. von Preußen (1712-1786), oft genannt "der Große", gehört zu denjenigen historischen Persönlichkeiten, die sehr unterschiedlich bewertet wurden und werden, deren Bedeutung weit über ihre Zeit hinaus sich aber nicht kleinreden läßt. Wenn auch sicher kein be-deutender Philosoph im eigentlichen Sinne, war Friedrich doch an ihr nach-haltig interessiert und setzte sich mit zeitgenössischen Autoren auseinan-der. 1 Berüchtigt ist Friedrichs mangelhaftes Verständnis für die deutsche Literatur seiner Zeit, die er zudem nicht sehr gut kannte. Friedrich ist schon in einer umfangreichen Fach-sowie auch populärwissenschaftlichen Litera-tur und Biographik gewürdigt worden. 2 Auch die Beziehung zu dem franzö

Research on national images and stereotypes consistently points out the mutual dependency of self-image and the image of the other: Thus, enmity towards Catholic France played a decisive role in forming a British sense of national consciousness during the eighteenth century. A similar case has been made for German national identity, which was critically moulded during the Napoleonic Wars and beyond by a process of rhetorical dissociation from neighbouring France. 1 British perceptions of Germany and Prussia during the nineteenth century were certainly much less emotionally charged. 2 Nevertheless, as antagonism between Britain and Germany rose at the turn of the century, public dis-*A first draft of this article was presented at the workshop Anglo-German Perceptions and Prejudices since 1800 at Newnham College, Cambridge 21-22 March 2013. I would like to thank the conveners Richard J. Evans, Bianca Gaudenzi, Henning Grunwald and David Motadel for the opportunity to communicate my ideas. I am grateful for the helpful comments and suggestions by an anonymous reviewer. Finally, I would like to thank Anne MacKinney for her thorough revision of the English manuscript.

Emilie du CHÂTELET Rezeption Deutschland AUFSATZSAMMLUNG 19-3 Emilie du Châtelet und die deutsche Aufklärung / Ruth Ha-gengruber, Hartmut Hecht (Hrsg.).-Wiesbaden : Springer VS, 2019.-XII, 420 S. ; 21 cm.-ISBN 978-3-658-14021-2 : EUR 44.99 [#6540] Die Philosophin Emilie Du Châtelet (1706-1749) nimmt in der Geschichte der Aufklärungsperiode eine herausgehobene Stellung ein. 1 Lange vor al-lem dadurch bekannt, daß sie teilweise in enger Verbindung mit Voltaire leb-te und arbeitete, ist sie in den letzten Jahren zunehmend als eigenständige Denkerin und Naturwissenschaftlerin gewürdigt worden. Der vorliegende Band, herausgegeben von der bekannten Paderborner Châtelet-Forscherin Ruth Hagengruber 2 und dem Berliner Privatdozenten Hartmut Hecht, legt nun den Fokus auf die deutsche Rezeption der Denkerin, deren Wirkung nicht gering zu veranschlagen sei. (Der Band beschränkt sich aber nicht ganz darauf.) Insbesondere gilt dies für ihre annotierte und kommentierte französische Übersetzung der epochalen Principia Newtons aus dem La-teinischen, die sie im Lichte der Philosophie von Leibniz ergänzte. 2 Siehe auch Von Diana zu Minerva : philosophierende Aristokratinnen des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts / hrsg. von Ruth Hagengruber. Unter Mitwirkung von Ana Rodrigues.-Berlin : Akademie-Verlag, 2011.-181 S. : Ill. ; 22 cm.-ISBN 978-3-05-004923-6 : EUR 49.80 [#1728].-Rez.: IFB 12-1 http://ifb.bsz-bw.de/bsz335865496rez-1.pdf-Emilie du Châtelet between Leib-niz and Newton / ed. by Ruth Hagengruber.-Dordrecht : Springer, 2012.-XVI, 253 S.-(International archives of the history of ideas ; 205).

Julien Offray de LA METTRIE ROMANHAFTE BIOGRAPHIE 18-2 Herr Maschine oder vom wunderlichen Leben und Sterben des Julien Offray de La Mettrie / Bernd Schuchter. -Wien : Braumüller, 2018. -176 S. ; 19 cm. -ISBN 978-3-99200-201-6 : EUR 20.00 [#5847] Der Arzt Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709 -1751), der am Hofe Friedrichs des Großen Zuflucht fand, aber schon im Alter von 42 Jahren starb, ist im allgemeinen Bewußtsein der Autor eines Buches, Der Mensch eine Maschine. 1 Und dieser Buchtitel fungiert oft nur als bloßes Schlagwort, das man auch dann im Munde führen kann, wenn man das Buch selbst nie in der Hand gehabt hat. Auch litt La Mettries Ruf darunter, daß man ihn auch von seiten der Aufklärer marginalisierte und aus der Zunft der Philosophen auszugrenzen suchte. So war es etwa Voltaire, der ein bestimmtes Bild La Mettries kolportierte, und selbst Diderot war in seiner Ablehnung bemerkenswert entschieden. Gleichwohl wird man im Falle Voltaires z.B. nicht von einem durchgängig negativen Bild La Mettries sprechen dürfen. Es ist durchaus hilfreich, wenn auch für ein breiteres Publikum gelegentlich an den Arzt und Philosophen aus St. Malo erinnert wird -und eben das macht der österreichische Autor Bernd Schuchter in seinem populärwissenschaftlichen Werk, das in Form eines längeren Essays in das Leben und Werk La Mettries einführt. Das geschieht in durchaus lockerer Form -Fußnoten gibt es nicht, nur eine Liste mit verwendeter Literatur, die aber nur sehr selektiv ist und auch nur einen Teil von La Mettries Schriften anführt, 2

Unter den Persönlichkeiten, die im Zentrum der deutschen Aufklärung stan-den, kommt Jean Henri Samuel Formey (1711-1797) eine besondere Be-deutung zu. 1 Er war als langjähriger Sekretär mit zahlreichen Persönlichkei-ten der Zeit-bzw. Wissenschaftsgeschichte in Kontakt, wobei er hier vor allem als sogenannter passiver Korrespondent dokumentiert ist. Denn von 17.000 erfaßten Briefen hat Formey selbst nur 1.200 verfaßt (S. 10). Das hängt mit der prominenten Position zusammen, die er über lange Jahre in-nehatte. Angesichts der hohen Zahl von Briefen hat es wenig Sinn, hier auf einzelne Korrespondenten hinzuweisen, weshalb ich aus gegebenem Anlaß-der Edition des Briefwechsels von Christian Wolff und Ernst Christoph von Manteuffel 2-nur auf die enge Verbindung Formeys zum Wolffianismus ver-weise. Er war mit dieser Philosophie bestens vertraut, wovon nicht zuletzt 1 Siehe zuletzt auch Jean Henri Samuel Formey : Wissensmultiplikator der Berli-ner Aufklärung / hrsg. von Jannis Götze und Martin Meiske.-1. Aufl.-Hannover : Wehrhahn, 2016.-184 S. ; 22 cm.-(Aufklärung und Moderne ; 36).-ISBN 978-3-86525-547-1 : EUR22.80 [#5302].-Rez.: IFB 17-2 http://informationsmittel-fuer-bibliotheken.de/showfile.php?id=8381 2 Briefwechsel zwischen Christian Wolff und Ernst Christoph von Manteuffel 1738-1748 : historisch-kritische Edition in 3 Bänden / hrsg. von Jürgen Stolzen-berg, Detlef Döring, Katharina Middell, Hans-Peter Neumann.-Hildesheim [u.a.] : Olms.-25 cm.-(Gesammelte Werke / Christian Wolff : [Abt. 3], Materialien und Dokumente ; 160).