External links
- Article by Sebastian Panwitz (in German)
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The (Geheime) Berliner Mittwochsgesellschaft ("[Secret] Berlin Wednesday Society") was a small group of German liberal thinkers in Berlin.
As early as 1783 (with Johann Erich Biester as secretary), intellectuals associated with the Late Enlightenment had gathered in a Gesellschaft der Freunde der Aufklärung, or Society of Friends of the Enlightenment. It was established by Wilhelm Abraham Teller. Members included the Prussian finance minister Carl August von Struensee, the finance councillor Johann Heinrich Wloemer (1726–1797), the poet Leopold Friedrich Günther von Goeckingk, Christian Konrad Wilhelm von Dohm, the theatre director and writer Johann Jacob Engel, the Supreme Court councillor Friedrich Wilhelm von Beneke, Friedrich Gedike, Karl Franz von Irwing, the jurist Ernst Ferdinand Klein, Franz Michael Leuchsenring, the physician Johann Carl Wilhelm Moehsen und Christian Gottlieb Selle, the preachers Johann Joachim Spalding and Johann Friedrich Zöllner, and Karl Gottlieb Suarez. Moses Mendelssohn was an honorary member.
It was through this scholarly semi-secret society, as well as through the longer-lived Montagsclub, which had a more social character, that the Berlin Enlightenment spread its ideas, using the Berlinische Monatsschrift as an outlet. Nearly every member wrote in this paper, and Werner Krauss, in his studies of the period, called it the movement's most important forum.
In 1798, Frederick William III of Prussia closed down the society as a threat to public order.
With the short-lived Berliner Blätter and Neue Berlinische Monatsschrift (which lasted until 1811), Biester continued to promote their ideas, the enthusiasm for which philosophical Idealism had threatened to quench; but the standards of previous years (when Kant had made contributions) were never quite matched, and Biester died in 1816, with no-one left to replace him.
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"Answering the Question: What Is Enlightenment?", often referred to simply as "What Is Enlightenment?", is a 1784 essay by the philosopher Immanuel Kant. In the December 1784 publication of the Berlinische Monatsschrift, edited by Friedrich Gedike and Johann Erich Biester, Kant replied to the question posed a year earlier by the Reverend Johann Friedrich Zöllner, who was also an official in the Prussian government. Zöllner's question was addressed to a broad intellectual public community, in reply to Biester's essay titled "Proposal, not to engage the clergy any longer when marriages are conducted". A number of leading intellectuals replied with essays, of which Kant's is the most famous and has had the most impact. Kant's opening paragraph of the essay is a much-cited definition of a lack of enlightenment as people's inability to think for themselves due not to their lack of intellect, but lack of courage.
Christoph Friedrich Nicolai was a German writer, bookseller, critic, and regional historian, who authored satirical novels and travelogues.
The Fruitbearing Society was a German literary society founded in 1617 in Weimar by German scholars and nobility. Its aim was to standardize vernacular German and promote it as both a scholarly and literary language, after the pattern of the Accademia della Crusca in Florence and similar groups already thriving in Italy, followed in later years also in France (1635) and Britain.
The Berlin Observatory is a German astronomical institution with a series of observatories and related organizations in and around the city of Berlin in Germany, starting from the 18th century. It has its origins in 1700 when Gottfried Leibniz initiated the "Brandenburg Society of Science″ which would later (1744) become the Prussian Academy of Sciences. The Society had no observatory but nevertheless an astronomer, Gottfried Kirch, who observed from a private observatory in Berlin. A first small observatory was furnished in 1711, financing itself by calendrical computations.
Since the 18th century Berlin has been an influential musical center in Germany and Europe. First as an important trading city in the Hanseatic League, then as the capital of the electorate of Brandenburg and the Prussian Kingdom, later on as one of the biggest cities in Germany it fostered an influential music culture that remains vital until today. Berlin can be regarded as the breeding ground for the powerful choir movement that played such an important role in the broad socialization of music in Germany during the 19th century.
Johann Heinrich Karl Menu, as of 1820 Freiherr Menu von Minutoli, was a Prussian Generalleutnant, explorer and archaeologist.
The Waldfriedhof Dahlem is a cemetery in Berlin, in the district of Steglitz-Zehlendorf on the edge of the Grunewald forest at Hüttenweg 47. Densely planted with conifers and designed between 1931 and 1933 after the plans of Albert Brodersen, it is one of Berlin's more recent cemeteries. Its graves include those of writers such as Gottfried Benn, composers such as Wolfgang Werner Eisbrenner and entertainers like Harald Juhnke, and put it among the so-called "Prominentenfriedhöfe" or celebrity cemeteries.
The Evangelisches Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster, located in suburban Schmargendorf, Berlin, is an independent school with a humanistic profile, known as one of the most prestigious schools in Germany. Founded by the Evangelical Church in West Berlin in 1949 as the Evangelisches Gymnasium, it continues the traditions of the ancient Berlinisches Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster, the oldest Gymnasium in Berlin, which for hundreds of years was situated in former monastery buildings in the city's Mitte district, closed by the East Germans in 1958. In 1963 the Evangelisches Gymnasium of West Berlin adopted its traditions and added "zum Grauen Kloster" to its name.
A Musen-Almanach was a kind of literary annual, popular in Germany from 1770 into the mid-19th century. They were modelled on the Almanach des Muses published in Paris from 1765.
The Göttinger Hainbund was a German literary group in the late 18th century, nature-loving and classified as part of the Sturm und Drang movement.
The Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums is a Gymnasium, or grammar school, in Hamburg, Germany. It is Hamburg's oldest school and was founded in 1529 by Johannes Bugenhagen. The school's focus is on the teaching of Latin and Ancient Greek. It is proud of having educated some of Germany's political leaders and some of Germany's notable scientists. The school is operated and financed by the city of Hamburg.
In 1740 Frederick II, known as Frederick the Great, came to power in the Kingdom of Prussia. Under the rule of the philosophically-oriented Frederick II, Berlin gave birth to an intellectual renaissance in which it became one of the most important centers of the Enlightenment in Europe. The city was an important printing press location, as well as the new home of many drama groups. Later, it hosted a National Theater, the Academy of the Arts and the Academy of Sciences.
The Berlinische Monatsschrift was a monthly magazine published by Johann Erich Biester and Friedrich Gedike.
Johann Erich Biester was a German philosopher. With Friedrich Nicolai and Friedrich Gedike, he formed what was known as the 'Triumvirate' of late Enlightenment Berlin.
Karl Hermann Heinrich Benda, was a German violinist and composer of Bohemian origin.
Friedrich Wilhelm Birnstiel was an 18th-century German music publisher known for publishing two volumes of four-part chorales by Johann Sebastian Bach in the 1760s.
Karl Gottlieb Döbbelin (Karl Theophilus Döbbelin, also Carl Theophil Döbbelin as well as Doebelin or Döbelin was a German theatre director and actor.
Dietrich Karl Nummert was a German journalist and author.
Große Berliner Kunstausstellung , abbreviated GroBeKa or GBK, was an annual art exhibition that existed from 1893 to 1969 with intermittent breaks. In 1917 and 1918, during World War I, it was not held in Berlin but in Düsseldorf. In 1919 and 1920, it operated under the name Kunstausstellung Berlin. From 1970 to 1995, the Freie Berliner Kunstausstellung was held annually in its place.
