The Correspondence of Jean Paul’s Family and Acquaintanceship

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Norbert Miller
• Subject Area: German Literary and Cultural Studies (Modern German Literature)
• Term: from 2018 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 398776857

The goal of this proposal is to edit, comment and publish the letters from the family and friends of Jean Paul (Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, 1763-1825). These letters and the correspondence contain material that is highly important, even essential, for understanding the writer’s life and work. The edition will therefore complement the historical-critical complete edition of the letters from and to Jean Paul (over 7600 letters, in print twenty eight volumes). In digital form, it will take full advantage of the possibilities now open to letters published electronically. The digital edition will be available online in open access, as part of an internet platform that presents the entire correspondence of the writer together with a comprehensive database (indexing persons, works, places), ultimately constituting of more than 9200 letters. It will thereby ensure content and research driven access to the letters.Besides substantially furthering research on Jean Paul, the development and reception of his works, his family (a typical small, bourgeois family from around 1800), and his companions, the project will contribute additional results: Firstly, it will document the undertaking to reconstruct social networks based on correspondence, lending itself as an example case. Secondly, it will encompass the different forms of correspondence that existed around 1800 into an exemplary edition. In those times, epistolary communication often did not have just one writer and was frequently not directed to, or meant for, just one recipient. Rather, correspondence was multipolar and often indirect. The project therefore aims to significantly broaden our knowledge of the practice of communication through letters around 1800, a subject that is currently expanding greatly and highly relevant for many editions.Hence, the proposed project will be of significant interest for the history of literature (Jean Paul) and provide material for cultural history and the history of everyday life, as well as – in regard to the Richter family – extraordinary documents for the history of psychology. It will also pose new questions concerning the theory and history of communication by letter; such questions being especially interesting today with a view of the communication forms in social media.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants