The correspondence of the natural philosopher Henrik Steffens (1773-1845). A scientific indexing and virtual merging project

• Applicants: Dr. Marit Bergner; Dr. Thomas Burch
• Subject Area: History of Philosophy ; History of Science
• Term: from 2021 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 462388823

As a Prussian scholar in Halle, Wroclaw and Berlin the natural philosopher Henrik Steffens, who was born in Norway, educated in Denmark – and today nearly forgotten – is one of the central figures of the German and Danish Romanticism and the German Idealism. Steffens coined the speculative direction of natural philosophy and, in harmony with Schelling, was the significantly representative of the theory of the unity of nature and spirit. His extensive scientific work is important beyond philosophy for history, theology and literature; for example, Steffens’ essay “Über die Idee der Universitäten” (1809) is, along with the writings of Fichte, Schleiermacher and Wilhelm von Humboldt, one of the most important treatises on a modern research university. In the epoch of the early Prussian nation-building, Steffens was a staunch cosmopolitan and member of a European intellectual community. His correspondence not only reflects this Europeanization - his network included professors and generals, singers and actors, nobles and clergy in several European countries - but also represents an important source for the history of science, as it provides information on knowledge networking in the early 18th century. The reason for the very few studies on Steffens and his Romantic circles in Halle and Jena to date is that the correspondence has neither been catalogued – it is distributed among 43 archives in seven European countries – nor published in its entirety. At the same time, it is a central source corpus for the history of natural philosophy and documents the socio-political discourses of his time.The aim of the project is therefore to systematically record and index all of Steffens´ approximately 600 discoverable letters and other ego-documents for the first time and, in cooperation with the Trier Center for Digital Humanities, to publish them on a digital portal using the FuD research network and database system. There, the correspondence of Henrik Steffens, recorded and evaluated according to specific metadata, as well as the owning institution of the individual autograph are made available for further scientific international research and Steffens` network is visualized. This not only resolves a research desideratum; the scholarly indexing of Henrik Steffens` correspondence provides a new source base for further philosophical, socio-historical and literary research that does not yet exist for his estate.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigators: Professor Dr. Bernd Henningsen; Professorin Dr. Stefanie von Schnurbein