Journal of Historical Geography 72 (2021) 1e12

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Historical Geography

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jhg

Geographical print culture in the German-speaking territories,

c.1690dc.1815
Luise Fischer a, Charles.W.J. Withers b, *
a
Fraunhofer Center for International Management and Knowledge Economy, IMW, Leipzig Neumarkt 9-19, 04109, Leipzig, Germany
b
Institute of Geography, School of Geosciences, University of Edinburgh, Drummond Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9XP, UK

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This paper examines the number and type of books of geography and geographical periodicals in the
Received 26 March 2020 eighteenth-century German-speaking territories and the place and chronology of their publication with
Received in revised form reference to recent work on geographical print culture in the Enlightenment. The paper extends recent
26 November 2020 €rungsgeographie (Enlightenment geography) by taking a broadly quantitative approach
studies on Aufkla
Accepted 30 November 2020
and in presenting, for 345 books and 109 geographical periodicals, geographies of authoring, editing and
publishing in the German-speaking territories between c.1693 and c.1815. Attention is paid to differences
Keywords:
of content, to contemporaries’ interests in geography as a form of ordered knowledge (wissenschaft) and
Geographical print culture
Enlightenment
to the purposes of their work: broadly, education, polite sociability, and the ‘completeness’ of geography
German-speaking territories as a form of Enlightenment knowledge. We show how writing and publishing geographydand
Eighteenth century €rungsgeographiedwas spatially distributed and how the rise in numbers and increased diversity of
Aufkla
geographical works raised questions about authorship and credibility and the content of geography.
© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction content and purpose of geographical writing. Part six considers

the purpose and the reception of the works in question. In part
This paper examines the production of geography books and seven, the conclusion, we address the wider implications of this
periodicals in the German-speaking territories in the long eigh- study.
teenth century. Attention is paid to the number, chronology, types
of geographical works, to the towns and cities in which those
Geographical print culture in the eighteenth century
works of geography were written and published in that period,
and to the meaning and purpose of geography expressed in these
Geographical print culture in the eighteenth century has been
forms of print culture. Following this introduction, the paper is in
the subject of considerable attention. The content and format of
several further parts. The first outlines recent work on eighteenth-
books of geography has been assessed, building in part upon
century geographical print culture and provides context to our
bibliographical studies of the numbers and authorship of such
examination of German language works. In the second and third
works.1 The work of Robert Mayhew has been particularly influ-
parts, we offer comments on questions of terminology and
ential. He has, variously: shown ‘the character’ of eighteenth-
methodology since ‘Germany’ understood as a nation state did not
century English geography to be related to two social and intel-
exist in the eighteenth century and geography enjoyed different
lectual traditions, a commercial and practical tradition, and a hu-
meanings in German language works. In parts four and five which
manistic and scholarly tradition; illuminated the relationships
address, respectively, books and periodicals, we examine evidence
between geography’s books and Georgian politics; and demon-
for the number of German language works, their type, date, and
strated, with reference to citationary practices and connections
place of publication between c.1693 and c.1815. For both books
between spatiality and textuality in the format and content of En-
and periodicals, we address questions of authorship and the
glish language geography books, how geography’s eighteenth-

1
* Corresponding author. O. Sitwell, Four Centuries of Special Geography: An Annotated Guide, Vancouver,
E-mail addresses: luise.fischer@imw.fraunhofer.de (L. Fischer), c.w.j.withers@ed. 1993; B. McCorkle, A Carto-Bibliography of the Maps in Eighteenth-Century British and
ac.uk (Charles.W.J. Withers). American Geography Books, Lawrence, 2009.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2020.11.003
0305-7488/© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
L. Fischer and Charles.W.J. Withers
century print culture responded to new knowledge derived from
exploration.2 In other work, Mayhew has revealed interrelation-
ships between Enlightenment philosophy and politics, either in
individual works such as William Guthrie’s Geographical Grammar
(1770) with its introduction into British geographical discourse of
key themes from the Scottish Enlightenment, notably stadial the-
ories of social development in the work of Adam Smith, Adam
Fergusson and others, or, at greater length, he has explored the
political languages of British geography after 1650.3 In this and
other work, Mayhew has effectively countered the persistent and
unwarranted historiographical ‘effacement of early modern
geography’.4
These insights into eighteenth-century British geographical
print culture have been added to by others. Dodds’ analysis of
booksellers’ records illuminates not just the geography of the book
trade in Enlightenment Edinburgh but also the gendered reading of
geography’s books.5 At a different scale, and with reference to
‘mainstream British geographical books’ published between 1760
and 1830, Stock has shown how the idea of Europe was differently
constituted in terms, for example, of politics, religious difference,
cultural boundaries, and the natural environment. Like Mayhew
and Dodds, Stock is circumspect over questions of method and
attentive to context. Most English language geography books in this
period were not written by geographers, if, by that term, we mean
persons either trained in the subject, employed by others to un-
dertake work in it, including teaching, or explorer-voyagers. Most
geography books were the product of hack writers and jobbing
authors, few of whom ventured far from their libraries and desk.
Because plagiarism was common, attribution of authorship, origi-
nality, and edition history can be difficult.6
These issues apply no less to English-language books of geog-
raphy in the early United States. There, geographical texts were
used to instil a nascent national identity for that emergent polity,
2
See R. Mayhew, The character of English geography c.1660e1800: a textual
approach, Journal of Historical Geography 24 (1998) 385e412; R. Mayhew, Geogra-
phy books and the character of Georgian politics, in: M. Ogborn and C. Withers
(Eds), Georgian Geographies: Essays on Space, Place and Landscape in the Eighteenth
Century, Manchester, 2004, 192e211; R. Mayhew, Mapping science’s imagined
community: geography as a Republic of Letters, 1600e1800, British Journal for the
History of Science 38 (2005) 73e92; R. Mayhew, Materialist hermeneutics, textuality
and the history of geography: print spaces in British geography, c.1500e1900,
Journal of Historical Geography 33 (2007) 466e488.
3
R. Mayhew, William Guthrie’s Geographical Grammar, the Scottish Enlighten-
ment and the politics of British geography, Scottish Geographical Journal 115 (1999)
19e34; R. Mayhew, Enlightenment Geography: The Political Languages of British Ge-
ography, 1650e1850, Basingstoke, 2000.
4
R. Mayhew, The effacement of early modern geography (c.1660e1850): a his-
toriographical essay, Progress in Human Geography 25 (2001) 383e401. As Mayhew
earlier noted, the long-influential view of Richard Hartshorne in his Nature of Ge-
ography (1939) that eighteenth-century geography books were in a ‘pre-critical’
stage of development must now be rejected: Mayhew, The character of English
geography c.1660e1800, 385e6.
5
P. Dodds, Geographies of the book (shop): reading women’s geographies in
Enlightenment Edinburgh, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 45
(2020) 270e283; P. Dodds, Translating Arabia in Enlightenment Edinburgh:
compilation, comparison, and Robert Heron, Eighteenth-Century Studies 53 (2019)
91e108. For other work in the British context, see C. Withers, Geography, Science and
National Identity: Scotland since 1520, Cambridge, 2001, chapter 4; M. Ogborn,
Geographia’s pen: writing, geography and the arts of commerce, 1660e1760, Journal
of Historical Geography 30 (2004) 294e315; C. Withers, Writing in geography’s
history: Caledonia, networks of Correspondence and geographical knowledge in the
late Enlightenment, Scottish Geographical Journal 120 (2004) 33e45; C. Withers,
Placing the Enlightenment: Thinking Geographically about the Age of Reason, Chicago,
2007.
6
P. Stock, Europe and the British Geographical Imagination, 1760e1830, Oxford,
2019. As Stock notes, given the nature of geography books in this period and their
authors’ standing, ‘we may need to set aside some of the established pre-
occupations of text-based intellectual historydspecifically a focus on authorial
intentions, clear intellectual provenances, and textual originality’ (p. 29).
2
Journal of Historical Geography 72 (2021) 1e12
with Jedidiah Morse’s American Geography (1795) the first major
book of geography in Enlightenment America to help shape that
country’s national self-awareness. Others’ principally political
works were similarly attentive to geography.7 Some attention has
been given to such matters for France and the distinctions there
between authorship by ‘g eographes de cabinet’ and ‘voyageurs’.8 But
most work on eighteenth-century geographical print culture has
focused on English language books of geography in their different
formats and upon texts written, published, read, and reviewed in
the English-speaking world, whether of England, Scotland, Britain
as a whole, or the United States.
A notable exception to this Anglocentric emphasis is Dean
Bond’s work on geography in late eighteenth-century Germany and
on Anton Friedrich Büsching in particular. Earlier published
research in the German context explored geographical teaching in
universities, in Halle, in Go€ttingen and, notably, by Immanuel Kant
in Ko€nigsberg.9 In turning to Büsching, Bond has widened the
geographical range of studies of geography’s print culture, and
advanced our understanding of authorship by examining the moral
issues of epistemic credit and trust that underlay Büsching’s
emphasis on accuracy and up-to-dateness in his geography. In his
account of the Dane Carsten Niebuhr’s ill-fated Arabian Expedition
and, but more so, in his own Neue Erdbeschreibung, whose first
volume appeared in 1754, Büsching was at pains to establish ‘a new
7
On Jedidiah Morse’s geography and geographical print culture in the early
United States, see R. Brown, The American geographies of Jedidiah Morse, Annals of
the Association of American Geographers 31 (1941) 145e217; M. Brückner, Lessons in
geography: maps, spellers, and other grammars of nationalism in the early Re-
public, American Quarterly 51 (1999) 311e343; M. Brückner, The Geographic Revo-
lution in Early America: Maps, Literacy and National Identity, Chapel Hill, 2006; M.
Brückner, The Social Life of Maps in America, 1750e1860, Chapel Hill, 2017; D. Liv-
ingstone, Risen unto empire: moral geographies of the American Republic, in: D.
Livingstone and C. Withers (Eds), Geography and Revolution, Chicago, 2005,
304e335; H. Friis, The role of geographers and geography in the Federal Govern-
ment, in: B. Blouet (Ed), The Origins of Academic Geography in the United States,
Hamden, 1981, 37e56; J. Short, A new mode of thinking: creating a new national
geography in the early republic, in: E. Carter (Ed), Surveying the Record: North
American Scientific Exploration to 1930, Philadelphia, 1999, 19e50; D. Allen,
Acquiring ‘Knowledge of Our Own Continent’: geopolitics, science, and Jeffersonian
geography, 1783e1803, Journal of American Studies 40 (2006) 205e232; W. Koelsch,
Thomas Jefferson, American geographers, and the uses of geography, The
Geographical Review 98 (2008) 260e279.
8
N. Broc, La G eographie des Philosophes: G eographes et Voyageurs Français au
XVIIIe Si
ecle, Paris, 1974. S. Moravia, Philosophie et ge ographie a la fin du XVIIIe
cle, Studies in Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 57 (1967) 937e1071; M. Staum,
sie
Human geography in the French Institute: new discipline or missed opportunity?
Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 23 (1987) 332e340; A. Godlewska,
Geography Unbound: French Geographic Science from Cassini to Humboldt, Chicago,
1999; H. Blais and I. Laboulais (Eds), G eographies Plurielles: Les Sciences
G 
eographiques au Moment de l’Emergence des Sciences Humaines (1750e1850), Paris,
2006; M. Heffernan, On geography and progress: Turgot’s Plan d’un ouvrage sur la
geographie politique (1751) and the origins of modern progressive thought, Political
Geography 13 (1994) 328e343; M. Heffernan, Edme Mentelle’s geographies and the
French Revolution, in: D. Livingstone and C. Withers (Eds), Geography and Revolu-
tion, Chicago, 2005, 273e303; M. Heffernan, Courtly geography: nature, authority
and civility in early eighteenth-century France, in: S. Daniels, D. DeLyser, J. Entrikin
and D. Richardson (Eds), Envisioning Landscapes, Making Worlds: Geography and the
Humanities, London, 2011, 94e105; M. Heffernan, Geography and the Paris Academy
of Sciences: politics and patronage in early 18th-century France, Transactions of the
Institute of British Geographers 39 (2014) 62e75.
9
See the essays in J. Güßefeldt and J.Sponemann (Eds), Geographie in der
Grundlagenforschung und als angewande Wissenschaft Go € ttinger Akzente,
Go€ttinger Geographische Abhandlungen 100 (1997), and D. Denecke, Die Geschichte
der Geographie in Go € ttingen, in: H.-G. Schlotter (Ed), Die Geschichte der Verfassung
und der Fachbereiche der Georg-August-Universita €t zu Go €ttingen, Go €ttingen, 1999,
198e204. On Kant’s geography, see S. Elden and S. Mendieta (Eds), Reading Kant’s
Geography, New York, 2011. For an unpublished assessment from which this paper
draws, see L. Fischer, Geography and Enlightenment in the German states,
c.1690ec.1815, unpublished PhD, University of Edinburgh, 2014. For electronic ac-
cess, see: http://hdl.handle.net/1842/9668.
L. Fischer and Charles.W.J. Withers
methodological foundation for the discipline of geography’.10 This
involved attention to the moral economy of geographical knowl-
edge, namely the social and intellectual standing of Büsching’s in-
formants, cross-checking claims made in correspondence, and
upholding what historian of science Steven Shapin terms ‘episte-
mological decorum’, those procedures by which putative authors,
unable directly to confirm all reports, assured themselves of the
veracity of what was told them about places and events they had
not seen by persons they did not know. For Büsching, ‘the need for a
source critical approach in geography was inextricably linked to
matters of morality’.11 Büsching also produced a German language
periodical. This hitherto little examined ‘periodical geography’ was
a key feature of what Bond calls Aufkla €rungsgeographie (Enlight-
enment geography).12 Büsching brought his concerns over accuracy
and distrust over troublesome sources to his ‘learned newspaper’,
the Wo €chentliche Nachrichten, which was published weekly, in
Berlin, between 1773 and 1787.13 Büsching was not alone in pro-
ducing a geographical periodical. What is noteworthy, argues Bond,
is that geography journals of this sort were ‘a uniquely German
product’, with periodical-form geographical material in Britain and
in France appearing in the proceedings and transactions of learned
societies, not as a distinct genre in the public sphere: there was,
then, ‘a distinct geography of periodical geography in the Enlight-
enment world’.14
This paper draws upon the literature cited and Bond’s call for
greater attention to be paid to periodical geography to examine two
related themes of Aufkla €rungsgeographie: the production of geog-
raphy books, and the production of geographical periodicals, in the
German-speaking territories. Bond focuses on the epistemological
concerns evidenced by Büsching and is singular, almost bio-
graphical in scope, in attention to Büsching and his works. The debt
we owe to Bond’s and others’ work is clear in what follows. But, in
further understanding geographical print culture in the eighteenth
century, it is appropriate to ask how representative Büsching’s Neue
Erdbeschreibung and his Wo €chentliche Nachrichten was of German
geographical print culture generallydin purpose and content, in
timing and, even, the location of publication? In short, Bond’s claim
that ‘Aufkla€rungsgeographie was defined by distinct geographies,
textual practices and print forms, and by a longer geographical
tradition’ can be subject to empirical enquiry.15
A note on terminology and methodology
Our concern with the number and type of books of geography
and geographical periodicals and with the place and chronology of
their publication takes a national perspective and a broadly quan-
titative approach. Qualification of the term ‘national’ is necessary:
10
D. Bond, Enlightenment geography in the study: A. F. Büsching, J. D. Michaelis
and the place of geographical knowledge in the Royal Danish Expedition to Arabia,
1761e1767, Journal of Historical Geography 51 (2016) 64e75; D. Bond, Plagiarist,
enthusiasts and periodical geography: A. F. Büsching and the making of
geographical print culture in the German Enlightenment, c.1750e1800, Transactions
of the Institute of British Geographers 42 (2017) 58e71.
11
Bond, Enlightenment geography in the study, 66; Bond, Plagiarists, enthusiasts
and periodical geography, 59 and 62 respectively. On ‘epistemological decorum’, see
S. Shapin, The Social History of Truth, Chicago, 1994, 193e242.
12
Bond, Enlightenment geography in the study, 66. Büsching’s Neue Erdbe-
screibung appeared in ten volumes and in eight editions between 1754 and 1792. It
was translated into English by Patrick Murdoch appearing, in six volumes, under
the title A New System of Geography, in 1762.
13
Bond, Plagiarists, enthusiasts and periodical geography, 59. The full title of the
periodical was Wo €chentliche Nachrichten von neuen Landcharten und geographischen,
statistichen und historischen Buchern und Schriften.
14
Bond, Plagiarists, enthusiasts and periodical geography, 61. Original emphasis.
15
Bond, Plagiarists, enthusiasts and periodical geography, 60.
3
Journal of Historical Geography 72 (2021) 1e12
there was no Germany as a unified nation state in the eighteenth
century. What existed was a political union of over 300 territories,
including free cities; what, in its mapped expression, one modern
commentator has called ‘a patchwork rug’.16 The terms Nation, Volk,
Vaterland and even Deutschland were in use in the period, but there
was no single coherent identity or territory that could be called
Germany.17 Our use of the term German-speaking territories rather
than states or nation thus conforms with one definition then in use,
namely the German language community, the deutsche Sprachge-
meinschaft.18 The sense that the authors concerned were writing for
a German language community yet at work within separate
German-speaking territories, is apparent in a remark by Hamburg-
based geographer Christoph Daniel Ebeling in 1773. Writing to
Charles Burney in England, Ebeling was at pains to correct his
correspondent’s views regarding German identity: ‘Then I believe
there is a general mistake that you believe our nation is to be
considered as one people. No Sir. History and Geography will
acquaint You that we are composed of different clans or even little
nations quite different from one another in dialects, customs,
notwithstanding many of them have been altered by administra-
tion, mixture with foreigners, wars, migrations etc. but always say
the Germans in genere [sic]. You should say the Bavarians, Upper
Saxons, Lower Saxons etc.‘19 We return below to the question of
German geography books as indicative or not of a sense of ‘German-
ness’.
The caution exercised over the use of Germany applies equally to
contemporaries’ use of the term geography. German geographical
authors commonly used Geographie in the titles of their works,
from its Greek roots meaning earth description. They also used two
Germanic versions, Erdbeschreibung and Erdkunde. While both
terms were broadly synonymous with Geographie, there were
subtle distinctions in meaning between them and a distinct chro-
nology in the usage of these terms. The term Erdbeschreibung was
used of geography books from at least 1670.20 Erdkunde was used
widely only from the later eighteenth century. Adam Christian
Gaspari used the terms interchangeably in his Vollsta €ndiges Hand-
buch der Erdbeschreibung (1797), for example, yet also argued that
Erdkunde differed from Erdbeschreibung in referring to a body of
knowledge whilst Erdbeschreibung concerned the science to be
studied: ‘The word Erdkunde actually expresses the individual
knowledge of the earth which is gained through the study of Erd-
beschreibung; it [Erdkunde] is however often also used as synonym
for Erdbeschreibung’.21 In his Encyclopa€die der Historischen Haupt-
wissenschaften und deren Hülfswissenschaften (1808), Johann Fabri
pointed to some of the variations used, including by Büsching:
[T]he term geography [Geographie] is expressed differently by
individual writers.
16
G. Schmidt, Vernunft durch Wandel. Deutsch Geschichte im 18. Jahrhundert,
München, 2009, 57.
17
On these issues, see H.-M. Blitz, Aus Liebe zum Vaterland. Die Deutsche Nation im
18. Jahrhundert, Hamburg, 2000; O. Dann, Nation und Nationalismus im Deutschland
1770e1990, Munchen, 1993; Schmidt, Vernunft durch Wandel; R. Vierhaus,
Deutschland im 18. Jahrhundert. Politische Verfassung, soziales Gefüge, geistige
Bewegung, Go € ttingen, 1987.
18
Dann, Nation and Nationalismus im Deutschland 1770e1990, 30, 48.
19
C. Ebeling, letter to Charles Burney, Hambourg 20 June 1773 in: G. Stewart,
Christoph Daniel Ebeling, Hamburger Pa €dagoge und Literaturkritiker, und seine
Briefe an Charles Burney, Zeitschrift des Vereins für Hamburgische Geschichte 61
(1975), 33e58.
20
The term is used by Erhart Weigel [Weigelius], for example, in his Ober-und
Unter-Welt [abbreviated title], published in Jena in 1670.
21 €ndiges Handbuch der neuesten Erdbeschreibung, Weimar, 1797,
A. Gaspari, Vollsta
1. All translations are by Dr Fischer.
L. Fischer and Charles.W.J. Withers
1. Ant. Fridr. [Anton Friedrich] Büsching, in his Erdbeschreibung
[Neue Erdbeschreibung], part one, eighth edition (Hamburg,
1787), page 9 calls Erdbeschreibung all detailed news of the
natural and civic state of the known earth [Erdboden].
2. Others explain geography [Geographie] as a science of the
natural state of the known [parts of the] earth [Erdboden].
3. Again others: as a science of the earth [Erdboden], or
4. as a science which treats the description of the earth by
addressing each part according to its natural and political state
based on rational theorems and reliable information.22
Contemporaries’ use of these geographical terms in relation to
the term Wissenschaft (any ordered system of knowledge and, thus,
not simply ‘science’) was part of their concerns to position geog-
raphy as a credible form of learning.
Eighteenth-century contemporaries categorised geographical
print in order to organise different genres of geographical knowl-
edge. In his Geographie für alle Sta€nde (Geography for all Estates)
(1786), for example, Johann Ernst Fabri noted how ‘The many books
which ease the study of geography can be classified along the
following categories: 1) Libraries and other works that offer infor-
mation about geographical works. 2) Systems and textbooks which
cover geography in all aspects or at least several parts of it. 3)
Geographical dictionaries. 4) Essays and works on individual
geographical curiosities in different parts or areas of the world. 5)
Travel accounts. 6) Topographies and Chorographies which only
describe individual places or regions. 7) Publications of geograph-
ical societies. 8) Miscellanies, periodicals, magazines, journals,
weekly papers’.23 Such systematisation was part of eighteenth-
century interests in taxonomising and encyclopaedism as a form
of classifying knowledge.24
That the volume of German geographical literature was
considerable is apparent from a comment by Albrecht Watermeyer
in the second (1786) edition of his Statistisch-Historisch-Geo-
graphisches Handbuch. He referred his readers to Fabri’s Geographie
€nde (1786) wherein Fabri listed ‘more than one and a half
für alle Sta
thousand’ works of geographical literature’.25 Gatterer’s Abriß der
Geographie (1775) lists more than 50 pages of geographical sources.
Both Fabri and Gatterer included foreign language works and travel
accounts, however, and second and later editions of German and
other geographical texts as separate works.
Our analysis is restricted to works that were primarily intended
22 €die der Historischen Hauptwissenschaften und deren Hülfswis-
J. Fabri, Encyclopa
senschaften, Halle, 1808, 123.
23
J. Fabri, Kurzer Abris der Geographie. Halle, 1786, second edition, 332.
24
M. Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, London,
1974; F. Schalk, Die Europa €ische Aufkla €rung, in: G. Mann (Ed), Propyla €en Weltge-
schichte. Eine Universalgeschichte, Berlin, Frankfurt/Main, 1964, Volume 7, 469e512;
R. Stichweh, Zur Entstehung des modernen Systems wissenschaftlicher Disziplinen:
Physik in Deutschland, 1740e1890. Frankfurt am Main, 1984; N. Hammerstein, Der
Wandel der Wissenschafts-Hierarchie und das bürgerliche Selbstbewubtsein.
Anmerkungen zur aufgekla €rten Universita €tslandschaft, in: W. Barner and E. Müller-
Lückner (Eds), Tradition, Norm, Innovation. Soziales und literarisches Tradi-
tionsverhalten in der frühen Neuzeit der deutschen Aufkla €rung, Munich, 1989,
277e291; U. Decker, Die Deutsche Encyclopaedie, Das achtzehnte Jahrhundert:
Zeitschrift der Deutschen Gesellschaft für die Erforschung des Achtzehnten Jahrhunderts
2 (1990) 147e151; C. Donato and R. Maniquis (Eds), The Encyclop edie and the Age of
Revolution, Boston, 1992; W. Goethschel, C. Macleod and E. Snyder, The Deutsche
Encyclop€ adie and encyclopedism in eighteenth-century Germany, in: C. Donato and
R. Maniquis (eds), The Encyclop edie and the Age of Revolution. Boston, 1992, 55e61;
C. Withers, Encyclopaedism, modernism and the classification of geographical
knowledge, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 21(1996) 275e298.
25
A. Watermeyer, Statistisch-Historisch-Geographisches Handbuch, Hamburg, 1786,
ix.
4
Journal of Historical Geography 72 (2021) 1e12
to communicate geographical knowledge. It is based on the study of
library catalogues and book sellers’ records, and for German lan-
guage works only, and excludes travel accounts, later editions, and
works in which geographical material was only incidental (within
encyclopaedia, for example). Research into German geographical
print culture in these terms resulted in the identification of 345
German books of geography and 109 periodical works between
c.1690 and c.1815.26 Within these totals, the books were initially
grouped in categories which were faithful to contemporaries’
ordering principles: (1) compendia, textbooks, and reading books;
(2) treatises (on the progress of geography and instructions of ge-
ography); (3) gazetteers/dictionaries (including pocket dictio-
naries); (4) pocket books; (5) explanations of maps (old and new),
atlases; (6) Repertorium; (7) directories of earth descriptions
(‘Landes-und Reisebeschreibungen’); and (8) Miscellanea (letters,
verses, tables, picture-book/story books, areal measurements). Pe-
riodicals appeared under the headings of magazines, journals,
Repertoria (directories), and sometimes Repositoria, and as publi-
cations of societies.27 The more detailed categorisations of content
which follow are based upon close reading of the works in ques-
tiondin short, ours is a ‘materialist hermeneutics’ aimed at eluci-
dating the form, content and purpose of the works and, where we
could, the audience.28
Defining geography in the eighteenth-century German-
speaking territories
As did their English-language counterparts, German geograph-
ical authors recognised long-standing scale-based dimensions.
Geography was understood to refer to the study of the earth as a
whole, in contrast to cosmography which addressed the earth in
relation to other celestial bodies, and chorography and topography,
the study of nations, regions, or localities. In his Kleine Geographie
vor die Anfa€nger (1755), for example, Johann Hager advised his
readers ‘not to confuse geography with cosmography, chorography,
topography, hydrography, and orography’. For Büsching, ‘Erdbes-
chreibung [Geography] is only part of Weltbeschreibung [Cos-
mography] with which it stands in close connection’, a point
26
The 345 books and 109 periodicals were identified by consulting existing
research, and then by thematic search in library catalogues, such as the Katalog der
Deutschen Nationalbibliothek (catalogue of the German National Library), the
Katalog des Südwestdeutschen Bibliotheksverbundes (SWB), the Verbundkatalog der
Hochschulbibliotheken Nordrhein-Westfalens und eines großen Teils von Rheinland-
Pfalz (Union Catalog North Rhine-Westphalia), the Hessische Bib-
liotheksInformationsSystem HeBIS Verbundkatalog (Library Union Catalogues of
Hesse and parts of the Rhineland-Palatinate), the GVK - Gemeinsamer Verbundka-
talog (Union Catalogue of seven German federal states and the Foundation of
Prussian Cultural Heritage participating in the Common Library Network (GBV)),
the Bibliotheksverbund Bayern (BVB) (the union catalogue of all networked Bavarian
€
libraries), and the Verbund der Landesbibliotheken Osterreich und Südtirol (network
of Austrian state libraries and South Tirol). These catalogues were researched by
title words, key words related to geographydGeographie or geographisch,
La€nderkunde, Erdbeschreibung, Weltbeschreibung, Erdkundedand by authors.
Differentiating between books and periodicals involved recognizing their format
and the frequency of publication. The research involved a pilot-study in archives
and libraries in Go €ttingen, Jena, and Weimar and more comprehensive research in
libraries and archives in Go €ttingen, Brunswick, Wolfenbüttel, Hamburg, Berlin,
Leipzig, Jena, Halle, Weimar, Gotha, Heidelberg, Mannheim, Erfurt, Munich, Cam-
bridge Massachusetts, Boston and New Haven. For reasons of space, and other than
brief reference to Christoph Daniel Ebeling’s Correspondence with British and
American scholars held in the Harvard libraries, in New Haven, and in Hamburg, we
have not made use here of manuscript sources.
27
For a full listing of these works, see Fischer, Geography and Enlightenment in
the German states, c.1690ec.1815, Volume 2, Appendix, 415e479.
28
On materialist hermeneutics see R. Mayhew, Materialist hermeneutics, tex-
tuality and the history of geography: print spaces in British geography,
c.1500e1900, Journal of Historical Geography 33 (2007) 466e488.
L. Fischer and Charles.W.J. Withers
endorsed later by others such as Friedrich Frantz in his Lehrbuch der
€nder-und Vo
La €lkerkunde (1788) and Friedrich Canzler in his 1790
Abriß der Erdkunde.29
German geographical authors differentiated geography by sub-
ject matter (Gegenstand); by time (Zeit), old, middle, or new,
describing, respectively, the state of the earth and geographical
knowledge in the Classical period, the Middle Ages, and the modern
era; and by scale or scope (Umfang) where reference was to smaller
studies in geography. The most common distinction was that be-
tween mathematical, physical, and political geography. Gaspari
outlined these terms in his 1797 work: ‘astronomical or mathe-
matical [geography] which examines [the] shape, size, and move-
ment of the earth and explains related lines and points; physical
[geography] which addresses the state of the earth’s surface; and
political [geography] which examines the earth as a dwelling place
of rational creatures who share the earth and relate to one another
in various ways’.30
The threefold differentiation in time between old, middle and
new or, more properly, modern geography, was understood in
several ways. Old commonly meant the Classical period in Europe.
Middle referred to Europe’s Middle Ages. Use of the term new,
newest or modern in the titles of works, especially in the late
eighteenth century, reflected a view that the authors were aware of
that period, the Enlightenment, as epoch-making, progressive,
something fundamentally different from what had gone before.31 In
this sense, and for some authors, Aufkla €rungsgeographie was a self-
conscious project which stressed geography’s development over
time, and the place of geography as an historical science; that is, it
took seriously changes over time in the conditions of its own ex-
istence and in its content. Like their English-language counterparts,
most German geographical authors were not professional geogra-
phers but, rather, historians, theologians, and philosophers who
nevertheless shared a belief in progress and in the necessity for
society’s improvement, ‘Fortschrittsglaube’. Even as opinions varied
over the precise relationship between social, scientific, and moral
improvement, there was a common understanding that ‘Fortschritt’
(progress) was required but that it was an incomplete process.32
German scholars read the historical theories of French and
Scottish authors on stadial theory and conjectural history, the idea
that society progressed through stages of development. In France,
French political commentator and geographer Anne-Robert-
Jacques Turgot hypothesised three such stages: hunters, shep-
herds, and husbandmen. Scottish authors such as Adam Fergusson
and Adam Smith conceptualised four stages: hunting, pastoralism,
agrarianism, and commercialism.33 These ideas surfaced in German
geography books: Sprengel in 1792 argued that ‘Barbarians and
savages in their isolated… state do not have a concept of Erdkunde
29 €nger, Chemnitz, 1755, 7e8; A. F. Büsching,
J. Hager, Kleine Geographie vor die Anfa
Neue Erdbeschreibung, Hamburg, 1754, Volume 1, 33; F. Franz, Lehrbuch der La €nder-
und Vo €lkerkunde in zween Theilen. Erster Theil. Europa, Stuttgart, 1788, ix; F. Canzler,
Abriß der Erdkunde nach ihrem ganzen Umgang zum Gebrauch bey Vorlesungen,
Go€ttingen, 1790, x.
30 €ndiges Handbuch der neuesten Erdbeschreibung, Weimar, 1779,
A. Gaspari, Vollsta
3.
31
U. Muhlack, Geschichtwissenschaft im Humanismus und in der Aufkla €rung. Der
Vorgeschichte des Historismus, München, 1991, 159e175.
32
R. Koselleck, ‘Fortschritt’, in: O. Brunner, W. Conze and R. Koselleck (Eds),
Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe. Historisches Lexikon zue Politisch-Sozialen Sprache in
Deutschland, Stuttgart, 1975, 351e423; T. Prüfer, Die Bildung der Geschischte: Frie-
drich Schiller und die Anfa €nge der modernen Geschischtswissenschaft, Ko €ln, 2002,
183e185.
33
Heffernan, On geography and progress; Withers, Placing the Enlightenment,
149e150; R. Wokler, Anthropology and conjectural history in the Enlightenment,
in: C. Fox, R. Porter and R. Wokler (Eds), Inventing Human Science: Eighteenth-
Century Domains, Berkeley, 1996, 31e52.
5
Journal of Historical Geography 72 (2021) 1e12
or Erdbeschreibung’; Gatterer in 1775 referred to ‘unaufgekla €rte,
halbaufgekla €rte und ganzaufgekla €rte [sic] Vo
€lker’ (not enlightened,
half-enlightened and fully enlightened peoples).34
The third criterion of classifying geographical knowledge, by
scale and scope, was between universal and special geography, the
former signalling to studies of the whole earth, the latter to de-
scriptions of parts of the earth, as in English language works.35
Distinctions proposed in physical geography, for example be-
tween hydroistic geography (hydrology) and Aeroistik, atmospheric
and meteorological geography, reflected moves to the more precise
study of given natural phenomena. The term human geography was
not in common use, matters of human difference or cultural prac-
tice being covered by Vo €lkerkunde, ethnography.36 Statistical or
commercial geography emerged as a sub-category toward the end
of the century. This reflected the emergence in the German-
speaking territories of the discipline of statistics, Staatswissen-
schaft or Staatskunde, the science of the state. The rise of Staats-
wissenschaft resulted in differences of view over the precise
content of, and the boundaries between, statistics and geography.
Modern scholars have argued that statistics primarily focused upon
the state, and upon the German-speaking territories in particular,
given growing recognition of the inefficiencies of territorial
governance by the later 1700s.37 Eighteenth-century German
geographical authors shared no single opinion. In his 1790 work,
Canzler stressed the difference between statistics and geography,
with geography the necessary ‘foundation and preparation for the
science of the state’; by contrast, Gaspari in 1796 saw statistics as
part of political geography.38 These differences also reflected
competing views over geography as a university subject and a
science with its own objectives and methods no longer auxiliary to
mathematics, history, or statistics.
Even in this necessarily abbreviated summary, it is clear that
geography was widely written about in the eighteenth-century
German-speaking territories, that Büsching’s work sat in a longer
and diverse intellectual tradition, that German geographical au-
thors worked with particular classificatory schema for geography
and that they, like their French, British, and American counterparts,
were exercised by others’ conjectural and historical theories and by
concerns over geography’s content and utility.
It is also clear that, in German geography as in English-language
works, plagiarism was common and so defining authorship, origi-
nality and from that, the separateness of texts, is problematic.
Writing geography was often an exercise in amalgamating or syn-
thesising existing texts, a point which echoes Mayhew’s and Stock’s
arguments concerning English language geography books at this
time.39 For some, writing geography was a popular way of gener-
ating private income: so much so that one scholar bemoaned the
34
M. Sprengel, Geschichte der Wichtigsten Geographischen Entdeckungen, Halle,
1792, 1e2; J. Gatterer, Abriß der Geographie, Go €ttingen, 1775, xix.
35
Sitwell, Four Centuries of Special Geography; Mayhew, The effacement of early
modern geography.
36
H. Vermeulen, Before Boas: The Genesis of Ethnography and Ethnology in the
German Enlightenment, Omaha, 2015.
37
On the relationship between geography and statistics, see H. Bo €deker, On the
origins of the ‘Statistical Gaze’: modes of perception, forms of knowledge and ways
in writing in the early social sciences, in: P. Becker and W. Clark, (Eds), Little Tools of
Knowledge: Historical Essays on Academic and Bureaucratic Practices, Ann Arbor,
Michigan, 2001, 169e195; E. Plewe, Ausgewa €hlte Beitra€ge zue Geschichte und
Methode des Faches von Ernst Plewe, in: E. Meynen and U. Wardenga (Eds), Geo-
graphie in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart Stuttgart, Wiesbaden, 1986; C. Tang, The
Geographic Imagination of Modernity: Geography, Literature, and Philosophy in
German Romanticism, Stanford, 2008.
38
Canzler, Abriß der Erdkunde, x; Gaspari, Vollsta €ndiges Handbuch, 47.
39
Mayhew, The character of English geography c.1660e1800: a textual approach;
Mayhew, Mapping science’s imagined community.
L. Fischer and Charles.W.J. Withers Journal of Historical Geography 72 (2021) 1e12

careless production of poor quality geographical works as Buhl-

dirne, ‘whorish’, with authors prostituting themselves ‘for the sake
of the dear bread’.40 In 1803, Ehrmann similarly commented upon
the deterioration in quality of some geographical works since, with
so many to choose from by that period, less scrupulous authors
could and did draw from the more assiduous. For Ehrmann, this
raised exactly that issue of trust which had so concerned Büsching
half a century earlier: ‘Since quick book research is easier than
digging, scribblers of all kinds have made geography their line of
work in order to create a job; these scribblers have described
countries they have never seen and about which they have no new
knowledge, because of that, a geographer has twice reason to ask
himself at every step he takes in his science: whom do you trust?‘41
Ehrmann considered it essential that geographical authors should
write with critical scepticism, to evaluate content, author, method
and any contextual conditions determining the narrative form
(such as censorship).42
These remarks are to note several things. As was the case in
Britain and for most English-language geographical print culture,
geographical authors in the German-speaking territories were not
professional geographers but historians, theologians, or philoso-
phers by training: several were jobbing authors. Some geographical
authors may have seen themselves part of a German Gelehrtenre-
publikdan imagined intellectual community whose aim was to
counteract the fractured political, religious and scholarly landscape Fig. 1. Publication rates, by year, of the 345 German language geography books pub-
lished in the German-speaking territories, by year of first edition or year of first
of the time.43 As we show below, however, most German
identified version, c.1690ec.1815.
geographical authors were concerned more with the status of ge-
ography as a form of knowledge, with distinctions within geogra-
phy, and to establish geography’s intellectual credentials than they [mittleren] Zeiten (1712), focused on the geography of the middle
were in using geography to promote a sense of Germany as a single ages. Works on the progress of geography were the fourth most
territory or, even, an imagined national space. common genre. While books on more specific aspects of geography
were produceddon medical geography and diseases, for example,
German geography books, c.1690-c.1815 and on military geographydthey were few in number (Table 2).
Discussion in detail of the different genres, certainly of indi-
The chronology and type of book publication vidual texts, is problematic given the number and variety of texts
and limitations of space, but several general observations may be
Assessment of the chronology of publication of the 345 German made. The categories used here are ones of relative emphasis rather
geography books published in this period shows two phases: from than discrete separation: most general geographies for example
c.1690 to c.1775, in which period geography books were published contained elements of political and/or physical geography. Clearer
at a low level of annual output, and after that date, in which period, distinction between types of geography was apparent by the later
noticeably from the early 1780s, large numbers of books appeared eighteenth century. The majority of the more specialist books of
annually, with ‘peaks’ in 1782, 1784, 1785, 1789, 1790, 1791, 1792, geography, in mathematical and in physical geography, were pub-
1798, 1804, 1805, and 1810. The rate of publication fell after 1815 lished after 1780: the exceptions being a textbook on mathematical
(Fig. 1). Of the total overall, the great proportion (250 books) were and physical geography in 1758, and an introduction to mathe-
books of general geography. Seven other genres of book publishing matical geography in 1771. The publication of works of physical and
may be identified, in which specific geographical or regional de- mathematical geography by the later 1700s reflected the greater
scriptions formed the next largest category of publication (41 attention given to geographical teaching in German universities, a
works) (Table 1). If we look in more detail at the types of geography developing interest within the German-speaking public sphere,
books produced, works of general geography predominated (107 and a relative decline in the number of political geography books
books), with books of chorographic focus the next most numerous given the rapidity with which the European political landscape was
(92 works). Works focusing on the geography of a specific time then changing. The participation of Germans and German-speakers
period were the third largest category by number of works pub- in international explorationdCarsten Niebuhr in Arabia, Johann
lished (36). The great majority of books in this category addressed Reinhold Fo€rster on James Cook’s second voyage between 1772 and
the geography of the Roman and ancient Greek worlds; only one, 1775dwas reflected in several general geography books after
Christian Juncker’s Anleitung zu der Geographie der mitlern c.1782 (and in their later editions) and in works of chorographical
focus. Overall, between 1782 and 1810dthe ‘high point’ of German
geographical book publishingdno single theme dominated. Works
40
T. Ehrmann, Ueber die geographische Literatur, ihren gegenw€ artigen Umfang of chorography were more prevalent than earlier in the century,
und ihre noch auszufüllenden Lücken. Ein fragementarischer Versuch, Allgemeine demonstrating an interest in the German states and in overseas
Geographische Ephemeriden 28 (1809) 255e276, quote from p. 264. geography and explorationdparticularly North America and Oce-
41
T. Ehrmann, Ueber die geographische Kritik. Ein Versuch, Allgemeine Geo-
ania. Attention to America and France mirrored (and perhaps
graphische Epherimeden 11 (1803) 414e438, quote from pp. 423e424.
42
T. Ehrmann, Ueber die geographische Kritik. Ein Versuch. Allgemeine Geo-
stimulated) public interest in revolutions and wars there. Interest in
graphische Ephemeriden 11 (1803) 414e438. the progress of geography is evident in treatises on the state of
43
F. Klopstock, Die Deutsche Gelehrtenrepublik. Hamburg, 1774; D. Phillips, Acolytes geography and its relation to other sciences, with books to this
of Natures. Defining Natural Science in Germany 1770e1850, Chicago, 2012.

6
L. Fischer and Charles.W.J. Withers
Table 1
Genres of German geography books, c.1690ec.1815.
Compendia/systems, textbooks, and reading books
Descriptions/dissertations
Treatises [on the progress of geography and instructions for geography]
Gazetteers/dictionaries [including pocket dictionaries]
Pocket books
Repertorium [Directories of earth descriptions] (Landes- und Reisebeschreibungen)
Works geared to explanation of maps or atlases
Miscellanea [letters, verses, tables, picture-books, areal measurements]
Total
Table 2
German geography books, by principal theme, c.1690ec.1815.
General Geography [description of the known earth]
Geographical chorographies [descriptions of continents, lands, regions,
topographies]
Historical geography/geography by time period
Political geography [including descriptions of inhabitants, customs]
Physical geography [including geography of plants and animals]
Mathematical geography
Physical geography [with mathematical geography]
Geography and its relationship with other sciences
Treatises on the progress of geography and instructions on geography
Other geographical themes [military geography; the size of states and
products; subterranean geography; trade, moon, nosology, biblical
geography, medical geography etc.]
Pocket books [for geographical travels in Europe]
Explanations of maps and of atlases
Repertorium [directory of earth descriptions: Landes- und
Reisebeschreibungen]
Total
purpose more common after the 1780s. The great proportion of
general geography books were concerned with geographical
learning, with geography in school and university education and a
means to social progress: 239 books made reference to education or
instructional learning in private homes, schools, colleges, and
universities. If the twelve treatises on the role of, and improvement
in, geographical learning are added to this group, then 251 books
were primarily concerned with education and learning. For the
reasons noted, however, we must be cautious about ascribing books
to a single category or in attributing to authors either a single end in
view or a clearly-defined audience: many had mixed audiences in
minddthe interested public, more specialist readers as well as
school and university students.
Geographies of book authorship and production
Questions of authorship are problematic not just because of the
nature of eighteenth-century geographical writing but because, for
a handful of books, authorship was anonymous. While writing a
book perhaps required some travel, most authorship commonly
involved sedentary compilation. It is reasonable to suppose, then,
that authorship and editorship commonly took place in the in-
dividual’s usual place of residence. From close reading of books’
prefatory material, library catalogues and evidence in obituaries, it
is possible to identify where authorship and editorship took place.
Geography book authorship and editorship in the eighteenth-
century German territories was a predominantly urban phenome-
non, mainly of the principally Protestant north. Geography’s au-
thors and editors were found almost everywheredone or two
publications were undertaken in each of eighty-eight different
placesdbut they were mainly located in the larger urban centres.
For books, this was in Berlin (22 people), Go€ ttingen (13), Nurem-
berg and Halle (9 each), Leipzig and Jena (8 each). A total of
seventeen books were undertaken outside the German-speaking
Journal of Historical Geography 72 (2021) 1e12
250
41
22
15
4
4
3
6
345
territories, and a handful in then German towns, most in Prussia,
later ceded to other nations (Table 3).
107 Writing and editing geography books predominantly took place
92 in towns and cities with academic institutions and a larger resident
population. Berlin, the capital of Prussia, did not have a university
36
until 1810, but its academy of science, the Berliner Societa €t der
9
7 Wissenschaften, was founded in 1700. The comparatively greater
7 number of books written there may be explained by the Prussian
6 emphasis on improved schooling and education following the
26 €ttingen, Halle,
introduction in 1763 of compulsory schooling.44 Go
22
22 and Jena were leading universities and centres for Enlightenment
debate, as was Leipzig. Amongst leading geographical authors,
Anton Friedrich Büsching, Johann Christian Gatterer, August Lud-
4 wig von Schlo €zer, and Friedrich Gottlieb Canzler all worked in
3
Go€ttingen. Nuremberg, home to the Cosmographical Society, was a
4
centre for works of historical geography (books, that is, whose
345 principal focus was on the geography of a particular time period),
early in the century by Johann David Ko €hler in 1724, 1728 and 1730,
and, later in the century, in books by Conrad Mannert in 1788 and
1798. Ko €nigsberg was the workplace of Immanuel Kant, whose
physical geography was based on his lectures. Gotthilf Christian
Reccard and Johann Heinrich Jacobi also in Ko €nigsberg wrote
geographical textbooks. Stuttgart was home to the Hohe Karls-
schule, a military academy where geographical authors Friedrich
Ferdinand Drück and Friedrich Christian Franz worked as history
and language teachers. Franz wrote a textbook on general and
regional geography; Drück one on Asia. Johann Christian Volz also
worked in Stuttgart and wrote a textbook for the local grammar
school. Hamburg, where five books of geography were authored,
was a Bürgerrepublik, a city republic, and important in international
trade. It is noteworthy that the geography books written and edited
in Hamburg concerned general geography, trade geography, and
the Americas, the authors on the latter two topics being Christoph
Daniel Ebeling, who corresponded with Jedidiah Morse over
America’s geography, and Johann Georg Büsch.45
Consideration of the place of book publication shows a similar
concentration in the larger urban centres, with Leipzigdthe lead-
ing German book city in the eighteenth centurydthe chief centre of
publication but not of authorship, a position held by Berlin (see
Table 3). A handful of German geographies were published beyond
the German territories (Table 4).
As for authorship, book publication centred upon Protestant
towns and cities, with the exception of Erfurt, Munich and, further
afield, Vienna. Of the ninety-nine different places of book writing,
only sixteen were in the Catholic south. Of the eighty-eight places
of book publishing, only fourteen were in the Catholic south.
44
J. Melton, Absolutism and the Eighteenth-Century Origins of Compulsory Schooling
in Prussia and Austria, Cambridge, 1988.
45
C. Ebeling, letter to William Bentley, 29 April 1796, in: W. Lane, The letters of
Christoph Daniel Ebeling to Rev. Dr. William Bentley of Salem, Mass., and to other
American correspondents, Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 35
(1925), 272e459, quote at pp. 289e290.
7
L. Fischer and Charles.W.J. Withers
Table 3
The principal place of authorship and editorship of German geography books,
c.1690ec.1815.
Place of author unknown
Author/editor anonymous
Berlin
Go€ttingen
Nuremberg [including Altdorf, Ensdorf, and Creglingen]; Halle
Leipzig; Jena
€nigsberg [then in Prussia, today in Russia]; Magdeburg
Ko
Outside the German territories
Vienna e 5; Copenhagen e 2; Greifswald [in Sweden until 1815] e 2;
Salzburg e 2; Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland e 1; Barby [USA] e 1;
Paris e 1; Riga [Lithuania] e 1
Table 4
The principal place of publication of German geography books, c.1690ec.1815.
Leipzig
Berlin
Nuremberg
Halle
Frankfurt am Main
Hamburg [including Altona]
€ ttingen e 10; Stuttgart e 9; 62
Other principal locations: Erfurt e 11 works; Go
Ko€nigsberg and Augsburg e 7 each; Breslau [then in Prussia], Tübingen,
and Dresden e 6 each
Outside the German territories
Copenhagen e 3; Strasbourg, and Riga e both 2; Yverdon-les-Bains
[Switzerland], Barby [USA], Paris, Basle, Greifswald [in Sweden until 1815]
e 1 each
German geographical periodicals, c.1690dc.1815
The chronology and type of periodical publication
The chronology of publication of German geographical period-
icals divides broadly into three phases (Fig. 2). Between 1699 and
the appearance of Peter Lehmann’s Historische Remarques … aus der
Geographie and a further, anonymous, and short lived (1699e1703)
Singularia Historio-Geographica published in Leipzig, and 1779, only
a handful of geographical periodicals appeared. Those in the 1760s
included Hager’s Geographischer Büchersaal (1766e1778) and
Büsching’s Magazin für die neue Historie und Geographie
(1767e1793). In and from 1780, numbers increased sharply, with
prominent periodical peaks in 1782, 1790 and 1791, before a decline
after 1801. The periodicals appearing from 1780 reflected interests
in state-related issues, historical, geographical and statistical in-
formation, developments in geography, and Erd-und
Vo€lkerkundedgeneral geographical accounts written to expand on
descriptions in textbooks. These often drew upon others’ travel
accounts and exploration narratives of North America, Oceania, or
Asia. The general intent was to inform the public and scholars alike
about new geographical findings, and to comment upon trade and
regional and world politics. Several later eighteenth-century peri-
odicals were concerned, more evidently than their earlier coun-
terparts, with reviewing geographical publications and monitoring
the progress of geography, or a particular sub-theme of it, as a
science (Wissenschaft) in its own right.46 The periodicals published
46
See J. Fabri, Encyclopa€die der historischen Hauptwissenschaften und deren
€ndiges Handbuch
Hülfswissenschaften, Erlangen, 1808, 125e126; A. Gaspari, Vollsta
der neuesten Erdbeschreibung, Weimar, 1797.
Journal of Historical Geography 72 (2021) 1e12
23
14
22
13
9
8
each
6
each
15
Fig. 2. Publication rates, by year, of the 109 German geographical periodicals pub-
79 lished in the German-speaking territories, by year of first edition or year of first
43 identified version, c.1690ec.1815.
23
21
in the final decade of the eighteenth century and the beginning of
17 the nineteenth century were almost all intended for more specialist
15
and geographically interested audiences.
For contemporaries, the increase in geographical periodicals
from the late eighteenth century was evidence of developments
12 within geography, however understood, and of demand from the
German public for new geographical and state-based information.
Friedrich Canzler noted thus in the first issue of his Allgemeines
€nder- Vo
Archiv in 1787, ‘The gigantic progress which the La €lker- and
Staatenkunde experienced during the second half of the current
century, and which seems to continue, is certainly a distinctive
attribute of our times. Everyone strives to acquire and supply news
for the purpose of these sciences’.47 Modern scholars have shown
that periodicals of all sorts increased throughout the German-
speaking territories, markedly from the 1770s, and that they did
so chiefly in Leipzig, Berlin, Hamburg, and Frankfurt am Main.
Geographical periodicals were part, then, of a burgeoning interest
in current and world affairs and in literary information as a form of
polite entertainment.48 Our research makes the geographies of this
public interest in geography more precise in terms of the author-
ship for, and the editing of, periodicals (Table 5) and the urban
centres of periodical production (Table 6).
Geographies of periodical editorship, authorship, and production
Periodical writing and editing centred upon Go€ ttingen given the
presence in the university (Georgia Augusta, founded in 1735) of
several leading geographers, and in Halle and Berlin for the same
reason. These cities benefitted in their scholarly foundations from
the political and financial patronage of their respective territorial
rulersdan essential feature in the promotion of Enlightenment
knowledge. In periodical authorship, the general pattern was of a
47 €nder-, Vo
F. Canzler, Allgemeines Archiv für die La €lker-und Staatenkunde, Gottin-
gen, 1787, Preface, i.
48
B. Fabian, English books and their eighteenth-century readers, in: P. Korshin
(Ed), The Widening Circle: Essays on the Circulation of Literature in Eighteenth-Century
€
Europe, Philadelphia, 1976, 119e196; M. Welke, Zeitung und Offentlichkeit im 18.
Jahrhundert. Betrachtungen zur Reichweite und function der periodischen deut-
schen Tagespublizisktik, in: E. Blühm (Ed), Presse und Geschicht. Beitrage zur His-
torischen Kommunikationsforschung, München, 1977, 71e99; Bo € deker, On the origins
of the ‘Statistical Gaze’; J. van der Zande, Statistik and history in the German
Enlightenment, Journal of the History of Ideas 71 (2010), 411e432; Tang, The
Geographic Imagination of Modernity, 143e147, 163e224.
8
L. Fischer and Charles.W.J. Withers
Table 5
The place of authorship and editorship of German geographical periodicals,
c.1690ec.1815.
Anonymous 9 Leipzig
€ttingen
Go 8 Berlin
Halle 5 Hamburg
Berlin; Hamburg [including Altona] 4 € ttingen; Weimar
each
Nuremberg 3 Dessau
Dresden; Marburg; Jena; Kiel; Brunswick; Chemnitz 2 Gotha; Tübingen
each
Kassel; Frankfurt am Oder; Munich; Stuttgart; Mainz; Gotha; Weimar; 1
Schnepfental; Bielefeld; Buchholz in Minden; Dortmund; Cannstadt; each
Leipzig; Coburg; Schwabach
Outside the German territories 4
Vienna e 2; Strasbourg; Riga e 1 each
single author or editor in individual towns or cities, with only three
persons outside the German-speaking territoriesdin St Petersburg
and in Riga (Table 5). In terms of periodical publication, Leipzig and
Berlin predominated as they did for geography books (cf. Tables 4
and 6). Many smaller urban centresd28 in totaldpublished only
a single periodical in this period. St Petersburg, with four, Riga and
Copenhagen with one each, were the locations for German peri-
odical geography beyond the German-speaking territories
(Table 6).
The majority of these geographical periodicalsd60 of the 109
identifieddaddressed geography as a whole (general geography),
with the others focusing on one or more particular topic, geog-
raphy’s relationship with cognate subjects, or discussing themes for
which geographical insight was considered necessary for public
lifedinternational trade, European politics, boundary changes.
Thirteeen periodicals were essentially chorographical, centring
their concerns upon Westphalia, Prussia, Franconia, Saxony, and
Bavaria, respectively, a fact which speaks against the notion of
geographical periodicals as a whole helping constitute a sense of a
greater German-ness. The commonly stated intent of editors and
authors that their periodical should speak to enthusiasts or lovers
of geography was designed to appeal to readers with more
specialist interests, and to the lay public alike. Nearly all periodicals
sought to promote an understanding of geography as the science of
earth description, to document advances in parts of geography and
in the geography of the world as revealed through travel and
exploration, and, broadly, to educate an interested public through
geography.
Yet, assessment of periodicals’ content does reveal differences
over time. Those few published before the 1760s were general in
purpose, more informative for lay audiences who read in order to
be informed about their world. From the 1760sdJohan Hager’s
short-lived Geographischer Büchersaal (1764e1778) was the first in
this respectdmore periodicals aimed at readers with greater fa-
miliarity with specialist themes in geography or an interest in the
progress of the subject, and those who were either teaching it or
being taught. The periodicals produced later in the eighteenth
century and in the early nineteenth century were almost all
intended for geographically aware audiences. Even allowing for
these differences, it is inappropriate to think, as we might in
modern context, of more publicly-oriented outlets and specialist
journals.49 Many editors and authors kept their content broad in
order to maintain interest and maximise sales: of his Geographische
Ephemeriden (1798e1799), for example, Franz Xaver von Zach
stated that it would include essays by numerous European
49
A. Csiszar, The Scientific Journal: Authorship and the Politics of Knowledge in the
Nineteenth Century, Chicago, 2018.
9
Journal of Historical Geography 72 (2021) 1e12
Table 6
The principal place of publication of German geographical periodicals,
c.1690ec.1815.
27
11
10
Halle; Go 7 each
Nuremberg 6
4
3 each
Outside the German territories 15
Vienna e 9; St Petersburg e 4; Copenhagen, and Riga e 1 each
correspondents and ‘geographical ‘observations’, ‘experiences’,
‘discoveries’, ‘inventions’, ‘critical reviews and news of recent sci-
entific publications’, ‘critical news of new maps, plans, astronomi-
cal and mathematical tools’, ‘biographical news and portraits of
men who have contributed substantially to these subjects [geog-
raphy and astronomy]’, as well as ‘news from travelers’.50
One advantage of publishing in periodical form was flexibility in
terms of format and frequency and, potentially, lower costs than
book publication. Despite increased interest in geography in the
public sphere, some journals failed, forced to close either for eco-
nomic reasons, for want of up-to-date and accurate information or,
as some noted, because the market was so well-provided for that it
was hard to maintain distinctiveness and ensure quality. Theophil
Ehrmann’s Magazin der Erd-und Vo €lkerkunde lasted only one issue
in 1782. Johann Fabri’s Magazin fur die Geographie, Staatenkunde
und Geschichte folded after less than a year in 1797. The fact that it
was Fabri’s eighth such periodical, his first being in 1782, hints at
complex personal stories of writing, editing, and publishing across
different towns and cities behind those geographies enumerated
above.51
The purpose and reception of German geographical print
culture, c.1690ec.1815
Geographical authors and publishers in the German-speaking
territories, and those few at work elsewhere, had two related
aims: the education and social and moral improvement of German-
speaking peoplesdenlightenment through geographydand the
development and improvement of geographydthe completeness
of geographydas a form of world knowledge, an independent and
distinctive Wissenschaft.
The benefits of geographical learning
Whether in treatises as a whole, in prefaces to longer works, or
in articles in periodicals, the benefits of geography as a form of
polite public knowledge were repeatedly stressed. Three related
benefits were noted, emphasis upon each varying according to in-
dividual authors. First, geographical knowledge was regarded as
beneficial to living as a good human being. Geography was
commonly considered useful and necessary in supporting one’s
50
51
von Zach, Allgemeine Geographische Epherimeden, 1 (1798), preface.
His first was Geographisches Lesebuch, published in 1782 in Halle by Gebauer.
This ran for 5 years. The others were Geograpisches Magazin (1783e1785), Dessau
and Leipzig; Neue Geographisches Magazin (1785e1789), Halle; Allegemeine Politi-
sche Zeitung (1786e1788), Halle; Historische und Geographische Monatsschrift (1788),
which was published in and distributed from Halle, Leipzig, Jena, Gotha, Hamburg,
Nuremberg, and Vienna [and undertaken with Karl Hammerdo € rfer], as was his
Historiscshe und Geographisches Journal (of 1789); Neus Geograpisches Lesebuch zum
Nutzen und Vergnügen (1791e1794), Leipzig; Beytra €ge zur Geographie, Geschichte und
Staatenkunde (1794e1796), Nuremberg.
L. Fischer and Charles.W.J. Withers
every-day activities, and in facilitating the study of other subjects:
both issues were emphasised in books designed for formal educa-
tion in geography. Second, some authors considered geography a
support to the Christian faith. Third, the study of geography
generated polite social behaviour and patriotic sentiments.
Norrmann’s emphasis on geography’s utility in his 1785 Geo-
graphische und Historisches Handbuch is illustrative of claims to the
fundamental character and purpose of geographical knowledge:
‘The utility of geography is extremely general. To know one’s
dwelling place is the first and worthiest matter of human curiosity.
Geography is necessary for all estates, for all relations and occu-
pations; it is necessary and useful for every age and every kind of
knowledge’.52 Westenrieder considered geographical awareness
‘the life duty of a citizen’. Büsching began his Neue Erdbeschreibung
with a section entitled ‘Of the utility of geography’, arguing how
‘Geography is a science not only useful for all but indispensably
necessary to some persons’, and identifying the sovereign, the
statesman, the theologian, the natural philosopher, the merchant,
and the traveller as persons who would benefit most from
geographical knowledge.53
Büsching saw geography’s greatest purpose as the demonstra-
tion of the existence and greatness of God, arguing that ‘a good
earth description should be an important explanation of the doc-
trine of the divine providence’ and how ‘the knowledge of God, the
creator and preserver of all things, is eminently promoted by this
science’.54 For Büsching, geographical knowledge and research was
an exercise in the affirmation of faith, belief in a beneficent God,
and a means of cognitive development, what he called gnosis, a
belief inherited in Halle from his teacher, Pietist theologian August
Hermann Francke. These views on Pietism, geographical knowledge
and the affirmation of Judeo-Christian faith were practised by
several Protestant pastors who gave geographical instruction and
undertook geographical research, such as Eberhard David Hauber,
Johann Reinhold Fo €rster, and Johann Gottfried Herder.55 The
attention to divine revelation through geographical knowledge was
perhaps more acute in Büsching than in some other German
geographical authors who mentioned the Abrahamic God in their
prefaces without always stressing the connection between geog-
raphy and faith, but it helps explain the predominantly Protestant
geographies of authorship and publication. Catholicism stressed
adherence to Church doctrine rather more than worldly learning, a
fact evident even in those few geography books produced there
after the abolition of the Jesuit order in 1773 (some of which were
in Latin and in French rather than in German): there is more to
know concerning the relationship between Jesuit theology and
geographical education, in the German-speaking territories and
elsewhere.56
Geographical learning was, thirdly, considered necessary for the
improvement of social and patriotic behaviour. Being able to read
and to understand current affairs was an indication of one’s per-
sonal enlightenment and a desire to better one’s self. Engagement
with geographical literature enabled one to take part in polite social
52
G. Norrmann, Geographisches und Historisches Handbuch der La €nder-, Vo€lker, und
Staatenkunde mit besta €ndiger Rücksicht auf physikalische Beschaffenheit, Produckte,
€rung, Politik und Menschengeschicht als ein Lehrbuch und Lesbuch für
Industrie, Aufkla
alle Sta€nde, Hamburg, 1785, introduction, vi.
53
L. Westenrieder, Erdbeschreibung für die churbaierischen Realschulen, München,
1776, preface, 4; Büsching, Neue Erdebeschreibung (1754), 25.
54
Büsching, Neue Erdebeschreibung (1754), 29.
55
Plewe, Ausgewa €hlte Beitr€age zue Geschichte und Methode des Faches von Ernst
Plewe, 26e48.
56
We acknowledge this point, made to us by one of our anonymous referees, but
for reasons of space cannot expand upon it here. On this issue, see M. Feingold,
Jesuit Science and the Republic of Letters, MIT Press, 2002.
10
Journal of Historical Geography 72 (2021) 1e12
conversations in private and in public. New information about the
world drove what one modern scholar has referred to as a ‘travel-
ogue mania’ in the German states after c. 1750.57 Among contem-
poraries, Gaspari recognised the public’s interest in travel literature
and the significance of geographical knowledge: ‘these travelogues
are now the reading matter and the topic of discourse of all civilised
estates. One cannot read them just with reason, nor talk about them
without being exposed and ridiculed, if one does not bring a certain
level of geographical knowledge to the book and the conversation. .
. . It is disgraceful to be illiterate in geography in such an era’.58
If geography was thus a basis to sociabilityda key Enlighten-
ment conceptdit was also understood as useful in promoting
patriotism in the sense of being familiar with, and taking pride in,
the geography of one’s homeland. This was taken to be several
things: Vaterland, the Holy Roman Empire, one’s territory or even
immediate local circle (Kreis). For Norrmann in 1795, geographical
knowledge helped ‘Germans of all estates to acquire a correct and
precise knowledge of their homeland, to acquaint them with the
merits of their homeland and to thereby inspire a reasonable na-
tional pride and patriotism’.59 Patriotism could then relate to
different spatial scalesdone’s immediate locale, territory or the
Holy Roman Empireda fact which reflected the fragmentation of
the eighteenth-century German territories with regard to their
political structures, national customs, and religion. For Christian
Ebeling as we have seen, there was no such thing as a single Ger-
many. Other authors did ask their readers to ‘render services to
their fatherland and [to] describe it in detail’ hoping, in part, to
contribute to the development of a trans-German print culture and
language group.60 The effectiveness of doing so, however, depen-
ded less upon the presumption a priori that there should be a single
Germany and more upon how the text in question was written and
structured and how it was to be used since many German
geographical books started with other states and nations: as Johann
Schatzen asked in 1776, ‘With what excuse is a German expected to
learn geography by first passing through mostly all other realms in
Europe before giving him [sic] the opportunity to get to know
Germany, his fatherland, in more detail?‘61 There are parallels here
with late eighteenth-century American geography and the work of
Jedidiah Morse and others. In his American Geography, Morse re-
cast the textual order of English language geography books for
use in America, putting America first. He also measured states
against the epitome of Connecticut (his own state) and so judged
their readiness to join with others to form a United States as a
nascent national entity. In the eighteenth-century German-
speaking territories, using geography to promote notions of the
fatherland depended in part upon what was meant by that term,
since it could mean either the territory alone or something greater,
in part upon different authors’ intentions, and upon how particular
books were used in geographical curricula.62
57
B. Tautz, Cutting, pasting, fabricating: late eighteenth-century travelogues and
their German translators between legitimacy and imaginary nations, German
Quarterly 72 (2006), 155e174, quote at p. 164.
58
A. Gaspari, Ueber den methodischen Unterricht in der Geographie und die
zweckma €ßigen Hülfsmittel dazu, Weimar, 1800, 12e13.
59
Norrmann, Geographisches und Historisches Handbuch, preface, viiiexi.
60
J. Hager, Geographischer Büchersaal zum Nutzen und Vergnügen der Liebhaber der
Geographie ero €fnet, Chemnitz, 1766 [1764]), 4th issue, 261.
61
J. Schatzen, Examen Geographicum. Das ist auserlesene Fragen aus der Geographie,
deren Beantwortung aus einem jeden wohleingerichteten Geographischen Systemate
mag genommen werden. Frankfurt und Leipzig, 1776, preface, 7.
62
We explore something of these issues further in L. Fischer and C. Withers,
Geographical education in the eighteenth-century German-speaking territories,
Paedagogica Historica 57 (2021) forthcoming.
L. Fischer and Charles.W.J. Withers
The idea of a ‘complete’ geography
Many of those later eighteenth-century texts which aimed at
more scholarly audiences sought a completeness to their work.
That is, it was, or should be, the purpose of geographical texts to
produce a complete description of the earth, one that was up-to-
date, accurate, and which demonstrated the systematisation of all
forms of geographical enquiry, by theme, time period, and across
the three main geographical topics (mathematical, physical, and
political geography). The wish for such a complete geography was
expressed in numerous ways. Theophil Ehrmann (1783) bemoaned
the lack of a geographical whole in his Magazin der Erd-und
Vo€lkerkunde: ‘We have systems of geography, publications in
La€nderkunded publications by the greatest contemporary geog-
raphers. We have a rich abundance of compendia, special geogra-
phies, travel accounts, and similar works, all in uncountable
numbers. And yet, there has been no collector who has combined
all these parts to one whole, which could be the foundation for a
complete system’.63 The idea of completeness was further specified
by Johann Georg Müller in an essay in 1789 calling for an approach
to an ideal earth description. Müller’s desire for a critical earth
description would require, he argued, the ‘compilation, compari-
son, and examination of the uncountable geographies, topogra-
phies and travel accounts we already have’.64
This intended completeness necessitated certain authorial and
publication strategies. One approach was to distinguish between
scientific geographical authorship and popular writingdthe
approach adopted by Büsching in mid-century. Prefaces in journals
and books were used to comment on others’ publications. In his
1787 work, Canzler asked ‘German authors of travel writings and
translators of foreign travel accounts’ to take note of already
existing travel accounts so that multiple descriptions and
‘completely unimportant news’ could be avoided. The production
of what was, in effect, meta-data was of little value unless it was
accurate. So he also turned his attention to citation practices and
included a section entitled ‘Wishes, suggestions, and improve-
ments for the La €nder- Vo
€lker-und Staatenkunde’ in which he asked
‘Germany’s journalists’ to improve their referencing and citational
practices.65 The indication of sourcesdthe traceability (Nachvoll-
ziehbarkeit) of geographical informationdwas a way to indicate the
author’s credibility.
This evidence confirms Bond’s remarks on the importance
Büsching attached to the moral basis of authorial credibility, to the
culture of mistrust in one’s sources. Yet the fact that many authors
were addressing the self-same issue in the late eighteenth century
and in the early nineteenth suggests that Büsching’s mid-century
methodological caution was not widely adopted by his later
counterparts, overcome as they were by the wealth of new infor-
mation and the demands of a literate public. Writing to an Amer-
ican friend in 1809, Ebeling went even further, proposing a ‘new
manner of writing geography critically’, in which drafts of works
should be reviewed by local experts (scholars living in the area
described) before publication.66
Other authorial strategies were used. One was collaboration,
either in the production of the journal, or in working together to
63
T. Ehrmann, Magazin der Erd-und Vo €lkerkunde, Leipzig, 1783, preface.
64
J. Müller, Versuch über das Ideal einer Erdbeschreibung, Philosophische Aufsatze
1 (1789), 121e148, quote at p. 124.
65
F. Canzler, Allegemeines Archiv für die L€ €lker und Staatenkunde, 1
ander-, Vo
(1787), 155e157.
66
C. Ebeling, letter to John Eliot, 25 October 1809, in: W. Lane, The letters of
Christoph Daniel Ebeling to Rev. Dr. William Bentley of Salem, Mass., and to other
American correspondents, Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 35 (1925)
272e459, quote at p. 393.
11
Journal of Historical Geography 72 (2021) 1e12
elicit the required information. There is evidence by the later
eighteenth century of groups of scholars working to produce pe-
riodical form publication and, in book form, the reportorial, to this
common end. Examples include the Mitglieder der Kosmographi-
schen Gesellschaft (members of the Cosmographical Society) who
published Cosmographical News and Collections for the Year 1748,
and a journal in the mid-1780s. Of the 109 periodicals identified,
twenty-two were edited by two or more scholars, most of them in
the last decades of the eighteenth century and in the early nine-
teenth. Fo€rster and Sprengel’s Beitra €ge zur Vo €nderkunde
€lker-und La
(1781e1790), Bruns and Zimmermann’s Repositorium für die neu-
este Geographie, Statistik und Geschichte (1792e93), and Fabri,
Johann Ernst and Hammerdo € rfer’s Historische und geographische
Monatsschrift (1788) are examples. The Allgemeine Geographische
Ephemeriden edited by Franz Xaver von Zach was ‘composed by a
society of scholars’ scattered across the German-speaking states.
For a few, periodicals were a means of archiving geographical
material. Bruns and Zimmermann (1792) described the aim of their
Repositorium as to ‘store some of the newest and most remarkable
enrichments in geography made by foreigners. For future geogra-
phers, it would be very useful if all these materials could be com-
bined in one collection’.67 Repertoria were books or directories that
offered summaries of other publications’ content and commented
on their utility, method, and quality. Johann Samuel Ersch’s Rep-
ertorium über die allgemeinern deutschen Journale und andere peri-
odische Sammlungen für Erdbeschreibung, Geschichte und die damit
verwandten Wissenschaften (1790e1792) intended to provide an
overview of all general German language journals and other peri-
odical collections for the description of the earth, history, and the
related sciences. But this was compromised by the volume of ma-
terial with the result that it was out of date upon publication.
Attempts at completeness were hampered by changes in
Europe’s geography as well as from the volume of new material.
This is particularly apparent in works published in the late eigh-
teenth and early nineteenth century. As Gaspari (1797) explained,
‘This [the world’s political geography] sees daily changes and so
[does] also every geographical compendium. We further do not yet
know the earth completely; our Erdkunde is considerably widened
and corrected from time to time’.68 Another author argued that
political geography in particular experienced changes in its content
and ‘truth’ and bemoaned, ‘What is strictly true today, is no longer
true tomorrow.‘69
A further strategy to deal with the wealth of new information
was publication of revised editions and supplements. Fabri’s
Handbuch der neuesten Geographie für Akademien und Gymnasien
(first published in 1784e1785) went through nine further editions
between 1787 and 1819, his Kurzer Abriß der Geographie over fifteen
editions between 1786 and 1817. If this points to the importance of
edition history in geographical print culture, there is also evidence
that attempts at completeness were not accompanied by full cita-
tion of the relevant sources. Several authors referred only to their
main sources (Hauptquellen) and pointed to limitations of space
and lack of audience interest in justification of their decision. This is
true of Norrmann’s (1785) Geographisches und Historisches Handuch
der La €nder-Vo€lker-und Staatenkunde, Jacobi’s (1791) Allgemeine
Uebersicht der Geographie, Statistik und Geschichte sa €mmtlicher
67
P. Bruns and E. von Zimmermann, Repositorium für die neueste Geographie,
Statistick und Geschichte, Tübingen, 1792, volume 1, preface.
68 €ndiges Handbuch der neuesten Erdbeschreibung, Weimar, 1797,
A. Gaspari, Vollsta
4.
69
F. Franz, Lehrbuch der La €nder-und Vo€lkerkunde. Zweeter Theil. Asien, Afrika,
Amerika und die neu entdeckten La €nder, nebst einem Register über beede Teile,
Stuttgart, 1790, preface.
L. Fischer and Charles.W.J. Withers
Europa €ischen Staaten, and Gaspari’s (1797) Vollsta
€ndiges Handbuch
der Erdbeschreibung. But it was not true of all. After 1754, many
authors concerned with geography’s epistemic credentials as a
science highlighted Büsching as a key reference in their preface or
in footnotes: Drück (1784) declared, for example, that ‘The sources
which the author has drawn from are only mentioned if they are
not Büsching’s’.70 Moritz Erdmann Engel (1791) based his Neues
Handbuch der Geographie on works by Büsching and others: ‘That I
have used the excellent publications of Büsching, Gatterer, Fabri,
Norrmann, and Watermeyer and other men who have rendered
services to this science, this, I think is more a way of grateful
recognition than an excuse’.71
Although it is here summarily noted of numerous texts rather
than disclosed from close examination of a few as Bond does of
Büsching, there is clear evidence of the broadly dual purpose of
German geographical print culture, and, toward the end of the
eighteenth century, of different authorial and publication strategies
designed to cope with new information, geographical competitors,
and public demand, and changes in political and territorial
boundaries, especially in Europe itself. By 1815, German language
attempts to produce a complete geography, itself an expression of
Enlightenment encyclopaedism, were beginning to fail under the
weight of new evidence and their own expectations: in that, they
were not alone.72
Conclusions and implications
Recognising the caveats that necessarily attach to what is a
national study of large numbers of books and periodicals in a
subject then without clear boundaries, this account of German
geographical print culture nevertheless extends understanding of
the geographical dimensions of Aufkla€rungsgeographie. It does so by
giving greater precision to the authorship, editing, and publication
of geography books and periodicals in, and beyond, the German-
speaking territories. Rather than reiterate the principal findings,
we close by considering some wider implications: they, like our
findings, are suggestive rather than definitive.
Ours is very largely a production-based descriptive analysis,
taking production to mean writing and compilingdauthorship and
editorshipdand producing and printingdthe publication of books
and periodicals of geography. German language geographical print
culture was a largely urban and Protestant phenomenon. This being
so, there are opportunities to examine the relationshipsdauthorial,
financial, even denominationaldbetween authors and editors
(when not the same person) in and between given towns and cities,
and, of a few persons, to scrutinise through their correspondence
the networks of the geographically-minded in and beyond the
German-speaking territories. Studies of eighteenth-century map
making have similarly highlighted sectoral and status-based dif-
ferences in map production, in Paris and in Londondbetween
70
F. Drück, Erdbeschreibung von Asien, Stuttgart, 1784, preface.
71
M. Engel, Neue Handbuch der Geographie mit den no €thigsten statistischen und
€uterungen für die Jugend und Freunde der Erdkunde, Leipzig, 1791, vii.
historischen Erla
72
Withers, Encyclopaedism, modernism and the classification of geographical
knowledge.
73
M. Pedley, The Commerce of Cartography: Making and Marketing Maps in
Eighteeenth-Century France and England, Chicago, 2005.
74
Mayhew, Mapping science’s imagined community.
12
Journal of Historical Geography 72 (2021) 1e12
colourists, engravers, atlas and book binders and so ondand
identified trans-national networks of informational exchange.73
Production-based analysis might further address the idea of cita-
tionary geographiesdhow and when new evidence was cited in
justification of an author’s arguments, as Mayhew has shown of
John Pinkerton’s 1802 Modern Geography.74
Equally, work might be done on the edition history of German
geography books to trace more exactly how, when, and why au-
thors changed the content of their works, and, to extend Bond’s
arguments on Büsching, to know how many later authors adopted
his culture of mistrust over others’ evidence. Such issues of trust,
testimony, and truth extend also to the translation of geographical
works, the translation into German of geographical information in
other languages, and, less common, the translation into English of
German language works. The translation into German of works of
moral philosophy and political economy in the Enlightenment has
been studied: geographical print culture lends itself to comparable
assessment.75 As others have shown of the translation into English
of Humboldt’s scientific works in the nineteenth century, trans-
lation could involve considerable redaction, even outright alter-
ation, of the author’s original intentions in order to suit different
audiences and perceived needs.76 In short, and terms of production,
what did Aufkla €rungsgeographie look like in different places, in
different editions, in translation, as it moved over time and across
state and national borders?
Similar questions concerning the reception of German
geographical print culture are easier to pose than answer. The study
of how books have been read, in different places and by different
audiences with different interests in mind, is an established theme
of nineteenth-century science.77 That it is less common of
Enlightenment geography books and periodicals may reflect the
vagaries of extant sources, but the presence of large numbers of
German periodicals, especially after c.1780, offers possibilities in
this respect, since many contained reviews of and commentaries
upon others’ geographical works. This is a matter of scale, method,
and audience: whether one looks at an individual’s work, a
particular text, or at geography books in the home, or in school, or
across different territories, even the nation. In production certainly
and most likely in its reception, Aufkla€rungsgeographie had multiple
geographical dimensions.
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to the librarians and archivists of the many in-
stitutions visited in the course of research, to three anonymous
referees for their constructive suggestions and to Professor Thomas
as Editor-in-Chief and to Professor Stephen Legg for their guidance
in revision of an earlier draft, and improvements to the style and
argument, respectively.
75
L. Kontler, William Robertson and his German audience on European and non-
European civilisation, Scottish Historical Review LXXX (2001) 63e89; F. Oz-
Salzberger, The Enlightenment in translation: regional and European aspects, Eu-
ropean Review of History: Revue europeenne d’histoire 14 (2007) 385e409.
76
A. Martin, Nature Translated: Alexander von Humboldt’s Works in Nineteenth-
Century Britain, Edinburgh, 2018; N. Rupke, Alexander von Humboldt and revolu-
tion: a geography of reception of the Varnhagen von Ense Correspondence, in:
Livingstone and Withers (Eds) Geography and Revolution, 336e350.
77
For example, J. Secord, Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication,
Reception, and Secret Authorship of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation,
Chicago, 2000; D. Livingstone, Dealing with Darwin: Place, Politics, and Rhetoric in
Religious Engagements with Evolution, Baltimore, 2014.