AGATE

The project “Johann Friedrich Blumenbach –Online” (www.blumenbach-online.de) aims at making the rise of German science within the European context visible, and at supplying a missing part in accessible primary source material on the cultural history of the time: the publications of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach. This is particularly significant with regard to an essential aspect of this period: the emergence of modern natural sciences. Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752-1840) was Professor of Medicine and Natural History at the University of Göttingen. Succeeding Albrecht von Haller, Blumenbach contributed substantially to the thriving of German science. Blumenbach’s works are a unique testimony to the European dimension of the then Republic of Letters. Today scientists are working on location in Göttingen, creating (1) a new edition of Blumenbach’s published writings including translations and reissues, (2) a calendar of his correspondence, (3) a reconstruction of his collections of objects of natural history, and (4) a documentation of his contemporary and later reception. All these documents are edited electronically for presentation in a web portal.