The historiographical concept "Enlightenment" has for a long time wavered between the idea of a single unified Enlightenment and the notion of multiple competing enlightenments. This volume revisits this seeming contradiction by asserting that the Enlightenment should be understood as a shared process of communication, seeking ways to accommodate and mediate rival ideologies and orient enlightenment projects towards the betterment of humankind. Taking the work of the eminent Enlightenment scholar Hans Erich Bödeker as their point of departure, the different chapters (...) seek to explore this perspective through specific case studies of political communication. Readers are offered a selection of Bödeker's texts never previously translated into English, along with a series of contributions from his former colleagues, students, and collaborators. In doing so the book displays the broad scope of Bödeker's own work, as well as the multiplicity of themes captured within the framework of the Enlightenment. Genres, modes, and strategies of communication are contrasted with the institutions and cultural practices underpinning them. In exploring the depth and scope of Bödeker's work, the volume pays tribute to a German tradition rooted in historical semantics, while at the same time querying its present state and its future. (shrink)

SUMMARYThis article provides the first comprehensive and historically genuine analysis of Heinrich Ludwig von Hess's pamphlet Der Republickaner. Hess was an important figure in both the German and Swedish eighteenth-century political context. Firstly, I will show that the proper historiographical context for Hess's pamphlet is Sweden. In previous historiography on the subject it has been argued that Der Republickaner was a comment on the constitutional reality of Hamburg. My article demonstrates that the original context of Hess's pamphlet was the power (...) struggle between King Adolf Frederick of Sweden and the council of the realm. Secondly, I argue that Hess's pamphlet is the most elaborate defence of aristocratic republicanism written in Sweden in the Age of Liberty. As a result, Hess's pamphlet is the fiercest attack on absolutism written in German in the eighteenth century. (shrink)