• 20. Caroline to Luise Gotter in Gotha: Göttingen, 30 October 1780 [*]
[Göttingen] 30 Oct[ober 1780]
|33| . . . Despite my best efforts, I have been unable to secure the Kästner piece; not a single bookstore has it, nor will any professor give up a copy. They are all too patriotic to contribute to spreading the university’s shame even further; perhaps I can get a copy from Kästner himself, who in all likelihood has no sense for that sort of patriotism. [1] . . .
Notes
[*] Waitz (1871), 1:304fn1, remarks that this letter constitutes the postscript to a letter on 29 October 1780. Back.
[1] Schmidt (1913), 1:676, suggests the piece Caroline was trying to secure was Abraham Kästner, An Herrn Johann Beckmann, Professor zu Göttingen, 1.X.1781 (Göttingen 1781).
After suggesting that statements made by Kästner in the Göttingische Anzeigen von gelehrten Sachen had insulted the university, Johann Beckmann, professor of philosophy and economics in Göttingen, published a “declaration of honor,” Ehren-Erklärung des Herrn Professor Johann Beckmann zu Göttingen (Frankfurt 1780) (note date).
The basics of the dispute between Kästner and Beckmann are discussed by F. Frensdorff, “Die Vertretung der ökonomischen Wissenschaften in Göttingen, vornehmlich im 18. Jahrhundert,” in Festschrift zur Feier des hundertfünfzigjährigen Bestehens der Königlichen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen. Beiträge zur Gelehrtengeschichte Göttingens (Berlin 1901), 552–53, and Albert Leitzmann in Lichtenberg, Briefe, 1:420–21 (see supplementary appendix 20.1).
Both professors were close acquaintances of Caroline’s father, Johann David Michaelis (Michaelis’s reference letter of 2 August 1766 supporting Beckmann’s appointment has been preserved). But the date “1 October 1781” does not fit this letter unless Caroline was trying to secure the pre-publication version, and Waitz (1871), 1:304fn2, glosses this piece as “doubtless An Herrn Hofrath und Leibmedicus Zimmerman in Hannover (Altenburg 1780),” which involved a different dispute Kästner had with Johann Georg Zimmermann, on which see Caroline’s letter to Julie von Studnitz on 17 March 1780 (letter 12) with note 3. Back.
Translation © 2011 Doug Stott