Mathesis Universalis. The Oeuvre of Rahel Levin Varnhagen as Form of Knowledge in the Early Nineteenth Century

This research project will explore the oeuvre of the German-Jewish author Rahel Levin Varnhagen (1771-1833) as a form of knowledge against the backdrop of the transformational period of the early nineteenth century. From the beginnings, a biographic stance has dominated the research on Varnhagen and the impact of her persona and work is marginalized or even ignored in German literary and cultural history. The little research that has been done has focused almost entirely on her identity as a woman and Jewess, such as Hannah Arendt in her famous biography on Varnhagen. Arendt considers Varnhagen as the embodiment of German Romanticism, yet the intellectual dimensions of her thousands of pages of letters and diaries remain largely unexplored. This project will - as a first in its kind - focus on Rahel Varnhagen's work as an oeuvre that is part of the 'Wissenskomplex ' of the early nineteenth century. It will address her work with special attention to five thematic clusters that relate to topical parts of the 'human sciences' of her time and will investigate her work as a repository and system of knowledge in the early nineteenth century, gauging it in the development of the institutionalization of thought and sciences in the transitional period it stems from. Addressing an impressive but largely unexplored body of intellectual writing in a systemic and systematic way, this project will add to the complexity of thought of nineteenth century Europe's systems of knowledge.