‘German philhellenism’ (Publications of the English Goethe Society)
Abstract: This volume of PEGS was inspired by the proceedings of a colloquium on 'German Philhellenism', organized by the Cambridge Classical Reception Discussion Group and held at the Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge, on 15 December 2012. One of the CRDG's main aims is to promote exchange between Classics and other related disciplines. This event was designed to bring together classicists, Germanists, and historians and offer a more informed discussion of the kinds of questions about nationality and culture which this topic necessarily raises. How and why, for example, did philhellenism in Germany during the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries differ from expressions of the phenomenon in other European nation states? Might the current 'transnational turn' help us better to comprehend and respond to the ongoing cultural traffic in philhellenism between Germany and France or England? Such issues were indeed a focus of discussion, but other, less expected insights also emerged, about the powerful influence of periodization, pedagogical thought, and the narrative characteristics of intellectual traditions in general in constructing philhellenist conceptions during the last two-and-a-half centuries. Perhaps the salient point to come out of the colloquium as a whole was that we have too often been seduced into conceptualizing German philhellenism as a single, monolithic entity, with Winckelmann as its guiding star; and that we should conceive of 'philhellenisms' rather than 'philhellenism'. Indeed, who (or what) is primarily responsible for the invention of such a 'philhellenist tradition', and what its various authorizing functions have been at different times, emerged as key questions.