Gespenster und Gelehrte

Yvonne Wubben examines a tract on ghosts published in 1747 by the Enlightenment figure and aestheticist G.F. Meier from Halle. She reveals the topical conditions behind its creation, together with its function of bundlingknowledge. The study shows how aesthetics in Halle reacted to an empiricisation of knowledge. Reports of ghosts provide an opportunity to reflect on experience and to make a stand against the New Sciences in the market-place of knowledge. Evidence of the patterns of reception developing here can be traced in literary authors (Goethe, Schiller)."