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18 October 2022

How the greatest minds of the Enlightenment united in a small town in Germany

In 1790s Jena a group of thinkers including Friedrich Schiller and Goethe built the intellectual foundations of today’s world.

By Jeremy Cliffe

Every so often in the history of ideas, a cluster of thinkers and artists forms in a particular place and fundamentally changes how the world sees itself: the Golden Age writers of imperial Madrid, say, or the Scottish Enlightenment in mid-18th century Edinburgh, the Bloomsbury Set of early-20th century London, or the Beat Generation in 1950s San Francisco. What is the alchemical formula behind such moments? Why is it that groups of such unusual collective genius come together in the times and places that they do?

One such set, less well known internationally than some of the above examples, coalesced in a small university town in Germany at the end of the 18th century. Jena, about 150 miles south-west of Berlin, was tiny. You could cross it by foot it in about 10 minutes. But on the course of that stroll you would come across an astonishing concentration of some of the greatest minds of their age.

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