Dr. Dirk Sangmeister

Since 2021 Research employee at the Gotha Research Centre within the DFG priority program "Transottomanica" under the direction of Prof. Dr. Stefan Rohdewald (University of Leipzig).

2017-2021 Edition of the correspondence of Garlieb Merkel (1769-1850), with support from the Ernst Abbe Foundation (Jena) and the Foundation for the Promotion of Science and Culture (Hamburg)

2015-2017 Research project on "Forbidden Books in Saxony 1750-1850," with support from the Gerda Henkel Foundation (Düsseldorf).

2014 Fellow at the Max Weber Kolleg of the University of Erfurt; appointed member of the Gotha Research Centre

2013 Robert Rosenthal Fellow at the University Library of Chicago

2010-2012 Preparation of the text-critical edition of Johann Gottfried Seume's Apocrypha (published 2013), in cooperation with the Museum im Schloß Lützen

2009 Work on the edition of the correspondence between Johann Friedrich Cotta and Carl August Böttiger, under the leadership of Dr. Bernhard Fischer, director of the Goethe and Schiller Archive (Weimar), and in cooperation with Dr. Helmuth Mojem, head of the Cotta Archive at the German Literature Archive (Marbach)

2003-2008 Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Cyprus, Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures (from April 2004: Department of French Studies and Modern Languages)

1997-2001 Research employee at the University of Bielefeld, Faculty of Linguistics and Literary Studies. Contributions to Die Zeit and Neue Zürcher Zeitung

1997 Doctorate in Bielefeld (summa cum laude)

1993-1996 Dissertation on the entertainment writer August Lafontaine (1758-1831) with Prof. Dr. Jörg Drews at the University of Bielefeld. Scholarship holder of the Dr. Günther Findel Foundation at the Herzog August Library (Wolfenbüttel) and the Arno Schmidt Foundation (Bargfeld). Literary criticism for the Süddeutsche Zeitung

1991-1992 Graduate Assistant at the Department of European Languages and Literatures at the University of Hawai'i, USA; continuation and completion of graduate studies with an MA in European Languages and Literatures (German)

1989-1990 began graduate studies at the University of Hamburg

1987-1989 Editor for special assignments at the Braunschweiger Zeitung. Basic studies in German Studies and English at the Technical University of Braunschweig

1985-1987 Traineeship at the Braunschweiger Zeitung

Ways and Works of Michael Kosmeli (1773-1844) Edition of the Correspondence of Garlieb Merkel

Edition of Johann Gottfried Seume's autobiography My Life

• Late Enlightenment, especially travel and entertainment literature
• Social history of literature
• History of books and censorship
• Edition science
• Baltic literature
• German-Greek relations in the 18th-19th centuries

Monographs

Vertrieben vom Feld der Literatur. Verbreitung und Unterdrückung der Werke von Friedrich Christian Laukhard. Bremen 2017.

Seume und einige seiner Zeitgenossen. Beiträge zu Leben und Werk eines eigensinnigen Spätaufklärers. Erfurt 2010.

August Lafontaine oder Die Vergänglichkeit des Erfolges. Tübingen.

Editions

Michael Kosmeli: Die Zwei und vierzig jährige Äffin. Das vermaledeiteste Märchen unter der Sonne. Berlin: Das kulturelle Gedächtnis 2023.

Karl Morgenstern: The Bildungsroman. The two fundamental lectures on a globally used term. Eutin 2020.

Together with Thomas Taterka, Jörg Drews (†) (eds.): Garlieb Merkel: Briefwechsel I. Bremen 2019.

Johann Gottfried Seume: My Life. Göttingen 2018.

Johann Gottfried Seume. Apocrypha. Text-critical edition of the manuscripts in the Museum im Schloß Lützen and the Goethe Museum, Düsseldorf. Eutin 2013

Ludwig Daniel Jassoy: Man muss erstlich wissen, was man will, ehe man tun kann, was man soll. Aphorisms and glosses from "Welt und Zeit" (1815-1828). Eutin 2009.

August Lafontaine: Quinctius Heymeran von Flaming. Frankfurt/M 2008.

Together with Jörg Drews (ed.): Johann Gottfried Seume: Briefe. Frankfurt/M 2002.

Collected volumes

together with Martin Mulsow (ed.): German Pornography in the Enlightenment. Göttingen 2018.

Together with Martin Mulsow (ed.): Subversive Literature. Erfurt Authors and Publishers in the Age of the French Revolution. Göttingen 2014.

Together with Cord-Friedrich Berghahn (ed.): August Lafontaine (1758-1831). Ein Erfolgsautor zwischen Spätaufklärung und Romantik. Bielefeld 2010.

Together with Günter Dammann (ed.): Das Werk Johann Gottfried Schnabel und die Romane und Diskurse des frühen achtzehnten Jahrhunderts. Tübingen 2004.

Essays (selection)

Unwritten Pages in Merkel's Life Story(s). in: Mara Grudule (ed.): Garlibs Merkelis (1769-1850): cilveks, domatajs, mits / Garlieb Merkel - Mensch, Denker, Mythos. Riga: Latvijas Nacionala biblioteka 2021 (Proceedings of the National Library of Latvia, 8), pp. 86-129.

The Friend, Enemy, and Biographer of Carl Friedrich Bahrdt. Attempt on the writer and publisher Degenhard Pott, who disappeared without a trace in the winter of 1804/5, in Archiv für Geschichte des Buchwesens 76 (2021), pp. 1-94.

Revolution vs. state upheaval. Friedrich Schulz in his Changing Relationships with Campe, in: Cord-Friedrich Berghahn, Imke Lang-Groth (eds.): Joachim Heinrich Campe - Dichtung, Sprache, Pädagogik und Politik zwischen Aufklärung, Revolution und Restauration. Heidelberg 2021, pp. 43-88.

Prefaces from the early stations of a meandering life. Texts and Contexts of a Family Book of Grass Believed Lost. in: The Poet and Painter Carl Gotthard Grass (1767-1814). Riga: Latvijas Nacionala biblioteka 2020 (Proceedings of the National Library of Latvia, 5), pp. 325-365.

On the printing, censorship, and reception history of Franz von Kleist's Fantasies on a Journey to Prague (1792), in Brücken 26/2 (2018/2019), pp. 25-44.

The forgotten 'inventor' of the Bildungsroman. On the 250th Birthday of the Philologist Karl Morgenstern (1770-1852), in: Zeitschrift für German Studies N. F. 40/2 (2020), pp. 455-460.

An irritant figure in the literary field. On the 250th Birthday of the Writer and Publicist Garlieb Merkel (1769-1850). In: Journal of German Studies N. F. 39 (2019), H. 3, PP. 608-613.

The deep dichotomy between desire and failure. Unknown letters of Georg Forster to Wilhelm Meyer, the third in the alliance. In: Lichtenberg Yearbook 2019, pp. 265-310.

The Elusive Knife or: From Lichtenberg to Lichtenau. On the contemporary reception of the "Verzeichnisses einer Sammlung von Geräthschaften". In: Lichtenberg-Jahrbuch 2019, pp. 213-227.

Four pennies for a paradise. Zachariaes Verse über Tayti und die Folgen, in: Cord-Friedrich Berghahn et al. (eds.): Justus Friedrich Wilhelm Zachariä. Studies on life and work. Heidelberg 2018, pp. 185-212.

"What kind of fellow was he?" On the 250th birthday of the industrious entertainment and theater writer Julius von Voß (1768-1832), in. Journal of German Studies 38/2 (2018), pp. 362-367.

The Lincke Lending Library in Leipzig. On the history and holdings of a former reading institute and a present-day special collection, in Archiv für Geschichte des Buchwesens 72 (2017), pp. 23-128.

Bode's and Böttiger's Journey to Brunswick in the Summer of 1793. With Unpublished Notes on Encounters and Conversations in the Appendix, in: Cord-Friedrich Berghahn, Gerd Biegel u. Till Kinzel (eds.): Johann Joachim Christoph Bode. Studies on life and work. Heidelberg 2017, pp. 71-118.

From old autograph catalogs. Nachräge zu Provenienzen und Schicksalen einiger Handschriften von Kleist, in: Heilbronner Kleist-Blätter 28 (2016), pp. 120-130.

How Adam Müller was denounced in Dresden in 1806. An episode from the prehistory of the "Phöbus," in: Heilbronner Kleist-Blätter 28 (2016), pp. 29-37.

Unknown Kleist Autographs from Dresden. Alone and in company: traces of visits to the Dresden Kupferstich-Kabinett, in: Heilbronner Kleist-Blätter 28 (2016), pp. 17-28.

Of Books and People in Beygang's "Literary Museum. Ein Nachtrag zur Geschichte deutscher Leihbibliotheken und Lesegesellschaften, in: Detlef Döring, Thomas Fuchs, Christine Haug (eds.): Leipziger Jahrbuch zur Buchgeschichte 2016, pp. 249-311.

Alleged "Elective Affinities" and "Despicable Lives". How Friedrich Rochlitz commented on an "inquiry" into the context of Kleist's Freitod, in: Heilbronner Kleist-Blätter 27 (2015), pp. 120-127.

Karl Morgenstern's Notes on a Review of "Familie Schroffenstein". Records from Dorpat and Dresden in 1805 and 1808, in: Heilbronner Kleist-Blätter 27 (2015), pp. 31-44.

After the "Kant Crisis": Kleist Visits the Dresden Gallery of Antiquities, in: Heilbronner Kleist-Blätter 27 (2015), pp. 11-30.

Entschossenheit? An unknown text by Kleist in the programme of the traveling "art speaker" Theodor von Sydow, in: Heilbronner Kleist-Blätter 26 (2014), pp. 52-72.

The "Autumn Evenings" before the "Earthquake in Chili". An unknown (re)printing of "Jeronimo und Josephe" during Kleist's lifetime, in: Heilbronner Kleist-Blätter 25 (2013), pp. 78-105.

"Das ist volles, frisches Lebensmark". Eine vergessene "Amphitryon"-Rezension nebst Nachschrift über Otto Heinrich von Loeben, in: Heilbronner Kleist-Blätter 24 (2012), pp. 136-156.

Obscene Curses, Noble Pity. Some Notes on Inspiring Templates for the "Anecdote from the Last Prussian War" and "The Marquise of O....," in: Heilbronner Kleist-Blätter 24 (2012), pp. 124-135.

Ein Vagant voll Glut und Wut. The Writer and Jeweler Michael Kosmeli, in: Maria Oikonomou, Maria A. Stassinopoulou, Ioannis Zelepos (eds.): Greek Dimensions of Southeast European Culture since the 18th Century. Verortung, Bewegung, Grenzüberschreitung. Frankfurt/M. et al, pp. 201-216.

Of Flower Reading and Secret Societies. The Years of Johann Friedrich Ernst Albrecht as a Publisher in Reval and Erfurt, in: Heinrich Bosse, Otto-Heinrich-Elias, Thomas Taterka (eds.): Die baltischen Literaturen in der Goethezeit. Würzburg 2011, pp. 411-487.

Zehn Thesen zu Produktion, Rezeption und Erforschung des Schauerromans um 1800, in: Lichtenberg Jahrbuch 2010, pp. 177-217.

Das Bild Zyperns in der deutschen Belletristik des frühen 19. Jahrhunderts, in: Sabine Rogge (ed.): Zypern und der vordere Orient im 19. Jahrhundert. Die Levante im Fokus von Politik und Wissenschaft der europäischen Staaten. Münster et al. 2009, pp. 225-253.

Die getürkten Reisen des Friedrich Murhard nach Konstantinopel und in das Archipel, in: Evangelos Konstantinou (ed.): Ausdrucksformen des europäischen und internationalen Philhellenismus vom 17.-19. Jahrhundert. Frankfurt/M. u.a. 2007, pp. 269-282.

Heinrich von Kleist's Prevented Publisher. Der angeblich verrückte Johann Daniel Sander und der Salon seiner schönen Frau Sophie, in: Monika Estermann, Ernst Fischer, Ute Schneider (eds.): Buchkulturen. Contributions to the History of the Transmission of Literature. Wiesbaden 2005, pp. 321-354.

"Leute die viel wißen wollen auch manchmal zu viel beßer wissen." Johann Gottfried Seume as Lektor and Corrector in the Service of Georg Joachim Göschen, in: Jörg Drews (ed.): Seume: "The Man Himself" and His "Hypercritics." Lectures of the Colloquia on Johann Gottfried Seume in Leipzig and Catania 2002. Bielefeld 2004, pp. 113-137.

Until the Loss of the Right Hand. The Freelance Writer Friedrich Schulz, in: Triangulum 8 (2001), pp. 25-43.

From the "Spectator" to the "General State Advertisements". Ein unbekanntes Kapitel Berliner Zeitungsgeschichte, in: Jörg Drews (ed.): "Ich werde gewiß große Energie zeigen". Garlieb Merkel as Fighter, Critic and Project Maker in Berlin and Riga. Bielefeld 2000, pp. 93-113.

The Fairyland of Fantasy. The South Seas in German Literature between 1780 and 1820, in: Horst Dippel, Helmut Scheuer (eds.): Georg Forster Studien II. Berlin 1998, pp. 135-176.

The Flicker between Facts and Fictions. Uwe Johnson's "Jahrestage" and Raymond Federman's "Double or Nothing": A Demarcation between Modernity and Postmodernity, in: Carsten Gansel, Nicolai Riedel (eds.): Uwe Johnson zwischen Vormoderne und Postmoderne. Berlin/New York 1995, pp. 201-215.

He could write such curly things. On the Influence and Function of English on the Language and Style of Uwe Johnson's "Jahrestage," in: Carsten Gansel, Bernd Neumann, Nicolai Riedel (eds.): Internationales Uwe-Johnson-Forum, vol. 3. Frankfurt/M. et al: 1994, S. 35-51.

Complete list of publications

Complete list of publications (*pdf)