International conference on the "Volksaufklärer" Rudolph Zacharias Becker

The only secular work that was published in several hundred thousand copies and read by more than a million people in Germany during the "Goethe period" was a book written, printed and published in Gotha, namely the "Noth- und Hülfs-Büchlein" by Rudolph Zacharias Becker (1752–1822), who as a "Volksaufklärer" (enlightener for the people), publicist and publisher was one of the most influential writers throughout the empire in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

The 200th anniversary of Becker's death this year will be the occasion for the Gotha Research Centre of the University of Erfurt to organise a three-day international conference, which will not only focus on the works of this versatile man, but also on the entire structure of literary figures and scholars in the residence of the principality.

While classicism and romanticism prospered in Weimar and Jena, theatre, popular enlightenment, the press, secret societies and astronomy flourished in neighbouring Gotha. The progressive Duke Ernst II was a leading member of the Illuminati Order, protected its founder Adam Weishaupt and kept the legendary "Swedish box", which has been gradually catalogued and systematically analysed in Gotha for several years. In addition to Becker, the writer Friedrich Wilhelm Gotter, the publicist Schack Hermann Ewald, the theatre chronicler Heinrich August Ottokar Reichard, the philologist Friedrich Jacobs, the composer Georg Benda and publishers such as Carl Wilhelm Ettinger and Justus Perthes played leading roles in public societies as well as in (semi-) arcane circles.

The conference will be organised by Prof. Dr. Martin Mulsow and Dr. Dirk Sangmeister and coordinated by Kristina Petri. Registration is not required.