Friedrich Carové, the battle of nations and the "Liberation of Germany"

This weekend marks the bicentenary of the Battle of Nations (Völkerschlacht) at Leipzig from 16-19 October 1813 that ended Napoleonic rule in Europe. Whilst Hegel was present in the vicinity of the equally significant Battle of Jena in October 1806 and we have a contemporary letter giving his impressions, his reaction to the Battle of Leipzig is harder to trace. The above memorial was erected to mark the 100th anniversary of the battle in 1913.

Hegel in Heidelberg

This is an account of Hegel's time in Heidelberg from 1816 to 1818, drawn from Karl Rosenkranz's Life of Hegel (1844), the first biography of Hegel. It includes discussions of Hegel's essays on Jacobi and on the Wurtemberg Estates. I exclude from this the chapter on the first edition of the Encyclopadia (1817), which I have translated in a previous post.

First edition of the Encyclopedia

There follows a complete translation of the very brief chapter on the first edition of Hegel's Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences (1817) in Karl Rosenkranz' Life of Hegel (1844) taken from his coverage of Hegel's time in Heidelberg. The standard English translations of the Encyclopaedia are of the later editions rather than of this edition of which Rosenkranz speaks so highly. William Wallace translated the later editions of the Encyclopaedia Logic (1873) and Philosophy of Mind (1894), with the Encyclopaedia translation only completed in the 1970s with AV Miller's Philosophy of Nature. In this light, Rosenkranz' preference for the first edition is worth pondering.

Hegel Tour to South Germany

I here reproduce another email to the hegel@yahoogroups.com on my trip to Hegel-related towns in Southern Germany in October 2005:

I am just back from a five day trip to South Germany to see some of the
towns associated with Hegel - Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Tübingen, Nürnberg and Bamberg -and would like to share some of my impressions with you of things that struck me as noteworthy on the basis of having read some English-language biographical sources.