Georg-Forster-Society

Although he was ostracised in the 19th century, this did not erase the memory of one of the most important German polymaths and writers of the late Enlightenment, whose political views remained largely misunderstood in Germany in the late 18th and 19th centuries and beyond, and only found their counterpart in the late 20th century thanks to their modernity. However, in view of this buried legacy, it is now more important than ever to rediscover Georg Forster's intellectual heritage, whether from the perspective of the natural sciences, ethnology or anthropology, or from the perspective of history or German studies, or indeed from the perspective of linguistics and cultural studies, including art and politics.

Born on 27 November 1754 in Nassenhuben near Danzig, the son of the preacher Johann Reinhold Forster, Georg Forster accompanied his father on an inspection trip on behalf of the Russian government to the Volga in 1765 and from there, in search of employment, via St. Petersburg to London. After years of hardship and hard work, he was allowed to accompany his father on James Cook's second voyage around the world from 1772 to 1775, which established his fame as a naturalist and travel writer. After a trip to Paris, where Georg Forster met Buffon and Franklin, among others, he came to Kassel in 1778, where he obtained a position as professor of natural history at the Collegium Carolinum, becoming its vice-rector in 1779. During his five years in Kassel, he maintained close scientific exchanges with the most important scholars in Göttingen, met with Goethe, Herder, Wieland and other leading representatives of German intellectual life, and maintained close contact with Freemasons. In 1784, Forster accepted a position at the Polish University of Vilnius and, the following year, married Therese Heyne, the daughter of the eminent Göttingen classical philologist Christian Gottlob Heyne.

The plan for a multi-year scientific expedition to India on behalf of Tsarina Catherine II fell through, whereupon Forster accepted the position offered to him as librarian at the University Library of Mainz at the end of 1788. From Mainz, he undertook a three-and-a-half-month journey with the young Alexander von Humboldt via Holland to England in 1790, during which he made his first direct acquaintance with the French Revolution on his way back via Paris, which he immediately joined when French troops entered Mainz in October 1792. Forster joined the Mainz Jacobin Club and soon became its president. As vice-president of the ‘Rhenish-German National Convention’, he travelled to Paris on 25 March 1793 to present the Convention's request for the Mainz Republic to join the French Republic. Due to the recapture of Mainz by Prussian troops, Forster, a staunch democrat who was denied return to Germany where he faced imprisonment, remained in Paris. He died here in solitude at the age of 39 on 10 January 1794, politically controversial in Germany, but admired and respected far beyond its borders as the author of Reise um die Welt (Journey Around the World) and Ansichten vom Niederrhein (Views of the Lower Rhine), as well as a wealth of smaller treatises and often masterful essays on natural science, art and literature, philosophy, contemporary history and politics, in addition to a wealth of translations, including Sakontala, and reviews.