New publication: Grimm – Gotha – Paris

© Schwabe Verlag

Claire Gantet, Markus Meumann, Isabella Treskow (eds.)
Grimm – Gotha – Paris: A European Constellation at the Time of the Enlightenment
publisher: Schwabe, Basel, 2026
ISBN: 9783796553622
449 pages (hardcover)
78 EUR

The bilingual anthology “Grimm – Gotha – Paris: Eine europäische Konstellation zur Zeit der Aufklärung / Une constellation européenne au temps des Lumières" (Grimm – Gotha – Paris: A European Constellation in the Age of Enlightenment) sheds light on the German-French cultural mediator Friedrich Melchior Grimm (1723–1807), who, with his handwritten ’Correspondance littéraire", can be considered an early counterpart to today's influencers. His weekly or monthly “letters” were sent from Paris to European royal courts as part of exclusive subscriptions, for example to Catherine II of Russia, Duchess Luise Dorothea of Gotha and Duke Karl August of Weimar. They contained reviews of novels, plays and scientific literature, reports and political analyses, but also fashion observations and a certain amount of gossip from high society. Key figures of the Parisian Enlightenment around the Encyclopédie contributed to the Correspondance.

Throughout his life, Grimm worked as a tutor, diplomat and art buyer for European nobles and, as a writer, translator and critic, was close friends with Diderot, d'Alembert, Rousseau and the salonnière Louise d'Epinay. At the same time, he also corresponded with numerous European aristocrats beyond the Correspondance littéraire. He was an influential networker who spread cultural phenomena, ideas, styles and political impulses across national borders.

The volume, edited by Claire Gantet (Fribourg), Markus Meumann (Gotha) and Isabella von Treskow (Regensburg), is based on an international conference held in Gotha in September 2023. Under the title ‘Friedrich Melchior Grimm between Paris and Gotha’, researchers from France, Canada, Germany and Switzerland examined the role of the Gotha court in Grimm's work and his transnational networks in general.

The volume, which was published on 26 January 2026 as a printed book and simultaneously as an open-access publication by Schwabe Verlag, contains 16 contributions in the German language and French and is divided into three thematically focused chapters:
1. Relationships and Business | Relations et affaires
2. The Court of Gotha as a Central Node in Grimm's Network | La cour de Gotha, nœud central du réseau de Grimm
3. Grimm as a man of letters: criticism, politics, the Enlightenment | Grimm homme de lettres : critique, politique, Lumières

“Grimm was central to the spread of the ideas of the Parisian Enlightenment in Germany and North-Eastern Europe,” emphasises Dr Markus Meumann, co-editor of the volume. “At the same time, he was a figure as colourful as he was conflicted: on the one hand, he was friends with the radical representatives of the “lumières”, while on the other, he increasingly sought social recognition from the aristocratic elites of the Ancien Régime.”

The editors:

• Claire Gantet is Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland).
• Markus Meumann is an early modern historian and Scientific Managing Director of the Gotha Research Centre at the University of Erfurt.
• Isabella von Treskow is Professor of French and Italian Literature and Cultural Studies at the University of Regensburg.