The articles in this volume focus on Biedermeier as an epoch in the history of literature. They inquire first whether and to what extent this period is characterized by features that are specific to it, and also whether changes are to be observed within the course of that period itself. A third central topic is the engagement with the transformation process operative in the progress from the Age of Goethe to Biedermeier on the one hand, and from Biedermeier to realism on the other.

The thirteen papers in this volume span the period from the Early Enlightenment to the end of Romanticism and reconstruct the system of literature and thought of what is known as a ~The Age of Goethea (TM) from approx. 1770 to 1830. On the basis of a comprehensive corpus of texts from German literature, the papers illuminate not only their pre-conditions from the European Enlightenment but also the relations between literature and the theoretical discourses of (popular) philosophy, theology, medicine, anthropology and jurisprudence.

The historical significance of religious heterodoxies in the early modern age - both the forgotten and the subsequently influential - for the development of European thinking can hardly be overrated. In the context of these minority positions the values, norms, and anthropological notions systematizing and permeating the Enlightenment and still displaying a noticeable influence on the present stand out all the more clearly. The present volume is the fruit of a colloquium at the University of Passau and discusses a number of aspects involved in this process in the early modern age.