German new humanism

Goethe

The German new humanism or Neuhumanismus was a movement that emerged in Germany around 1750. The term was coined by the historian Friedrich Paulsen in 1885. It was a continuation of the original humanism of the renaissance. Central to the movement was a rediscovery of the Antiquity, and the movement was linked to a humanistic idea of knowledge, referred to as Bildung, and to the idea of humanity, the intellectual, physical, and moral formation of "a better human being." Some its major participants include Johann Matthias Gesner, Johann August Ernesti, Christian Gottlob Heyne, Friedrich August Wolf, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Johann Gottfried Herder, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, Friedrich Hölderlin and Wilhelm von Humboldt.

Its program was described by Friedrich August Wolf as Studia humanitatis which "include anything that contribute to make human Bildung and mental and emotional forces into a beautiful harmony of the inner and outer man."[1]

References

  1. ↑ Friedrich August Wolf, Darstellung der Alterthumswissenschaften, 1832, p. 45

Literature

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