LILIANE WEISSBERG

WHAT IS ENLEIGHTENMENT? Questions for the Eighteenth Century

An Exhibition curated by Liliane Weissberg
DHM German Historical Museum Berlin October 18,  2024 - April 6, 2025

image: Liliane Weissberg Berlin 2025. Courtesy of Liliane Weissberg. Copyright imagofeminae XLII 2025.  foto: by Annette Hollitscher.

Enlightenment and The Role of Women

Liliane Weissberg

an interview

by Paiman Maria Davarifard

Liliane Weissberg is a Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor in Arts and Sciences and Professor of German and Comparative Literature at the University of Pennsylvania, USA. Her research interests mainly focus on rediscovering a German-Jewish literary and cultural tradition from the late 18th to the early 20th century, as well as the Enlightenment and European and American Romanticism,  Edgar Allan Poe, Walter Benjamin, Sigmund Freud, Hannah Arendt, and early 19th-century writers like Henriette Herz, Dorothea Schlegel and Rahel Varnhagen. She has organized several exhibitions in the USA and Germany, including for the Slought Foundation in Philadelphia, the Jewish Museum Frankfurt and the German Literature Archive Marbach. She is a part of the Scientific Advisory Board of the German Historical Museum (DHM). She is the curator of the Exhibition WHAT IS ENLIGHTENMENT? QEUSTIONS FOR THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY in German Historical Museum in Berlin (October 18, 2024 - April 6, 2025). In an Interview with imagofeminae (Paiman Maria Davarifard), she explains the role of women in the era of Enleightenment and her choices as a curator in arranging the Exhibition in German Historical Museum in Berlin.

imagofeminae: Professor Weissberg, what is special about this exhibition dealing with the Enlightenment in Germany and beyond?

Liliane Weissberg: In 2024, we celebrated the anniversary of Immanuel Kant. Several recent exhibitions focused on his works. Our exhibit opened in 2024, and wants to show the context in which philosophers like Kant could emerge, in order to understand his works better, but also to understand the works of other philosophers and scholars of that time. Our exhibit is unusual for the German Historical Museum (DHM) in two respects.

First of all, the DHM is a history museum. While the 18th century may be historical period for us, question „What is Enlightenment?“ is a philosophical one. With our exhibit, we have tried to investigate what the Enlightenment is, and have broken down this large question into smaller ones, for example: What is the role of reason? What does emancipation mean? What is the significance of pedagogy? What are the gender roles at that time? These are also philosophical questions in a wider sense.

Secondly, we are showing the exhibition in the German Historical Museum, but it is not focused on Germany only. The DHM features currently another exhibit, „Roads Not Taken,“ that deals with specific moments in German history. The period of the Enlightenment has to be addressed in an international scope, however. The Enlightenment is not simply a German topic. We are dealing with Western Europe primarily (England, France, and Germany), but also with European philosophers and politicians who have forged connections with the world at large. To study nature, they had to travel to America or Asia, collected plants and animals that were brought back home, and learned about different peoples and religions. Philosophers established epistolary networks with scholars in other countries, exchanged ideas, translated foreign texts. And they published books that could be distributed widely. In Europe especially, literacy was on the rise, and there was a hunger for books. One can argue that the idea of a modern Europe established itself in the context of those international conversations.

The German Historical Museum was actually founded with the idea of dealing with German history in a European context. Thus, we just took the idea of Europe, and expanded the geography a bit – we are also showing objects from Asia, Africa, and the Americas.

image: Ausstellungsansicht "Was ist Aufklärung Fragen an das 18. Jahrhundert“ © Deutsches Historisches Museum, Foto: David von Becker. imagofeminae History winter 2025

imagofeminae: Did the status of women change during the period of the Enlightenment?

Liliane Weissberg: Many philosophers at that time began to demand the equality of all humanbeings. We explore this demand in regard to the rights of minorities, the poor, but also in regard to women.

There is, first of all, the question of the relationship between men and women exemplified by marriage. The question „What is Enlightenment?“ was formulated as an essay competition initiated by a new journal, the Berlin Monatsschrift in 1793, that was aiming for a wider readership. In September 1793, a Berlin clergyman called Johann Friedrich Zöllner wrote an article for that journal about civil unions. At that time, marriage was only possible in church, which means Catholics had to marry Catholics, Lutherans had to marry Lutherans, etc. Jews could not marry Christians and the same was true for Moslems - of which were very few in Germany. Zöllner argued that civil unions would be against the interests of the state. He added a footnote to this essay, in which he explained that the idea of civil unions must have come from those Enlightenment people with their new and fancy ideas, and that he did not even quite know what Enlightenment meant.

Zöllner’s question, “What is Enlightenment?” was curiously posed at the very end of the 18 th century, when much of the Enlightenment ideas had already been long in circulation. Many readers sent their answers to the Monatsschrift, including Immanuel Kant. Kant was not really interested in exploring the status of marriage in his essay, he was rather concerned with the emancipation of the individual. But you have the writings of Mary Wollstonecraft, who strongly rejects marriage in general, as it would limit the woman’s independence and make her subject to the husband’s will. And we show a painting by Georg Melchior Kraus, „The Relationship Between Science and Marriage.“ It shows a husband and his wife in a dispute over scholarly work, here firmly in the man’s hands.

image: Titelseite von Immanuel Kants Aufsatz „Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?“, in: Berlinische Monatsschrift, Berlin, 1784 © Deutsches Historisches Museum. Imagofeminae History winter 2025

In the 18th century, female literacy was on a steep rise in Europe as well, and women did not only become avid readers of literary and scientific work, they increasingly authored works, although many published their books anonymously or under pseudonyms. In the exhibition, we show for example manuscripts by Isaac Newton, whose experiments in optics revolutionized the waypeople thought about science, now based on the study of nature rather than a reading of the Bible. Next to these manuscripts, we have placed a book by Émilie du Châtelet who revises Newton. A few women—very few—gained access to universities. Christina Dorothea von Erxleben was the first German woman to receive a doctoral degree at the University of Göttingen, one the German reform universities. Dorothea Schlözer received a doctorate in philosophy from the University in Halle. Many more women became authors of literary works. Sophie von La Roche wrote one of the earliest German epistolary novels. Letter writing in general was deemed as particularly acceptable for women, the writing of drama less so. This may have had to do with the elevated status of drama at that time. And there were also a few women painters who could establish themselves, for example Anna Dorothea Therbusch, who was employed by members of the Prussian court. At the same time, the discussion about the nature of women put them in a place away from scholarship and the public eye in general. Pedagogical works claimed that women were close to Nature than men, and hence particularly suited for raising children. They were to stay at home, have children, and raise them, following a division of labor that would place only men in the public sphere. Women were to care for the household and for the education of their children. This did not devalue women, but limited them to a restricted realm. Children were also thought to be closer to Nature. One can think about Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Émile: „We should not just get the knowledge from the outside. We should educate children by nurturing what is inside.” There is a new term, taken from biology, Bildung: „just as a seed grows into a plant, so what is ever in the human being, should grow and become his proper self.“ While traditional pedagogy teaches you what can be gained by “outside” experience, Bildung nurtures the inner self, and helps a person to come to himself. It was mostly the boy and man who sought Bildung, but the woman who could nurture him. At the same time, we have women who are politically very active, particularly at the end of the century. The playwright Olympe de Gouges had an important role in the French revolution. Still, the Declaration of Human Rights issued by the revolutionaries, does not speak of women.

image: Ausstellungsansicht "Was ist Aufklärung Fragen an das 18. Jahrhundert“ © Deutsches Historisches Museum, Foto: David von Becker. imagofeminae History winter 2025

imagofeminae: Do women of this period influence our way of thinking today?

Liliane Weissberg: The questions whether women have fixed assigned gender roles, and whether they have the same opportunities as men, are still with us today. Women are often easily defined and are often also lacking access to institutions of learning or professions. But whereas the discussion in the 18th century focused on the individual roles of men or women, as well as on the specific nature of women, today’s discussion is more complex. We do not think of sexuality as simply binary, but view gender roles as varied. We bring in this perspective via the interviews that accompany the exhibition. I conducted an interview with Jack Halberstam, for example, who is not only concerned with feminist theory, but also thinks about transgender issues. He describes gender and sexuality as fluid and as something that cannot be easily categorized. In the exhibition, we relate the discussion of gender roles to that of minorities. I have already
spoken about the fact that the Enlightenment was an international movement, and that Enlightenment philosophers thought of themselves as cosmopolitan. At the same time, it was the age of colonialism. Voltaire or Kant may have spoken out for the equal rights of all men, but they established hierarchies also. Once again, we have the issue of domination. Science did not only establish order, but also a hierarchy of men that was to justify slavery. Everyone profited from the slave trade, as it was the fundament not just of the American, but also the European economy— and beyond. The trade of human being was part of the trade of goods. Black bodies were brought to the Americas, coffee, chocolate, sugar, or tobacco back to Europe, alcohol and guns shipped to Africa. At its core, it was a triangular trade, but it was also extended to Asia and South America. And everyone was implicated. Just think for a moment: If cotton would not be imported to England, we wouldn’t have had the industrial revolution that began in Manchester. Europeans
enjoyed the goods that were the result of the slave trade. Blacks who ended up in Europe led a complicated life. Anton Wilhelm Amo, a black former slave from West Africa, studied philosophy in Halle and Wittenberg, but returned after his doctorate to Africa where he settled at a port of the Dutch company that had sold him as a slave. The former Black slave known as Angelo Soliman became a servant at the court of the Prince of Liechtenstein in Vienna. Soliman became a cherished employee, joined the Free Masons, and was a member of the same Loge as Mozart. As a black man, he may even have been a model for the figure of Bassim in Mozart’s Abduction from the Seraglio. Angelo married, although he was not supposed to do so as a servant, and his daughter married into the Austrian aristocracy. Her son, Soliman’s grandson, was the poet Eduard von Feuchtersleben. But what happened to Soliman himself? When he died, the Emperor asked for his body, had it stuffed and exhibited it in his natural history collection. He became an object for display.

image: Titelseite von Immanuel Kants Aufsatz „Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?“, in: Berlinische Monatsschrift, Berlin, 1784 © Deutsches Historisches Museum. Imagofeminae History winter 2025

imagofeminae: How does diversity or do women’s issues impact your work as a curator?

Liliane Weissberg: In regard to the question of dominion, and to what and who a human being is, diversity and gender meet, of course. In the 18th century, we do not have a fully developed racial theory yet, but certainly race thought. What happened then leads the way to the 19 th century and the age of Nationalism, as well as to later discrimination. When I was conducting the interviews, I was primarily looking for experts of the 18th century who were prominent voices in their fields, who could also relate to our concerns today. I interviewed Annette Gordon-Reed, for example, a professor of history at Harvard, who worked on Thomas Jefferson, is an expert of the Black American experience. I wanted her not just to talk about Jefferson, his family, and his slaves, but also whether and how this history informs the Black Lives Matters movement today. Another interviewee, Kwame Anthony Appiah, a philosopher at New York University, has an interesting personal history. He grew up in Ghana and England, and is related to the King of the Asante, as well as to British aristocracy. He was able to comment on the complexity of African society, and also on slavery in Africa itself. Of course, these are examples that deal with the content of the exhibition. Our exhibition core team was female, by the way, and we tried to keep a gender balance throughout. Our catalog features essays by prominent women, and we have invited a good number of women to be interviewed. Next to Gordon-Reed, we are featuring the American philosopher Martha Nussbaum, the former director of the Berlin Max Planck Institute Lorraine Daston, the head of the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin, Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger, the Mayor of Frankfurt, Nargess Eskandari-Grünberg, the German actress and film maker Maryam Zaree.

I have published widely on women authors as well as feminist theory myself, and I have also been very much aware of my own position as a woman. I am the first women who received tenure as a professor of German at my institution, the University of Pennsylvania, and just a couple of years ago, I was awarded an honorary doctorate in Philosophy from the University of Graz in Austria; I was the first woman to receive such a degree from Graz.

imagofeminae: Thank you for the opportunity you gave our readers with this interview.