Johann Friedrich Blumenbach Online

The project "Johann Friedrich Blumenbach – online", which was successfully completed in summer 2025, makes the rise of German science within the European context visible and supplies a missing part in accessible primary source material on the cultural history of the time: the publications of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach. This is particularly significant with regard to an essential aspect of this period, namely the emergence of modern natural sciences.

Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752-1840) was Professor of Medicine and Natural History at the University of Göttingen. Succeeding Albrecht von Haller, Blumenbach contributed substantially to the thriving of German science. Blumenbach’s works are a unique testimony to the European dimension of the then Republic of Letters. The scholars' work on location in Göttingen comprised (1) creating a new edition of Blumenbach’s published writings including translations and reissues, (2) a calendar of his correspondence, (3) a reconstruction of his collections of objects of natural history, and (4) a documentation of his contemporary and later reception. All these documents have been edited electronically for presentation in a web portal.

To the Blumenbach-Online Portal