The young Herder

Born 25th August 1744 in [[Mohrungen]](Polish: Morag), formerly part of [[East Prussia]] a small town that now lies in north-eastern [[Poland]] in the [[voivodship]] of Warmia-Masuria. The town in 1740 had 1069 inhabitants, and some 246 men were independent craftsmen, including some 12 cloth makers; it boasted of a regiment of dragoons stationed in a garrison, as well as a brewery. His father, Gottfried Herder (9th May 1706-26.September/29th June 1763), was originally a clothier by trade, as was his father Christoph Herder, before him, however, in 1735 he became a school teacher and Cantor to the Polish community of Protestant [[Masurians]] at the time a post that had obligatory duties attached to it including bell-ringing in the church. Herder was born in a small house close to the St. Peter and Paul church, built in the early 14th century. His father had bought the house in 1743 situated in Große Kirchgasse and used the two rooms on the ground floor, separated by a kitchen, to teach, almost exclusively young girls (the sons of craftsmen tended to follow their fathers); the family lived in the two rooms upstairs.



His mother, Anna Elisabeth née Peltz (11th November 1717-3rd September 1772), was originally the daughter of the Mohrungen shoe-maker, Jakob Peltz. His parents married 20th November 1738. Herder believed that his grandfather on his father’s side emigrated from Silesia, due to religious persecution; research shows that in the middle of the 17th century there were already 4 families with this name living in Mohrungen. To associate him with the Silesian mystics such as [[Jakob Boehme]] and [[Hermann August Francke]] is therefore mistaken. If Goethe was a West German, Herder was very much a child of Eastern Germany. His father’s own protestant sensibility, always expressed precisely and orderly, together with his mother’s very pronounced sensitive piety- Herder admitted that he was “a spoilt motherly child” and that she had taught him to “pray, feel and think”- combined to create a safe haven of domestic piety. Following the correct completion of a domestic chore, the young Herder admitted to yearning for the feeling of the soft hand of his father placed upon the top of his head uttering the words “Gottesfriede”[God’s peace]. The Lutheran bible and hymn book, unquestionably became the most important early works and influences for him, and in the evenings in the small household, when his father wasn’t reading from Johann Arndt’s(1555-1621) „Vom wahren Christentum“[Of true Christianity], his favourite book, we know that the family regularly sang together. This would later become an object of envy for Hamann, that his young friend knew the entire hymn book and its melodies by heart. Herder’s earliest influences destined him to become a theologian & musician amongst the German classicists at Weimar, and ultimately shaped his love for folk-song. [I remember in my childhood years, when I read Job, the Preachers, Isaiah and the Evangelists as if there was no other book in the world or, any like it….my entire life develops for me now as what was said in childhood.”[Ich erinnere mich meiner Kindheitsjahre, in denen ich Hiob, den Prediger, Jesaias und die Evangelien las, wie ich kein Buch sonst auf der Welt gelesen habe und lesen werde….Mein ganzes Leben entwickelt mir nun, was mir meine Kindheit sagte“][Herder to Friedrich Haller, 1780s] Herder was a voracious reader and would eventually possess in Weimar at his death one of the most impressive private libraries in Germany, upwards of 8,000 books (There is an auction catalogue of his library, ‘Bibliotheca Herderiana.Vimariae,1804’).One of the earliest images we have of the young Herder, recounted by his wife Maria Karoline née Flachsland(1750-1809) , is that he would secure himself by a leather strap to the branches of a cherry-tree in his father’s garden, where he would lie for hours with a book in his hand, listening to birdsong and inhaling the fragrance of flowers. It was probably in this tree that he first read Homer and experienced a comparison that made a deep impression on him- of the transitoriness of human generations with the withering of autumnal leaves, a comparison that reduced him to tears. A favourite walk of his was along the banks of the Lake of Mohrungen and through the paradise-forests, alluded to in his poem, “Dreams of Youth”[Träume der Jugend]. He was the third of five children, and became the only surviving boy, after his younger brother died when he was eleven years old. The first born, Maria Elisabeth, died an infant (8 September 1739-24 January 1741), Herders eldest sister, Anna Louise, (1 November 1741- 30 January 1767) married a local butcher, Christoph Neumann; his younger sister Catharina Dorothea (12 July/August 1748-20 October 1793) married a baker, Christoph Gueldenhorn. The premature death of his younger brother, Carl Gottfried (7 Mai 1752 -20 February 1755) affected the young Herder deeply and he wrote a poem about “losing the most dearest thing he had in this world” [Das Liebste, was ich auf dieser Welt verlohren]



He went to the local grammar school where he showed great aptitude in Latin & Greek due in part to the stern & tyrannical tutelage of its rector, F. M. Grimm. About Grimm, not very much is known, although he was elderly, Herder wrote later:
“Notwithstanding his severity, and grim as he looked (for his appearance corresponded to his name) with his pale complexion and his black peruke, I must still acknowledge myself indebted to him for having grounded me in learning. He insisted strictly and inexorably on having the rules of grammar exactly learned. Every lesson, whatever it might be, he made us repeat over many times, till we completely understood it, and had fixed it in our memories. During the repetition of the lessons, we were required to stand; a practice which accustoms the scholars to a respectful demeanour towards their teacher, and enforces attention to the lesson. He insisted on the highest reverence being paid to him by us school-boys; the instant we saw him, and came in sight of his dwelling, we took off our hats. On the other hand, with all his strictness, he cheerfully testified his satisfaction with the industriousness and some few, of whom I was one, he particularly distinguished, by allowing us to accompany him in his walks, during which we were to gather speedwell and cowslips for the tea which formed his daily beverage. I have ever since been fond of speedwell and cowslips; they remind me of those walks of my youth, and of the praise and approbation of my old master. Sometimes he would invite one or two scholars, whom he wished especially to honour, into his study, to partake of a cup of this tea with a small lump of sugar; and this was regarded as a peculiar mark of favour and distinction. For myself he always appeared satisfied with me, and shewed me kindness and attention.”

Herder’s extreme sensitivity towards these early learning experiences would fundamentally determine the nature of his own radical pedagogical theories, brilliantly sketched out in his “Fragments on Recent German Literature”(1766-68) & “Travel journal”(1769). His indebtedness is unmistakable and the figure of Grimm, with cane in hand, in his classes that began at 7am and continued through until 4 or 5 in the afternoon, instilling in the children of Mohrungen “Anstand, Reinlichkeit, Ordnung, und Aufmerksamkeit”[decency, purity, order and attentiveness] over a whole range of subjects including music, is a mixed one. It was the logical ordering of ideas that Herder thanked him for, and we know that Grimm had steadfastly used Baumeister’s compendium of Wolffian logic and compendiums in theology too, and thus anticipated some of his university studies.



An image(1948) of the 6? metre high, late 14th
century crucifix in the St. Peter and Paul church.

His earliest religious impressions would have been derived from the sermons he listened to by the pastor of the church in Mohrungen, who instructed him in religion and had confirmed the young Herder, Christoph Reinhold Willamovius (24 April 1701-d. 17 October 1763). He was a man for whom Herder conceived the tenderest affection, and from whose character he borrowed, in one of his subsequent essays, the outlines of an ideal portraiture of ‘the Preacher of God.’ [Der Redner Gottes]. The church possessed a magnificent baroque altar and font that dated back to the [[30 Years War ]]and had been built by Gellert, a master of Nuremberg. The apostles Peter & Paul are depicted on both sides of this altarpiece. All around inside the grave stones of the Dohna family reaching back to the renaissance and an impressive crucifix would have caught the young Herder’s eye. The organ had been built in 1705 by Matthias Obuch, a Mohrunger organ builder.

Herder’s house was situated close to both the church and that of the Diakonus, Sebastian Frederic Trescho (1733-1804).Trescho, born in [[Liebstadt]], the son of a justice of the peace, at the age of 14 he had been taken into Willamovious’ house and educated along with his two sons for 2 years. Thus Trescho befriended the poet Johann Gottlieb Willamovius (Willamov) (15 January 1736-1777), the so called ‘German Pindar’. In 1751 he studied theology and poetry in Konigsberg under Arnoldt, Bock, Lilienthal and D. Schulz. Johann Gotthelf Lindner who taught poetry at this time as a Magister became his teacher and friend. After leaving Königsberg early (and thus without completing his studies)Willamovius appointed him to succeed Trescho’s own brother-in-law , Diakonus Grillo, who had died suddenly in 1760. Trescho lived in Mohrungen until his death, and upon his gravestone are engraved the words ”The Father of the Poor”[ Dem Vater der Armen]. He wrote poetry, literary criticism and pietistic devotional literature, including a very popular “Sterbebibel oder die Kunst, selig und frohlich zu sterben, Konigsberg “(1762)[ Dying-bible, or the art of dying devout and happy] At the beginning of 1761 [See Sembritzki, Trescho und Herder, 1904, pp.2-3] the opportunity arose for the young 16 year-old to work as his amanuensis, dutifully transcribing any number of his small writings for the press. In return for this help, Herder had access to Trescho’s impressive library & could work and sleep at his house. Trescho normally eat with Willamovius, and so Herder continued taking his meals with his family. Although it would be wrong to attach any notions of poverty or want to the Herder household, he himself said that he had been „in einer dunklen, aber nicht dürftigen Mittelmaessigkeit geboren“[born in a dark, but not deprived mediocrity], there was only one heated room in the upper floor of the house and in winter the entire family were forced together. For the young Herder this would have obstructed his reading and Trescho’s library offered him a precious solitary and undisturbed access to the works of German literature, philosophy and poetry such as [[Klopstock]], [[Albrecht von Haller]], [[Ewald Christian von Kleist]],[[Christian Fürchtegott Gellert]], Johann Peter Uz (1720-1796), [[Gotthold Ephraim Lessing]], [[Martin Christoph Wieland]] amongst many other writers that Trescho knew and loved. [See Haym, 1, 28; Sembritzki,1905, Dobbek, 1961, 39 ] German literature, as a subject, would not have been taught at his school. There is an intriguing anecdote we have of Trescho returning late one evening and finding the young Herder lying asleep on the bed, his candle burning, and the floor covered with a heap of Greek and Latin classics, and various German anacreontic poets, and on being asked by him the next morning whether he understood all these books he was reading, Herder replied, “that he was endeavouring to understand them.” This period lasted a mere one and a quarter years, and yet primarily through Trescho’s library, his reading & learning flourished exponentially: „Mit welchem Entzücken erinnere ich mich meiner Jugend, da ich zuerst diese (die deutschen Dichter seiner Zeit) und die alten Schriftsteller fremder Nationen las. Kaum reicht in meinen späteren Jahren etwas an diese Freude, and dies süße Erstaunen.“[SWS, XXX, 222; Dobbek, 1961, 38-39.] It is also here that he would have seen some of Johann Georg Hamann’s and Johann Gotthelff Lindner’s correspondence both friends of Trescho, and encountered their works for the first time upon the library shelves. We also know that he learnt French with Trescho; indeed, in a collection of his poems “Religion, Freundschaft und Sitten” [Religion, friendship and ethics](1761), that Herder would have read avidly, Trescho’s poems cite Rousseau, La Mettrie, Descartes, Voltaire, Toland, Leibniz, Crusius, Spinoza, Pope, Lessing, Young, and we even find poetical allusions to “Kants Himmels Theorie “[Kant’s Theory of the Heavens]. In one work of Trescho’s Kant’s cosmological theories are closely followed, and we also know that Trescho requested notes of Kant’s lectures from…….and we can assume that Herder read them. Indeed, it appears that it was the young Herder who brought Trescho’s attention to the writings of David Hume. Another work of Trescho’s from the time that Herder was his copyist,’ “Naschereyen in die Visiten=Zimmer am Neujahrs-Tage.(1762)[Nibbling in the visiting-room on New Years Day] was even parodied in Hamann’s ‘Aesthetica in Nuce”(1762) and Trescho wrote poems about Hamann’s ‘Socratic Memorabilia’. Trescho had also studied Music in Konigsberg with the organist Masmann. It is said that Herder’s first familiarity with the music of “Bachs Psalmen” was here too. (From 1771-1776 when Herder was at the Bückeburg Court of Count Wilhelm of Schaumberg-Lippe, he would later write cantatas & oratorios with the Konzertmeister, [[Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach (1732-1795)]])

It was at Trescho’s house that Herder’s own intellectual authorship commenced, a poem he had written “To Cyrus, the grandson of Astyages,”[Gesang an den Cyrus] inspired by the figure of Tsar [[Peter III of Russia]] and his succession to the imperial throne, infused with Old Testament learning , as well as classical allusions to Horace and Herodotus- he had deliberately placed it anonymously inside one of Trescho’s own writings “Geschichte meines Herzens…”(1763)[History of my Heart], that was to be sent to the [[Königsberg]] publisher, Johann Jakob Kanter (1738-1786). On discovering the poem Kanter immediately published it in January 1762 . Hamann took immediate notice of it, writing in April 1762 “it is said to be by a certain Hermes who lives in Mohrungen”. Kanter later asked Trescho who it could have been from. When he asked the 17 year old, we are told that he didn’t deny it, and that he “turned red and laughed.” The gesture of laughter is psychologically very revealing as Trescho found him at first “deeply reserved and withdrawn”- and he attributed his shyness and lack of candour, to the stern influence of Grimm’s schooling methods. Trescho was the first genuine German theological writer & poet he knew and he would have learnt all about the craftsmanship of writing from him. Whilst it is true that we encounter an outpouring of vituperative comments from Herder towards him already in Königsberg (August 1764) and later in Riga, where he is called a ”Hypocrite”,“The Apostle of Dying”, “ a Tartuffe,” etc., the debt of gratitude is clearly immense. It has been alleged that he had attempted to dissuade his family from allowing him to study at Konigsberg, but this is false, indeed, there have been many false & misleading accounts of Herder’s relationship with Trescho. A letter to his friend Borowski from 3 March 1762 clearly documents Trescho’s strong desire to see Herder study at Königsberg, the recognition of what he considered his remarkable genius, and the request to assist him in any way possible, to approach Schiefert as well as the dean of the university, Langhansen, and, most revealing, Trescho’s own personal offer of a limited amount of money to finance the young Herder’s studies “Das Eintrittsgeld von Ostern an, und was sonst zur woechentlichen Praenumeration gehoert, sollte richtig von mir bezahlt werden, bi s er mit der Zeit wohltaetige Herzen findet,durch die er etwa ein paar Freytische erhielte..”[See Sembritzki, 1904, 13-14] He may have been influenced by Hamann, who, although a friend, called Trescho the “animal scribax,” whatever that may be, the still neglected work of Johannes Sembritzki has carefully documented Herder’s intellectual indebtedness to him. In a letter to Hamann from October 1766, Herder wrote that it was Trescho who had awoken and fanned his first intellectual flames [“ersten Funken weckte“] Additional ire may have resulted from two works of his that may have appeared to the Königsberg milieu (and beyond) to have had the young Herder in mind as his protégé: Maximen an eine Jüngling, der die Akademie besuchte’[Maxims to a young man who visits the Academy](contained in: Trescho’s “Kleine Versuche im Denken und Empfinden, Koenigsberg,1762)[Small Essays in Thinking and Feeling] and „Briefe „Über das akademische Leben junger Leute an einen jungen Studierenden.”[Letters on the academic life of young persons to a young studiosus](1764). The former work had been savagely attacked in the ‘Briefe, die neueste Literatur betreffend’[Letter 316]. Herder’s bitterest attack on Trescho was documented in 1774 although at the same time it reveals that the Herder had shown Trescho an essay of Hume’s in Mohrungen.[see „An Prediger. Funfzehn Provinzialblätter. Leipzig 1774“[To Preachers. Fifteen Provincial Letters][Provinzialblatter, XI]

Towards the close of the [[Seven-Year War ]](1756-63) in which Prussia had fought Austria, France & Russia; following the death of [[Czarina Elisabeth]](5th January 1762), her successor Czar Peter III, had opted for peace with Prussia in the Treaty of St. Petersburg and the Russian troops that had occupied East Prussia since 1758 were withdrawn in 1762. The Russian regiment had been stationed in Mohrungen, since their arrival on 24th January 1758 after the battle of Gross Jägerndorf (30 July 1757) all this must have made a deep impression on the young Herder. It was said that the town suffered sporadically from the indiscipline of the Russian soldiers compared to the former regiment of Prussian dragoons that had been under the command of Johann Adolf von Möllendorf. Friedrich II had personally inspected his troops in Mohrungen (6 June 1750).The sister of Herder’s father was married to one of the dragoons; they exercised often, and every year revues and manouveres took place, and we must assume that the young Herder would have often witnessed all of this. Occasionally there were military executions, and the citizens of Mohrungen were sometimes called upon to hunt ,not only for wolves who encroached from the nearby forests, but sometimes for deserters from the regiment.
The surgeon of the Russian regiment, J. C. Schwarz-Erla, was acquainted with Trescho, and was impressed with the young Herder. Following Trescho’s recommendation he promised to take the young man with him to [[Königsberg]] in the summer of 1762 as the troops made their withdrawal, and to attempt the cure of his diseased eye, and to study medicine(Herder was suffering from a blocked lachrymal fistula(tear-duct) in his right eye, a condition he had acquired as a 5 year old, and the same condition that he was suffering from in September 1770 where, in [[Strasbourg]], heavily bandaged following an unsuccessful operation, he would meet Goethe for the first time at the foot of the stairs of his lodgings “Zum Geist”). In return, Schwarz-Erla had asked Herder to translate a medical treatise for him into Latin, and promised him further financial support to pursue his medical studies later in [[St. Petersburg]], if he so wished. Herder jumped at this opportunity and offer to escape Mohrungen, and what would have been the impending Prussian military conscription for all 17 year olds. Herder had developed a strong aversion to the military government of Prussia, and gave utterance to this feeling in one of his earliest poems “The Suckling.”[ Der Säugling] He arrived in Königsberg in May 1762 and would never return to Mohrungen, or, see his parents alive again. The following year his father would die.



Clearly, he had no real relish for the study of surgery, sentiments of repulsion accompanied him, and it is said that a feinting fit in an anatomical session ended any such hopes. Herder’s school-fellow in Mohrungen, Emmerich, helped him register with the dean of the theology faculty, Friedrich Samuel Bock (August 7th), an examination followed (Monday August 9th) with the dean of the philosophy faculty, Christoph Langhansen (1691-1770), and on August 10th 1762 he matriculated as a Theology student in the Albertina University . With very little hope of financing his studies further, and possibly due to Kanter’s own involvement with the young poet whom he had already published in January, and quite possibly Borowski or Kant’s own influence, the following day he managed to obtain an appointment as assistant teacher at the Collegium Fredericianum in Königsberg (Kant’s old school). The motto of the Fridericianum was ‘Pietas fundamentum omnium virtutum’ [Piety is the foundation of all virtue] His board and lodgings were thus secured and he was paid 16 Thalers a year. “With unusual speed he rose from Inzipient [incipient] to teacher. First, in the winter term 1762-63, he was given charge of instructing arithmetic in the ‘German school,’ but already the next spring he was entrusted with the third level Greek, French, Hebrew, and mathematics classes in the higher ‘Latin school’. Thereupon in the next fall came Latin and Poetics in the second, as well as History and Philosophy in the first level.”[Dobbek, 1961, 87; Zammito’s translation, 2002, 147.] Herder also applied for a scholarship from a foundation set up by Count Dohna for underprivileged students from Mohrungen. Herder does not appear to have altogether relished the spirit of the establishment, which was formal and pedantic. One of the inspectors insisted on Herder’s mounting a peruke as an indispensable requisite to an efficient teacher; but in spite of this, Herder preferred the cheaper covering of his own natural hair. His spirit of pure and simple piety was more especially revolted by the sanctimonious air of religion which then reigned in the college, and which procured for it the name of the “Place of Pietists”(Pietisten-Herberge).


Shortly after he attended lectures of Daniel Heinrich Arnoldt [Arnold](1706-1775) and Theodor Christoph Lilienthal (1717-1781). The latter renowned for an wide-ranging eclectic 16 volume work(Königsberg,1760[50???}-82) “Die gute Sache der in der heiligen Schrift alten und neuen Testaments enthaltenen Göttlichen Offenbarung, wider die Feinde derselben erwiesen und gerettet” that defended the Bible against the enemies of English Deists. Herder, however, had already turned towards the writings of the contemporary leader of schools of the philological and historical critiques of the Bible, [[Johann August Ernesti (1707-1781)]] in Leipzig, [[Johann Salomo Semler (1725-1791)]] in Halle and especially [[Johann David Michaelis (1717-1791)]] in Göttingen.

Of greatest significance for his education at the University of Konigsberg was the philosopher [[Immanual Kant]], his lectures in his so called pre-critical period [i.e. before 1769] with their greater emphasis upon natural science, astronomy, mathematics, logic, physical geography, metaphysics, moral philosophy and belles lettres had a tremendous effect on him. It appears that he was allowed to attend Kant’s lectures without payment. August 21 1762, was the first metaphysical lecture of Kant’s he actually attended (on Pneumatology) subsequently he went to every course Kant offered, several of them “repeatedly”. It is has been said that Herder was Kant’s greatest student, and Herder’s copious lecture notes from this period have been studied intensely by Kant scholars.[Details about these lecture notes can be found online] He called him the “German Shaftesbury”, and they struck up a very close friendship, Kant even handing him some of the manuscripts of his latest works before their actual publication. Once he read out one of Herder’s poems in his lecture class, and one of Herder’s earliest works written in Königsberg at this time, his “Essay on Being”(first published in 1936) begins with a panegyric to Kant. In 1766 reflecting back on his studies with him, he proudly declared to a friend, “I, who was initiated [eingeweihet] simultaneously into Rousseauiana and Humiana by Kant, who read both men every day”. Indeed, evidence from early notebooks of his from this time show how he structured his reading of [[Jean Jacques Rousseau]] early in the morning and late at night, at the same time Kant was reading “Emile”. So too, his close reading of [[David Hume’s]] philosophy in Königsberg so as to further his understanding of one of Kant’s prize essays that he was writing for the Berlin Academy at this time. Herder was acutely aware of Kant’s “Humean tone of philosophizing,” as he put it, in this intensely sceptical period of his. Much later, in his ‘Letters for the Advancement of Humanity’ (1795), despite the fact that they had become philosophical adversaries, he described Kant as “a true teacher of humanity” and said of his experience of his lectures in Königsberg:

”I heard his evaluations of Leibniz, Newton, Wolff, Crusius, Baumgarten, Helvetius, Hume, Rousseau, some of them then very new names; it is remarkable that when he dealt with them his sole aim was a noble search for truth, a beautiful enthusiasm for everything that was best in man, a ceaseless, dispassionate desire to imitate what was best and greatest…His philosophy provoked independent thought, and I can think of no more efficient agency to this end than his lectures, his thought was borne before your eyes and then you had to develop it further: he had no patience with dictation, doling out information or dogmatic pronouncements”

Herder also attended at the university the lectures of Johann Gottfried Teske (1704-1772), who taught physics, and was renowned for his extensive collection of scientific instruments and spectacular experiments with electricity. Another of Herder's teachers at Königsberg, Georg David Kypke (1724-1779), a professor of oriental languages, had published “Observations on the New Testament”(Breslau, 1755) and had translated into German, [[John Locke's]] "Of the Conduct of the Understanding", and the "A Discourse of Miracles" both published in 1755. It is generally accepted that Königsberg was “steeped in an Anglophile cultural milieu” and this had much to do with the mercantile nature of the Hansa and the Baltic coast.

Along with Kant it was the enigmatic figure of Johann Georg Hamann (1730-1788), the so-called ‘Magus of the North’, whilst not actually teaching at the university (although he had previously studied there), who is said to have had the greatest influence on the young Herder, and first introduced him to Shakespeare and Ossian. Herder almost certainly met him following a visit to Hamann’s father who was an elderly physician, possibly concerning a cure for his eye disorder, or, as Trescho’s former amuensis and the acclaimed newly published ‘Hermes of Mohrungen’ in Kanter’s bookshop- that was the popular meeting place of the Königsberg literati.
Herder spoke proudly of Hamann in August 1764, not only as his friend, but as his “British teacher”. They would read Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’ together in Königsberg, John Milton, and Herder also learnt Italian with him reading Dante’s ‘Inferno’ together. In their ensuing rich correspondence- one of the great treasures of the German Enlightenment- Herder affectionately called him ‘Onkel Toby’ after one of the characters in Laurence Sterne’s novel ‘Tristram Shandy’, Sterne, an author that Herder almost worshipped at this time. Hamann had previously worked for the merchant company of Johann Christoph Berens in Riga, and was well acquainted with the English language and the latest writings in English political economy as well as French physiocracy. Berens had earlier requested him to translate into German a pirated French translation of an English work by Josiah Tucker in 1756, like an early economic Baedecker of England( a work that the young Herder cherished and actually imitated in some of his early works), he was subsequently chosen by Berens in 1758 to travel on a mercantile–diplomatic mission to London to negotiate restrictive Anglo-Russian trade agreements. He lived for 14 months in London, a period that resulted in an existential crisis and a new found philosophical-religiosity . He was renowned for his rhapsodic and idiosyncratic style that was littered with bible centos, and very few could decipher the “nuggets of gold”, as Herder once called them, in his writings, the most celebrated being his ‘Socratic Memorabilia’ (1759) and “Crusades of a Philologian”(1762). Hamann is often spoken of as a founding father of the German Sturm und Drang[Storm and Stress] literary movement. His mediation of some key works of the Scottish enlightenment to the young Herder (Stuart, Ferguson) has attracted rather less attention than his idiosyncratic reading of Hume (See Sir Isaiah Berlin’s works).

It was in Kanter’s bookshop that Herder would befriend the young assistant, Johann Friedrich Hartknoch (1740-1789), who would eventually become Herder’s most important publisher and financial backer. Hartknoch had previously studied theology in Königsberg, he would later set up his own publishing house in Mitau and then Riga (1765), he was succeeded by his son, Johann Friedrich Hartknoch (1768-1819), Herder’s godson. Hartknoch published both Herder’s ‘Ideas for the philosophy & history of mankind’’ and Kant’s ‘Critique of pure reason’.

Herder left his family and Mohrungen when he was 17 and Königsberg at 20 years of age, as Wilhelm Dobbek has written, to look upon him as an adult, conversing effortlessly with university professors in Kanter’s bookshop, is psychologically rather questionable, especially if one considers his sensitivity, reservedness and innate shyness. However, Trescho, who knew him best, after visiting him in 1764, said that he had changed considerably “a completely different youth”[einen ganz anderen Jüngling], who “at last stood like a finished product for the wide world”[endlich für die große Welt gemacht dastand].