Enzyklopädie

Enzyklopädie (also known in German as Konversationslexikon).The first notable encyclopedia completed in German is the translation of P. Bayle's Dictionnaire historique et critique (1695-7) by J. C. Gottsched (4 vols., 1741-4). Before this the monumental Grosses vollständiges Universal Lexicon aller Wissenschaften und Künste (68 vols., 1732-54) had begun to appear; its first volume contains an introduction, dated 30 September 1731, by Johann Peter von Ludewig (1668-1743), a historian and professor of law at Halle University and from 1721 its chancellor. It was edited (from vol. 19) by Carl Günther Ludovici (1707-78), a philosopher and adherent of Christian Wolff at Leipzig University. This encyclopedia is also known as the ‘Zedlersches Lexikon’ after its original publisher Johann Heinrich Zedler (1706-51). It was reissued 1962-3.

Encyclopedias flourished in the 19th c. with the first Conversationslexicon of Brockhaus (6 vols., 1796-1808, purchased by the firm virtually complete in 1808, expanded to 10 vols. and renamed Enzyklopädie, 1819-20). Meyer's Das große Conversations-Lexikon für gebildete Stände was on a larger scale (44 vols., 1840-55). The first encyclopedia published by Herder in Freiburg appeared in 6 volumes (1853-7). The most ambitious project, Die Allgemeine Enzyklopädie der Wissenschaften und Künste, begun in 1818 by J. S. Ersch and J. G. Gruber, was abandoned, still incomplete, in 1890 after 167 volumes had been published.

The principal existing German encyclopedias are the Brockhaus Enzyklopädie (19th edn., 30 vols., 1986-96), Meyers enzyklopädisches Lexikon (9th edn., 32 vols., 1971-81), and Der große Herder (5th edn., 12 vols., 1952-62).