Encyclopaedia Americana

The first modern encyclopedia designed and published in the United States according to international standards established in Europe in the first quarter of the nineteenth century was the work of the German American Francis (Franz) Lieber (1798 or 1800 to 1872), an eminent jurist, political scientist, and polymath.

With its thirteen volumes, the Encyclopaedia Americana, Popular Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, Literature, History, Politics and Biography, Brought down to the Present Time; Including a Copious Collection of Original Articles in American Biography; on the Basis of the Seventh Edition of the German Conversations- Lexicon, was published in Philadelphia from 1829 to 1833 and became an instant success with the American reading public, notably among the professional class. During the following decades, the Encyclopaedia Americana was published in numerous editions in different places by different pubishers and was widely used in all parts of the country until the time of the Civil War. Its significance is twofold. First of all, it represents the successful transfer and adaptation of the German type of encyclopedia, namely Brockhaus’s twelve-volume Allgemeine deutsche Real-Lncyclopaedie fur die gebildeten Stande or Conversations- Lexikon (Universal German Encyclopedia for the Educated Classes, 1827—1829), to the needs and circumstances of the United States, and in the process it evolved into a truly American reference work. At the same time, it functioned over many decades as a widely accepted source of information, not only about things American but also about the history and culture of the principal European nations of England, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, and Spain.

Lieber had derived the rationale for his enterprise from “the wants of the age,” which he saw as not confined to the new American republic but as a common trait of all modern Western nations.

The speed with which political changes now took place; the accelerating pace of scientific discoveries, where “science gathers contributions from every quarter of the globe ” (vol. 1:iv); and the increasing facility of communication among nations with the rapid spread of information had enormously enlarged the field of civilization and therefore required a new type of work that would furnish the general reader with all the information necessary to keep abreast of these developments. The Brockhaus Re- allexikon (encyclopedia) had successfully filled that need in Germany and other European countries (it was translated into Danish, Dutch, Swedish, and French). Now Lieber wanted to create a “repository of knowledge” relating to the United States and to all branches of knowledge that could be of value to an English and American readership and include “all subjects of general interest on the continent of Europe” (vol. 1:v). The Encyclopaedia Americana was thus explicitly designed by Lieber to venture beyond the traditional historical and cultural reach of the English encyclopedias that had been in use in the United States until the early 1800s.

Lieber’s plan for such a work won immediate approval and strong support among the New England intelligentsia, notably from the group of recent graduates of the University of Gottingen in Germany, who shared and expressed a view of a future American national culture independent from that of Great Britain and in whose plans the adaptation and utilization of German cultural ideas and achievements played a vital part. They included George Bancroft; Edward Everett, professor of Classics at Harvard and subsequently its president; and George Ticknor, the first professor of Romance Languages and Literatures at Harvard. In Gottingen they had been students of the new historical and philological disciplines for which the university was famous and had absorbed the Herderian notions of nationhood and national culture upon which these disciplines had been erected.

Upon their return to the United States, they used these new ideas to construct their own notion of an American national culture. They found their mouthpiece when Everett assumed the editorship of the prestigious North American Review. An essential part of their program was the attempt to enlarge the American cultural horizon beyond the one they had inherited from their former colonial masters. The journal published important articles by Bancroft, Alexander, and Edward Everett, which introduced the American public to major German authors such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, and Johann Gottfried Herder. Lieber, who had made contact with the group upon his arrival in Boston in 1827, shortly saw himself play the double role of mediator of German culture in this country and participant in the new American nationalist movement whose cultural and political ideals he shared. Supplied with strong letters of support from the Gottingen alumni, he convinced Mathew Carey, of Carey, Lea, and Carey of Philadelphia, arguably the most prominent publishing house in the country at the time, to accept his proposal for an American encyclopedia and sign a contract with him.

Setting up shop in Boston with Carey’s support, he hired an assistant editor (E.Wigglesworth), and went about his task employing up to a dozen translators at a time. Yet to make the work truly an American encyclopedia required the removal of hundreds of articles from the original Brockhaus encyclopedia, the rewriting of hundreds more, and the creation of an equal number of new entries. He succeeded in securing American contributors who were experts in their respective fields, the most prominent among them Joseph Storey, associate justice at the Supreme Court, who contributed over 120 pages on American legal topics. Also in need of treatment were the topics of Native American languages and American history, biography, economy, geography, mineralogy, and flora and fauna. Robert Walsh, editor of the American Quarterly, agreed to write the biographies of prominent Americans; Moses Stuart, theology professor at Andover and an expert on German biblical hermeneutics, wrote and/or translated many of the articles on religious topics; Edward Everett was responsible for the Greek and Roman classics; and George Ticknor covered modern European letters and literatures, in particular those of Italy and Spain.

John Pickering of Salem, Massachusetts, who, together with Peter S. Dupon- ceau, president of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia (also a contributor), belongs among the founders of American linguistics, was commissioned to write a lengthy article on the North American Indian languages. To inform the American public about the forthcoming work, Lieber in 1828 had an eight-page prospectus inserted in the North American Review. In 1829 the first volume appeared, and by 1830 volume 5 had been published, but the final volume (13) was not published until 1833 because the task had proven more demanding and complicated than the editor had first anticipated. Writing to his German correspondent Wilhelm von Humboldt, who belonged to the European network of friends and informants with whom he had stayed in contact after his arrival in this country (Wilhelm and his brother Alexander both were accorded entries in the encyclopedia), Lieber likened the Encyclopaedia Americana project to a jealous mistress who mercilessly claimed his time. In order to bring the work up to date on the latest political developments, as promised in the title, Lieber felt obliged to write extensive accounts of the Greek Revolutionary War, the July Revolution of 1830 in France, the establishment of the Kingdom of Belgium in 1831, and the English Reform Act of 1832.

Upon completion, the shape of the work was determined as much by the standards required for the modern encyclopedia as by the editor’s decisions on what to include and exclude; his choice of contributors; and his educational background, intellectual culture, historical understanding, and philosophical and political beliefs and opinions. Although the work, in order to represent the political map of the time, contains articles on most European nations, their respective treatments differ noticeably in type and density of information offered. “Germany,” with nearly 34 pages, would seem to surpass “Great Britain,” with a mere 26 pages, were it not for an additional 6.5-page entry “England” (with an entry on the English language) and another 5.5 pages on “Scotland.” Belgium, mentioned only briefly in volume 1 (the country did not exist yet in 1829), was given a 15-page treatment in the appendix to volume 13.

Poland, although not an independent state, received an entry of over 10 pages because, Lieber argued, it possessed a clear ethnic, cultural, and linguistic identity. The entry “Prussia,” in contrast, consists of only 7.5 pages and includes critical comments on the heterogeneous nature of the Prussian state. “Russia” has 33 pages, against “Spain” with 24 and “Portugal” with about 17, whereas “Italy” takes up nearly 45 pages. However, the lengthiest treatment—over 100 pages—was given to “France.” Its extraordinary length (including several appendices) was not due to a predilection of Lieber for France or French civilization, but resulted from his view of the current state of affairs in Europe as the consequence of the French Revolution and its aftermath: the rise of Napoleon, his conquest of Europe and eventual defeat, the order imposed at the Congress of Vienna with its restoration of the monarchical system on the continent, the opposition it encountered in various countries, and the developments in France that led to the July Revolution of 1830. The latter was seen by Lieber as an encouraging sign that other countries, in particular Germany, might follow suit and move toward a democratic and representative form of government. The developments in France were therefore depicted within the larger European context, and much of the lengthy account devoted to them read more like a history of modern Europe than French history. Not surprisingly, Lieber used these articles in a separate publication.

Yet upon closer examination, the apparent preponderance of France over the rest of the European nations dissipates, and a persistent German presence emerges. The very structure and organization of the work in fact displayes its German descent. Besides the entry “Germany,” we find a veritable plethora of different articles dealing with German literature, philosophy, theology, science, scholarship, music, and painting that convey mostly state-of-the-art information and open new vistas that had not been available in the country until then.

In addition, many articles pertaining to topics such as Greek and Roman civilization or the entries on general literary topics, such as the ballad, the drama, the epic, the concept “romantic,” and the substantial article on literary history—areas in which the Germans had taken the lead— relied heavily on German scholarship. Often, German scholars and critics, like August Wilhelm and Friedrich Schlegel, are quoted verbatim. The same holds true for the articles on Homer and the English poet William Shakespeare. The list of German authors represents a substantial enlargement of the literary horizon of the New England Gottingen alumni, whose interest was focused on classical authors like Herder, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Goethe, and Schiller. Now for the first time information was made available on the mainstream of writers that make up the literary history of Germany. Thus new names were added to the canon that had been established by Madame de Stael in her influential book De LAllmagne (Germany, 1813; Amer. ed., 1814). Besides entries on authors such as Clemens Brentano, Gottfried August Burger, Heinrich Wilhelm von Gerstenberg, Salomon Gessner, Johann Wilhelm Gleim, Johann Christoph Gottsched, Friedrich von Hagedorn, Albrecht von Haller, Friedrich Maximilian Klinger, Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, Lessing, Martin Opitz, Jean Paul Richter, Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg), Ludwig Tieck, on the medieval Nibelungen poem and, of course, Goethe and Schiller, we encounter names not mentioned by de Stael, such as Ernst Moritz Arndt, Simon Dach, Paul Fleming, Christian Furchtegott Gellert, Paul Gerhardt, Andreas Gryphius, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Ludwig Christoph Holty, or Johann Anton Leisewitz. Throughout, entries are organized around the biographical data for each figure; their important works are given with a few descriptive and (or) evaluating comments, mostly from a moralizing, liberal, political point of view. Thus Arndt is praised for having contributed to the liberation of Germany from Napoleonic rule “by his bold and patriotic writings” (vol. 1:386), and Novalis’s Hymns to the Night we are informed “have the greatest merit,” though we are not told why. About Klopstock we learn that as a lyric poet, he belonged among the most successful of any age, so that “he may well be called the Pindar of modern poetry” (vol. 7:377).

The treatment of Germanys philosophy and theology, though uneven in its coverage, proved to be more consequential than that of its literature. It raised issues and evoked ideas that preoccupied the minds of the New England intelligentsia at the time, providing them with strong indicators for the making of a new philosophical outlook beyond traditional empiricism or Calvinism that would be articulated by the Transcendentalists (Ralph Waldo Emerson and Theodore Parker) during the following years and decades. Among the articles on German philosophers, those on Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Immanuel Kant are the longest. The entries on the idealists Joahnn Gottlieb Fichte, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling contain no more than biographical and scant bibliographical data and generalizations, though some of Schelling’s main ideas are discussed in an article on the German philosophy of nature. Fichte is praised chiefly for his patriotism and ethical stance. Schelling and Hegel were still alive at the time, as was Goethe. The entry on Leibniz, “one of the most celebrated scholars and philosophers Germany has ever produced” (vol. 7:490), by contrast, discusses the details of his life and his achievements in various fields, from mathematics, logic, and physics to metaphysics. Here the emphasis is placed on his rationalist, antiempiricist stance, notably his doctrine of innate necessary truths. In his article on Kant, Lieber uses formulations that evoked this Leibnizian doctrine when he describes key notions in that thinker’s Kritik der Reinen Vernunft (Critique of Pure Reason). He employes expressions first introduced by de Stael to account for Kant’s position at a time when no English or French translations were yet available. Formulations much like these by Lieber later entered into the core writings of the American Transcendentalists: Kant having discovered “the fundamental laws of the mind,” ascertained the “exact number of these original or transcendental ideas or, imperative forms.” These we do not derive from experience, but rather “we acquire experience” by them. Of the mind’s three departments, the senses are “passive,” whereas the understanding displays “spontaneous activity,” yet reason shows “the highest degree of mental spontaneity” (vol. 7:305—306). Remarkably, Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, “a distinguished German philosopher,” receives more attention than any of the idealist thinkers or Lieber’s former teacher, Jakob Friedrich Fries. On account of the “religious glow “ of his metaphysical writings, Jacobi has been called “the German Plato,” and Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher is lauded for having “done much for the intellectual and religious advancement of his countrymen.” Georg Christoph Lichtenberg is described as “the greatest natural philosopher, and wittiest writer Germany has produced.” But these men are surpassed by Herder, to whom “Germany is deeply indebted in almost every branch of literature” (i.e., in theology, philosophy, literature, and history) and “who brought before the public the poetry of past times of Europe and Asia” (vol. 6:274f.). Yet the entries on European philosophers, taken singly or together, regardless of nationality, only insufficiently convey the importance that was attributed by the editor of the Encyclopaedia Americana to German philosophy. In the article “Philosophy” (Appendix, vol. 10:594— 604), the exceptionality of German thought is maintained and its reach extended beyond the traditional sphere of philosophy. The Germans had acquired through their philosophy “a spirit of scientific liberty, unknown in other nations,” a spirit that pervaded “the best of their works on religion, on literature, on natural philosophy”... “and may well challenge comparison.” Madame de Stael had already expressed similar views, as would the Transcendentalists later.

In its compilation of the scientific knowledge produced in the different European nations, the Encyclopaedia Americana included a significant contingent of German scientists and scholars, many of whom were connected with the University of Gottingen. Besides the mathematician Karl Friedrich Gauss and Johann Friedrich Blu- menbach, founder of modern anthropology, we find representatives of the historical-philological disciplines, such as the orientalist Johann Gottfried Eichhorn, the classicist Christian Gottlob Heyne, the philosopher and literary historian Friedrich Bouterwek, and the historian Arnold Hermann Heeren, some of whose works had been translated and published in this country by his former student Bancroft. Lieber included entries on the German linguists Jakob Grimm, Heinrich Julius Klaproth, Johann and Friedrich Adelung, and Johann Severinus Vater—the latter two were involved with the beginnings of American linguistics. This new discipline (in which Lieber possessed strong personal interest) was represented by John Pickering, with his article on the American Indian languages (Appendix, vol.6:581—600, subsequently translated and published in Germany), and by Peter S. Duponceau, with entries on the German Moravian missionaries in Pennsylvania, Johann Gottlieb Ernst Heckewelder, and David Zeisberger and their pioneering work on Indian languages and customs. Lieber also included a lengthy and personal article on the historian Berthold Niebuhr, his former teacher and benefactor (231 lines). His desire to join German and the American traditions can be gathered also from his treatment of the U.S. legal system. Thus, the article on the jury system consists of two parts: one, the translated Brockhaus text by a German legal scholar who also discusses the weaknesses of the system, and the other, a contribution by the American judge Storey. This entry illustrates in an exemplary fashion how the Encyclopaedia Americana could be both product and vehicle of the multifarious process of German American cultural transfer it helped set in motion and sustain.

A distinct weakness of the work derives from the the disproportionate length of its

articles devoted to the lives of American political and military personalities. Thus, the entry on Benedict Arnold, American general and turncoat during the American Revolution, takes up almost 10 pages, whereas Aristotle and Rene Descartes are compressed into 2 pages each, and the poet John Milton occupies a mere 2.5 pages. Yet on balance, the work, with its approximately 8,000 pages and 20,000 articles, proved a highly practical and effective compilation of knowledge. Its ready availability and low price contributed to its suc- cess—its contents equaled that of thirty-six to forty-eight English octavo volumes, which would have cost about $150, whereas the price for the entire thirteen- volume set was a mere $32.50. It sold throughout the entire country and abroad, with sales reaching 100,000 sets over the years. Presidents Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln owned one, as did Emerson and his writer friends; Alexis de Tocqueville received one as a gift from the editor himself. The work helped enormously “to republicanize,” as one reviewer put it, the knowledge that once had been the privilege of a few. It was above all the rapid expansion of the United States during the decades following its first publication that rendered the work outdated by the time of the Civil War.

Kurt Mueller-Vollmer

Encyclopaedia Americana

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