Schillers ´Horen´ in the field of forces around 1800

Friedrich Schillers literary journal Die Horen. Eine Monatsschrift, published between 1795 and 1797 by J.F. Cotta in Tübingen, ranks among the most significant German literary periodicals. Across a total of 36 issues, the journal featured 213 contributions by 50 authors, including prominent figures such as Johann Wolfgang Goethe, August Wilhelm Schlegel, Johann Gottfried Herder, and Johann Gottlieb Fichte. Several texts now considered canonical first appeared in Die Horen notably Schillers Briefe Ueber die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen and Goethes widely discussed Römische Elegien. The journal consolidated the collaboration between Schiller and Goethe, brought together the literary elite of the late eighteenth century, and helped establish Cotta as one of the leading publishers of his time. Despite its undisputed literary and cultural significance, Die Horen as this study (doctoral thesis, Humboldt University of Berlin and University of Vienna) sets out to show has yet to be thoroughly investigated. Many texts remain unexplored, and little is known about the journal itself: how it was presented, who its readers were, or how it functioned as a medium. This study offers the first attempt at a broad, integrative analysis of the Horen project. It tells a different story of the journal one that moves beyond all too familiar narrative of failure after the first year: the story of a dynamic, multifaceted, and sustained publishing enterprise, and of an editor who managed to balance high ideals with pragmatic realities. The study examines the journals genesis, the roles of key contributors (Christian Gottfried Körner as supporting and supported actor and his theory of absolute music), canonical texts an key topics from new angles (autonomy of art), the veritable boom in literary translations around 1800 (Goethe`s translation of Benvenuto Cellini`s autobiography) and previously overlooked or unknown contributions (Johann Baptist v. Alxingers Juvenal -imitations), especially those by female authors such as Sophie Mereau. In addition, it explores poetological and aesthetic concerns, genre-related questions, medium-specific writing practices, and publishing formats such as serialized texts. The analysis is grounded in Pierre Bourdieus theory of the literary field, praxeological approaches, materiality studies, and current models of journal research. Supplementing these frameworks, statistical analyses are employed to examine the 1796 and 1797 volumes in a systematic way for the first time. By combining theoretical innovation with detailed empirical inquiry, this study not only opens up new perspectives on a seemingly well-known periodical, but also contributes to the examination and further development of theoretical and methodological approaches in contemporary journal research.