Johann Friedrich Cotta—Publisher, Statesman, Entrepreneur

A talk by Dr. Bernhard Fischer, director of the Goethe- and Schiller-Archive in Weimar.

Johann Friedrich Cotta (1764–1832) was one of the most fascinating personalities of the so-called Goethezeit in Germany. Born in 1764, he took part in every sphere of the intellectual revolution that arose in the wake of the French Revolution: the beginnings of a German “Nationalliteratur,” of a discourse-based political public life and constitutional government, and the advancement of science (and the Industrial Revolution). He established a legendary publishing company that published not only the works of Goethe, Schiller, Herder, and many other famous authors, but also some fifty different periodicals in addition to the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung, which was intended to be the German Times. Owner of the most important publishing empire of his time, he fought for the freedom of the press and for the protection of publishers and authors against literary piracy, and he was elected to pursue these ideas at the Congress of Vienna and at the Bundestag in Frankfurt as representative of the German book trade. But his enormous success as publisher is just one aspect of his biography.

From Deutsches Haus NYU