The encyclopaedia was part of this control. History and maps enshrined ownership; the mighty book was a reader’s mighty estate. Inevitably and immediately, an encyclopaedia became a part of the society it aimed to reflect. Britannica was itself a land to be exploited: once blank, the pages were now filled with new inky native wisdom (one early-twentieth century advertisement promoted pictorial ‘scenes in foreign lands, costumes of strange peoples’). For as long as Britain claimed an empire, the multi-volume encyclopaedia was colonialism in print. (Or, in an overworked term, knowledge was power.)
Scholarly archaeology, palaeontology and anthropology were also boosted in this sudden golden age, a period in which the notion of deep time itself was scrutinised. In 1750, the earth was widely considered to be only 6000 years old; geologists added millions to it. When astronomers joined the party, and the number turned to billions, the challenge for the encyclopaedist was to explain not only earthbound philosophy but our place in the universe. (And we think we live in an Information Age.)
To accommodate all these new findings and acquisitions at the end of the eighteenth century, the study of storage and the concept of the archive became academic disciplines of their own, as did the art of knowledge-gathering and the categorisation of new finds. The encyclopaedia again mirrored these developments in both concept and design, having struggled with similar dilemmas for decades.
In one sense the encyclopaedia had it easy: more information just meant more volumes. But where would you stop? When would a project designed to limit and encapsulate the growth of books itself know when to limit its expansion? Could something be too comprehensive? Would the Ökonmische Encyklopädie, printed in Germany from 1773 to 1858, eventually stretching to 242 volumes, be considered too ambitious for its own good?
The fact that it is not better known may provide the answer. The work was generally known as ‘the Krünitz’, after its founder (and editor of the first seventy-two volumes) Johann Georg Krünitz (glorious legend suggests he died while working on the entry Corpse). His was a grand general work, and much admired in its first years. But size wasn’t everything, and it failed to find a large enough inexhaustible readership, its reputation rapidly eclipsed by a modest never-ending little effort called the Brockhaus, of which we shall learn more shortly.
* Between the first two sat the mysterious plant Micropus, a ‘bastard cudweed, a genus of the polygamia neceffaria order … the receptacle is palcaceous; there is no pappus; the calyx is calyculated; there is no radius of the corolla.’
* See Peter Burke, A Social History of Knowledge, Volume II, (Polity Press, Cambridge, 2012).
J
JAHRBUCH
We have seen with the Grosses vollständiges Universal Lexicon Aller Wissenschafften und Künste, Welche bißhero durch menschlichen Verstand und Witz erfunden und verbessert worden how the Germans love a long title.
So it should come as little surprise to learn that the greatest German encyclopaedia of the age had a name that also refused to roll off the tongue. But it was at least enduring. Conversations-Lexikon oder kurzgefasstes Handwörterbuch für die in der gesellschaftlichen Unterhaltung aus den Wissenschaften und Künsten vorkommenden Gegenstände, mit beständiger Rücksicht auf die Ereignisse der älteren und neuren Zeit was a title that lasted, in various forms, almost 200 years, from the beginning of the nineteenth century to 2006, increasing and decreasing in size and popularity, and second only to the Britannica in influence, regard and longevity.
The first six-volume edition appeared between 1809 and 1811, and its 2000 copies sold out within months. When a new and revised edition was published between 1812 and 1819, Europe’s revolutionary wars and industrial expansion necessitated an increase to ten volumes and a print run of 3000. Its title was also revised, and inevitably lengthened, and was now almost a volume in itself:
Conversations-Lexicon oder Handwörterbuch für die gebildeten Stände über die in der gesellschaftlichen Unterhaltung und bei der Lectüre vorkommenden Gegenstände, Namen und Begriffe, in Beziehung auf Völker- und Menschengeschichte, Politik und Diplomatik, Mythologie und Archäologie, Erd-, Natur-, Gewerb- und Handlungskunde, die schönen Künste und Wissenschaften: mit Einschluß der in die Umgangssprache eingegangenen ausländischen Wörter und mit besonderer Rücksicht auf die älteren und neuesten merkwürdigen Zeitereignisse was edited and published by David Arnold Friedrich Brockhaus. To save time and energy, his great encyclopaedia was – almost from its inception – known simply as Brockhaus. And in Germany the word Brockhaus is to encyclopaedia what Roget is to thesaurus.
The spark came from the German scholar Dr Renatus Gotthelf Löbel. In 1796, aware of the impact of both the Encyclopédie and Britannica, Löbel began work in Leipzig on a modest version of a new German encyclopaedia, but died before the century was out. After several other editors and publishers took the helm, Friedrich Arnold Brockhaus acceded to the venture and, with the aid of his two sons, transformed it.
What set it apart? What would prompt the eleventh edition of Britannica (1910/11) to conclude that ‘no work of reference has been more useful and successful, or more frequently copied, imitated and translated, than that known as the Konversations-Lexikon of Brockhaus’? The answer, pertinently, lay in (part of) the title. This translated as ‘General German Encyclopedia for the Educated’, and it announced a simple concept with wide appeal. Rather than the increasingly lengthy, philosophical and scientific entries of the Britannica, it offered a more popular approach to the attainment of knowledge: the ‘educated’ of the title was inclusive, the volumes written to appeal to curious young adults rather than just the highly qualified. Further, the venture had an element of the newspaper to it: from 1857, supplements would appear every month, confusingly called the Jahrbuch. When the supplements appeared twice monthly from 1865, the name was changed to Unsere Zeit (Our Time). Never before had an encyclopaedia created a sense of a living tutorial focused on continual intellectual improvement.*
Frequent new editions of increasing size were met with a corresponding increase in sales; the fifth edition was reprinted twice and sold more than 30,000 copies, a magnificent achievement, and soon its influence extended well beyond Germany. A translation of its seventh edition provided the groundwork for the Encyclopedia Americana (1829–33), the most successful American encyclopaedia after Dobson’s. In 1890, a Russian version was published in St Petersburg, where readers could choose either the thirty-five or eighty-six-volume set.*
The Brockhaus was based in the same building in Leipzig from 1808 to 1943, when it was bombed and partially destroyed by the British. It took four years to resurrect itself on a smaller scale in Wiesbaden, and the great project flourished again until the last full-scale print edition of 2006, by which time it had been partially destroyed by the Internet. It still thrives online, where one is greeted with the message ‘Willkommen in der Welt des Wissens und Lernens!’*