Inghilterra e Italia viste dalla nuova periferia europea: l'archivio Mitauer di Heinrich von Offenberg (1752-1827)

The research project focuses on the basis of hitherto unknown evidence from historical archives in Northern and Eastern Europe on two intermediaries of the Enlightenment - Rudolf Erich Raspe (1736-94) and Heinrich von Offenberg (1752-1827) - and thus moves into a newly opening research field of the history of cultural transfers between Western and Eastern Europe. Triggered by former and current research by the project leader in the field of comparative historical research, the history of travel, the history of ideas and last but not least the history of 18th-century art (the influence of Denis Diderot, Friedrich Melchior Grimm, Johann Friedrich Reiffenstein and other intermediaries on the culture of knowledge, the history of collecting and the artistic patronage of their time) it is the aim of this project to recuperate and analyse for the first time in depth these virtually unknown sources of an undisputed high quality (in this case from Latvian archives). At the same time it is hoped that this undertaking will contribute towards reopening a perspective on a European periphery which for a long time was lost as a result of the deep-rooted geopolitical upheavals of the Twentieth Century. Thus the project will also try to confront the notion of a cultural and historical European unity from a consciously comparative perspective, which has become once again possible since 1989/92.