Family Name: Meiners
First Name: Christoph
Birth Date: Mon, Jul 31, 1747
Birth Place: Warstade
Death Date: Tue, May 01, 1810
Death Place: Göttingen
Main places of activity:
Place From To
Göttingen 1767 1810
Personal info:
Education

1763-1767 – Gymnasium (Bremen).

1767-1770 – Georgia Augusta University of Göttingen
Career

1772-1775 – Professor extraordinarius (University of Göttingen)

1775-1810 – Professor ordinarius (University of Göttingen)

c. 1789-1810 – Hofrath (court counsellor) (up to 1806 to the Elector of Hanover; to the King of Great Britain following dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire). Note: while considered significant by contemporaries, this was probably seen largely as an honorary position and it is unlikely that Meiners had a significant role in Hanoverian, let alone British, politics. However, as very little of his correspondence survives, it remains unclear precisely what his activities were in this regard.

1803-1810 – Hired by the Russian government (with unspecified title) to recruit professors for Russian universities.


Memberships:

1776 – Member of the Royal Society of Sciences (Göttingen)

1803 – Member of the Société philotechnique (Paris)

1804 – Honorary Member of the University of Moscow

1805 – Honorary Member of the Moscow Society of Naturalists

1806 – Member of the Italian Academy of Sciences and Arts

1808 – Ordinary Member of the Bavarian Royal Academy of Sciences in Munich

1809 – Corresponding member of the Institut de France
Financial Situation

Unclear. In the 1780s Meiners was paid eight Reichsthaler per sheet, apparently making him one of contemporary Germany's best-paid authors (Anne-Margarete Brenker, Die Meyersche Hofbuchhandlung in Lemgo in der zweiten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts (Bielefeld, 1996), p. 93).
Translations Other Works

translations activities

Although best known for his racial theory and defence of the transatlantic slave trade, Christoph Meiners was a prolific author who published at least forty-four books over his life (many of them multivolume). These included translations of work by Pietro Verri (1777) and James Beattie (1779) . He also provided an extensive commentary for a translation of Jesuit reports from China made, from French, by a "Herr Bergmann" (possibly Liborius von Bergmann) in 1778. While this commentary to the Jesuit reports and various other early works frequently express xenophobic and chauvinist views, it is notable that they precede his explicit commitment to the view that racial hierarchies are facts of nature. These make them particularly useful sources in tracing the development of his thought up to his writings on race.

More generally, many of Meiners' writings are concerned with introducing German readers to British ideas and, accordingly, several of his works contain long passages translated from British authors. This is perhaps most prominent in his writings on ethics of 1800-1801, in which he presented the work of British moralists such as the Third Earl of Shaftesbury, Francis Hutcheson, and Adam Smith as offering a viable alternative to Immanuel Kant's critical philosophy.

secondary bibliography references

Anderson, Lara & Merle Benbow, Heather, 'Christoph Meiners' History of the Female Sex (1788-1800): The orientalisation of Spain and German nationalism', in History of European Ideas, vol. 35 (2009), 433-440.

Carhart, Michael C., The Science of Culture in Enlightenment Germany (Cambridge, MA, 2007).

Carhart, Michael C., 'Polynesia and Polygenism: the Scientific use of Travel Literature in the Early 19th Century', in History of the Human Sciences, Vol. 22, No. 2 (2009), 58-86.

Dougherty, Frank W. P., 'Christoph Meiners und Johann Friedrich Blumenbach im Streit um den Begriff der Menschenrasse', in Mann, Gunter & Dumont, Franz (eds.), Die Natur des Menschen: Probleme der Physischen Anthropologie und Rassenkunde (1750-1850) (Stuttgart, 1990), 89-111.

Golf-French, Morgan, 'Bourgeois Modernity versus the Historical Aristocracy in Christoph Meiners' Political Thought', in The Historical Journal 62/4 (2019), 943-966.

Golf-French, Morgan, ‘From Atheists to Empiricists: Reinterpreting Stoicism in the German Enlightenment', in Modern Intellectual History (issue tbc; available online).

Lotter, Friedrich, 'Christoph Meiners und die Lehre von der unterschiedlichen Wertigkeit der Menschenrassen', in Boockmann, Hartmut & Wellenreuther, Hermann (eds.), Geschichtswissenschaft in Göttingen: Eine Vorlesungsreihe (Göttingen, 1987), 30-75.

Park, Peter K. J., Africa, Asia, and the History of Philosophy: Racism in the Formation of the Philosophical Canon, 1780-1830 (Albany, NY, 2013).

Rupp-Eisenreich, Britta, 'Des choses occultes en histoire des sciences humaines: le destin de la "science nouvelle" de Christoph Meiners', in L'Ethnographie, Nos. 90-91 (1983), 131-183.

Rupp-Eisenreich, Britta, 'Christoph Meiners et Joseph-Marie de Gérando: un chapitre du comparatisme anthropologique', in Droixhe, D. & Goissiaux, Pol-P (eds.), L'Homme des lumières et la decouverte de l'autre (Brussels, 1985), 21-47.

Stiening, Gideon and Klingner, Stefan, Christoph Meiners (1747-1810): Anthropologie und Geschichtsphilosophie  in der Spätaufklärung (Berlin, 2022).

Stollberg-Rilinger, Barbara, 'Väter der Frauengeschichte? Das Geschlecht als historiographische Kategorie im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert', in Historische Zeitschrift, Vol. 262, No. 1 (1996), 39-71.

Vetter, Sabine, Wissenschaftlicher Reduktionismus und die Rassentheorie von Christoph Meiners: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der verlorenen Metaphysik in der Anthropologie (Aachen, 1996).

Translations

  • Idee sull'indole del piacere

  • Translation Title: Gedanken über die Natur des Vergnügens
  • Original Author: Pietro Verri
  • Original title: Idee sull'indole del piacere
  • Publ. Year From: 1773 to:
  • lang: Italian
  • Note:

    Title page reads 1774, but all sources agree it was in fact published in 1773.

    An expanded version was published as "Discorso sull'indole del piacaere, e del dolore" in Discorsi del conte Pietro Verri dell'Instituto delle Scienze di Bologna (Milan: Giuseppe Marelli, 1781). The volume also contains the essays "Sulla Felicità" and "Sulla Economia Politica".
  • Translation: Gedanken über die Natur des Vergnügens
  • Publisher:
  • N° Editions: 1
  • Pub. Place: Leipzig
  • Pub. Date: 1777
  • Lang: German
  • Note:

    Subtitle: "Translated from the Italian, and accompanied with annotations by Christoph Meiners, professor of philosophy at Göttingen." ("Aus dem Italiänischen übersetzt, und mit Anmerkungen begleitet von Christoph Meiners, Professor der Weltweisheit in Göttingen.")

  • Essays

  • Translation Title: Jakob Beattie's, Professor der Moral und Logik in Aberdeen, neue philosophische Versuche
  • Original Author: James Beattie
  • Original title: Essays
  • Publ. Year From: 1776 to:
  • lang: English
  • Note:

    Contains the following essays:

    On the Nature and Immutability of Truth, in opposition to Sophistry and Scepticism.

    On Poetry and Music, as they affect the Mind.

    On Laughter, and Ludicrous Composition.

    On the Utility of Classical Learning.


    Each published previously but revised for this edition.
  • Translation: Jakob Beattie's, Professor der Moral und Logik in Aberdeen, neue philosophische Versuche
  • Pub. Place: Leipzig
  • Pub. Date: 1779
  • Lang: German
  • Note:

    Contains the following from Beattie's Essays:

    Versuch über Dichtkunst und Musik, insofern sie die Seele rühren (On Poetry and Music, as they affect the Mind).  Included in vol. 1.

    Versuch über die Unveränderlichkeit der Wahrheit (Essay on the Immutability of Truth). Included in volume 1. Extracts only.

    Versuch über das Lachen und über wizige Schriften (On Laughter, and Ludicrous Composition). Included in vol. 2.

    Bemerkungen über die klassische Gelehrsamkeit (On the Utility of Classical Learning). Included in vol. 2.


    Meiners includes only extracts from the Essay on the Immutability of Truth which had been added for the 1776 collection, as a previous, complete, translation of the first edition (Edinburgh: A. Kincaid & J. Bell; E. & C. Dilly, 1770) had already been published (anonymously) as Versuch über die Natur und Unveränderlichkeit der Wahrheit; im Gegensatze der Klügeley und der Zweifelsucht (Copenhagen and Leipzig: Heineck und Faber, 1772).

  • Mémoires concernant l'histoire, les sciences, les arts, les mœurs, les usages, &c. des Chinois par les Missionaires de Pekin

  • Translation Title: Abhandlungen Sinesischer Jesuiten, über die Geschichte, Wissenschaften, Künste, Sitten und Gebräuche der Sinesen
  • Original Author: Jean Joseph Marie Amiot and others
  • Original title: Mémoires concernant l'histoire, les sciences, les arts, les mœurs, les usages, &c. des Chinois par les Missionaires de Pekin
  • Publ. Year From: 1776 to: 1814
  • lang: French
  • Note:

    The Mémoires were a vast project initially directed – and largely written – by Jean Joseph Marie Amiot (1718-1793). The first fifteen volumes were published between 1776 and 1791, with a sixteenth appearing in 1814.
  • Translation: Abhandlungen Sinesischer Jesuiten, über die Geschichte, Wissenschaften, Künste, Sitten und Gebräuche der Sinesen
  • Pub. Place: Leipzig
  • Pub. Date: 1778
  • Lang: German
  • Note:

    Only the first volume of the Mémoires concernant les Chinois appears to have been translated. A series of plates at the end of the original are not included. Meiners supplied critical commentary.

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By:

  • Morgan Golf-French