Berliner Kunstakademie und Weimarer Freye Zeichenschule: Andreas Riems Briefe an Friedrich Justin Bertuch, 1788/89 eds. by Anneliese Klingenberg and Alexander Rosenbaum (review)

This volume focuses on the eighteen letters sent by Andreas Riem, secretary of the Berlin Academy of Arts and Mechanical Sciences, to Friedrich Justin Bertuch between September 1788 and December 1789. Despite its brevity, this collection of letters chronicles the short career Riem had as secretarius perpetuus of the Berlin Academy (it ended in 1790) while also affirming the great degree of intellectual interaction between Berlin and Weimar during this period. The letters clearly reveal that members of Weimar’s cultural and intellectual elite were held in high esteem by the Berlin Academy and also show that this respectful relationship was used to revise the reputation of the academy itself. The appointment of the new curator Friedrich Anton von Heinitz in 1786 signaled a period of reform for the academy, and Riem’s letters thus capture a time of intense change and innovation within this institution.

The letters are fully transcribed and editorially unaltered; in this volume they appear for the first time in their entirety in print. The corpus of letters is presented with the deletions and changes that were made by Riem himself, which adds to the documentary status of this correspondence. The letters are meticulously researched, and the accompanying appendix offers a full archival commentary on the information conveyed. This scrupulous work, completed by Alexander Rosenbaum, will be of invaluable assistance to scholars working on any number of topics in this period. Overall, the editors show impressive and commendable attention to detail and provide solid documentation and supporting textual evidence for the topics discussed by Riem. For example, in the appendix they publish Bertuch’s description of the famed Freye Zeichenschule in Weimar, a contribution requested by Riem on multiple occasions for publication in his Monats-Schrift at the Berlin Academy. Letters by Goethe, Kraus, Wieland, and Grand Duke Carl August (confirming his acceptance to the Berlin Academy) are also printed in their entirety in the appendix. Carl August’s membership was discussed but also, rather significantly, mediated by Riem, and it stands as a notable legacy of his short career as secretary of the Berlin Academy. It is the great merit of this volume to make letters accessible to scholars that have not hitherto been published.

In addition to the methodical archival work, the editors have compiled a historical overview in their instructive afterword. Anneliese Klingenbergs’s useful synopsis of the epoch provides proper context to the many issues raised within the letters. The afterword describes the political conditions in which the academy was founded and elucidates some of the consequences of Woellner’s controversial Religious Edict of 1788. In numerous letters, Riem complains of the repression and censorship that his own work as writer and publisher suffered following this edict, alluding to his activities as editor of the Berlinische Journal für Aufklärung. His objection to the Religious Edict is most strongly articulated in his own abandonment of the pastoral office (noted in the second letter, dated October 1788), a situation that is fully explained in Klingenberg’s afterword.

The correspondence—regrettably, we have only one set of letters—offers insights into Riem’s precarious and demanding position as secretary at the Berlin Academy. The balance he attempts to strike between duty, business, and friendship is accurately portrayed and at times poignant to read. For instance, an implicit concern of Riem’s in his correspondence at this time was the increasing likelihood that he was about to be deprived of his position as secretary in favor of the well-connected Karl Philipp Moritz. This is not stated overtly anywhere; nonetheless, a strong sense of the author’s foreboding pervades many of the letters. (Nor was it unfounded: Moritz replaced Riem as secretary in 1790.) On this personal and psychological level, the volume is revealing. If, however, there is a slight shortcoming, it is that the much broader picture...