Isis (journal, 1816)

Isis was an encyclopedic journal that focused on articles on natural science, medicine, technology, economics as well as art and history.

Edited by Lorenz Oken and published by Friedrich Arnold Brockhaus, Isis was the first interdisciplinary journal in the German-speaking world.

Originally conceived as a non-political journal, Oken was forced to vehemently defend the freedom of the press in the first years of Isis' existence.

This resulted in numerous lawsuits against Oken, some of which overlapped in time, which led to temporary bans on Isis in the Grand Duchy of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach.

In the run-up to the Carlsbad Decrees, this led to Oken's dismissal as a professor at the University of Jena at the end of June 1819 under pressure from the states of the Holy Alliance.

From 2006 to 2013, a project funded by the German Research Foundation at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena studied the significance of Isis for scientific communication and the popularization of the natural sciences in the first half of the 19th century.

[2] Presumably at the end of June/beginning of July 1815, Oken took over the editorship of the Tagesgeschichte, a supplement to the Deutsche Blätter, which was dedicated to daily politics and for which he wrote and edited numbers 1 to 16.

[8] The design concept for Isis was delayed until July 1816, as Oken was still working on the zoological section of his textbook on natural history.

Oken reached an agreement with Brockhaus that a copper plate should appear in each booklet, and he worked towards a low sales price.

Oken had a woodcut made for the title head, in the middle of which the goddess Isis is depicted on an ancient Egyptian throne.

Oken commissioned the rector of the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig, Veit Schnorr von Carolsfeld (1764–1841), to create the frontispiece and later copper plates.

[11] Oken introduced this first issue of Isis, which appeared on August 1, 1816,[12] with an excerpt from the Basic Law on the State Constitution of the Grand Duchy of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach.

As he feared for the financial security of his paper, Eichstädt turned to the President of the State Ministry in Weimar, Christian Gottlob Voigt, and obtained a renewal of this privilege on July 17, 1816.

Oken, who became aware of the verdict eight days later, protested against it to the Weimar government on September 2 and attached the first five issues of Isis to his letter in support of his position.

[I 4] In the third issue of Isis, Oken also printed a letter dated December 5, 1811, from the Rostock professors Samuel Gottlieb Vogel, Wilhelm Josephi, Georg Heinrich Masius (1771–1823) and Karl Ernst Theodor Brandenburg (1772–1827), in which they rejected Oken's appointment to the vacant chair of natural history at the University of Rostock due to his pompous natural philosophy.

The expert opinions written by Anton Ziegesar (1783–1843), the head of the administrative and police authority Karl Wilhelm von Fritsch, and the head of the school and church system Ernst Christian August von Gersdorff were collected together with the first eleven issues of Isis in a file entitled Acta Geheimer Staats-Canzley Den Unfug der Preßfrechheit besonders der Isis betr.

[20] In his reply of 5 October, Goethe recommended to the Grand Duke not to prosecute Oken personally, but to take action against the printer of Isis and thus enforce a ban on printing the journal.

[I 6] In June 1817, the Prussian Minister of Police, Wilhelm Ludwig Georg Fürst zu Wittgenstein, complained to Carl August about a derogatory criticism of a Prussian decree of 1811 that had appeared in the Oppositions-Blatt and a small note in Isis,[I 7] in which Oken complained about Prussia's presumption in wanting to interfere even in insignificant matters such as those of the Vienna Agricultural Society.

Fourteen days later, Oken published a report on the meeting at Wartburg Castle, which also contained a list of the burned books and objects, along with mocking signs.

Through an indiscretion, the history professor Heinrich Luden from Jena came into possession of one of the numerous bulletins written by the Russian consul general Kotzebue and intended for Tsar Alexander I in mid-December 1817.

Under pressure from the Russian envoy to the Saxon court, Vasily Vasilyevich Chanykov (1759–1829), the Weimar state treasurer Carl August Constantin Schnauss (1782–1832) was forced to file charges against Oken on April 20, 1819.

[40] From the outset, Isis devoted considerable space to summaries and abstracts of publications published in foreign scientific and academic journals.

[39] In the last volume of 1848, Christian Ludwig Brehm published original articles in Isis with Ueber das allmählige Fortrücken der Vögel, Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Siedhofs (1803 - ca.

1867) with Naturgeschichtliches aus den Vereinigten Staaten von Nordamerica, Johann Jakob Kaup with Uebersicht der Eulen (Strigidae) and Christian Gottfried Giebel with Das subhercynische Becken um Quedlinburg in geognostisch-paläontologischer Beziehung.

Some of the publications discussed in this volume were Sebastian Egger's (1803–1866) Ueber die Pflichten gegen die Thiere, Franz von Kobell's Mineralogie, Christian Gottfried Giebel's Fauna der Vorwelt, Mauro Rusconi's (1776–1849) Riflessioni sopra il sistema linfatico dei rettili, Johann Malfatti's Neue Heilversuche, Karl Bernhard Stark's Kunst und Schule and Joseph Hippolyt Pultes (1805–1869) Organon der Weltgeschichte.

[41] In 2001, the German historian of science Dietrich von Engelhardt characterized Isis as "a first-rate scientific and cultural-historical document from that transitional epoch from idealism and romanticism to positivism and realism",[42] the analysis of which was still pending.

Since 2006, the Institute for the History of Medicine, Natural Science and Technology at the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, headed by Olaf Breidbach, has been investigating the significance of Isis for scientific communication and the popularization of the natural sciences in the first half of the 19th century, as well as its economic structure, in a project funded by the German Research Foundation.

[43] In a three-year project that began in July 2006,[44] Claudia Taszus initially focused on the company documents found in the Fröbel court printing works.

The activities funded by the German Research Foundation also include the project carried out by the Thuringian University and State Library and the Ereignis Weimar-Jena.