The European journal boom in the decades around 1700 was first and foremost a flourishing of learned journals. Among the most famous titles besides the
Journal des Sçavans (1665–) are the
Acta Eruditorum in Leipzig (1682–1782), Pierre Bayle’s Amsterdam publication
Nouvelles de la République des Lettres (1684–1718) and the Roman
Giornale de’ letterati d’Italia (1668–81). At least 300 such journals were founded before 1730.
1 Barnes, ‘The Editing of Early Learned Journals’, p. 155. They provided a growing readership with abstracts and notices of recent publications from a growing literary marketplace along with news from the Republic of Letters, supplementing the epistolary networks as a powerful new tool for knowledge transfer among European intellectuals.
In 1701 the editor of the
Acta editorum, Otto Mencke, complained about the complete absence of Swedish books in Leipzig. In Holland Pierre Bayle similarly noted that it was almost impossible to obtain knowledge about what was printed in Poland, Sweden and Denmark.
2 Oscarsson, ‘En revolution i offentligheten’, p. 98. So, from the perspective of the dominant centres of the republic of letters this international intellectual community should ideally cover the northern parts Europe as well. However, the most important initiative in that regard came from the periphery itself in form of the Lübeck-based monthly
Nova literaria Maris Balthici et Septentrionis [Literary or learned news from the Baltic Sea and the North], 1698–1708 (edited by the Lutheran priest and antiquarian Jakob von Melle and the lawyer Achilles Daniel Leopold).
Evidently, this interregional journal had a broader geographical base than what would later be understood as ‘Scandinavia’ although, as Ingemar Oscarsson has pointed out, it should be considered as a predecessor to the more nationally constrained journals, which saw the light of day in Denmark (
Nova literaria, 1720) and Sweden (
Acta literaria Sueci, 1720).
3 Ibid., p. 111. The journal contained registrations and summaries of newly published literature but also original contributions within all sorts of sciences, for instance find reports related to natural history and antiquarianism. Everything was structured according to place of publication or discovery, as illustrated in the inaugural issue: Wismar, Rostock, Greifswald, Gdansk, Riga, Uppsala, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Ribe, Kiel and, finally after this counter-clockwise tour around the Baltic and Nordic regions, Lübeck.
The motivation behind the publication was determined in the inaugural issue of the journal:
For in those journals [diariis] of learned men […] you may very sparingly, and infrequently enough to be counted, see mentions of those things, which are going on at these more remote shores of the Baltic Sea.
4 [Preface], Nova literaria Maris Balthici et Septentrionis (January 1698), p. [3]. At alia nobis est, erritque omnibus, haec nostra paullo attentius confiderantibus, sententia. Latin orig.: ‘In illis enim, quæ diximus, hominum eruditorum diariis, licet ea fatis diligenter afferantur, quæ vel apud exteros cultioris Europae populos, vel in superiori Germania iis vicina accidunt; parce tamen admodum, satisque infrenquenter ea recenseri videas, quæ ad remetiora hæc Balthici maris littora’.Thus the
Nova literaria questioned the common understanding of cultural centres and peripheries and stressed the Baltic Sea and Nordic regions with Northern Germany, the Baltic States, Denmark–Norway and Sweden as an own, hitherto forgotten part of the Republic of Letters. However, the intentions were peaceful. The editors merely pointed to a practical problem of transnational scholarly communication, which of course was even more present for the scholars of the north. However, there were no accusations of hegemony, parochialism etc. against the scholarly community in the centres of the Republic of Letters. This atmosphere of tolerability is very much in line with Ingemar Oscarsson’s impression of the learned journals as open fora for different networks and interest groups, where the cultural polarisations of the time – such as North vs. South, scholarly centres vs. peripheries, humanistic vs. scientific, Protestant vs. Catholic etc. – were more or less suspended.
5 Oscarsson, ‘En revolution i offentligheten’, p. 99.Against this backdrop, a remarkable thing is that this Baltic community with its new organ was born and thrived well during a time of political division and crisis in the region. It was the time of the so-called ‘Great Northern War’ with the two most warring nations in the history of Europe, Sweden and Denmark, as belligerents.
6 As a term ‘The Great Northern War’ originates from the latter part of the eighteenth century. It covers a series of wars in which Sweden and Denmark were on opposing sides, fighting for control of the Baltic Sea area, dominium maris baltici, see D. H. Andersen, Store Nordiske Krig, vols 1–2 (Copenhagen, 2021). The scholarly exchange between Swedes and Danes continued, as witnessed in the journal as well as in correspondence from the time.
7 H. Ilsøe, ‘Peder Resens nordiske bibliotek’, Fund og Forskning, 30 (1991), 27–50. In other words, relating to the concepts from Alexander Beecroft, the
Nova literaria succeeded in a seamless integration of tensions between global and regional and in contesting national systems of literary circulation. Crucial in this regard was the common language of Latin, which at the time was the default choice, at least outside the domains of the major languages. The members of the Republic of Letters often had Latinised names, read Latin and wrote in Latin, even in correspondence with compatriots. Unfortunately, there is no bibliographical information available concerning print runs or the numbers of subscribers. However, the fact that the
Nova literaria offered a densely printed octavo sheet each month for ten years (totalling almost 20,000 pages) and that it had a steady influx of contributors indicates that the journal was not only a demanding and possibly tiring enterprise, but also a viable one.
During the eighteenth century, Latin would lose ground as a
lingua franca whereby the editor of a literary journal was facing a critical choice regarding the language of publication as testified as early as in 1720 in an advertisement for a new Copenhagen-based journal under the same title as the pioneering enterprise of the region,
Nova literaria. According to the two editors, the university professor Andreas Hojer and the publisher Joachim Wielandt, the journal would ‘for the sake of Europe be in Latin’ and ‘for the sake of the Nordic home audience render an overview of every publication and activity in the learned world’.
8 Quoted after P. M. Stolpe, Dagspressen i Danmark, Dens Vilkaar og Personger indtil Midten af det attende Aarhundrede, vol. 2 (Copenhagen, 1881), pp. 120–1. With only thirteen issues, the new
Nova literaria belongs to the group of short-lived journal enterprises. Part of the explanation for its failure could very well be both the choice of Latin, which discouraged a broader national readership from reading, and the high expectations for both international interest and Nordic agreement in literary matters, which at this point in time seemed anachronistic and unwarranted.