14 Moritz describes the experience of participating in a poor schoolboys’ choir in Anton Reiser.
15 Abraham a Santa Clara (1644–1709), ecclesiastical name of Johann Ulrich Megerle, Augustinian friar known for the popularity of his sermons.
16 François Ambroise Didot, along with his two sons Pierre and Firmin, led a French typography and printing company after whom the font is named. In addition to being a publisher, Unger was, along with the Didots, a typographer interested in the production of new, hybrid, and more modern typefaces. After publishing Probe einer neuen Art deutscher Lettern, erfunden und in Stahl geschritten von JF Unger (1793), on reforming the typeface Fraktur, he created the new typeface Unger-Fraktur.
17 The Berlinische Monatsscrift [Berlin Monthly], a journal known for featuring major debates of the German Enlightenment. It was published from 1783 to 1796 by Haude and Spener. Some editions of its first volume (January — June, 1783) list Unger as the publisher.
18 Das jüdische Großmütterchen oder Der schreckbare Geist der Frau im schwarzen Gewande (Prague: Widtmann, 1798).
19 Franz Antonin Pabst, Der Nachtwächter oder Das Nachtlager der Geister bei Saatz in Böheim: Eine fürchterliche Sage aus den Zeiten des grauen Zauberalters (Prague, 1798).
20 Adelmar von Perlstein, der Ritter vom geldenen Schlüssel oder Die zwölf schlafenden Jungfrauen, die Beschützerinnen des bezaubernden Jünglings: Ritter- und Geistergeschichte aus dem Mittelalter als Seitenstück zu Ritter Edulf von Quarzfeld. For an illustration from this title, see Benjamin, “Dienstmädchenromane des Vorigen Jahrhunderts” and Figure 17, GS, 4.2, 620–2 (“Chambermaids’ Romances of the Past Century,” SW, 2, 226).
21 Christian August Vulpius, Rinaldo Rinaldini der Räuberhauptmann (Leipzig: Wienbrack, 1798). Vulpius’s sister Christiane was married to Goethe.
22 Christian Heinrich Spieß (1755–1799), popular writer primarily known for his romances, ghost stories, and robber fiction.
23 See Christian Heinrich Spieß, Meine Reisen durch die Höhlen des Unglücks und Gemächer des Jammers (Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1797).
24 See Christian Heinrich Spieß, Biographien der Wahnsinnigen (Leipzig: Voss, 1795–1796), 4 vols.
25 See Spieß, Preface to Biographien der Wahnsinnigen, vol. 1, 3–4.
26 Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741–1801), Swiss poet, mystic, and prominent Counter-Enlightenment Protestant figure known for his interest in physiognomy and the occult.
27 Johann Kaspar Lavater, Sittenbüchlein für Kinder des Landvolks (Frankfurt: Kessler, 1789).
28 See Moritz, Versuch einer Kleinen praktischen Kinderlogik (Berlin: Mylius, 1786).
29 The Allgemeine Zeitung, a famous newspaper established by the eminent publishing house J. G. Cotta.
30 August Friedrich von Kotzebue (1761–1819), German novelist and prolific playwright. His plays were once immensely popular.
31 Franz Volkmar Reinhard (1753–1812), preacher at Dresden, influential German Protestant theologian.
32 On July 9, 1788, King Frederick William II, under the influence of the recently appointed Minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs, Johann Wöllner, enacted the “Edict Concerning Religion.” It was followed on December 19, 1788 by the “Edict of Censorship,” which forbid the publication of books that were deemed to question religious orthodoxy.
33 Kant published the first part of what would become Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason [Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft] in the Berlinische Monatsschift in April, 1792. Forbidden by the censors to publish its continuation, the magazine shifted publication to Jena.
34 See Alexander von Humboldt: eine wissenschaftliche Biographie, ed. Karl Bruhns, vol. 1 (Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1872), 74; Life of Alexander Humboldt, trans. Jane and Caroline Lassell (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1873), 63.
35 See King Frederick William II to Cabinet Minister Count von Finckenstein on February 4, 1792, in Friedrich Kapp, ed., Aktenstücke zur Geschichte der preußischen Censur- und Preßverhältnisse unter dem Minister Wöllner (Part 1: 1788–1793). In Archiv für Geschinchte des Buchhandels, vol. 4 (Leipzig: BÖrsenvereins des Deutschen Buchhändler, 1879), 153.
36 Moritz, Kinderlogik, 82.
37 Karl Arnold Kortum (1745–1825), German physician and writer, author of the satirical epic Die Jobsiade (1784).
38 Translation from Kortum, The Jobsiade: A Grotesco-Comico-Heroic Poem, trans. Charles T. Brooks (Philadelphia: Frederick Leypoldt, 1863), 176–80. Benjamin has skipped several verses from the poem.
39 See Moritz, Anton Reiser, ed. Ludwig Geiger (Heilbronn: Henninger, 1886), 31–2.
40 See Die Schriften von Karl Arnold Kortum: Bienenkalender (Wesel, 1776); Grundsätze der Bienenzucht, besonders für die Westphälischen Gegenden (Wesel, 1776); Über das alte und neue Gesangbuch und die Einführung des letzteren in die lutherischen Gemeinden der Grafschaft Mark (Mark, 1785); Anweisung, wie man sich vor allen ansteckenden Krankheiten verwahren könne (Wesel, 1779).
41 See Moritz, Kinderlogik, 154.
42 The Gray Cloister School was the oldest gymnasium in Berlin. Moritz became its Deputy Headmaster in 1780.
43 These names, some now better known than others, are all figures associated with early German Romanticism: August Ferdinand Bernhardi (1769–1820), German linguist and writer; August Ludwig Hülsen (1765–1809), philosopher and educator who, like Bernhardi, was a contributor to the Athenaeum (1798–1800), the literary journal founded by the Schlegel brothers; Henrik Steffens (1743–1845), a Norwegian-born Danish philosopher associated with Naturphilosophie and with German Romantic circles in Berlin and Jena; Novalis (pseudonym of Friedrich von Hardenberg) (1772–1801), a leading figure of German Romanticism; Ludwig Tieck (1773–1853), a prolific German novelist, translator, and critic.
44 Clemens Brentano (1778–1842), coeditor with Achim von Arnim of Des Knaben Wunderhorn [The Boy’s Magic Horn] (1805–1808), a collection of German folk songs and poems.
45 Bonaventura, pseudonym of Ernst August Friedrich Klingemann (1777–1831), German writer, thought to be the author of Romantic prose text Nachtwachen [Night Watches], anonymously published in 1804.
46 Jean Paul Friedrich Richter (1763–1825), a writer whose works are often considered unclassifiable. See Benjamin’s description of Jean Paul’s imagination as one of “extreme exuberance,” in “Notes for a Study of the Beauty of Colored Illustrations in Children’s Books: Reflections on Lyser,” SW, 1, 265.
47 Jean Paul’s Levana, oder Erziehungsiehre [Levana, or Pedagogy] (Braunschweig: F. Bieweg, 1807), a classic work on education.
48 From Richter’s Hesperus, oder 45 Hundposttage: Eine Lebensbeschreibung (1795). Translation from Hesperus or Forty-Five Dog Post Days: A Biography, Vol. 1, trans. Charles T. Brooks (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1865), 240.