Abstract
Compiled by a ‘society of learned men’ mainly affiliated to the University of Göttingen, the Geschichte der Künste und Wissenschaften (1796-1820) presented a tableau of the history and progress of the arts and sciences at an unprecedented scale, divided up into eleven sections and 71 volumes. Ambivalent between a bibliographic format and a running narrative, it is both a high point and an end point of the early modern genre historia literaria. This article explores how the Göttingen megaproject contributed to discipline formation especially in the domains of history, art history, and the history of literature, giving these fields a history of their development and formulating a programme for furthering them. Thus, the attempt to create an overview also resulted in unintended pioneer work, even if the contents of the Geschichte were rather dull. I call this the ‘handbook paradox’.
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