248 Reviews with their commentaries they make up 534 pages of the whole (pp. 131-664). The remainder consists of introductory material, including lists of correspondents and addressees, and at the end indexes of words and names, on the model of previous volumes. Fewer texts in foreign languages occur here, but there are some passages in French and Latin, the latter preceded by a translation or summary. Highlights of the volume are items relating to well-known contemporary literary figures,such as Augustus Buchner, Paul Fleming, Tobias Hiibner, Martin Opitz, and Diederich von dem Werder. Among the Hiibner items, forinstance, is 350731, which includes, in facsimile, a substantial German poem by Hiibner about court life, pub? lished at Halle in 1635. Or there is 300725, heavily annotated with editorial commen? tary,where Opitz reports to his patron Dohna about his political mission to Paris in 1630. No. 360600 offersus a detailed curriculum vitae forHiibner. In all these different ways important material for biographical, political, historical, and literary studies is offered,and frequently this material was hitherto unpublished or very inaccessible. We learn about the role of aristocratic women associated with Prince Ludwig from items like 310108 about Princess Loysa Amalia von Anhalt-Bernburg, patron ofthe society Noble Academie des Loyales, and at 300320 there is a huge item about Ludwig's sister Countess Anna Sophia von Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, with a 1630 membership list of the all-female Tugendliche Gesellschaft, verse by her amended by him, and illustrations ofthe imprese ofthe society. The commentary here amounts to a study in itself. The sixty-two illustrations (two in colour), together with their extensive editorial commentaries, add to the information value of the book. As with previous volumes, the mass of annotated material is at times bewildering, despite the large format and generous print. It will be best used as a superbly researched reference work to which specialist scholars will return again and again in those libraries wise enough to subscribe to the complete series. Glasgow Anthony J.Harper 'Der Teutsche Merkur': Die erste deutsche Kulturzeitschrift? Ed. by Andrea Heinz. (Asthetische Forschungen, 2) Heidelberg: Winter. 2003. 302 pp. ?38. ISBN 38253 -1497-9. The years immediately following the Seven Years War were to witness a remarkable boom in the launch of new journals in the German-speaking countries. Between 1766 and 1790, 2,191 journals of all kinds began publication, three times as many as in the years 1741-65. One of the most important of these initiatives was Der Teutsche Merkur, founded by Christoph Martin Wieland and published at Weimar in collabo? ration with Friedrich Justin Bertuch, a man with sound business acumen. Appearing from 1773 to 1810, it was one of the most influential periodicals of the later En? lightenment period in Germany; indeed, it played no small role in getting Weimar recognized as a major cultural centre. If this journal has until recently been rather neglected in scholarship, this is primarily because complete sets of it are rare, even in major libraries, and because ithas been so difficultto find one's way around its 40,000 pages. These problems have meanwhile been largely overcome: a fully searchable text is available on www.ub.uni-bielefeld.de/diglib/aufklaerung, and comprehensive indexes to the contents are to be found in Thomas C. Starnes's indispensable Der Teutsche Merkur: Ein Repertorium (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1994). Apart from Hans Wahl's thesis, Geschichte des Teutschen Merkur (Berlin: Mayer & Muller, 1914), an early attempt to come to terms with the journal as a whole, most of the existing scholarly literature dealing with it takes the form of scattered articles MLRy ioo.i, 2005 249 investigating very specific topics or individual contributors. In these circumstances, this book is welcome indeed. Based on a conference held in November 2001 as part of the activities of the research project 'Ereignis Weimar-Jena. Kultur um 1800', it comprises thirteen essays covering the background to the journal, its publishing history, some of its contributors, and selected aspects of its wide-ranging content. Naturally, a slim volume such as this can hardly do justice to a journal that embraced literature, law, economics, music, medicine, language, education, politics, religion, philosophy, art, science...