To what extent and how is literary and scholarly originality contingent on the reception of others’ works? How have scholars read other scholars? And what is to be found of a scholar’s reading in his or her own works? How is scholarly knowledge taken up in non-written media such as in works of fine art? Questions such as these are to be pursued by the chair for Modern Written Culture and European Knowledge Transfer in order, in particular, to understand the transfer of knowledge in aesthetics and the theory of art from the early modern period to the present day.

The chair of Modern Written Culture and European Knowledge Transfer was established in 2015 at the Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg for the Humboldt Professor Elisabeth Décultot. Professor Décultot, who is sponsored by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, is based at the Department of German Studies in Halle and at the Interdisciplinary Centre for European Enlightenment Studies (IZEA). Research projects conducted by the Humboldt Professor and the team members working on this project will be presented on this website.