Die Aufklärung der Aufklärung: Lessing und die Herausforderung des Christentums by Hannes Kerber (review)

themselves. a fashion plate in the Wiener Zeitschrift of 1842, for example, which published serial reportage by adalbert stifter on the solar eclipse of that year, alongside articles by other authors responding to the same event, reacted in a subsequent issue to the eclipse. The July 21 plate, which postdates the eclipse, pictures two ladies equipped with a telescope but who are focusing instead on the already effected medial conversion of the natural event into reading material: one presents to the other a brochure in a format reminiscent of the Wiener Zeitschrift and which bears the title “Beschreibung der sonnenfinsterniß 1842.” This argumentative thrust is a very helpful corrective, indeed, to scholarly views that have accepted more or less at face value receptions such as annette von Droste-Hülshoff’s caustic remarks about the 1846 Rheinisches Taschenbuch: if she, unlike schlegel, appreciated its visually appealing bindings and illustrations, it was now its chaotic and middlebrow literary contents that fell far short of its material form. What the authors of Optische Auftritte collectively demonstrate is that serial publications of the first half of the nineteenth century called not for simple-minded consumption but for poetically active readers who could read backward while anticipating future installments across issues and publications, who could parse the interactions between words and images, and who were attuned to the medial differences and exchanges between Taschenbücher, calendars, journals, weekly newspapers, and books. a richly argued, documented, visualized, and informative survey of journal production across a range of German and austrian literary marketplaces in the first half of the nineteenth century, the heyday of the serial journal, this volume will be essential reading for scholars of book history and the material text.