Arndt Engelhardt is a visiting research fellow at the center in the years 2021-2023. His current research at the center is “On the Theo-Political Dimension of ‘Weltliteratur:’ Moritz Veit (1808–1864) as Critic and Publisher” some considerations about the critic, politician and publisher Moritz Veit. Since the founding of the publishing house "Veit & Co." in 1834, Veit actively advocated the mediation of traditional Jewish scholarship with modern forms of literature. As the long-time publisher of the “Magazin für die Literatur des Auslandes, [Magazine for Literature of Foreign Countries]”, he disseminated “Weltliteratur” to German readers. In addition to a sophisticated literary and philosophical program, his publishing house initiated fundamental works of German-language scholarship on Judaism, new translations of Hebrew texts, and anthologies on Jewish history and literature. Moritz Veit was concerned with including a reformed Jewish text tradition in the canon of German-language literature, which was only becoming established at that time.
Arndt shows this in discussing the early journalistic work of Veit and his engagement as long-time chairman of the German Publishers and Booksellers Association in Leipzig.
Arndt's project “Public Emancipation and Literary Belonging: On the Materiality of German-Language Jewish Publishing Cultures in the Nineteenth Century,” reconstructs the material and cultural dimensions of the German-language Jewish book trade in the emancipatory age. Printing and the book trade became increasingly important spheres of activity after the Napoleonic wars, including for Jews, as these fields demanded commercial skills, entrepreneurial daring, and a broad intellectual horizon. These professions moreover lay beyond academic limitations and offered exceptional opportunities to Jewish scholars and businesspeople who were filled with nineteenth-century ideals of emancipation, acculturation, and individualization, but could not acquire university positions. Focusing on both literary and scholarly works, the project investigates the European and transnational orientation of primarily German-language Jewish publishing houses and, more generally, the bourgeois culture of reading emerging at the time, which formed a prerequisite for the publishing business.