Via India to the 'Abendland'? The genesis of the Abendland-discourse in the context of the German-language engagement with India between 1790 and 1830.

• Applicant: Dr. Ulrich Harlass
• Subject Area: Religious Studies and Jewish Studies
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 568406999

This project aims to trace the historical genesis of the (German-language) identity discourse of the Abendland between 1790 and 1830. To date, there are no accounts that have addressed this topic, despite the fact that, according to scholarship, the crucial shaping of the debate and its "ideological charging" ocurred in the early 19th century—with the Schlegel brothers in particular. The project focuses on two specific areas: religion and India. In research on the Abendland, "Islam" dominates as the primary counterpoint to articulations of the Abendland from the very beginning of its supposed "ideological charging" around 1830. India, however, remains absent from such scholarship. But India was not only a central reference point for the Schlegel brothers, but it was probably also a decisive factor for the later Abendland-discourse. The project thus focuses particularly on scholars of India (Indienkundler), who assigned a special role to India in cultural-history and world-history publications. Many saw India as a cultural precursor to Europe and it is highly likely that India has played a central (but overlooked) role in the discourse on the Abendland. The Abendland-debate reveals the second thematic focus, which has been entirely underestimated: religion. Research on the Abendland accepts religion as a given, but never explicitly examines it. The project aims to address this gap both diachronically (across the period from 1790 to around 1830) and synchronically (between the different articulations). Moreover, the historic understandings of religion themselves remain unexplored. Preliminary examinations suggest that the common historicization of religion—with the decisive turn to the "modern" discourse on religion from the mid-19th century onwards—can be significantly refined and specified through this project. Religion emerges as a central element in the formation of the Abendland-discourse, yet its conceptualization shifts considerably over time, and ideas of it as a comparative global category (such as history of religions or world religions) appear earlier than hitherto assumed. Finally, the overall evaluation of the "Abendland" is at stake: Global historical and postcolonial scholarship has convincingly argued for worldwide entanglements and mutual dependencies. The knowledge produced by German scholars of India was built on colonial archives compiled by their British and, to some extent, French colleagues in the context of the imperial exploitation in Asia. Against this backdrop, the project critically examines the two extremes of a "German Sonderweg" and its counterpart, its purely global constitution. The historical analysis must carve-out how articulations of Abendland-identities emerged and should be classified. This project thus promises to open up an entirely new thematic field in research on the Abendland, and for a history of religions in general.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants