IMMANUELIO KANTO PRAKALBA CHRISTIANO GOTTLIEBO MIELCKE’ĖS ŽODYNE (1800)
Volume 28 (2020), pp. 192–208
Pub. online: 3 June 2021
Type: Article
Open Access
Open Access
Published
3 June 2021
3 June 2021
Abstract
There are three prefaces in Christian Gottlieb Mielcke’s (1733–1807) dictionary Littauisch-deutsches und Deutsch-littauisches Wörter-Buch (1800). The first is written by the compiler himself; the second by Daniel Jenisch (1762–1804), a Berlin theologian and linguist; and the third by Christoph Friedrich Heilsberg (1726/7–1807), a counsellor in the Königsberg Chamber of War and Domains and inspector of East Prussian schools. The ‘Friend’s Note’ (Nachschrift eines
Freundes) of the philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) is placed after all of them. It is a friendly, quite short, one-and-a-half-page commentary on the Lithuanians and their language, written in free form, and cannot be called a true preface.
The article analyses the circumstances of the appearance of Kant’s ‘Friend’s Note’ in the dictionary, and discusses the ideas expressed in it.