Johann Peter Hebel’s Lunar Realism: Science, History, and Poetic Possibility, Lecture with Felix Christen

Johann Peter Hebel (1760–1826) was hailed as a realist by both his contemporary Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and his later reader Walter Benjamin. But what kind of realism characterizes Hebel’s writing, and what does it reveal about nineteenth-century conceptions of realism and their afterlives? In this lecture, I situate Hebel’s largely unexplored oeuvre within the heterogeneous media and institutional contexts of its publication, which range from rural calendars to one of Germany’s most prestigious publishing houses. I identify three distinct yet connected types of realism in Hebel’s work: scientific-mathematical, historical-calendrical, and hermeneutic-phenomenological. These modes come together in what I term a “lunar realism,” an epistemologically oriented form of narration. In texts such as “The Man in the Moon” and “Settling Accounts with a Ghost,” the moon functions not only as a narrative element but also as a medium for reflecting on the fundamental assumptions and possibilities of realism.

Felix Christen is a prominent scholar of German literature and philosophy, currently based at the University of Zurich and Heidelberg University. His work focuses on the intersection of literature, rhetoric, and modern thought.