Kelly Whitmer (Max Planck Institute for the
History of Science, Berlin)
Gathering kinds, assembling models: Pietist
philanthropy's global enterprises, 1700-1730
The
University town of Halle (Saale) was the most vibrant city in
Brandenburg-Prussia from 1690-1730. It was the site of a series of
Leibniz-approved attempts to radically reform society by generating
philanthropy: including new technologies of confessional and philosophical
reconciliation. At the same time, the city’s *Pietist* Franckesche
Stiftungen, founded by one of the earliest members of the Berlin Academy of
Sciences, became the site of Germany’s first evangelical mission. The
Danish-Halle mission, as it was called, sent several missionaries to the
southeast coast of India, to Russia, Lapland and even the American colonies by
the early 1730s. The journeys of these individuals consistently involved
gathering plant and animal specimens, which were sent back to Halle to be
assembled, studied and archived. There were productive convergences
between model-making techniques, philanthropic gesturing, the application of
theological categories (such as the “Ordnung des Heils”) and species
designation efforts here, I will argue. The circulation of kinds through
spaces of assimilation assembled in Halle generated (and sustained) these
convergences.
