The Journals of the Hegelian School
This text is a preview of History of the Reception of Hegel, volume I, to be published in 2026 by Reflexivity Press.
The Hegelian school had several publication organs, whose history mirrors the political upheavals of the era.
The Jahrbücher für wissenschaftliche Kritik (1827–1846)
The Jahrbücher für wissenschaftliche Kritik [Yearbooks for Scientific Criticism], co-edited by Eduard Gans (see Chapter 2.4), were the official organ of the Hegelian school. Hegel himself published here, as did his most important students. Under the protection of the liberal Prussian minister of culture Karl vom Stein zum Altenstein (1770–1840), the Yearbooks could operate relatively freely.
Everything changed with the change of monarch in 1840. Friedrich Wilhelm IV, romantically reactionary and decidedly hostile to Hegel, ended this protection. Censorship intensified dramatically, and self-censorship followed. After Gans’s early death (1839), the organizational driving force was also missing. The Yearbooks degenerated into a shadow of themselves—when they were finally discontinued in 1846, no one missed them any longer.
The Hallische Jahrbücher (1838–1843)
When the Berlin Yearbooks came under censorship pressure, the Hallische Jahrbücher für deutsche Wissenschaft und Kunst [Halle Yearbooks for German Science and Art], edited by Arnold Ruge and Theodor Echtermeyer, took over the role of the leading Hegelian forum for debate. They were published in Halle (Saxony), outside direct Prussian censorship, and became the organ of the spectrum from the center to the left of the Hegelian school.
When pressure increased in Saxony as well, the editors moved to Dresden and renamed the journal, on July 1, 1841, the Deutsche Jahrbücher für Wissenschaft und Kunst. But by the end of January 1843, this journal too was banned. One last flicker were the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher [German-French Yearbooks] (1844), which Marx and Ruge published in Paris—but only a single double issue appeared.
Der Gedanke (1861–1884)
After the collapse of the Hegelian school in the 1840s, Carl Ludwig Michelet and August von Cieszkowski (see Chapter 12.3 on the Polish Hegelians) attempted a Hegelian renaissance in the 1860s. They founded the journal Der Gedanke [The Thought] (1861–1884) and a “Philosophical Society” in Berlin.
The attempt remained largely without effect—the intellectual landscape had changed too much. Materialism, Neo-Kantianism, and the rising individual sciences dominated. Der Gedanke nevertheless documents that, even after “Hegel fatigue” (Köhnke), there were attempts to carry the Hegelian tradition forward.