Cultural exchange between the francophone and the German-speaking spheres in the eighteenth century has been largely regarded as a one-way channel: significant transfer from France to Germany, with only occasional traffic in the opposite direction. By contrast, this volume shows that Franco-German interaction constituted a much more balanced exchange of knowledge through wide-ranging personal networks such as scholarly correspondence, learned societies and clandestine circles. Intellectual exchange was also mediated via multilingual groups and areas such as Huguenot communities across Germany and the Netherlands or Swiss interlocutors. The book chapters explore these networks as well as the media and practices of knowledge exchange, while simultaneously re-assessing the relevant concepts: transfer, circulation, and networks.
