Translated from Lichtenberg's original German: Sudelbücher, Heft F, no. 502, in LichtenbergG. C., Schriften und Briefe, ed. by PromiesWolfgang (HanserCarl, Munich, 1968), i, 529.
2.
On this point see MautnerFranz H. and MillerFranklinJr, “Remarks on G. C. Lichtenberg, humanist-scientist”, Isis, xliii (1952), 223–31.
3.
Translated from the original German. Letter 468 dated 12 April 1778: I, 813–14.
4.
Translated from the original German. Letter 272 dated 28 January 1775: I, 504.
5.
In the first Reisetagebuch of Lichtenberg's second sojourn in England, Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen, Cod MS Lichtenberg, iv, 8, f.60; this page from the diary was reproduced by Hans Ludwig Gumbert in his edition of Lichtenberg's London-Tagebuch September 1774 bis April 1775, with an Introduction, “Das politische Denken des jungen Lichtenberg” (Gerstenberg Verlag, Hildesheim, 1979), 85.
6.
BrinitzerCarl, Die Geschichte eines gescheiten Mannes (Tübingen, 1956) quoted from the English translation by SmithBernard: A reasonable rebel: Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (Macmillan, New York, 1960), 193.
7.
Lichtenberg would later write that he had spent the best ten years of his life taming English boys.
8.
Letter 500 dated 30 July 1778: I, 857–8.
9.
I.e., one that could distribute the Lichtenberg figures made with sprinkled powder according to a desired pattern (see Figure 3), thus producing the first sample of electrostatic recording.
10.
Georgius Rex.
11.
Letter 450: I, 793. Note that Franklin had in that year sealed the alliance with France in the name of the free states of North America.
12.
I.e., hydrogen.
13.
The first chair of experimental physics at a German university was established for Lichtenberg.
14.
Letter 927 dated 30 June 1782: Ii, 370.
15.
For example, for SternJ. P., “Clearly, Lichtenberg is not a political thinker”, Lichtenberg: A doctrine of scattered occasions. Reconstructed from his aphorisms and reflections (Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1959), 239.
16.
See for example, VierhausRudolf, Lichtenberg und seine Zeit (in: Aufklärung über Lichtenberg (Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, Göttingen, 1974), 27): “So ist… seine Zeitkritik — zumal insoweit sie sich auf den sozialen Umkreis bezieht, dem er angehörte — keine Kritik an der Gesellschaftsstrucktur, sondern an der Moral der Gesellschaft, an ihrem Unaufgeklärtsein, ihren Streitigkeiten, daran, daß in ihr von den Menschen zu wenig selbständig gedacht und zu wenig praktisch verbessert wird. Ein freier Kopf und fern aller Servilität, war er doch gehorsamer Untertan, was freilich im englisch-hannoverschen Göttingen keine große Überwindung erforderte ….” Although devoting a whole chapter to Lichtenberg's “Idee politiche e sociali”, Anacleto Verrechia, basing his judgement exclusively on utterances of Lichtenberg after 1789, does not come to any decided statement on the question, shifting the ambivalence to Lichtenberg's account: “… non espose mai alla finestra una bandiera politica dai colon ben definiti” (Georg Christoph Lichtenberg: L'eretico dello spirito tedesco (La Nuova Italia, Florence, 1969), 85).
