The question \u201cWhat is Enlightenment?\u201d stems from a footnote in a critical contribution about civil marriage in the Berlinische Monatsschrift<\/em> from December 1783. It was posed by the conservative theologian Johann Friedrich Z\u00f6llner (1753\u20131804). In his essay \u201cIs It Advisable to Sanction Marriage through Religion?\u201d the pastor warned against the threatening decline of morals if the wedding of two people wanting to get married no longer takes place as a religious act (but is sanctioned only by civil law) and asks in a footnote: \u201cWhat is Enlightenment? This question, which is almost as important as: What is truth?, should be answered before one begins to enlighten! And I have not found it answered anywhere!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The attempt to introduce civil marriage mostly had to do with the enlightenment ideal of religious tolerance (in this form of marriage, couples could be of different confessions or even different religions). But to see the marriage contract as a contract sanctioned by the state<\/em> could also have useful implications for the wives. A wedding that was no longer conducted \u201cin the eyes of God\u201d could also be separated without divine blessing and that would mean greater freedom in getting divorced. \u201cMutual aversion\u201d or \u201cnon-conformity of character\u201d[i]<\/a> now belonged to the grounds for separation and a \u201crelationship based on partnership\u201d[ii]<\/a> between the married couple was aspired to. To consider oneself enlightened in the 18th<\/sup> century also meant to express one\u2019s understanding of marriage rights and obligations in accord with the \u201chigh civilisational standard of the age.\u201d[iii]<\/a> So, is the Enlightenment with its debates about civil marriage the great leveller between the sexes? That is not quite the case. The woman as partner in marriage and life was idealised in the educated bourgeois milieu as a \u201ccultivated\u201d sparring partner, but she did not achieve partial \u2013 much less a complete \u2013 equal status.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Instead, the leading Enlightenment thinkers saw the woman as standing \u201coutside of the bourgeois society of mature, equitable citizens\u201d[iv]<\/a>; the ideal of the coequal companion was performative and was very likely found more appealing in theory than in practice. The good wife should receive a basic education so that she could hold her own in conversation and be amusing \u2013 but her ambitions should seldom go too far. In the satirical copperplate engraving \u201cThe Learned Lady\u201d by Johann Heinrich Ramberg (1763\u20131840), the artist jokingly exaggerates the risks that a distraction from the household and care of the children though a pursuit of learning would bring. The example of civil marriage and the role of women in times of the Enlightenment clearly illustrates the conflicting priorities that characterised the view of the equality of man and woman in this epoch. One could speak of a chauvinism posing as enlightened or a chauvinism in sheep\u2019s clothing. At the same time \u2013 and this, too, distinguished the Enlightenment \u2013 there were women who would not accept the status quo and fought for their place in society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhat is Enlightenment? Questions for the 18th<\/sup> Century\u201d, which is named after Z\u00f6llner\u2019s meanwhile world-famous, oft quoted footnote question, explores this social context and presents stories of women in all rooms of the exhibition \u2013 women are not just accidental products of the 18th<\/sup> century: without them the Enlightenment can \u201conly insufficiently be depicted and understood.\u201d[v]<\/a> In this way the exhibition reflects on a purely structural level the fact that women were able to make their mark in this philosophical, largely male-dominated age in many different ways. Visitors will find enlightened female protagonists not only in the section \u201cGender Models\u201d, but in all other rooms of the exhibition as well, including \u201cThe Rule of Reason\u201d, \u201cThe Search for Knowledge and the New Science\u201d and \u201cStatesmanship and Political Liberty\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Among the academically engaged women presented in \u201cWhat is Enlightenment?\u201d \u2013 whose lives need to be much more intensively researched \u2013 are, for example, \u00c9milie du Ch\u00e2telet (1706\u20131749), Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze Lavoisier<\/a> (1758\u20131836), and Dorothea Christiane Erxleben (1715\u20131762). While the Marquise du Ch\u00e2telet devoted her life to Newton\u2019s physics and translated, annotated, and brought his works to the French public, Marie-Anne Lavoisier participated in the chemical experiments of her 15-years-older husband Antoine. With her detailed documentation of the experimental setups in his laboratory and translations of scientific publications, she contributed decisively to the wording and empirical verifiability of the findings even after his death. Dorothea Erxleben, who was only allowed to study medicine if accompanied by a male relative, addressed herself in 1741 to Friedrich II (1712\u20131786) with a request to be allowed to study at university. At his behest she was admitted to the Reform University in Halle. More than a decade later, at age 39, she submitted her dissertation and in 1754 became the first woman in Germany to get her doctorate in medicine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The exhibition also deals with women involved in the arts during the Enlightenment period, including the poet Phillis Wheatley (ca. 1753\u20131784), the author Luise Gottsched<\/a> (1713\u20131762), and the painter Anna Dorothea Therbusch (1721\u20131782). The poetry book of the repeatedly discriminated, enslaved Phillis Wheatley, which appeared in 1773, made her the first author of African origin to have published in America under her own name.[vi]<\/a> The \u201cGottschedin\u201d, as Luise Gottsched was known in Germany, already published several theatre plays under her own name in the first half of the 18th<\/sup> century. What\u2019s more: literary research now assumes that she actually wrote some of the works of her husband, Johann Christoph Gottsched (1700\u20131766) \u2013 for example, numerous passages in the moralistic weekly \u201cDie vern\u00fcnftigen Tadlerinnen\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n The artistic career of Anna Therbusch \u2013 particularly in a time when it was hardly possible for women to be admitted to art academies \u2013 is remarkable. The Berlin artist even received commissions from the European nobility, and from the time she was taken into the Acad\u00e9mie Royale in Paris in 1767, she signed her works \u201cPeintre du Roi de France\u201d, \u201cArtist of the French King\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Alongside scientific pursuits, it is often social change that is closely connected with our image of the Enlightenment. And so it is hardly surprising that the time was also marked by sociocritical, politically engaged female thinkers. Among them, for example, are the French revolutionary Olympe de Gouges (1748\u20131793) and the English women\u2019s rights advocate Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797). De Gouges not only took a stand for the equal rights of man and woman, but is also an example of a white woman who fought against the racism of her time in her writings and theatre plays. She also called for the introduction of a divorce law.[vii]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Mary Wollstonecraft, whose principal work from 1792, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman<\/em>, is cited at the beginning of the exhibition, also took a strong stand against reducing women to the role of the devoted wife \u2013 with or without the right to get a divorce. The noted philosopher and translator Mary Shelley, also known as the author and \u201cmother\u201d of Frankenstein<\/em>, lived for years with the father of her first child without getting married. She only experienced the start of her influence on the struggles for equal rights in the European sphere, since she died early of childbed fever. Her argumentation that women have a capacity for reason equal to that of men influenced the following generations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The women of the Enlightenment had a heavy load to carry in an era of chauvinism in sheep\u2019s clothing and could seldom rely on gaining the recognition they deserved for their work. Thanks to decades of research by (often explicitly feminist-motivated) historians, their stories can still be understood today and form part of the fundament of the modern women\u2019s movement, of which an internationally networked group of women socialists introduced the first International Women\u2019s Day in 1911, nearly a century after the fading of the Enlightenment cause. It is a sad irony that the two countries, France and England, which with Wollstonecraft and de Gouges brought forth the most radical champions of women\u2019s rights, were comparatively late in introducing women\u2019s suffrage, namely in 1928 in Britain and 1944 in France.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [i]<\/a> Buchholz, Stephan: \u201eEhe\u201c, in: Schneiders, Werner (ed.), Lexikon der Aufkl\u00e4rung, M\u00fcnchen 2001: pp. 87\u201388.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [ii]<\/a> Stollberg-Rilinger, Barbara: Die Aufkl\u00e4rung, 5. Aufl. Stuttgart 2021: p. 147.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [iii]<\/a> Ibid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [iv]<\/a> Meyer, Annette: Die Epoche der Aufkl\u00e4rung<\/em>, 2. Aufl. Berlin 2018, p. 189.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [v]<\/a> Ibid., p. 188.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/AK-0051_Die-gelehrte-Frau_Goettingen-1-814x1024.jpg\")
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