Main Topics

The three letters that open the correspondence, dating from 1745–46, focus on Haller’s contributions to review journals. In the first Hollmann commented on Haller’s manuscript of a review he wrote for the Bibliothèque raisonnée that discusses recent German works on experiments with electricity, a subject fashionable at the time. He drew on his own wide readings and experiments. Haller’s review was quickly translated and published in Gentleman’s Magazine, in which form it came to the attention of Benjamin Franklin, whose own writing on electricity was clearly influenced by it.

In May 1746 Hollmann provided Haller with a lengthy précis of the new edition of his book on logic – to spare Haller the task of reading the book itself, he wrote. In the review Haller went far beyond the précis or the book; he attacked latter-day Scholastics, for instance, and argued that Latin was the ideal international language of the arts and sciences. In November 1746 Hollmann asked Haller, who was then co-director of the GGA, to run a correction to a notice in the journal that had led some readers in Regensburg to question whether one of their citizens had really been awarded the doctor of philosophy degree by the University of Göttingen.

The birth of the GdW gave rise to a brief written exchange between Haller and Hollmann in January 1751. Having been asked by the Hanoverian minister Gerlach Adolph von Münchhausen to set down his ideas for such an institution, Haller quickly submitted a series of proposals. Hollmann held in his “Chronik” that he was unaware of the proposed plan until Haller outlined it for him in his home and that when he subsequently submitted his doubts about the plan in writing, Haller responded with the brief note that is presented in this edition.

In his letter to Hollmann of 1 May 1753, Haller explained why he had accepted the post of Rathausammann in his native Bern and requested his dismissal from Göttingen. He also confirmed Hollmann’s expectation that he would be in Göttingen as quickly as possible in order to settle his affairs there. On 31 May, however, in a letter now lost, Haller wrote that he would not be coming, after all, but that his wife would do so and retrieve the children and tend to various business matters. On 10 June, Hollmann urged Haller to reconsider and briefly reappear in Göttingen and Hanover. From the start he worried about the negative impact that Haller’s resignation would have on the university, especially its medical faculty, but welcomed his desire to maintain ties with the GdW. On 11 July, Michaelis passed along to Hollmann surprising news: Haller, disappointed with his situation in Bern, was asking about the possibility of his making an early return to the university. Like Michaelis, Hollmann regretted not having known about Haller’s change of mind five or six weeks earlier, when something might have been done to accommodate his latest wish. He listed some of the developments that had by then made a return in the near future ill-advised, if not impossible: “Kurtz nach gegenwärtiger Situation scheint die Sache mir nicht nur moraliter, sondern fast physice, unmöglich zu seyn, die doch nach einigen Jahren eher möglich zu machen seyn wird.”

After Haller’s return to Switzerland the unhappy saga of Christlob Mylius’s planned scientific expedition to North America emerged as the main theme of the exchange.

The journalist and naturalist Mylius had in the spring of 1752 prevailed on Haller to head a commission to solicit funds and to draw up instructions for Mylius. By the time Mylius arrived in Göttingen from Berlin in March of 1753, Haller had already departed for Switzerland. Before leaving, Haller had persuaded a reluctant Hollmann to take possession of the money that subscribers had sent, and he repeated that request in his letter of 1 May. Hollmann passed along to Mylius the amount authorized by Haller, but at the same time he gave Haller many reasons for continuing to supervise the project from Bern and not pass that responsibility on to him (Hollmann). Haller agreed to retain direction of the project. In early July, Hollmann reported on his discussions with Haller’s wife, on her temporary return to Göttingen, and made an accounting of the funds still in his possession. Thereafter Hollmann kept up his correspondence with Mylius, as the naturalist slowly made his way to London, and he felt it necessary to share with Haller some of its surprising or unsettling contents, including Mylius’s pleas for money. In time Hollmann developed some suspicions about the man and his commitment to the overseas expedition, and he grew uneasy when subscribers to the project asked him what the fruits of the expedition’s first year were or when some others submitted their second installment. Late in April 1754 he expressed surprise that Haller was on 10 April still unaware that Mylius had died on 6 March in London. He proceeded to send him an inventory of Mylius’s left-behind possessions and a firsthand description of his final days. One remaining question was how the unpaid landlord bill in London was to be paid. In early 1755 he could still relate a few more developments in the aftermath of the failed expedition, including the news that two subscribers had told him they would not ask to have any of their money returned. In the last available letter of the correspondence, Haller sums up the project as one in which “das ganze Geld ohne den geringsten nutzen verlohren ist.”

7

Mylius was not the only subject in the final two years of the correspondence. Both men touched on a few of their own recent scientific findings and projects. Hollmann also described the debate over how to divide the gift that the king of Denmark had given the GdW for its dedication of its Commentarii to him. Most other news about the GdW he assumed would reach President Haller by way of Michaelis, its secretary. He did offer some remarks regarding professors, princely students, and publishers in Göttingen. In a postscript to his last available letter, he wrote that Anna Vandenhoeck had just accompanied Segner to Halle and that Segner wanted to persuade her to move her bookselling and publishing firm from Göttingen to Halle. In his reply Haller wrote that he disliked that development, since he still had publishing projects with her that he wanted to see completed in Göttingen.