Pieter Geyl (1887—1966) was undoubtedly one of the most internationally renowned Dutch historians of the twentieth century, but also one of the most controversial. Having come to the UK as a journalist, he started his academic career at the University of London in the aftermath of World War I (1919) and played an important role in the early days of the Institute of Historical Research. Known in this time for his re-interpretation of the sixteenth-century Dutch Revolt against the Habsburgs, that challenged existing historiographies of both Belgium and the Netherlands but was also linked to his political activism in favour of the Flemish movement in Belgium, Geyl left his stamp on the British perception of Low Countries history before moving back to his country of origin in 1935. Having spent World War II in German hostage camps, he famously coined the adage of history being ‘a discussion without end’ and re-engaged in public debates with British historians after the war, partly conducted on the airwaves of the BBC. A prolific writer and an early example of a ‘public intellectual’, Geyl remains one of the most influential thinkers on history of his time. The present volume re-examines Geyl’s relationship with Britain (and the Anglophone world at large) and sheds new light on his multifaceted work as a historian, journalist, homme de lettres and political activist.

Predikant-dichter, hoogleraar in de Nederlandse taal en letteren te Utrecht.

his article takes up the production of ignorance in early modern academic information circulation by focusing on the question of how information changes from being present to being absent in the medium of the learned journal—in short, how knowledge becomes forgotten. To examine the processes behind this change, I have selected four exemplary late-seventeenth- to early-eighteenth-century scholars: Johannes Braun (1628–1708), Thomas Gale (1636–1702), Adriaan Reland (1676–1718), and Eusèbe Renaudot (1646–1720), and tracked their reception over the course of the eighteenth century, as indicated by patterns of references to them in learned journals. To this end, I chose four exemplary eighteenth-century learned journals, the [Nova] Acta Eruditorum, the Journal des Savants, the Maandelyke Uittreksels, of Boekzaal der geleerde waerelt, and the Philosophical Transactions, and searched digitally for all references to the four scholars between 1 January 1701 and 31 December 1800. Each journal page bearing at least one reference to one of these scholars is treated as a textual unit for the extraction of co-citation data. These co-citation data were then used as material for a diachronic network analysis of the reference patterns. The results show that the frequency of references made to all four scholars began to decline demonstrably in the middle of the eighteenth century and that by the last quarter they had become forgotten, that is, effectively “ignored.” These processes turn out to be context-sensitive and not determined by the quality of the contributions of those who became forgotten.

Der Band widmet sich der Sprachwissenschaft, der Sprach- und Literaturdidaktik und der Interkulturellen Kommunikation sowie ihren Schnittmengen. Den ausnahmslos von ehemaligen Promovenden von Wolfgang Herrlitz anlässlich seines 70. Geburtstages verfertigten Beiträgen ist der Gegenstand Sprache gemeinsam. Die Multidimensionalität dieses Begriffes zeigt sich in den gesellschaftlich-sozialen, den kulturell-literarischen, den unterrichtsbezogenen sowie den sprachwissenschaftlichen Betrachtungen. Dominant ist die Perspektive der linguistischen Pragmatik, die in diesem Band sowohl in theoretischen Abhandlungen als auch empirischen Analysen zum Ausdruck kommt. Auch aus diesem Grund ist 'Von Eisbergen und ihren Spitzen' der nicht zufällig gewählte Titel dieser Festschrift für Wolfgang Herrlitz. Denn diese Beiträge sind in gewissem Sinne als Spitzen eines Eisbergs zu verstehen: Sie spiegeln das folgenreiche Wirken und den Werdegang von Wolfgang Herrlitz wider, indem sie 'unterhalb der Wasserlinie' auf den von ihm geprägten Denkstilen basieren.

Adriaan Reland (1676-1718), Arabist, Cartographer, Antiquarian and Scholar of Comparative Religion covers the intellectual achievements of a remarkable man: Adriaan Reland, professor of Oriental languages (1701) and Hebrew Antiquities (1713) at the University of Utrecht from 1701 to 1718. Although he never travelled beyond the borders of his home country, he had an astonishingly broad worldview. The contributions in this volume illuminate Reland's many accomplishments and follow his scholarly trajectory as an Orientalist, a linguist, a cartographer, a poet, and a historian of comparative religions. Reland, although a devout Protestant, believed that religions should be examined objectively on their own terms with the help of reliable and authentic documents, which would dispel the prejudices of the past. Contributors: Lot Brouwer, Ulrich Groetsch,Toon van Hal, Jason Harris, Bart Jaski, Christian Lange, Richard van Leeuwen, Remke Kruk, Anna Pytlowany, Henk J. van Rinsum, Dirk Sacré, Arnoud Vrolijk, Tobias Winnerling and Jan Just Witkam.