The Scientific Age in the Province

With the first assembly of the Society of German Naturalists and Physicians in 1822, according to Werner von Siemens (1886), a 'scientific age' began, in which the natural sciences opened up to broader segments of the population and were no longer exclusively discussed within professional circles.

The dissertation project examines how this opening of the sciences, as noted by Siemens, unfolded in the provinces. Despite spatial distance to universities and scientific circles in major cities, scientifically interested citizens gathered and organized themselves in associations. There, they pursued common efforts to promote knowledge and science. The practices and self-perception of these groups in the provinces are now to be examined in detail. Starting with the establishment of the Natural Science Association in Gotha in 1875, the aim is to determine what was understood as knowledge in bourgeois circles outside the metropolises at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century and how it was generated and received.

In addition to the social structure of the group, the practices of collaborative research, collecting, and presenting will be considered. Lectures, excursions, and high-profile projects formed the core of the association's activities, taking place in inns, museums, schools, local businesses, and nature. The topics discussed there provide insights into the self-perception of the actors as scientists. In addition, it will be determined how this self-perception was evaluated in the supra-regional scientific context. Overall, the work is intended to serve as a contrasting background to studies of metropolises as centers of the natural sciences and to provide another perspective on the province as a knowledge space.

_{^{Image: Gothaischen Zeitung, 2. November 1881. © Forschungsbibliothek Gotha.}}