A new form of academy

The research group "Poetics and Hermeneutics", founded in the early 1960s, has made a significant contribution to the intellectual history of the Federal Republic of Germany. Hans Robert Jauß, Hans Blumenberg and Clemens Heselhaus - all full professors of Romance Studies, Philosophy and German Studies in Giessen - invited a group of twenty people to a special kind of colloquium at their university in the summer of 1963, eighteen years after the end of the National Socialist dictatorship: the first meeting of the "Poetics and Hermeneutics" group.This book describes the initial phase of the research group along the estates of Hans Blumenberg, Hans Robert Jauß and other participants. The dream of a researching community became a reality by exhausting intellectual, financial and social resources.