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H E G E L’ S IN T E R P R E T A T I O N O F TH E
RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD
Hegel’s Interpretation of the
Religions of the World
JON STEWART
1
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
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and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
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© Jon Stewart 2018
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in 2018
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics
rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
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You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
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Preface
¹ Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion, Parts 1–3, ed. by Walter Jaeschke,
Hamburg: Felix Meiner 1983–85, 1993–95 (hereafter VPR).
² Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, vols 1–3, ed. by Peter C. Hodgson, trans. by
Robert F. Brown, Peter C. Hodgson and J.M. Stewart with the assistance of H.S. Harris, Berkeley
et al.: University of California Press 1984–87 (hereafter LPR).
³ Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, vols 1–3, trans. by E.B. Speirs and J. Burdon
Sanderson, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, New York: The Humanities Press 1962, 1968,
1972 (hereafter Phil. of Religion).
Acknowledgments
The present work has been made possible by the selfless help of a number of
friends and colleagues, whose efforts I gratefully acknowledge. I profited from
many fruitful discussions with Jaime Aroosi, István Czakó, Roe Fremstedal,
Finn Gredal Jensen, Alex Gourevitch, Nicholas Jolley, Aisha Khan, Avron
Kulak, Tal Lewis, Bob Orsi, Wang Qi, Peter Šajda, Gerhard Schreiber, Heiko
Schulz, Brian Söderquist, Allen Speight, and Katalin Nun Stewart. I owe a
special thanks to Liz Cohen and Judy Vichniac for honoring me with the
opportunity to work on this project at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced
Study at Harvard University.
I presented parts of this work as lectures at different universities, and the
manuscript has improved as a result of the feedback that I received on those
occasions. The Introduction along with other parts of the text were presented
under the title “Hegel’s Conception of Christianity in His Philosophy of Religion,”
at the Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre at the University of Copenhagen, on
September 12, 2014. A variant of this lecture was given at Leiden University
College, Faculteit Campus Den Haag on November 19, 2015, at the Pázmány
Péter Catholic University, Budapest, Hungary, on May 12, 2016, the Radcliffe
Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University on October 19, 2016, and the
Philosophy Department at Boston University on November 4, 2016.
A draft of a part of Chapter 1 was presented under the title “Hegel, Creuzer
and the Rise of Orientalism: A Study in Hegel’s Philosophy of Religion,” at the
Philosophy Department at the University of Tromsø in Norway, on March 5,
2014. Part of Chapter 7 was presented as “Hegel’s Account of the Ancient
Egyptian Religion as a Transition from Nature to Spirit,” at the Conference:
“Europe, Christianity and the Encounter with Other Religions in Kierkegaard
and 19th Century Religious Thinking,” sponsored by The Søren Kierkegaard
Research Centre and The Centre for European Islamic Thought, on May 9,
2012, and at the Institut Universitari de Cultura at the Universitat Pompeu
Fabra in Barcelona, on May 24, 2012. A part of Chapter 8 was given as a
lecture under the title, “The Religion of the Sublime: Hegel’s Controversial
Account of Judaism,” at Yeshiva University in New York City on November
16, 2016. Sections of Chapter 9 were presented under the title “Hegel’s Inter-
pretation of the Greek Religion as a Religion of Spirit,” at the Mahindra
Humanities Center at Harvard University on December 13, 2016.
viii Acknowledgments
Earlier versions of some of the material from this work have appeared
previously in printed form. I am thankful to the following journals for allowing
me to reprint this material in the present work: Filozofia, The Owl of Minerva,
the Hegel Bulletin, the Jahrbuch für Hegelforschung, and Hegel-Studien. This
work was produced at the Institute of Philosophy, Slovak Academy of Sciences.
It was supported by the Slovak Research and Development Agency under the
contract No. APVV-15-0682.
Contents
Bibliography 305
Index 313
List of Illustrations
It has long been a cliché in overviews of modern philosophy to point out that
one of Hegel’s great contributions was to make philosophers aware of the
importance of history for an understanding of truth and objectivity. For this
reason his Introduction to the Lectures on the Philosophy of History remains
one of his best-known texts. It is claimed that unlike most of his predecessors,
who proceeded in an ahistorical fashion, Hegel innovatively used his profound
appreciation and understanding of history to shape his reflections on the key
issues of metaphysics, epistemology, aesthetics, and social-political philosophy.
Hegel argues that concepts must be understood not just as abstractions but
also in their concrete instantiations in the real world, and his account of
history is a part of this.
Despite this awareness and appreciation of the important role of history in
Hegel’s thought, scholars working on his philosophy of religion have almost
entirely ignored this dimension. Most studies of Hegel’s Lectures on the
Philosophy of Religion simply disregard the long and highly detailed historical
analyses of the world religions that he carries out under the rubric “the
determinate religion” (die bestimmte Religion). Instead, they choose to focus
primarily on two other sets of issues which can be regarded as representative
of the two main tendencies in the secondary literature.
One of these is to concentrate on the first part of Hegel’s analysis that falls
under the heading, “The Concept of Religion,” where he discusses broadly the
nature of religion and its relation to philosophy and other forms of knowing.
Here Hegel presents the organization and methodology of the lectures, out-
lining his conception of a speculative philosophy of religion. He further
attempts to determine the correct concept of the divine. The tendency in the
secondary literature to focus just on this initial part of Hegel’s account of
religion is analogous to the general practice taken with regard to Hegel’s
Lectures on the Philosophy of History, where most people read only his famous
2 Hegel’s Interpretation of the Religions of the World
¹ Compare the claim made by Roger-Pol Droit in his The Cult of Nothingness: The Philo-
sophers and the Buddha, trans. by David Streight and Pamela Vohnson, Chapel Hill and London:
The University of North Carolina Press 2003, p. 58: “Hegel was extremely attentive to the
progress of Orientalism. As scholarly works appeared, he acquainted himself with those that
dealt with Persian, Sanskrit, and Chinese. His courses relative to the Orient, whether they were
on art, religion, or world history, were founded on first-hand documentation. The philosopher
undoubtedly altered the information available, sometimes markedly, to be able to make it fit into
his system. But the accuracy of his information was generally remarkable.”
4 Hegel’s Interpretation of the Religions of the World
A responsible judgment requires a detailed overview of and intimate famil-
iarity with Hegel’s sources.
Third, there is an important view that goes hand-in-hand with the one just
mentioned. In recent years there has been a quickly growing body of second-
ary literature arguing that Hegel’s views are decidedly Eurocentric, ethnocen-
tric, and even straightforwardly racist.² It is commonly held that, like most
Europeans of the day, he was simply prejudiced and negatively disposed
towards any religion except Christianity, and, as a result, his analyses of
non-Western religions cannot be taken seriously. According to the charitable
version of this view, he cannot be faulted for these shortcomings and preju-
dices since all of his sources suffered from the same flaws. In any case, it is
thought that he cannot in principle have anything meaningful to say about the
different religions of the world since all of his analyses are marred by a
pernicious prejudiced disposition typical of European scholars of the day. It
is but a short step from this to claiming that his historical accounts can be
safely skipped over since they can have no beneficial effect on the reader and
do not facilitate an understanding of religious phenomena.
While it is true that Hegel, like all human beings, has his prejudices and
does express himself in ways that we would regard as ethnocentric or racist
by our contemporary cultural standards, it does not follow from this that he
has absolutely nothing meaningful to say about the world religions. Simply
because we can identify some of his statements as racist, it does not follow that
all of them are. Of course, we have a duty to identify and criticize whatever
ethnocentric or racist elements that we find, but this can be done without a
wholesale rejection of his entire philosophy of religion. Moreover, Hegel’s
critics on this issue implicitly rely on a theory of equality, human rights, and
the value of the individual that, in fact, Hegel himself helped to bring about.
Some version of his account of subjective freedom and the irreducible im-
portance of the individual vis-à-vis oppressive customs and institutions is at
work in the views of those who wish to dismiss him by branding him
² This body of literature represents a new and important contribution to Hegel studies, which
traditionally had simply ignored or dismissed this dubious aspect of his thought. See, for
example, Teshale Tibebu, Hegel and the Third World: The Making of Eurocentrism in World
History, Syracuse: Syracuse University Press 2011. Robert Bernasconi, “Hegel at the Court of the
Ashanti,” in Hegel after Derrida, ed. by Stuart Barnett, New York: Routledge 1998, pp. 41–63.
Robert Bernasconi, “With What Must the Philosophy of World History Begin? On the Racial
Basis of Eurocentrism,” Nineteenth-Century Contexts, vol. 22, 2000, pp. 171–201. Robert
Bernasconi, “The Return of Africa: Hegel and the Question of the Racial Identity of the
Egyptians,” in Identity and Difference: Studies in Hegel’s Logic, Philosophy of Spirit and Politics,
ed. by Philip Grier, Albany, State University of New York Press 2007, pp. 201–16. Babacar
Camara, “The Falsity of Hegel’s Theses on Africa,” Journal of Black Studies, vol. 36, no. 1, 2005,
pp. 82–96. Michael H. Hoffheimer, “Hegel, Race, Genocide,” Southern Journal of Philosophy, vol.
39 (supplement), 2001, pp. 35–62. Michael H. Hoffheimer, “Race and Law in Hegel’s Philosophy
of Religion,” in Race and Racism in Modern Philosophy, ed. by Andrew Valls, Ithaca and London:
Cornell University Press 2005, pp. 194–216.
Introduction 5
ethnocentric or racist. So ironically, it is impossible to criticize Hegel here
without in another sense agreeing with him and having recourse to his theory
of what it is to be human.
Fourth, another problem has to do with Hegel’s teleology. Most studies of
Hegel’s philosophy of religion ignore his striking claim that the history of the
world religions follows a necessary telos. It is quite unfashionable today to
claim that the development of the religions of the world leads to a culminating
point in Christianity, which is the only true religion. Such claims offend our
modern sensibilities almost as quickly as racist or ethnocentric statements.
As a result, otherwise sympathetic commentators have discreetly ignored
these claims since they regard them as wholly indefensible. This fact also
explains why there has not been much interest in the historical dimension of
Hegel’s lectures.
The problem with this approach is that to ignore Hegel’s claim about the
teleological trajectory of the world religions means to miss the entire point of
his account of the historical development. It is simply impossible to under-
stand his analyses of either Christianity or the other religions without keeping
in mind this idea. However, it does not follow from this that everything that
precedes the endpoint of the account is false and meaningless.³ Indeed, Hegel
devotes a great deal of time and effort to understanding these other religions.
Far from dismissing them, Hegel warns his auditors against prejudice towards
this material:
A survey of these religions reveals what supremely marvelous and bizarre flights
of fancy the nations have hit upon in their representations of the divine essence
and of their [own] duties and modes of conduct. To cast aside these religious
representations and usages as superstition, error, and fraud is to take a superficial
view of the matter . . . ”⁴
³ On this point I concur with José Ortega y Gasset’s understanding. See Luanne Buchanan
and Michael H. Hoffheimer, “Hegel and America by José Ortega y Gasset,” Clio, vol. 25, no. 1,
1995, p. 71: “Hegel’s historical philosophy has the ambition of justifying each epoch, each human
stage, and avoiding the error of vulgar progressivism that considers all that is past as essential
barbarity. . . .Hegel wants to demonstrate . . . that what is historical is an emanation of reason;
that the past has good sense; or . . . that universal history is not a string of foolish acts. Rather
Hegel wants to demonstrate that in the gigantic sequence of history something serious has
happened, something that has reality, structure and reason. And to this end he tries to show that
all periods have had reason, precisely because they were different and even contradictory.”
⁴ Hegel, LPR, vol. 1, p. 198; VPR, Part 1, p. 107. See also Hegel, Aesthetics, vol. 1, pp. 310f.;
Jub., vol. 12, p. 417. As early as “The Tübingen Essay” Hegel upbraids people who wish to
denigrate the pagan religions (TE, p. 38; TJ, p. 10): “whoever finds that other people’s modes of
representation—heathens, as they are called—contain so much absurdity that they cause him to
delight in his own higher insights, his understanding, which convinces him that he sees further
than the greatest of men saw, does not comprehend the essence of religion. Someone who calls
Jehovah Jupiter or Brahma and is truly pious offers his gratitude or his sacrifice in just as
childlike a manner as does the true Christian.”
6 Hegel’s Interpretation of the Religions of the World
He enjoins his auditors to take the different religions seriously and devote a
careful study to them: “It is easy to say that such a religion is just senseless and
irrational. What is not easy is to recognize the necessity and truth of such
religious forms, their connection with reason; and seeing that is a more
difficult task than declaring something to be senseless.”⁵ Since religion is a
product of the human mind, it must contain some rationality that is accessible
to the inquiring subject. There is thus an inherent logos in religious belief and
practice, regardless of how absurd it might strike us at first glance. Although
there is a teleology in the development of religion, according to Hegel, this
does not imply that everything prior to the culmination of the development is
absurd. On the contrary, Hegel can be seen as making a plea, progressive at the
time, for the careful study of non-European religions.
On the whole, this body of historical material about the world religions is
something of an embarrassment for sympathetic readers today. They want
to explore Hegel’s defense of Christianity, but before they can get to this,
there stand in the way, inconveniently enough, several hundred pages of
material, which are rather difficult and, to their mind, less than convincing.
The natural reaction has been simply to omit this material and try to keep it
an inside trade secret. But this approach can only lead to new misunder-
standings since Hegel clearly intended for the historical analyses to do
substantial work in his overall argumentation. Whether he was right or
wrong, prejudiced or disabused, well or ill informed, it is impossible to
escape the fact that he saw these historical analyses as being absolutely
essential for a correct understanding of the nature of religion and ultimately
Christianity.
In short, the reason for the neglect of the historical dimension of Hegel’s
analysis is presumably the belief that this is simply an untenable part of his
overall project due to the reasons outlined above. None of the standard works
on Hegel’s philosophy of religion really takes seriously the historical dimen-
sion, which he spends so much time and energy elaborating. It is clear that this
historical material is absolutely central to his argumentative strategy and
ultimate goal, but yet it has been almost completely neglected.
To date there are only three short single-author monographic studies that
treat Hegel’s account of the “determinate religions”: Ernst Schulin’s Die
⁵ LPR, vol. 2, p. 570; VPR, Part 2, p. 467. See also Hegel, LPR, vol. 1, p. 198; VPR, Part 1, p. 107:
“The higher need is to apprehend what it means, its positive and true [significance], its
connection with what is true—in short, its rationality. After all it is human beings who have
lighted upon such religions, so there must be reason in them—in everything contingent there
must be a higher necessity.” Phil. of Hist., pp. 195f.; Jub., vol. 11, p. 261: “However erroneous a
religion may be, it possesses truth, although in a mutilated phase. In every religion there is a
divine presence, a divine relation; and a philosophy of history has to seek out the spiritual
element even in the most imperfect forms.”
Introduction 7
weltgeschichtliche Erfassung des Orients bei Hegel und Ranke, from 1958,⁶
Reinhard Leuze’s Die außerchristlichen Religionen bei Hegel, from 1975,⁷ and
Michel Hulin’s Hegel et l’orient, from 1979.⁸ The first two of these were Ph.D.
dissertations. As the title suggests, Schulin’s work is a comparative study of
Hegel and the German historian Leopold von Ranke (1795–1886). While this
study contains much that is relevant for Hegel’s account of the different world
religions, its main focus is the philosophy of history and not the philosophy
of religion. Specifically, this work wishes to explore the significance of the
rising awareness of the East in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries for
European ways of thinking about history in the nineteenth century. Schulin
gives accounts of Hegel’s treatment of China, India, Persia, Phoenicia, Israel,
and Egypt, but since his focus is confined to Hegel’s conception of the Orient,
he does not go on to treat Hegel’s understanding of the Greek and Roman
world. No attempt is made to link Hegel’s treatment of the Orient with his
understanding of European religion and culture. In other words, the material
on the Orient is treated on its own and not as part of a wider analysis that
includes the West.
Leuze’s investigation, by contrast, is much closer to the present study in its
angle and method. First, this is a work dedicated to Hegel’s philosophy of
religion, and so the author is concerned specifically to reconstruct Hegel’s
different accounts of the world religions. Second, since he is not focused
primarily on Hegel’s treatment of the oriental world, Leuze goes on to explore
Hegel’s analysis of both the Greek and Roman religion. This study is particu-
larly to be praised for its attempt to make use of all of Hegel’s scattered
statements about the different religions, regardless of where they appear in
his corpus. This allows the author to understand how Hegel’s views developed
over time as he learned more about the different world religions. Unfortu-
nately, however, since it stops without further ado after the treatment of the
Roman religion, this study misses out on the main advantage that it could
provide, namely, to show how Hegel’s treatment of the different world reli-
gions is relevant for his defense of Christianity.
The third study, Michel Hulin’s Hegel et l’orient, makes use of both the
Lectures on the Philosophy of History and the Lectures on the Philosophy of
Religion to reconstruct Hegel’s account of the different oriental cultures and
religions. The treatments are somewhat uneven, since the author devotes more
⁶ Ernst Schulin, Die weltgeschichtliche Erfassung des Orients bei Hegel und Ranke, Göttingen:
Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht 1958.
⁷ Reinhard Leuze, Die außerchristlichen Religionen bei Hegel, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und
Rupprecht 1975 (Theologie und Geistesgeschichte des Neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, vol. 14).
⁸ Michel Hulin, Hegel et l’orient, suivi de la traduction annotée d’un essai de Hegel sur la
Bhagavad-Gita, Paris: J. Vrin 1979.
8 Hegel’s Interpretation of the Religions of the World
pages to India than to all of the other religions combined.⁹ In particular the
accounts of Hegel’s analysis of Persia, Egypt, and Israel are rather superficial.
In addition to these three single-author monographs, there has appeared
an anthology entitled Hegel’s Philosophy of the Historical Religions, which in
many ways can be regarded as a forerunner of the present study.¹⁰ This useful
collection, edited by Bart Labuschagne and Timo Slootweg, features articles
by different scholars on Hegel’s treatment of magic, the Chinese religion,
Hinduism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, the Egyptian religion, the Greek reli-
gion, Judaism, and the Roman religion. Moreover, this collection goes on, in
individual articles, to explore Hegel’s treatment of Christianity, Islam, and
Protestantism. In this way it correctly portrays Hegel’s understanding of the
non-European religions as a part of his overall argument for Christianity and
not as an isolated or separate topic. The contributing authors recognize the
complexity of the topic and realize that it calls for specialized expertise in the
individual religions treated. The only shortcoming of this volume, if one can
call it that, lies in its nature as a multi-author collection. Since there are many
different contributing authors involved, no single thesis or line of thought is
developed throughout the entire work. Instead, the individual chapters are
more or less episodic in their treatments, using different approaches and
methodologies. This anthology can be seen as a reflection of the growing
scholarly interest in Hegel’s treatment of the different world religions; it is,
without doubt, the most extensive and useful single volume on the topic
to date.
Like these studies, I wish to give an overview of Hegel’s account of the
historical material about the religions of the world and make this the primary
focus of the investigation and interpretation. Also like these works, I wish to
explore in some depth Hegel’s sources of information about the different
religions and the state of the scholarship at the time in the different fields
that we today refer to under the broad rubrics of Asian, Near Eastern, and
Classical Studies. This will help us to put Hegel’s statements into a more
concrete context that will facilitate an understanding of his overall views.
While Schulin, Leuze, and Hulin make valiant attempts to reconstruct Hegel’s
sources, they ultimately only begin to scratch the surface of the vast amount of
material that needs to be explored in order to understand Hegel’s different
treatments.
I wish to argue that Hegel’s interpretation and defense of Christianity
cannot be properly understood without an appreciation of his assessment of
⁹ That the author is most interested in India and Hinduism is attested by the fact that the
work also included the author’s French translation of Hegel’s book review of Wilhelm von
Humboldt’s treatise on the Bhagavad-Gita.
¹⁰ Hegel’s Philosophy of the Historical Religions, ed. by Bart Labuschagne and Timo Slootweg,
Leiden and Boston: Brill 2012.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
Abb. 13 Die Hoflößnitz Eingang zum
Festsaal
Aufnahme von J. Ostermaier, Dresden-Blasewitz
Müde vom vielen Schauen gönnen wir uns eine kurze Rast unter
den alten Kastanien der geräumigen Aussichtsterrasse, die
zwischen dem Hoflößnitzer Herrenhause und dem gemütlichen
Weinschanke liegt, der sich in einem der alten Hofgebäude
eingenistet hat. Zu einem Fläschchen Wein oder wenigstens
Schoppen wäre schon der Durst vorhanden. Ob aber auch die
nötigen Billionen, ohne die heutzutage niemand an so etwas denken
darf? Mag die durstige Kehle dursten! Dafür trinkt das durstige Auge
die Schönheit, die der Blick auf die liebliche Lößnitz zu unsern
Füßen bietet, in vollen Zügen. Ein andrer Blick wieder, als vom
Jakobstein über Wackerbarths Ruhe, die aus der Ferne noch einmal
zu uns freundlich herübergrüßt, aber auch bezaubernd schön in
seiner Art. Der um die Vervollkommnung des Lößnitzer Weinbaus
hochverdiente Johann Paul Knoll, der »erste Winzer der Lößnitz«,
dessen Bild in der Schankstube nebenan von der Wand
herablächelt, durfte schon mit Recht singen:
Abb. 1 Grundkarte
Details
Geldknappheit ist durchaus keine neuzeitliche Erfindung! Anno
1675 hat ein »Wohlverordtneter Cammer-Juncker, auch Ober Forst
u. Wildtmeister … vor eingelieferte Hirsch Wildts und andere Heuthe
auch Rehe felle und anders (Wölfe sind mehrfach noch genannt!)
noch 496 fl 2 gr an Jägerrechte zu fordern«. Er bittet, wenigstens die
Hälfte ihm zu gewähren – die Forderung betraf die Jahre 1670–
1675!! Treue Dienste müssen aber doch belohnt werden! Ist kein
Geld da, dann eben auf andre Weise! Und so war denn der Kurfürst
auf den Gedanken verfallen, sein Waldgebiet dort zu opfern, wo es
der Wildbahn nicht schädlich war: er verlieh an Stelle vielleicht sehr
dringlicher Gehaltszulagen ein Stück derartigen Heidebodens – als
Weinbergsgelände! Die Karte (Abb. 2) nennt Namen und Stand der
Bedachten: Forstleute und Amtsschreiber, Bürgermeister und
Kammerdiener, alle werden fast gleichmäßig bedacht: zwischen vier
und sechs Ackern schwankt die Größe der »Neuen Weinbergstede«.
Die Karte zeigt übrigens auch, wie der Kurfürst gleichzeitig die
Gelegenheit benutzt hat, sein Heidegebiet abzurunden: »Diesen
Feldwinkl treten die Zwantzig Personen von Rädebeil vnderthenigst
ab! Zu ergäntzung dieser heyden ecken!« lesen wir unter anderem
im nordöstlichen Teile der Karte – sie ist umgekehrt orientiert wie
unsere Karten! Seit 1627 hat sie geruht – zum ersten Male wird sie
hier abgedruckt – im Dresdner Hauptstaatsarchiv fand ich sie (Loc.
38525, Rep. XVIIIa, Dresden 185), eine Zeichnung des Balthasar
Zimmermann, des kursächsischen Markscheiders, des Vetters jenes
berühmteren Mathias Oeder, dessen Heidekarte von 1600 bereits
Erwähnung fand.
1
2
4
5
7
8
Gez. v. M. Retzsch Lith. v. E. Otte. Gedr. v. E. Böhme.
Abb. 1 Winzerzug