KANT (Immanuel).
Physische Geographie. Auf Verlangen des Verfassers, aus seiner Handschrift herausgegeben und zum Theil bearbeitet von D. Friedrich Theodor Rink.
The first authorised edition of Kant’s geographical treatises. Vollmer’s edition marginally predated it to begin with (1801-1805), but it was based on old lecture notes rather than - as here with Rink - on the manuscript.
‘Friedrich Theodor Rink (1770-1811) was possibly a student of Kant’s from the late 1780s, but then later became a close colleague and frequent lunch guest during the 1790s when he was a lecturer, and then associate professor, of oriental languages at the university, eventually also becoming a full professor of theology. He left Könïgsberg in 1801 for a chaplaincy and rectorate in Danzig, and brought with him a small collection of Kantiana, including at least four sets of lecture notes: two on geography and one each on pedagogy and theology). Rink clearly enjoyed Kant’s trust, with whose permission he published a two-volume edition of Kant’s lecture notes on geography (1802), as well as what became a remarkably popular one-volume edition of Kant’s lectures on education (1803). After Kant’s death he also published Kant’s essay on the Progress in Metaphysics (1804) and wrote one of the early Kant biographies (1805). An unauthorized version of Kant’s lectures on physical geography was published by Johann Jakob Wilhelm Vollmer in a four-volume work [1801-5] that was soon translated into Italian [Eckerlin 1807]. Kant publicly denounced Vollmer’s edition. A two-volume compilation from the Rink and Vollmer editions was also published by Karl Gottlieb Schelle (Leipzig: J. B. Schieff, 1803)’ (Steve Naragon’s ‘Kant in the Classroom’ website).
Warda 215, Adickes 109.
