424 Notes to Pages 4-7
- Äußerungen über Kant, seinen Charakter und seine Meinungen, von einem billigen
Verehrer seiner Verdienste (Königsberg, 1804), p. 7. - Äußerungen über Kant, p. 9.
- "Misogynist" did not mean the same thing that it means today. For Metzger it
seems to have meant simply an "aversion to marriage." - Äußerungen über Kant, p. 17.
- Äußerungen über Kant, p. 19.
- There was Kant's Leben. Eine Skizze. In einem Briefe eines Freundes an einen Freund
(Altenburg: C. H. Richter, 1799). It is represented as a translation "from the En¬
glish." There is also an English title published in the same year by the same pub¬
lisher, called "A Sketch of Kant's Life in a Letter from One Friend to Another from
the German by the Author of the Translation of the Metaphysic of Morals.. ."
The author of this appears to have been John Richardson, who had studied Kant¬
ian philosophy with Beck. This "sketch" cannot be identical with "Richardson's
Sketch" as published by Stephen Palmquist (ed.) in Four Neglected Essays by Im¬
manuel Kant (Hong Kong: Philopsychy Press, 1994). This was written later. The
earlier version was a translation of "Etwas über Kant," Jahrbücher der preußischen
Monarchie unter der Regierung Friedrich Wilhelms des Dritten 1 (1799), pp. 94-99
(author indicated by "L. F."). Second, there was an anonymous volume called
Fragmente aus Kants Leben. Ein biographischer Versuch (Königsberg: Hering and
Haberland, 1802), probably by Johann Christoph Mortzfeld, a medical doctor who
lived in Königsberg, and another anonymous biography that had appeared early
in 1804, entitled Immanuel Kants Biographie, vol. 1 (Leipzig: C. G. Weigel, 1804).
Apart from these longer treatments there had already been at least sixteen short
publications, a number of public speeches on Kant in Königsberg, and many other
incidental materials. For a discussion of the value of all these (and some later sources)
see Karl Vorländer, Die ältesten Kant-Biographien. Eine kritische Studie (Berlin:
Reuther & Reichard, 1918). - Johann Gottfried Hasse, Ausserungen Kant's von einem seiner Tischgenossen (Königs¬
berg: Gottlieb Lebrecht Herlage, 1804). - Ak 12, p. 371.
- Hasse, Ausserungen Kant's, p. 2on. According to Rüdiger Safranski, in E. T. A. Hoff¬
mann. Das Leben eines skeptischen Phantasten (München/Wien: Karl Hanser Ver¬
lag, 1984), p. 42. Hasse also tried to prove in one of his publications that the Garden
of Eden had been somewhere close to Königsberg (Samland). - Since Metzger and Hasse were close, both being "foreigners," i.e., not natives of
Königsberg, one may speculate whether the two were not playing the same game,
that is, taking the natives down a notch. - Hasse, Ausserungen Kant's, p. 37n.
- Scheffner, Briefe von und an Scheffner, II, p. 451.
- He himself claimed that he sat in Kant's lectures for nine years. Since he received
his Magister degree in 1787, he must have attended Kant's classes even as a young
Magister. See Jachmann, Kant, p. 142. - Wasianski kept a copy of his biography bound with empty pages between the
printed ones, in which he made "remarks not appropriate for the public." They
were later published by P. Czygan as " 'Anmerkungen, die nicht fürs Publikum