ABSTRACT
Introduction Adam Smith’s earliest German reception came in several stages, which run roughly parallel to the profound historical and geopolitical changes associated with the demise of the Holy Roman Empire and the rise of Prussian supremacy. The late Enlightenment saw the early translations of The Theory of Moral Sentiments (by Christian Rautenberg, 1770) and The Wealth of Nations (by J. F. Schiller, 1776-8). The era of Napoleonic upheaval and war dovetailed with a second and highly effective translation of the latter (by Christian Garve, 1794-6) and the emergence of specialist German Smithians, especially from the University of Göttingen. The Stein-Hardenberg reforms in Prussia, signaling a recovery from defeat and launching Prussia’s ascendancy in the early nineteenth century, ran parallel to a deeper reading in Smith, which partially impacted these reforms.
