Monday lecture
30 Nov 2026 · 6.30 pm

Cornelia Zumbusch (University of Bern): Fausts Sorge. Zur Anthropologie im Anthropozän

Venue: Leibniz-Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung, Eberhard-Lämmert-Saal, entrance Meierottostr. 8, 10719 Berlin
Organized by Pola Groß
Research project(s): Reproduction, Labor, Aesthetics

Care figures twice in Goethe’s dramatic works. In Faust II, care appears as an allegory, drawn by Goethe from Hyginus’s fable of Cura. Whereas, in the play Pandora, care appears as Epimeleia, the daughter-figure that Goethe wrote into the myth of Prometheus. This lecture seeks to develop an anthropology of the Anthropocene that departs from current debates on matters of care, by exploring the discrepancy between the concern and restlessness of the gray woman Care, and the relational care implied in the figure of Epimeleia. The aim is to elucidate the dimensions of human relations to nature, as sketched in both Faust and Pandora, through a notion of care that is intertwined with labor and effort, anxiety and sorrow, reproduction and regeneration.

 

Cornelia Zumbusch is a professor of modern German literature at the University of Bern, co-director of the Warburg-Haus, and a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Since 2019, she has co-directed the DFG-Centre for Advanced Studies “Imaginaria of Force” together with Frank Fehrenbach. In 2026, she received the DFG’s Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize for her outstanding research on the poetics of knowledge and the relationship between literature and science.

Selected Publications:

  • Sorge/Care: Ethik und Realität der Sorge (Herder, Goethe, Stifter, Stelling), in: Joseph Vogl, Roman Widder (eds.): Treue. Die Ethik des Realismus. Stuttgart: Metzler 2026, 217–239
  • Ed.: Vers und Prosa. Stuttgart/Weimar: Metzler 2026 (with Judith Kasper)
  • Cura, Care und Caritas. Gottfried Kellers Roman Der grüne Heinrich als verdeckte Geschichte der Sorge, in: Frauke Berndt, Philipp Theisohn (eds.): Gottfried Kellers Moderne. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter 2024, 217–236
  • Romantische Thermodynamik. Dichtung, Natur und die Verwandlung der Kräfte 1770–1830. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter 2023
    Natur und Askese. Eine Poetik. Berlin: Matthes & Seitz 2022
  • Ed.: Politische Emotionen in den Künsten. Berlin/New York: De Gruyter 2021 (with Frank Fehrenbach and Philipp Ekardt)
    Die Immunität der Klassik. Berlin: Suhrkamp 2011