The Historical Reference to French Enlightenment in German and Viennese Late Enlightenment currents

From the end of the 19th Century until the time of the third Reich, a vast network of groups emerged and developed around specific topics and intellectual as well as practical problems of the time. Now referred to as "Late Enlightenment" (Stadler 1981, 2015), these sociocultural currents developed a scientifically oriented worldview in conjunction with progressive reform movements around education, economy, justice, state-church relationship and more (Sandner, Pape 2017; Sandner 2019; Linsbichler 2021). As such, these currents are the sociocultural milieu in which the Vienna Circle and the Austrian school of economics and their protagonists developed their thought and were often active. The main groups were the monists, the freethinkers and the ethical society both in Germany and in Austria, with specific dynamics and organisations in their singular context. Each group was crossed by different political tendencies and links to the political parties, ranging from social liberalism to social democracy and even Austromarxism. If they often associate themselves with Enlightenment ideas, a precise analysis of key publications and key journals of the main groups shows that one of the meanings of Enlightenment is often a reference to the 18th Century French historical Enlightenment. Three elements can be strongly identified: the French Revolution, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire and sometimes Jean Meslier. But depending on the protagonist, the group, the time (before WWI or during the interwar) and their political tendencies and agenda, their interpretations share some features, emphasise some aspects and differ on others. Namely: the critique of the church and christianism, education, progress, ethics, literature, etc. This talk aims to present the views of their protagonists on those specific references and provide an analysis of their interpretation, between their internal group dynamics and the shadow of mediator thinkers such as D. F. Strauß and J. Popper-Lynkeus.