Johanna Eleonora Petersen and the Reception of Molière in Germany

The earliest significant German edition of Molière, published in 1694, was a collection of thirteen comedies which may have been translated – surprisingly – by the devout Pietist writer Johanna Eleonora Petersen. This article is the first detailed examination of the collection. It investigates the question of who may have translated the plays, examines the text itself, and shows how the translation played a crucial role in spreading knowledge of Molière among a new bourgeois readership at the beginning of Germany's own golden age of drama.