Selections from the Correspondence of Otto von Guericke and Leibniz


Between May of 1671 and March of 1672, Otto von Guericke carried out a correspondence with none other than the great Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. These letters started out in Latin, but the vast majority is in German, with Latin interspersed, usually for technical terms or quotes and ideas from Guericke's book, Experimenta Nova (1672), which was eagerly anticipated. Below I've reproduced the text of the letters (without the critical annotations found in the original source) to provide as clear a picture of the correspondence as possible. The numbers of each letter are for cross-referencing with the associated numbers in my main reference:

Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. Philosophischer Briefwechsel. Vol. 1. Sämtliche Schriften und Briefe 2. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2006.

Because the letters are in German, and I don't speak German, it was necessary to get at least a rough translation through Google Translate. This provides the gist of the letters, and I lightly edited some parts to help readability. Maybe I'll commission a proper translation at some point, but for now, this is sufficient. Both the original German and the roughly translated English versions can be found below. 

German edition:


English rough translation:


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