---
title: "Isis (journal, 1816)"
chunk: 1/5
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isis_(journal,_1816)"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:11:31.596695+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

Isis was an encyclopedic journal that focused on articles on natural science, medicine, technology, economics as well as art and history. It also published important articles on science policy and the organization of science. Edited by Lorenz Oken and published by Friedrich Arnold Brockhaus, Isis was the first interdisciplinary journal in the German-speaking world.
The 41 volumes of the journal named after the Egyptian goddess Isis were nominally published from 1817 to 1848. However, the first issue appeared on August 1, 1816, while the printing of the last issue was delayed until February 1850. Until 1832, Isis bore the title Encyclopädische Zeitung. After the focus of the articles published in it had changed, Oken changed the title to Encyclopädische Zeitschrift, vorzüglich für Naturgeschichte, vergleichende Anatomie und Physiologie in 1833. Initially printed in Jena, the journal was banned in the Grand Duchy of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach and from the summer of 1819 was produced in nearby Rudolstadt in the court printing works of the Principality of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt. The magazine's original print run of 1,500 copies fell rapidly in the first few years of its existence and amounted to around 200 copies in the last few years.
Originally conceived as a non-political journal, Oken was forced to vehemently defend the freedom of the press in the first years of Isis' existence. This resulted in numerous lawsuits against Oken, some of which overlapped in time, which led to temporary bans on Isis in the Grand Duchy of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach. In the run-up to the Carlsbad Decrees, this led to Oken's dismissal as a professor at the University of Jena at the end of June 1819 under pressure from the states of the Holy Alliance.
From 2006 to 2013, a project funded by the German Research Foundation at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena studied the significance of Isis for scientific communication and the popularization of the natural sciences in the first half of the 19th century.

== Origin ==
In a letter dated April 11, 1814, Lorenz Oken contacted the publisher Friedrich Arnold Brockhaus for the first time and offered him his publication Neue Bewaffnung, neues Frankreich, neues Theutschland for printing. Brockhaus did not print it, but Oken subsequently contributed to Brockhaus' Conversations-Lexikon and, from June 1815 at the latest, was a contributor to the Deutsche Blätter, which Brockhaus had been publishing since October 1813 following the Battle of Leipzig and which became the most important journal in central Germany in 1813/1814. Presumably at the end of June/beginning of July 1815, Oken took over the editorship of the Tagesgeschichte, a supplement to the Deutsche Blätter, which was dedicated to daily politics and for which he wrote and edited numbers 1 to 16. With the end of the Wars of Liberation, the focus of the Deutsche Blätter shifted from war reporting to general daily politics, which was associated with a considerable decline in circulation from an initial 4000 to 1100 copies. On February 22, 1816, Brockhaus announced that he would discontinue the Deutsche Blätter. Oken regretted this decision and repeatedly urged Brockhaus to continue the Deutsche Blätter in another form. He presented Brockhaus with his encyclopedic concept of a new journal, which would not focus on current politics, but on the natural sciences, critique, history and political science. Brockhaus was only to bear the printing and postage costs. The first publishing contract for the Encyclopädische Blätter was signed with Brockhaus on March 31, 1816. Oken presented his concept to readers in the last issue of Deutsche Blätter.

== Conception ==
The design concept for Isis was delayed until July 1816, as Oken was still working on the zoological section of his textbook on natural history. Oken reached an agreement with Brockhaus that a copper plate should appear in each booklet, and he worked towards a low sales price. They were at odds over the arrangement of the information in the title head and the text and image design. Oken had a woodcut made for the title head, in the middle of which the goddess Isis is depicted on an ancient Egyptian throne. On the left, she is flanked by her husband Osiris, who carries a vulture's head and a staff. To her right is Anubis with a jackal's head, palm branch and snake sceptre. Oken commissioned the rector of the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig, Veit Schnorr von Carolsfeld (1764–1841), to create the frontispiece and later copper plates. There were differences of opinion as to whether foreign-language contributions should be translated into German. Oken spoke out against it due to the difficulty of translating certain technical terms. Brockhaus was in favour of a translation for reasons of popularization.
The title Isis first appeared in correspondence between Oken and Brockhaus at the end of July, shortly before the first issue went to press. The two agreed on Encyclopädische Zeitung as the additional title, in line with the originally intended title of the journal. Oken sent the draft of the first edition, produced by the printer Johann Georg Schreiber in Jena, to Brockhaus' publishing house in Altenburg on July 13, 1816, with the remark that it was to be published in a new edition. Oken introduced this first issue of Isis, which appeared on August 1, 1816, with an excerpt from the Basic Law on the State Constitution of the Grand Duchy of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach. In it, he presented the programmatic orientation of his new journal. Isis was to cover natural sciences, medicine, mathematics, technology, economics, art and history. Law and theology were expressly excluded. Oken wrote "That is why history is the mirror of this journal, nature its floor, art its pillar wall. We leave the sky open." Anyone could send articles to Isis for publication. Oken did not pay a fee for published articles.

== Oken's fight for freedom of expression and the press ==

=== Legal dispute with Eichstädt ===