Preface.

I believed I could not use and apply my spare hours, after completing my professional and official duties, better than by dedicating them to literary history, especially that of Upper Lusatia, particularly since I have always loved this study from my school years onwards. During this occupation, I became acquainted with Hamberger's Gelehrtes Teutschland Learned Germany, continued by the Privy Councilor Meusel, and with Weiz's Gelehrtes Sachsen Learned Saxony. As I first caught sight of these scholars' works, I liked their idea in terms of their utility, as well as the courage of the former in their trust in their own strength to undertake a work encompassing the literary industry of all Germany, which was all the more Herculean as they found little or no paved way, neither in general nor in relation to individual provinces. In this state of affairs, nothing finished could be expected. Whoever understood the undertaking in its scope and with all its difficulty, even to a small degree, had to be astonished at the fairly profitable yield, but also had to foresee that, even with the industry, the widespread scholarly correspondence, and the rare resources of the beginner and his successor, it would have to remain piecemeal as long as there was not, in every province, a man