Continuing from Volume I of the “Early Writings” published in 1989, Volume II contains all texts from Hegel’s years in Frankfurt (1797–1800): the revised Berne manuscripts on faith, religion, and the history of Israel, as well as newly created manuscripts on the history of Israel and the Greek, Jewish, and Christian religions. It also includes two late fragments on religion and a newly developed introduction to a treatise on positive religion.
During these years, however, Hegel also turned his attention to completely different subjects: Fragments of his first pamphlet on the constitution of Württemberg, as well as geometric studies and smaller texts, such as an assessment of Schiller’s Wallenstein, and his extensive commentary translation of Jean Jacques Cart’s letters on the relationship of the canton of Vaud to Bern.
The texts of this period, passed down by his biographer Karl Rosenkranz, as well as a text titled “An Ethics” that appears in Hegel’s handwriting and is attributed to an unidentified author, complete the content of the volume.
A conversation between Roland Reuß, Walter Jaeschke, and Manfred Meiner, which provides further details on this volume, was published in Text – Kritische Beiträge, Issue 15, pp. 253-267, Stroemfeld Verlag, Frankfurt/Main (2016).
Simon Gros 
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