Benjamin Herder

And Johann Gottfried von Herder, in the heart of Roman Catholic Germany, produced a counterweight to the Protestant Brockhaus in his Konversations-Lexikon (1853–57)—soon called, simply, Herder—which adopted a distinctive Catholic viewpoint. This excellent encyclopaedia was early recognized for its general impartiality, scholarship, and accuracy. In the…

In addition, Herder’s Conversations-Lexikon (1853–57) and its subsequent editions provided the Catholic counterbalance in a country where Protestants and Catholics were almost equal in numbers.