JOHANNES SCHERR WAS a mediator, an author between two nations, Germany and Switzerland, each of which was in the making during his lifetime. The argument to be developed in this chapter is that Scherr's authorial life is best understood as a perpetual movement between the two. Nor did that movement cease when Scherr went into permanent exile in Switzerland in 1849. Rather it was sublimated, taking on the form of a commerce of ideas. Scherr translated Germany outward to the world at the Zurich Polytechnic Institute, but he also interpreted Germany and the world for German readers in popular works that were written in Switzerland and published in Leipzig.

In this chapter I will argue that Scherr is a liminal author in the sense that he is “characterized by being on a boundary or threshold, esp. by being intermediate or transitional to two states, situations,” and that his liminality is a constitutive factor in his authorship. Scherr was liminal in at least three important senses: geographically, existentially, and professionally. His life and work as an author were defined by his geographical proximity to a political border. Scherr the freelance writer had long existed on the threshold to a clearly defined social role. Finally, even after Scherr had crossed the threshold to recognition and respectability upon his appointment to a professorship, the faculty structure of his home institution, a technical university, effectively placed him in an intermediate position between the humanities and the natural sciences.

Scherr thought of himself as a German first, but in purely legal terms he was a Württemberger. He was a German nationalist, and until the attainment of political unity in 1871, this meant pledging allegiance to the Kulturnation, a nation that existed purely in the realm of ideas—or in print. Scherr was until 1871 formally a citizen of Württemberg. It follows that if there is an argument to be made for liminality as a constitutive factor in his authorship, then this must begin with his movements back and forth between Württemberg and Switzerland, specifically the Canton of Zurich. Only by considering Scherr's crossings between these states, with their distinct yet interconnected intellectual and political cultures, will it be possible to gain insight into the specific character of his authorship.