The present volume is based on the conference ‘How Radical was the German Enlightenment?’ which took place November 7–9, 2013, at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign). The conference was organized in cooperation with the Lessing Society and made possible by the generous financial support of a number of institutions and organizations, among them the School of Literatures, Cultures, and Linguistics (U. of Illinois), the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (U. of Illinois), the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD/New York), and a number of smaller units: the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, the European Union Center, the Department of French, the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, the Program in Jewish Studies, the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory, the Program in Comparative and World Literature, and the Department of History (all at the U. of Illinois). I would like to thank Laurie Johnson, Jill Gurke, Rick Partin, Sarah Henneboehl, Jeff Castle, and Renata Fuchs for their organizational help with the conference.