Abstract

When Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz saw the light of day in Leipzig on June 21, 1646, negotiations to end the Thirty Years’ War were taking place in Münster and Osnabrück. In 1648, the Peace of Westphalia marked the end of what was probably the greatest catastrophe in German history at that time. Golo Mann described these two “Westphalian cities of Münster and Osnabrück [...], this one as the residence of the Catholics, that one of the Protestants”, as “islands of security and splendid prosperity in a sea of misery” (Mann 1991, p. 220). Leibniz was born into the post-war period of this war, the most devastating war in European history: “The consequences were bad for millions of suffering, martyred human individuals. They were also bad for the collective being, called nation, in its living together and competition with other nations” (Mann 1991, p. 228).