The 30 contributions of the volume understand ‘enlightenment’ as an anthropological category, investigate the close connection with education and religion and discuss historical-cultural differences and continuities. The topics are different forms of ‘enlightenment’ in the classical ‘educational century’, the question of ‘enlightenment’ in the Middle Ages, ‘enlightenment’ educational concepts since the 19th century, the fields of tension Islam and gender as well as variants of ‘enlightenment’ as ‘cultural transfer’ or independent development with the examples Iceland, Turkestan, Mongolia and Japan.