Ongoing Projects
Determining Truth, Choosing Faiths, and Making Decisions about One’s Affiliation: Religious Decision-Making in the Early Modern Period (Prof. Dr. Matthias Pohlig, monograph)
Offering new religious choices, the early Reformation in the Holy Roman Empire was a field of experimentation in decision-making culture. Even though polemicists propagated the idea of a sharp dualism between the ‘true’ and the ‘false’ church, in reality, there was a multitude of confessional options that remained fluid. This project investigates how the need for making decisions was constructed through communication as well as the processes of decision-making, their representation, and their narratives.(More)
Middle Eastern Christians in the Eighteenth-Century Holy Roman Empire (Dr. Tobias Graf, monograph/habilitation thesis)
In the eighteenth century, a growing number of Christians from Ottoman Syria journeyed to the Holy Roman Empire. Most prominent among them were allegedly high-ranking individuals to whom contemporaries referred as ‘princes of Mount Lebanon’ or ‘Arabian Princes’. This project investigates the reception of these highly mobile actors and especially their treatment by administrations at different levels.
Gender in Rebellion? A Gender-Historical Approach to the ‘German Peasants’ War’ (1524–1526) (Fabia Berhanue, doctoral dissertation)
The aim of this doctoral project is an investigation of the uprising commonly called the ‘German Peasants’ War’ of 1524 to 1526 from the point of view of gender history. Combining discourse analysis with an actor-centric approach, it will shed light on what meanings the category of gender acquired when and why in the context of this rebellion and what this meant for the options for action available to individual rebels. (More)
The Reception of German Historians in France in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries: Translation, Circulation and Use (Inès Saugné, Dissertation)
This thesis project proposes to locate, situate, and characterize the historiographical works of German historians of the sixteenth century on the basis of their French translations published during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. It aims to evaluate the presence and influence of the writings, ideas, political and religious themes favoured by German historiography in early modern France. (More)
The ‘Memoriael’ of the First Dutch Ambassador to the Sublime Porte, Cornelis Haga (1612-1639), and his Role in European Politics on the Eve of the Thirty Years’ War (Tatjana von Schoenaich-Carolath, doctoral dissertation)
On the basis of comparison of the largely unpublished private and official correspondence of Cornelis Haga with the dispatches of other European ambassadors in Constantinople as well as contemporary Ottooman works of history, this project reconstructs a detailed picture of the diplomatic activities of the first Dutch ambassador in the Ottoman capital and charts the establishment of the Dutch embassy at the Sublime Porte in its European context. (More)
Under the Skin. On the Shape and Function of Phantasmatic Body Images in Anti-Jewish and Witchcraft Discourses during the Long Sixteenth Century (1470-1630) (Arndt Wille, doctoral dissertation)
This doctoral project is a comparative investigation of the form and function of phantasmatic body images in German anti-Jewis and witchcraft discourses during the long sixteenth century. Through a focus on ‘imagined’ body boundaries (skin/orifices), this research allows new insights into how allegedly ‘abhorrent’ and ‘dangerous’ Others were discoursively constructed. (More)