Correspondence between theologians in the southwestern part of the empire in the early modern period (1550–1620)
Correspondence between theologians in the southwestern part of the empire in the early modern period (1550–1620)
Zur Datenbank: https://thbw.hadw-bw.de
To the Letter of the Month
Video report about the work of the research center
The task and goal of the research project is to collect, index, and partially edit the letters of all leading theologians and church leaders in the Electoral Palatinate, Württemberg, and Strasbourg from 1550 to 1620. An evaluation of the letters from this period is particularly well suited to clarifying confessionalization and its consequences in the early modern period. Correspondence is a particularly fruitful source if one not only catalogs the correspondence of individual persons, but also examines as completely as possible the letters of certain groups of persons in selected regions during specific periods. This makes it possible to identify networks and patterns of general validity become more easily visible. Since theologians played a key role in the development of the confessions, their letters provide particularly valuable information about the motives and mechanisms of confessionalization.
Portraits from: Boissard, Bibliotheca chalcographica, Heidelberg/Frankfurt am Main 1652–1669 (Source:University of Mannheim, MARABU)
Zu erwarten ist – bei einer Zahl von ca. 200 relevanten Personen – ein Corpus von ca. 35.000 Briefen. Diese große Menge an Dokumenten wird anhand der Basisdaten (Absender, Adressat, Datum, Incipit, Schlagworte zum Inhalt etc.) in einer Datenbank (https://thbw.hadw-bw.de/) erfasst, ein Teil zusätzlich als Digitalisat der handschriftlichen Vorlage wiedergegeben und eine noch begrenztere Auswahl auch transkribiert geboten. Zudem sollen etwa 1.000 für die Frage nach dem Zusammenhang von Konfessionalisierung, Territorialstaatsbildung und Säkularisierung besonders relevante Briefe ediert und kommentiert werden. Mit der Erfassung und Edition der Briefe geht deren inhaltliche Auswertung im Hinblick auf diese zentralen Themen einher. Am Projekt beteiligte Promovierende werten einzelne Briefwechsel gezielt aus. Nicht zuletzt dienen die Daten der erfassten Briefe als Grundlage für die Rekonstruktion und die Analyse der Korrespondenznetzwerke der südwestdeutschen Theologen.
The work of the research center
The collection, cataloguing, and exemplary edition of the correspondence of all leading theologians of the Electoral Palatinate, Württemberg, and Strasbourg from 1550 to 1620 should shed light on the relationships outlined above. The project will take into account theology professors from the universities of Heidelberg and Tübingen as well as the Strasbourg Academy, as well as superintendents and court preachers who were significant in terms of territorial or church history during the period in question. This involves more than 200 individuals and approximately 35,000 letters. Of these, the thousand most important letters will be edited and annotated. This large amount of source material can only be managed by recording the majority of it in rudimentary form, reproducing another part as a reproduction of the handwritten original, and offering a more limited selection in transcribed form. The most important letters will be edited and annotated.
Briefdatenbank: https://thbw.hadw-bw.de/
Significance of the Theologians' Letters
An evaluation of the letters from this period is particularly well suited to clarifying confessionalization and its consequences in the early modern period. Correspondence is a particularly fruitful source if one not only examines the correspondence of individual persons, but also takes a comprehensive look at the letters of certain groups of people in selected regions during specific periods. This makes it possible to identify networks and reveals patterns of general validity more easily. Since theologians played a key role in the development of the confessions, their letters provide particularly valuable information about the motives and mechanisms of confessionalization.
Why the Southwest?
Between 1550 and 1620, three competing models of the Reformation developed in the southwestern part of the empire: a Lutheran model (Württemberg, University of Tübingen), a Reformed model (Electorate of the Palatinate, University of Heidelberg), and an "Upper German" model (Strasbourg).
These different denominational forms of Protestantism in the southwest had a strong influence on each other, particularly by increasingly distinguishing themselves from one another. However, they also had a supraregional, even international impact. The Strasbourg model of the Reformation influenced Calvin's Reformation, for example, while the Tübingen theologian Jacob Andreae played a leading role in the formation of the Lutheran confession throughout the German-speaking world. Reformed Protestantism in the Electoral Palatinate, with the University of Heidelberg, developed into a political bastion and intellectual center of Calvinism in Europe until 1620. This region thus made a significant, yet still insufficiently recognized contribution to the history of the European Reformation.
Contribution to the historiography of the early modern period
The period between the Peace of Augsburg and the Thirty Years' War has received particular attention in historical studies in recent decades. Since the 1980s, the prevailing interpretation that the path to modernity can essentially be described as secularization, i.e., a decline in the relevance and normativity of religion for the state and society, has been fundamentally questioned. Rather, the confessionalization that began as a result of the Reformation was also an eminently modernizing process. A more precise definition of the relationship between secularization and confessionalization is currently a central question in early modern historiography. It also has significant implications for the interpretation of the history of Western civilization as a whole, right up to the current question of the role of religion in public life.
head of research
auxiliary personnel
- Simon Manuel Ammann
- Aaron Lee Dietrich
- Hanna Katharina Eberhardt
- Madlena Felsinger
- Celia Charlotte Ganz
- Leo Sebastian Groll
- Vincent Hecker
- Simon Heyne
- Zonghan Jia
- Isabella Saime Kaya
- Jennifer Phuong
- Isabella Ridzewski
- Katharina Schnetzer
- Nicolas Vernola
- Michael Woodard
- Robin Wußler
- Qingyuan Xu
Members of the commission accompanying the project
- Prof. Dr. Matthieu Arnold (Strasbourg)
- Dr. Reinhard Bodenmann (Zurich)
- Prof. Dr. Tobias Bulang (Heidelberg)
- Professor Amy Nelson Burnett (University of Nebraska-Lincoln)
- Prof. Dr. Michael Gertz (Heidelberg)
- Prof. Dr. Sabine Holtz (Stuttgart)
- Prof. Dr. Andreas Holzem (Tübingen)
- Prof. Dr. Armin Kohnle (Leipzig)
- Prof. Dr. Thomas Maissen (Heidelberg)
- Prof. Dr. Torsten Schrade (Mainz Academy)
- Prof. Dr. Albrecht Winnacker (Erlangen)
- Prof. Dr. Eike Wolgast, Chairman (Heidelberg)