Coping with Life during the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648)


Book Description

At its core, Coping with Life during the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648) explores how people tried to survive the Thirty Years’ War, on what resources they drew, and how they attempted to make sense of it. A rich tapestry of stories brings to light contemporaries’ trauma as well as women and men’s unrelenting initiatives to stem the war’s negative consequences. Through these close-ups, Sigrun Haude shows that experiences during the Thirty Years’ War were much more diverse and often more perplexing than a straightforward story line of violence and destruction can capture. Life during the Thirty Years’ War was not a homogenous vale of gloom and doom, but a multifaceted story that was often heartbreaking, yet, at times, also uplifting.




Coping with Life During the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648)


Book Description

At its core, Coping with Life during the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) explores how people tried to survive the Thirty Years' War, on what resources they drew, and how they attempted to make sense of it. A rich tapestry of stories brings to light contemporaries' trauma as well as women and men's unrelenting initiatives to stem the war's negative consequences. Through these close-ups, Sigrun Haude shows that experiences during the Thirty Years' War were much more diverse and often more perplexing than a straightforward story line of violence and destruction can capture. Life during the Thirty Years' War was not a homogenous vale of gloom and doom, but a multifaceted story that was often heartbreaking, yet, at times, also uplifting.




Healing and Harm


Book Description

Professor Mary Lindemann inspired several generations of historical researchers in early modern history and culture. She has served as president of the German Studies Association and the American Historical Association and is the author of pathbreaking scholarly work in the history of medicine, urban space, diplomacy, and of women. In honor of her scholarship, service, and dedication, Healing and Harm gathers a group of leading scholars that includes her students, contemporaries, and those who have been inspired by her work to continue Lindemann’s prolific arguments and observations on early modern, central European and German history and culture.




The Moment of Death in Early Modern Europe, c. 1450–1800


Book Description

Both in our time and in the past, death was one of the most important aspects of anyone’s life. The early modern period saw drastic changes in rites of death, burials and commemoration. One particularly fruitful avenue of research is not to focus on death in general, but the moment of death specifically. This volume investigates this transitionary moment between life and death. In many cases, this was a death on a deathbed, but it also included the scaffold, battlefield, or death in the streets. Contributors: Friedrich J. Becher, Benedikt Brunner, Isabel Casteels, Martin Christ, Louise Deschryver, Irene Dingel, Michaël Green, Vanessa Harding, Sigrun Haude, Vera Henkelmann, Imke Lichterfeld, Erik Seeman, Elizabeth Tingle, and Hillard von Thiessen.




The Empire’s Reformations


Book Description

The Empire's Reformations provides a concise overview of reform movements in 16th-century Germany that gave birth to the modern division of western Christianity into multiple denominations – Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist, and more. It exposes the origins of modern religious pluralism, both in battle for souls among these emerging camps and in the struggles of political leaders at every level to manage the threat that religious diversity posed to tranquillity and order in a rigidly hierarchical society. As such, it offers a prehistory of religious toleration, not as a positive value – few regarded toleration as inherently good – but as a strategy for keeping the peace. David M. Luebke considers the reformations of religion in the context of concurrent transformations in the political and judicial structures of the Holy Roman Empire, that sprawling confederation of principalities and city-states that embraced most regions where German was spoken. This allows Luebke to view the religious reforms through the lens of imperial politics, showing how the Empire differed from the Atlantic monarchies, Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, and the Mediterranean. On a different and equally significant level, he examines how ordinary people of all backgrounds experienced the controversy over religion and responded to reforms of doctrine and observance. The inclusion of both the imperial and local perspectives moves the Reformation beyond the familiar story of theological combat and reimagines it as something that had resonance throughout the world, impacting people's lives in the process.




Embodiment, Identity, and Gender in the Early Modern Age


Book Description

Embracing a multiconfessional and transnational approach that stretches from central Europe, to Scotland and England, from Iberia to Africa and Asia, this volume explores the lives, work, and experiences of women and men during the tumultuous fifteenth to seventeenth centuries. The authors, all leading experts in their fields, utilize a broad range of methodologies from cultural history to women’s history, from masculinity studies to digital mapping, to explore the dynamics and power of constructed gender roles. Ranging from intellectual representations of virginity to the plight of refugees, from the sea journeys of Jesuit missionaries to the impact of Transatlantic economies on women’s work, from nuns discovering new ways to tolerate different religious expressions to bleeding corpses used in criminal trials, these essays address the wide diversity and historical complexity of identity, gender, and the body in the early modern age. With its diversity of topics, fields, and interests of its authors, this volume is a valuable source for students and scholars of the history of women, gender, and sexuality as well as social and cultural history in the early modern world.




German Migrant Historians in North America


Book Description

The migration experiences, career paths, and scholarship of historians born in Germany who started emigrating to North America in the 1950s have had a unique impact on the transatlantic practice of Central European History. German Migrant Historians in North America analyzes the experiences of this postwar group of scholars, and asks what informed their education and career choices, and what motivated them to emigrate to North America. The contributors reflect on how these migration experiences informed their own research and teaching, and particularly discuss the more general development of the transatlantic exchange between German and American historians in the scholarship on Modern Central European History.




Deep Roots


Book Description

Everyone of us is who and where we are today because of the efforts and decisions of those who came before us -- our ancestors. This book traces the history of nine of my ancestral families, from their small farming villages in Germany, through the wrenching decision to leave cherished roots in Europe, to the planting of new roots in southern Indiana. The book is intended primarily for members of my family, but others may find some interest in a small microcosm of the American experience.




Revisiting National Security


Book Description

This book examines the evolving concept of national security and how human systems could be governed in an ever turbulent and dynamic world. It takes a revised look at the concept of national security, previously researched and identified by the author, based on the present context but with a futuristic appreciation of governance, primarily national but extended to global perspectives, in the modern and dynamically shifting world. The book emphasises the need for governments to maximise national security for the well-being of their people. The concept of national security is taken as the key subject of national governance which is extendable to global governance wherein national security is not only the physical or military security alone but also the overall well-being of the people of a nation. This book explores how national security can be achieved by balancing its various elements in different terrains where the game of governance is played in national as well as global perspective. It also presents additional findings and observations to show that the approach is transformative, redefining the key knowledge paradigms. This book is relevant for policy makers, students, researchers and academics who wish to explore and rethink their approach towards governing the human systems, whose well-being is the responsibility of governments.




A History of the Quests for the Historical Jesus, Volume 1


Book Description

A comprehensive, two-volume reassessment of the quests for the historical Jesus that details their origins and underlying presuppositions as well as their ongoing influence on today's biblical and theological scholarship. Jesus' life and teaching is important to every question we ask about what we believe and why we believe it. And yet there has never been common agreement about his identity, intentions, or teachings—even among first-century historians and scholars. Throughout history, different religious and philosophical traditions have attempted to claim Jesus and paint him in the cultural narratives of their heritage, creating a labyrinth of conflicting ideas. From the evolution of orthodoxy and quests before Albert Schweitzer's famous "Old Quest," to today's ongoing questions about criteria, methods, and sources, A History of the Quests for the Historical Jesus not only chronicles the developments but lays the groundwork for the way forward. The late Colin Brown brings his scholarly prowess in both theology and biblical studies to bear on the subject, assessing not only the historical and exegetical nuts and bolts of the debate about Jesus of Nazareth but also its philosophical, sociological, and theological underpinnings. Instead of seeking a bedrock of "facts," Brown stresses the role of hermeneutics in formulating questions and seeking answers. Colin Brown was almost finished with the manuscript at the time of his passing in 2019. Brought to its final form by Craig A. Evans, this book promises to become the definitive history and assessment of the quests for the historical Jesus. Volume One covers the period from the beginnings of Christianity to the end of World War II. Volume Two (sold separately) covers the period from the post-War era through contemporary debates.