scholarly journals Ottoman Language Learning in Early Modern Germany

2021 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-33
Author(s):  
Stefan Hanß
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Modern Germany ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
Field Of Inquiry

AbstractThis article presents new evidence on the authorship and readership of the earliest printed Ottoman language materials that details the extent to which sixteenth- and seventeenth-century inhabitants of the Holy Roman Empire actively engaged in learning Ottoman. Such findings open up a new field of inquiry evaluating the Ottoman impact on the German-speaking lands reaching beyond the so-called “Turkish menace.” Presenting the variety of Ottoman language students, teachers, and materials in central Europe, as well as their connections with the oral world(s) of linguistic fieldwork in the Habsburg-Ottoman contact zone, this article argues that Ottoman language learning is an important but thus far neglected element in understanding the cultural and intellectual landscape of early modern central Europe. What may appear to be experiments with linguistic riddles on first glimpse was in fact grounded in deep enthusiasm and fascination for Ottoman language learning shared among a community of Protestant semi-scholarly aficionados.

scholarly journals Literary Culture in the Holy Roman Empire, 1555-1720

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Early Modern Literature ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
The Social ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Century Literature

These essays discuss approaches to early modern literature in central Europe, focusing on four pivotal areas: connections between humanism and the new scientific thought the relationship of late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century literature to ancient and Renaissance European traditions the social and political context of early modern writing and the poets' self-consciousness about their work. As a whole, the volume argues that early modern writing in central Europe should not be viewed solely as literature but as the textual product of specific social, political, educational, religious, and economic circumstances. The contributors are Judith P. Aikin, Barbara Becker-Cantarino, Thomas W. Best, Dieter Breuer, Barton W. Browning, Gerald Gillespie, Anthony Grafton, Gerhart Hoffmeister, Uwe-K. Ketelsen, Joseph Leighton, Ulrich Maché, Michael M. Metzger, James A. Parente, Jr., Richard Erich Schade, George C. Schoolfield, Peter Skrine, and Ferdinand van Ingen.

scholarly journals Der nordische Fremde: Historische Untersuchung des medialen Schwedenbildes im Heiligen Römischen Reich (1500–1721)

Nordlit ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tobias E. Hämmerle
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Mass Media ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
Northern Region ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Northern Regions ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
Modern Mass ◽  
Great Northern War

Until to the beginning of the 17th century the North was rather an unknown and abstract space for the average German-speaking recipient of early modern mass media (for example illustrated broadsheets, newspapers, pamphlets). In the course of the 17th century due to Denmark’s and Sweden’s participation in the Thirty Years War, the northern regions became a central topic in the early modern mass media and therefore forced the recipient to be more aware of it. In the course of the second half of the 17th century the northern kingdoms became less important for the publicists in the Holy Roman Empire and instead they laid their focus on the politics of French and the Ottoman Empire. Thus, the image of the northerners and their stereotypes, which had been introduced to the German speaking readers in the course of the Thirty Years War, lived on until the beginning of the 18th century. Nevertheless, the Great Northern War (1700–1721) brought the people from the northern regions back to the media landscape of the Holy Roman Empire and about the same time the illustrated broadsheet – an almost antiquated genre of mass media that had struggled with the upcoming of the new modern genre ‘newspaper’ – experienced a kind of a renaissance. The aim of this article is to describe how the northern region, with a focus on Sweden, was depicted in early modern mass media between the 15th and the 18th centuries. I will show continuities and changes of the visual and textual representation of ‘northerners’ and ‘Sweden’ in early modern mass media, which were published in the Holy Roman Empire between around 1500 until the end of the Great Northern War in 1721.

Monasticism in Early Modern Germany

2020 ◽  
pp. 461-470
Author(s):  
Edeltraud Klueting
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Left Bank ◽  
Modern Germany ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Right

The chapter addresses the history of monasticism in the German-speaking territories of the Holy Roman Empire from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries. Whether the Reformation movement unleashed by Martin Luther represented a continuation of late medieval monastic reforms or, rather, an abrupt departure from them, is a contentious issue. In the Catholic parts of Germany, after the Council of Trent, monasteries became significant agents in the renewal of the Church, especially in the areas of education and social and charitable activity. On the other hand, the Enlightenment, with its narrow conception of utility, called into question the very basis of monastic life, and hence the right of monasteries to exist. The fallout of the French Revolution and the French occupation of the left bank of the Rhine led to a great wave of monastic dissolutions. It was only under the influence of German Romanticism that monasticism experienced another revival.

Sons and Mothers: Agrippina, Semiramis, and the Philological Construction of Gender Roles in Early Modern Germany (Lohenstein's Agrippina, 1665)

1996 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-113
Author(s):  
Jane O. Newman
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Gender Roles ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
German Language ◽  
Language Play ◽  
Entire Life ◽  
Modern Germany ◽  
Early Modern Germany

Trois ou quatre heures du Regne de Neron ont esté plus funestes à l'Empire Romain que toute la vie d'Agrippine sa Mere. (Three or four hours of Nero's reign were more deadly to the Roman Empire than the entire life of Agrippina, his mother.)Pierre de Moyne, La Galerie des Femmes Fortes (1647,1660)Gentes tamen esse feruntur,/in quibus et nato genetrix et nato parenti/iungitur. (And yet, they say that there are tribes among whom mother and son, daughter with father mates.)Ovid, Metamorphoses, 10: 331-33Act three of Daniel Casper von Lohenstein's 1665 German language play about Nero's assassination of his mother and erst-while co-regent Agrippina in A.D. 59 contains what could arguably be deemed one of the most salacious scenes produced on the early modern stage in central Europe.

Juridical Equality

2019 ◽  
pp. 42-52
Author(s):  
David Sorkin
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Ethnic Differences ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Central European ◽  
Political Status ◽  
Central European Region ◽  
East And West

This chapter details how the Jews of the Holy Roman Empire constituted the central European region of emancipation. Some historians would contend that the Holy Roman Empire's “archaic, traditionalist constitution created a society that tolerated religious and ethnic differences to a far greater degree than the more centralized states of Western Europe”; in other words, “early modern central Europe was a pluralistic, complex society more tolerant of differences than England, France or Spain.” Whether this observation is accurate or not, it concerns toleration, not parity. Jews in the Holy Roman Empire fell behind Jews to the east and west in their political status. They gained neither collective corporate privileges nor the civic rights of emerging civil societies. To be sure, their juridical equality in the courts of the Holy Roman Empire marked a significant elevation in status. The Court Jews' extensive individual privileges were also an elevation in status, yet only for a miniscule elite. In sum, Jews in the Holy Roman Empire did not keep pace with their brethren east and west, thus making the transition to emancipation, when it came, a painful rupture.

HEARING THE BODY OF CHRIST IN EARLY MODERN PRAGUE

2019 ◽  
Vol 38 ◽  
pp. 51-105
Author(s):  
Erika Supria Honisch
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Sacred Music ◽  
The Body ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Body Of Christ ◽  
Corpus Christi ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
Growing Population

The multi-confessional cities of early modern Central Europe resounded with sacred music. People sang to express faith, to challenge the beliefs of others, and to lay claim to shared urban spaces. This study considers how such music was heard in Prague, the capital of the Holy Roman Empire, during the reign of the Habsburg Emperor Rudolf II (1576–1612). During this period, the city’s Catholics jostled for supremacy with Czech-speaking Utraquists (followers of Jan Hus), who vastly outnumbered them, and a growing population of German-speaking Lutherans. Focusing on the sonically rich Corpus Christi processions held by Prague’s Jesuits, this article examines how sounds that aggressively promoted Catholic Eucharistic doctrine were received by those who were––by chance or by design––within earshot. Viewing Catholic claims alongside non-Catholic resistance suggests that music’s power lay as much in the fact of its performance as in its deployment of specific texts and sounds.

Austria as a Region of German Culture: 1900–1938

1992 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 135-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
David S. Luft
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
German Culture ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
History Of ◽  
Austrian Studies ◽  
The Relationship

This Essay Attempts to contribute to our understanding of the intellectual and cultural history of Central Europe by making explicit a variety of themes that haunt discourse about Austrian culture and by making some suggestions about periodizing the relationship between Austria and German culture. I originally developed these thoughts on Austria as a region of German culture for a conference in 1983 at the Center for Austrian Studies on regions and regionalism in Austria. Although the political institutions of Central Europe have undergone a revolution since then, the question of Austria's relationship to German culture still holds its importance for the historian-and for contemporary Austrians as well. The German culture I have in mind here is not thekleindeutschnational culture of Bismarck's Reich, but rather the realm that was once constituted by the German-speaking lands of the Holy Roman Empire. This geographical space in Central Europe suggests a more ideal realm of the spirit, for which language is our best point of reference and which corresponds to no merely temporal state.

THESAURUS LITANIARUM: THE SYMBOLISM AND PRACTICE OF MUSICAL LITANIES IN COUNTER-REFORMATION GERMANY

2015 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
pp. 45-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander J. Fisher
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Religious Controversy ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
Written Traditions ◽  
Petitionary Prayer ◽  
Catholic Reform ◽  
Ebb And Flow

AbstractA venerable form of petitionary prayer, the litany emerged as a key aural expression of Counter-Reformation Catholicism around the turn of the seventeenth century, particularly in the confessionally contested borderlands of the Holy Roman Empire. Its explicit projection of the dogma of sanctoral intercession, rejected soundly by Protestant theologians, helped to make the litany a flashpoint for religious controversy. Especially in the duchy of Bavaria, the northern bastion of the Counter-Reformation, the litany flourished in a wide variety of monophonic and polyphonic forms that reflected its fluid position on a spectrum between oral and written traditions. This essay explores the usage and significance of the litany in Counter-Reformation Germany, focusing especially upon the Thesaurus litaniarum (Treasury of Litanies, 1596) by Georg Victorinus, music director of the Munich Jesuits. Intimately connected with currents of Catholic reform in German-speaking lands, this great anthology illustrates the varied and creative ways in which composers responded to the litany’s distinctive ebb and flow of titles and petitions to holy intercessors.

Imagining the Witch

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Kounine
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
Modern Germany ◽  
Witch Trials ◽  
Female Stereotypes ◽  
The Witch ◽  
Physical Consequences

This book explores levels of personhood through witch trials in early modern Germany. Witchcraft was not a uniquely female crime; a significant minority of those tried for witchcraft in the Holy Roman Empire were men. Concepts of witchcraft also centred on the notion that emotions could have deadly physical consequences. Not all suspicions led to formal accusations, nor did all trials lead to the stake; just over half of those tried for witchcraft in early modern Europe were executed. To understand how early modern people imagined the witch, we must examine how people understood themselves and others; to grasp how the witch could be a member of the community, yet inspire visceral fear. Through an examination of case studies, this book examines how the community, the church, and the law sought to identify the witch, and how ordinary men and women fought to avoid the stake. It further explores witchcraft in this period to establish why witchcraft could be aligned with strong female stereotypes, but also imagined as a crime that could be committed by male or female, young or old. By moving beyond stereotypes of the witch, this book argues that what constituted witchcraft and the ‘witch’ appears far more contested and unstable than previously thought, and suggests new ways of thinking about early modern selfhood. Indeed, the trial process itself created the conditions for a diverse range of people to give meaning to emotions, gender, and the self in early modern Lutheran Germany.

Reformierte Eliten im Preußenland: Religion, Politik und Loyalitäten in der Familie Dohna (1560–1660)

2004 ◽  
Vol 95 (1) ◽  
pp. 210-239
Author(s):  
Hans-Jürgen Bömelburg
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Close Contact ◽  
Religious History ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Religious Symbolism ◽  
Religious Influences ◽  
History Of ◽  
Early Establishment

ABSTRACT The archives of the Dohna family contain materials on the efforts at creating a “Second Reformation” in the Duchy of Prussia, where the early establishment of a Lutheran confessional foundation (the Corpus doctrinae pruthenicum| of 1567/68) and a solid ecclesiastical constitution prevented Calvinism from gaining a foothold. The Reformed creed found followers among the nobility through connections with the Reformed territories in the Holy Roman Empire, by close contact with Reformed theologians in royal Prussia, and by connections with the Calvinist church of the nobility in Poland and Lithuania. This network radiated into ducal Prussia, where the Dohnas became Calvinists. During the first three decades of the seventeenth century this led to a conflict between the Reformed party and the Lutheran majority among the theologians and the lower nobility. Drawing on the support of the Polish king, the Lutheran party succeeded between 1610 and 1620 in shutting out the Reformed officeholders by means of lawsuits and unequivocal oath formulas. The Reformed nobility were not helped by the connection they forged in 1613 with the equally Reformed territorial ruler because he had to take into account the Polish crown as well as ecclesiastical legal determinations in ducal Prussia.The Dohnas, who stood close to the Calvinist “party of movement,” tried nevertheless to introduce elements of the Reformed faith or to engage men who were inclined toward the Reformed creed into the churches within their patronage. In this context, the Dohnas argued with the noble concepts of patronage held by the Lithuanian Radziwiłłs, who used their rights of patronage to introduce Calvinist pastors. Repeated conflicts arose with the Ko¨ nigsberg consistory and neighboring Lutheran pastors, in the course of which both sides adhered to their positions. On the level of religious symbolism, the Dohnas removed images of saints and programmatically transformed older works of art to conform to Calvinism.The confessional disputes in the Duchy of Prussia are typologically similar to those in the Prussian cities (Elbing, Danzig, Thorn), except that in the former noble patronage and in the latter bourgeois patronage was contested. It is evident that in eastern Prussia, too, along with Lutheran confessionalization, numerous other religious influences were felt. Therefore, the region can be included more definitely than previously thought in the religious history of eastern central Europe.

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