Projects
Get an overview of the current project at the Schlegel Professorship for Church History with a focus on Reformation and Enlightenment. If you would like to know more about the individual projects, please contact the responsible person.
Johann Gottfried Herder in Bückeburg
Vera Gretges’ dissertation project on Johann Gottfried Herder's period of activity in Bückeburg (1771-1776)
Vera Gretges’ doctoral project is dedicated to Johann Gottfried Herder’s period of activity in Bückeburg (1771-1776), where he initially worked as a consistorial councillor and senior preacher and eventually also held the office of superintendent. The activities of Herder, who had an extremely wide range of interests, are to be traced in their aspects of church history as well as cultural history. Among other things, the project focuses on Herder's preaching activities and analyses his correspondence with Countess Marie Barbara Eleonore of Schaumburg-Lippe.
Imperial Cities and Anabaptism
Habilotation projekt by Dr. Aneke Dornbusch on networks of defamation and persecution of Anabaptists in southern German imperial cities in the 16th century.
For the first time, this project brings together sources on the Anabaptist movement in selected imperial cities in southern Germany (including Esslingen, Reutlingen, Ulm, Augsburg, Nuremberg, and Regensburg). It examines the question of whether the specific social and governmental structures of imperial cities influenced their treatment of Anabaptists in the 16th century.
The project goes beyond a purely comparative perspective between cities by focusing on different types of texts that are relevant to this question. Newly discovered archive material is brought together with previously edited texts. It investigates mandates, theological and legal opinions, letters of supplication and chronicles, among other things. In addition, the supra-regional cooperation of the imperial cities on the Anabaptist question is examined with the help of historical network analysis.
The project promises not only a differentiated perspective on the previous portrayal of the persecution of the Anabaptists, but also new insights into questions of the organisation and identity of early modern imperial cities during the Reformation.
Jakob Strauß (ca. 1480–1527/32)
Dissertation project by Jan Huber on Jakob Strauß: A "mind of his own" among the preachers and publicists of the early Reformation.
Jakob Strauß (1480/1–1527/32) was one of the most prolific Reformation pamphleteers of the 1520s – but remains one of the most enigmatic and enigmatic theologians of his time to this day. As of right now, there is no detailed critical account of his life and work that fulfils current scholarly standards.
The focus of the project lies in tracing Jakob Strauss' work as a reformer and his theological positions in their various historical and biographical situations. The project will also investigate possible developments and dependencies of Strauß as well as his impact on later generations and the history of research on Strauß.