Synopses & Reviews
This highly original book is the first in-depth study in English of a footsoldier of the seventeenth-century Republic of Letters. Its subject, the German polymath and schoolteacher Christian Daum, is today completely forgotten, yet left behind one of the largest private archives of any early modern European scholar. On the basis of this unique source-base, this book portrays schools as focal points of a whole world of Lutheran scholarship outside of universities and courts, as places not just of education but of intense scholarship, and examines their significance for German culture. Protestant Germany was different from Catholic France and Protestant England in that its network of small fostered educational and cultural competition made possible a much larger and socially open Republic. This book allows us for the first time to understand how the Republic of Letters was constructed from below and how it was possible for individuals from relatively humble backgrounds and occupations to be at the centre of European intellectual life. This book is aimed at other specialists as well as postgraduate students in the fields of history, education and gender studies, and can also serve as an introduction to recent European - mostly German and French - literature on early modern scholarship for undergraduate students.
Synopsis
The first English language in-depth study of a footsoldier of the seventeenth-century Republic of Letters. Its subject, the German polymath and schoolteacher Christian Daum, left behind one of the largest private archives of any early modern European scholar.
About the Author
Alan S. Ross is Postdoctoral Fellow in Early Modern History at Humboldt University, Berlin
Table of Contents
Introduction
1. 'A veritable gem': culture, authority and education in early modern Zwickau
2. The finished scholar: convincing oneself and convincing others
3. The knowledge
4. The pupils: educational strategies and social mobility
5. Learning by wrong-doing: aspiration and transgression among Zwickau pupils
6. Networks, patronage and exploitation: correspondence and the next generation of scholars
Conclusion: Civic communities, humanist education and the 'Age of Enlightenment'
Appendices
Bibliography
Index