Elaboration of an encycopledia of almanac-makers from 1550 through 1750

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Holger Böning
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: from 2014 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 249370026

The goal of this project is to prepare a lexicon, accessible in bothinternet and printed forms, of calendar makers from 1550 to 1750, offeringbio-bibliographical sketches of about 550 persons who authored orpublished large Schreibkalender (annual calendars in quarto format) in theearly modern period. Such a reference work would provide an essentialprerequisite for any social-historical research on Europeancalendar-making and its production of the printed materials that foundtheir way into nearly early every household, including even illiteratehouseholds.Recent research has emphasized the importance of the calendar maker in thedifferentiation of textual and iconographic content that emerged duringthe second third of the seventeenth century. Although a small subset ofthe leading scholars who made calendars is known (e.g., writers likeJohann Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen and Sigmund von Birken,professors like Johann Christop Sturm and Georg Albrecht Hamberger,physicians like Johann Magirus, astronomers like Gottfried Kirch, orclergymen like Christoph Richter), shedding more light on the broadspectrum of calendar makers remains an important desideratum.A lexicon of calendar makers would provide the foundation for exploringbiographical, literary, and publishing relationships between this group ofpublicists and other groups, such as scholars at universities andacademies, literary writers and poets, editors of newspapers and journals,printers and publishers and political elites in city councils and princelycourts. This lexicon should aid in the analysis of calendar authors andpublishers as contributors to a genre of reading material that after 1650reached nearly every household. Such annually-printed texts graduallystimulated their readers to begin making their own judgments aboutprocesses in nature as well as in society. That is, the lexicon shouldanswers questions about the motivation and knowledge of those who, bymeans of the medium of calendars, supported the origin and development ofthe Enlightenment.The source base for this project, including biographical research that hasagain become important for historians, has greatly improved in recentyears. New materials include the large collections of printed calendars,discovered in 2006 in Cracow and Altenburg during the applicant's previousprojects, as well as records preserved in archives (printing privileges,personal papers, correspondence).

• DFG Programme: Research Grants