Athanasius Kircher (1601/02-1680): A Biographical Encyclopedia

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Andreas Bähr
• Subject Area: Early Modern History ; History of Philosophy ; History of Science
• Term: from 2014 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 249977407

This project - currently funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft - is a "biographical encyclopedia" of the German Jesuit and polymath Athanasius Kircher (1601/02-1680). Kircher's life embodies the complex historical tensions, changes and upheavals of the 17th century: after fleeing from the atrocities of the Thirty Years' War he did not, as originally planned, go to the Orient as a missionary, but spent the second half of his life at the Collegium Romanum in Rome. His scholarship, in turn, was situated at the interface between religious, magical and scientific knowledge as well as between the histories of salvation, nature and the world. Kircher's biography cannot be written without considering his extensive oeuvre, which sought to comprehend the world as a whole and adopted much non-European knowledge. I have decided that the best way of approaching Kircher's biography in terms of content and formal structure is to mirror the encyclopedic character of his own works. Juxtaposing different accounts of his life and arranging them according to the concepts of his own time, my project contributes to the methodologically fascinating question of how to write the biography of a person in an age that had yet to develop the notion of autonomous selfhood. The primary sources I use include not only Kircher's oeuvre and its reception but also his autobiography and his correspondence with more than 760 correspondents all over the world.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants