Archives as Spoils of War in the Thirty Years' War

• Applicant: Dr. Natalie Krentz
• Subject Area: Early Modern History
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 436192905

The project investigates the plundering and looting of archives during the Thirty Years' War and their subsequent transport throughout Europe. Four main research questions are being addressed by analysing this little-known subject: How did looting and transport change the archives and their organisation in the long term? How were the looted archives used by the warring parties in conflicts of sovereignty (2), published in political pamphlets (3) and what value was attributed to them as trade goods and collector's items (4)? Methodologically, the archival-historical concept of "archival cultures" is combined with approaches from the history of collecting and object history, which examine the transport of and the ascription of value to goods. A continuation of the project by one year is applied for, as in the course of the project three necessary extensions have arisen. The first extension concerns the publication of the looted documents in political pamphlets. Due to the pandemic-related closure of the archives at the beginning of the project (September 2020), the processing of this chapter, which was initially planned to be less extensive, was brought forward as it did not require any archive research. During the unplanned, more detailed research on the topic, a considerably more extensive source corpus of such pamphlets was found, which contain reprints of captured records from archives and field chancelleries. The extensive collection of sources was analysed regarding the function of the documents as a means of authentication and proof, as planned in the first proposal. Their examination additionally suggested a contextualisation in the political theory of the time, with a particular focus on questions of publicity and the secrecy of political knowledge. A second extension of the subject that has appeared necessary concerns the number of researched cases of seized archives. While the first proposal was mainly able to name Swedish cases due to the research situation, numerous cases of the looting of archives by imperial troops were found as archival work began. This enables a broader and more comprehensive understanding of the topic, which includes different regions, phases of war and actors as well as types of archives (princely and episcopal, but also aristocratic and monastic archives). A third, smaller extension of the subject matter concerns the aspect of materiality already emphasised in the initial application, which could be substantiated by discoveries of preserved items of archival and transport furniture in the storerooms of numerous archives.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants