Funded by: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft/ Arts and Humanities Research Council
project duration: February 1 2026 – March 31 2029
In collaboration with: Prof. Dr. Alison Rowlands, Essex University https://www.essex.ac.uk/people/ROWLA29503/Alison-Rowlands
Doctoral researcher : Katharina Welker, M.A./ MEd
 

The project explores for the first time the multilateral exchange of ideas about witchcraft, magic and the Devil between early modern England and the Holy Roman Empire. It uses a new ‘witchcraft politics’ model to inter alia compare the regional intensity of witch-trials.

This compendium comprises 50 biographically oriented texts on individuals who, each in their own way, contributed to the democratic development of the historical predecessor states of what would later become the federal state of Rhineland-Palatinate. The period covered spans approximately 100 years, from 1750 to 1850, described in the title – “Aufklärung und Frühliberalismus 1750–1850” – as a transitional phase in the genesis of modern liberalism. The volume is intended to be the first in a planned two- or three-part series on the history of democracy in Rhineland-Palatinate, and was funded by the Historical Commission for the History of Rhineland-Palatinate.

Stephan Laux (Hg), Quellenpublikationen der Gesellschaft für Rheinische Geschichtskunde. Rahmenbedingungen, Genese und Rezeption im wissenschaftshistorischen Kontext (= Studien und Darstellungen der Gesellschaft für Rheinische Geschichtskunde, Bd. 2), Cologne: Böhlau 2025

The Gesellschaft für Rheinische Geschichtskunde (GRhG) conducts foundational research on the sources of regional history. Since its founding in 1881, it has provided the scholarly community with editions of records and documents.
This volume presents the results of a 2022 conference marking the anniversary of the GRhG’s founding. It examines the conditions under which the GRhG’s source publications were created, how these conditions evolved over time, and how the publications were received.
Nine detailed case studies and two overarching essays offer insights into the wide thematic and methodological spectrum of the GRhG’s editorial work. At the same time, the volume forms a contribution to the history of historiography by placing selected editions, their respective editors, and the GRhG as publisher into their historical and intellectual contexts. It raises awareness of the historicity of source publications and critically examines them with respect to broader scholarly and socio-historical dimensions.
 

Luc Deitz/ Gunther Franz/ Rita Voltmer (Hgg.): Cornelius Loos: De vera et falsa magia (1592). Based on the preparatory work of Othon Scholer and published posthumously … with an introduction by Rita Voltmer. Trier 2024 (Trierer Hexenprozesse – Quellen und Darstellungen 10)

[Download: Table of Contents & Blurb ]

The manuscript of De vera et falsa magia – preserved only in its first two books – was discovered in 1886 in the Trier City Library by George Lincoln Burr. Its author, Cornelius Loos, a Catholic controversial theologian and Counter-Reformation agitator who had fled from Gouda, expressed radical criticism of belief in the devil, witches, and magic, as well as of witch trials. The tract was banned, and Loos was forced to recant his theses during a heresy trial at St. Maximin. This unique manuscript witness to early resistance now appears in a scholarly, annotated Latin-German edition based on Othon Scholer’s preparatory work and edited by Luc Deitz, Gunther Franz, and Rita Voltmer. In her extensive introduction, Rita Voltmer presents the life and work of Cornelius Loos, the treatise itself, its context during the Trier and St. Maximin witch persecutions (1582–1596), and its reception history. This editio princeps makes a significant contribution to the study of European witch hunts and their opponents.