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CONVERSION AND THE POLITICS OF RELIGION IN EARLY MODERN GERMANY
Edited by David M. Luebke, Jared Poley, Daniel C. Ryan, and David Warren Sabean
ISBN 978-0-85745-375-4 Hb $70.00/£43.00 Published (May 2012)
eISBN 978-0-85745-376-1
The Protestant and Catholic Reformations thrust the nature of conversion into the center of debate and politicking over religion as authorities and subjects imbued religious confession with novel meanings during the early modern era. The volume offers insights into the historicity of the very concept of “conversion.” One widely accepted modern notion of the phenomenon simply expresses denominational change. Yet this concept had no bearing at the outset of the Reformation. Instead, a variety of processes, such as the consolidation of territories along confessional lines, attempts to ensure civic concord, and diplomatic quarrels helped to usher in new ideas about the nature of religious boundaries and, therefore, conversion. However conceptualized, religious change— conversion—had deep social and political implications for early modern German states and societies.
David M. Luebke is Professor of History at the University of Oregon. His publications include His Majesty’s Rebels: Factions, Communities, and Rural Revolt in the Black Forest (Cornell University Press 1997) and many articles, most recently “Confessions of the Dead: Interpreting Burial Practice in the Late Reformation” (Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 101: 2010).
Jared Poley is Associate Professor of History at Georgia State University. He is the author of Decolonization in Germany: Weimar Narratives of Colonial Loss and Foreign Occupation (Peter Lang 2005).
Daniel C. Ryan is currently Visiting Assistant Professor at the College of Charleston. He was awarded his PhD in 2008 from the University of California, Los Angeles, with a study on conversion and peasant protest in Imperial Russia.
David Warren Sabean is the Henry J. Bruman Endowed Professor of German History at University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of Property, Production, and Family in Neckarhausen, 1700-1870 (Cambridge University Press 1990) and Kinship in Neckarhausen, 1700-1870 (Cambridge University Press 1998). He recently edited, with Simon Teuscher and Jon Mathieu, Kinship in Europe: Approaches to Long-Term Development, 1300-1900 (Berghahn Books 2007).
Series: Volume 3, Spektrum: Publications of the German Studies Association
LC: BT780.G47 2008
BISAC: HIS014000 HISTORY/Europe/Germany; HIS037030 HISTORY/Modern/General; REL000000 RELIGION/GeneralBIC: HBLH Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700; HRAM2 Religion & politicsContents
Preface
Introduction: The Politics of Conversion in Early Modern Germany
David M. Luebke
Chapter 1. Paths of Salvation and Boundaries of Belief: Spatial Discourse and the Meanings of Conversion in Early Modern Germany
Duane J. Corpis
Chapter 2. Conversion Concepts in Early Modern Germany: Protestant and Catholic
Eric-Oliver Mader
Chapter 3. Turning Dutch? Conversion in Early Modern Wesel
Jesse Spohnholz
Chapter 4. The Right to be Catholic—The Right to be Protestant? Perspectives on Conversion Before and After the Peace of Westphalia
Ralf-Peter Fuchs
Chapter 5. Conversion and Diplomacy in Absolutist Northern Europe
Daniel Riches
Chapter 6. Irenicism and the Challenges of Conversion in the Early Eighteenth Century
Alexander Schunka
Chapter 7. Mish-Mash with the Enemy: Identity, Politics, Power, and the Threat of Forced Conversion in Frederick William I’s Prussia
Benjamin Marschke
Chapter 8. Pietist Conversion Narratives and Confessional Identity
Jonathan Strom
Chapter 9. Conversion and Sarcasm in the Autobiography of Johann Christian Edelmann
Douglas H. Shantz
Afterword
Jared Poley
Bibliography
Notes on the Contributors
Index