Jacob Burckhardt, Lecture on early modern history, vol. 1: 16th century, critical edition from the original manuscripts with commentary, edited by Hans Berner, Wolfgang Hardtwig, Christine Tauber, with the collaboration of Jürgen Große and Wolfram Knäbich

• Applicant: Privatdozentin Dr. Christine Tauber
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: from 2015 to 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 286707239

As part of the critical edition of the complete works of Jacob Burckhardt, this publication is meant to make accessible for the first time his lecture manuscripts on early modern history and his lectures on the times of counter-reformation. The original manuscripts and Burckhardt¿s additions and supplements are here joined together and analyzed regarding text critical issues and content. These materials, published for the first time, and the reconstruction of Burckhardt¿s sources allow to trace back his interpretation of the early modern period in Europe; as such, they constitute a paramount source for the history of 19th-century historiography. The publication of this critical edition with commentary is an indispensable part of the complete works of Jacob Burckhardt (Jacob Burckhardt Werke, JBW) and highly in need, as the lectures on early modern history shed new light on some unknown aspects of Burckhardt¿s view on the formation of the modern European states. Whereas scholars are acquainted with his ideas about the Italian Renaissance, there has been no written source to transmit his reading of Renaissance and Reformation in Northern Europe. The publication of the critical edition of the lecture manuscripts on early modern history and on the times of counter-reformation will hence cover an important desideratum of the complete works of Jacob Burckhardt. At the same time it provides access to until now unknown aspects of Burckhardt¿s conception of history and of his specific historiographical thought beyond historicism.

• DFG Programme: Publication Grants