Publications

To mark the 450th anniversary of the death of Georg Joachim Rheticus on 4 December 1574, the RFB has developed a cabinet exhibition entitled World knowledge of Wittenberg – Wittenberg’s worlds of knowledge. The exhibition will be on display in the Research Library from 7 January to 25 March 2025.
An exhibition booklet has been published to accompany it.

The accompanying booklet is available for a nominal fee of € 4.99 in the Research Library for Reformation Studies.

The anthology looks at the decades around 1500, which were characterised by political consolidation and changed concepts of rule, by economic boom, new technologies and cultural transformation, from a specific historical-epistemological perspective. The papers address the role of the city and court in production and organisation, the mediation and transfer of knowledge, as well as for the careers of the bearers of knowledge.

This view, accentuated by personal history, meets different areas of knowledge: alongside university scholars, it deals as well with specialists and practitioners whose profession was only partially determined by academic education or not at all. Learned councillors and officials in the services of princes and counts, doctors, astrologers and cartographers, heralds and craftsmen, miners and merchants are all taken into account.

The anthology emerged from a conference concept that was planned for 2020 in Lutherstadt Wittenberg as a collaboration between the Research Library for Reformation Studies and the research project Residenzstädte im Alten Reich (1300-1800) (Residence cities in the old kingdom (1300-1800)) of the Lower Saxony Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Göttingen and the Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences’ Repertorium Academicum Germanicum (RAG) project. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic thwarted these plans. However, the great commitment of the participants made it possible to publish the planned contributions in an anthology, which has now been published by Jan Thorbecke Verlag. The book can be purchased from bookstores.

From 17 April to 16 July 2023, the Forum Schlosskirche will host the exhibition “Die Engel bedenken sich. Heidrun Feistner - Sculptures”. An accompanying catalogue has been published.

The catalogue comprises 120 pages and presents all the works shown in the exhibition in a way that is as sophisticated as it is appealing. Many of Heidrun Feistner’s sculptures are closely related to poems, which have also been included. In addition, the catalogue contains selected prose texts for the understanding of the work.

Heidrun Feistner usually creates her works from stone. Casts are also made of some works. She describes the process of creation as the gentle exposure of the forms hidden in this material, very similar to an archaeological approach. But it is about more than just discovering hidden forms. It is also about making the genesis of the form visible, letting the stone become the narrator of a story.

The catalogue was made possible by a generous grant from the Evangelical Wittenberg Foundation. The volume is available at the price of € 15.00 in the Research Library for Reformation Studies.

How do collections come about? Why are they broken up or destroyed? What determined the collectibility of objects in different historical contexts? What criteria do we apply today and for what motives?

These questions were the focus of the ninth Saxony-Anhalt State History Day, which was organised in 2019 by the Research Library for Reformation Studies in cooperation with the Historical Commission for Saxony-Anhalt and the Archive of the Ev. Church of Anhalt in Lutherstadt Wittenberg. Thematically, the range of topics covered ranged from the breakup of the relic collection of the Elector Friedrich the Wise to the everyday culture of the GDR. Mitteldeutscher Verlag has now published an anthology for this conference. The book can be purchased from bookstores or directly from the publisher.

A richly illustrated brochure outlines the concept, organisation and holdings of the Research Library for Reformation Studies and highlights the work of this new scientific and cultural institution in its first two years at Wittenberg Castle.

The brochure is available for free download in PDF format (see below).