All things considered, reviewers rarely rejoice in reviewing a Festschrift. This reviewer had precisely that reaction when asked to review the liber amicorum for Professor Harm Klueting. At first sight, one may indeed sigh when picking up this more than substantial volume, over eight hundred pages long and containing about forty scholarly contributions. Yet, in this particular case, the old axiom ‘quod abundat non vitiat’ turned out to be true. Little by little, the book left a strong impression on its reviewer.

Several reasons can be mentioned for this: first of all, the book's editor, Reimund Haas, has shown himself wise enough not to offer a classic – and very German – introduction to his book, but took another turn by providing the reader with a rich, and at times slightly humorous, reflection on the literary genre of the Festschrift. This opening text is quite important for it succeeds in tying together a reflection on the personal biography of Harm Klueting and on the research themes covered during his career. It will be no surprise to those who are acquainted with Klueting's career to learn that both his life story and his scholarly preferences are astonishingly complex. While it is impossible, at this juncture, to retrace the path which ultimately led this scholar, educated and well-versed in Evangelical Protestantism, to become a Roman Catholic priest, anyone interested in the details may refer to the excellent and quite detailed curriculum vitae provided by Edeltraud Klueting at the beginning of the book.

It is not impossible, but it is difficult to convey the wide scope of themes addressed by contributors to this book. It has to be said that this vastness is not, as often is the case with Festschrifts that lack internal coherence, the result of inadequate editorial oversight; in this case it simply reflects the complexity of Klueting's own scholarly gaze. In order to cope with this, the editor has divided the articles in this book into three sections. A first section devotes itself to a cluster of subthemes including liturgical history, ecclesial art history and the scholarly study of the life and work of Edith Stein. The articles on Edith Stein strike this reviewer as being the most interesting, both nuanced and well-versed in the abundant literature in the field. Other contributions certainly have their value, although some – for example, the one on the tension between the ecclesiological notions of ‘Body of Christ of People of God’ – strike the reader as being somewhat too confined to the German area of debate, and lacking insight into much of the scholarship that has been devoted to the topic in francophone areas. This is all the more striking given Klueting's own links with the Institut Catholique de Paris.

This flaw is much less present in the second part of the book, which lays a heavy emphasis on the post-Tridentine developments in the history of Church and theology – even if some contributions do cover the period before Trent. Here too, the complexity remains: doing justice to Klueting's career requires covering a wide range of historico-theological issues. This is the case in a section that unites themes that range from a study of sixteenth-century Catholic attitude toward the ‘Ruthenians’ (even if Nelson Minnich shows himself aware of the delicacy, one remains baffled to see this term show up in the title of a scholarly article) to a contribution tackling the ecclesiastical politics of Louis xiv. Still, credit needs to be given to the editor for the fact that virtually every contribution succeeds in linking up with major themes of research in Klueting's own oeuvre.

Part iii concentrates upon so-called Landesgeschichte, and here contributions are bound together by a geographical focus. The unifying factor is the history of Westphalia. Here are excellent studies on Enlightened absolutist politics under Josephite rule. Excellent, since such contributions combine a territorial focus with a scholarly relevance that stretches out far beyond the geographic limits of the section.

All in all, the editor has done a marvellous job in compiling this rich palette of historical studies. Any scholar with a broad interest in the institutional and theological evolution of the modern Christian Church will find something to relish in this book. But, this is not the final word. By way of conclusion, the three appendices, compiled by Edeltraud Klueting, cannot remain unremarked. Undoubtedly the fruit of many hours of careful and diligent research, they offer a full bibliography of Klueting's writings, and an impressive collection of both doctoral, BA and MA dissertations which bear Klueting's mark. Even though this material may appear dry and technical, it also offers one of the best illustrations in the book of the wide horizon of this celebrated scholar.