Enduring Loss in Early Modern Germany is an edited volume of sixteen essays drawn from papers delivered at the 2008 triennial conference of Frühe Neuzeit Interdisziplinär (FNI). Interdisciplinary conferences can be the academic equivalent of a three-ring circus with each discipline essentially running its own mini-conference under the umbrella of a larger organization. By selecting a central focus for its meetings, FNI has worked hard to overcome this problem and facilitate greater intellectual exchange among the disciplines.
As the title of this volume indicates, the theme for the 2008 conference was loss. These articles written by art historians, musicologists, literary specialists, and historians all reflect on this general issue. All fine in theory, but does it work? Is the volume more than the sum of its parts? Loss, of course, is a broad designation that covers a range of phenomena. In this volume there are essays that examine attitudes toward death, exile, financial ruin, and even religious enclosure. At times the metaphor does seem strained and the content mismatched. Articles that investigate changing understandings of sacred space and mourning practices in Pietist families can seem miles apart. But on closer examination, there is a logic to the volume's organization.
Lynne Tatlock has done a fine job of selecting pairings of essays that work well together. Jeffrey Chipps Smith and Helmut Puff consider loss and its impact on the creative powers of Albrecht Dürer. Barbara Lawatsch Melton and Alexander Fisher investigate the lives of Catholic nuns and reflect on what was lost and gained in this era of religious reform. In one of the most intriguing pairings, Lee Wandel and Duane Corpis analyze shifting notions of sacred space in early modern Augsburg. Rosalind Beiler and Bethany Wiggin cross over to the New World as they consider the experience of exile and loss among German settlers. The volume is framed by two particularly thoughtful essays. Hans Medick examines the catastrophe of the Thirty Years' War and how it became an iconic moment in German memory. At the volume's end, Tom Safley explores the fall of Augsburg's Höchstetter family who lost its fortune in the volatile mercury market. Safley illustrates that despite the social disgrace that accompanied their bankruptcy, resourceful members of the family were able to recover and begin to regain what had been lost.
There are small errors or typos scattered throughout the text. The Austrian noble, Ruprecht von Mosheim, was active in the 1530s, not as Tatlock notes in the introduction in the 1630s. A more substantial introduction would have also served this volume well. There is, for example, a substantial literature on death in the early modern period. A thoughtful analysis of this material would have helped to foreground many of the individual articles more effectively. Nevertheless, this is a fine collection of essays that examine the fragility of life, the transience of wealth, and the experience of displacement. As a group, the contributors demonstrate how early modern Germans responded to loss with surprising powers of endurance and a resilience that elicits admiration even today.
