Rebellion, Community and Custom in Early Modern Germany

by Norbert Schindler, Pamela E. Selwyn

Overview

When this volume first appeared in German it inspired a whole generation of young scholars. Schindler recreates the lives of both the poor and excluded; the milieu of the burghers; and the rumbustuous lifestyles of the Counts von Zimmern. A true archivist, he evokes the lost worlds of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century people. He investigates popular nicknames, snowball fights, carnival rituals, even what people did at night-time before the advent of lighting. A final essay deals with an extraordinary late set of trials for witchcraft, in which over 200 people died. Translated into English for the first time, the volume contains a new Foreward by Natalie Zemon Davis and a new introductory essay setting out the key influences of Schindler's work. Norbert Schindler is the leading exponent of historical anthropology in the German-speaking world. A founding member of the German journal Historische Anthropologie, Schindler teaches at the University of Salzburg.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521650106
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	10/17/2002
Series:	Past and Present Publications
Pages:	328
Product dimensions:	6.34(w) x 9.29(h) x 1.06(d)

About the Author

Professor Norbert Schindler was born in 1950 in Chieming, Bavaria, and is the author of many influential books on popular culture in the early modern period. He has taught at University institutions in Berlin, Konstanz, Innsbruck, Basel, and Salzburg.

Table of Contents

Introduction: revisiting the elusive quarry: popular culture in early modern Germany; 1. Habitus and lordship: the transformation of aristocratic practices of rule in the sixteenth century; 2. The world of nicknames: on the logic of popular nomenclature; 3. Carnival, church and the world turned upside-down: on the function of the culture of laughter in the sixteenth century; 4. 'Marriage weariness' and compulsory matrimony: the popular punishments of pulling the plough and the block; 5. Nocturnal disturbances: on the social history of the night in the early modern period; 6. The origins of heartlessness: the culture and way of life of beggars in late seventeenth-century Salzburg.

Editorial Reviews

"[T]his learned and scintillating book represents an important further stage in the social history of the early modern period. This book will certainly stimulate further research in popular history. The author, the translator, the editors of Past and Present Publications, and the publishers are to be congratulated for making this notable study available." Walter Klaassen, University of Saskatchewan, Canadian Journal of History

"Unquestionably a major contribution to folklore and history, anthropology and sociology...This book is an absolute delight to read, a carnival of scholarship." Bibliotheque d'humanisme et Renaissance

"Students wishing to see historical anthropology at its best, composed in a place and at a time when such an approach was endangered, might well start here." - Journal of Modern History, H.C. Erik Midelfort, University of Virginia

"These six sparkling essays originated in the lively efforts of young German scholars in the 1980s to write a new history of popular culture...What is so refreshing about reading these essays today is to see the importance of writing a cultural history that is deeply and historically contextualized." - Sixteenth Century Journal Thomas Robsheauz, Duke University

From the Publisher