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Today, the FWF project “Benedictines, Church and the State in Austria, 1720-40” (P-28016) ends. A series of particularly dynamic years lie behind us, and unfortunately we have not been able to achieve all our envisaged goals. Nevertheless, significant progress has been made, and this coming year will see us (a) publish the conference volume “Central European Pasts” resulting from our 2018 conference; (b) continue data collection efforts for early modern Central Europe (www.digitalhabsburgplatform.net); (c) publish the Pez papers data online; (d) lay the groundwork for a hybrid edition of the entirety of the Pez correspondence together with our publisher Böhlau. Also, expect members of the VEMG (vemg.at) to roll up their sleeves once more and bring the edition closer to its completion.

The Pez project also considers sources from its close thematic surroundings, for example the papers of Gottfried Bessel, abbot of Göttweig (d. 1749). Among the things recently discovered there by the project team, a hitherto unknown inventory of the Göttweig collections from the 1730s/40s is of particular interest. A first detailed description of this extraordinary source, highly relevant for the baroque understanding of natural history in Central Europe, has now been published by Bernhard Rameder, who is responsible for the abbey’s collections, in the latest “Yearbook of the Austrian Society for 18th-Century Studies”.

 

On the occasion of the 300th anniversary of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’s death, the Austrian Academy of Sciences – together with two sister academies – will honour its almost-founder with a symposium held on 3-4 November 2016. Thomas Wallnig will contextualize Leibniz’s failed attempts at establishing an academy within the broader context of the Viennese court scene of the 1710s. Learn more.