Gotha Library Talks

Jacob Schilling, M.A., and Dr Kathrin Paasch will kick off the programme on Wednesday, 21 April. They will talk about the indexing of the letters and life documents of Veit Ludwig von Seckendorff (1626-1692), which is currently being done as part of a project funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). The event will begin at 6.15 pm.

Veit Ludwig von Seckendorff is considered one of the most important exponents of the European scholars' republic between the Thirty Years' War, Pietism and the beginning of the Enlightenment. The development of the hitherto largely unknown and widely scattered sources - more than 7,900 documents in a total of 32 libraries and archives - can provide new impulses for the interdisciplinary examination of Seckendorff. In the talk, Jacob Schilling will use selected documents to provide insights into the concrete indexing work and present his findings on Seckendorff's various roles as politician, scholar, noble landowner and family father.

Jacob Schilling studied modern history in Berlin and wrote his dissertation in Hamburg on scholarly practices in researching the past using the example of Caspar Sagittarius (1643-1694). He was then employed in Hamburg in the DFG project "Historical Knowledge from Archives" and in Halle in the project "Prosopography of Early Modern Leopoldina Members (1652-1800)". Since the beginning of 2020, he has been indexing the Seckendorff documents as a research assistant. Kathrin Paasch is the director of the Gotha Research Library and heads the Seckendorff project she developed.

The series of events is planned as a digital format, dial-in in each case via the link: https://uni-erfurt.webex.com/meet/veranstaltungen.fb.