History

Luther used and coined a rich arsenal of battle names and pejorative terms with which he labelled his 'radical' opponents and through which he marked 'deviation' from his own position. Thomas Hahn-Bruckart explores these and other strategies of linguistic inclusion and exclusion to trace how identity and alterity was marked and contoured in the early Wittenberg Reformation.

The letter books of the Benedictine nuns of Lüne Abbey provide an insight into their daily life, their interaction with the provost, their families and other convents, and the struggle against the Lutheran Reformation. The edition includes over 450 letters, written in Latin, Low German, and a characteristic mix of both.

Pliny the Younger, the author of a comprehensive epistolary collection and a panegyric speech for the emperor Trajan, enjoyed an extraordinary fortune in antiquity and subsequent periods. In recent years, Pliny has undergone a significant reappraisal - especially in literary studies. Apart from classical philology, he is of great interest for many other fields such as ancient history, epigraphy, archaeology, art history, visual studies, legal studies, sociology, comparative studies, gender studies as well as didactics and pedagogy. This volume, containing German and Italian contributions, offers new approaches to a 'classic' from a variety of different perspectives, taking into account a wide range of disciplines.

To reveal the essential Luther, Thomas Kaufmann's latest volume traces how the Protestant reformer used his affinity with books and aptitude as a man of words to develop the publishing strategies that became visible from 1517/18 onwards. Above all, the author shows that Luther developed an immense sensibility towards possible reading interests that he put to most effective use in the organisation of the Wittenberg printing press, which was to become the most powerful in Europe.