Locations of events.

How can you teach people to good and kind to each other? Perhaps best by showing negative examples for a deterrent effect. That’s exactly what an 18th-century satirical etiquette book did presenting rules on how (not!) to treat other people.

If you’ve read 1984, you know how easy it is to falsify the past. But this knowledge is nothing new. For centuries, rulers paid historians (and some still do) to create an embellished version of the past and the relevant sources, until the Maurists got wise to them.

In 1581, the Froschauer publishing house in Zurich created a complete edition of all works written by Huldrych Zwingli. And there was a good reason for it – which was directly linked to the circumstances of the death of the Zurich reformer in 1531.

Already during his lifetime Luther was the Protestant equivalent of a saint. All the words of wisdom he is said to have shared on all sorts of events have been written down for posterity by his followers. Johannes Aurifaber published all of it as “Luther’s Table talk, with his very own agenda.

Only a few books have such a spectacular transmission history as the works of Tacitus. Their story begins with thefts in German monasteries. However, the author only became truly appealing when the Reformation had created a new national German identity.