Locations of events.

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.

A mediocre French author writes mediocre poems about spring and love. But even though his beloved is a prostitute, his literary kisses are rather chaste.

In the 17th century, Amsterdam was Europe’s number-one city for scientific research. One of the city’s great minds was the brilliant physician Gerhard Blasius, one of the co-founders of comparative anatomy. And, typically enough, his last book was a handbook of animal anatomy.

There is no war that shaped Germany more than the conflict between the emperor and the empire that went down in history as the Thirty Years’ War. The fact that Germany is a federal republic now can be traced back to this war – and to the peace that put an end to it.