Search for authors and persons involved.

In Zeiten vor Wikipedia gab es wiederholt Versuche, das Wissen einer Epoche zusammenzufassen. Die „Naturkunde“ des Plinius war für fast 1500 Jahre die Enzyklopädie schlechthin. Ein Ein-Mann-Monumentalwerk, das seinesgleichen sucht!

Why was Albrecht Dürer so successful? For many different reasons. One of them: Dürer was a specialist in metrology and mathematics, too. He was particularly fascinated by human proportions – to that extent that he wrote four treatises on the subject.

When Jean Jacques Rousseau came to Paris, he was called ‘the little Rousseau’. The great Rousseau’s name was Jean Baptiste and he was considered an important author. Today, we hardly know anything about him. He became a victim of the highly competitive literary market at the time of the Enlightenment.

Bertuch’s picture book for children is considered a milestone in educational non-fiction literature. It sold extremely well. The producers of this unauthorised reprint wanted to participate in this success. Bertuch didn’t think it was funny at all...

Regional information and lists – not exactly the most exciting reading matter. However, in 17th and 18th century England the respective market was highly competitive.

In an enormous heroic poem, the former national epic of the Germans tells of political conflict in the early Middle Ages, deadly attempts at emancipation and (almost) immortalising dragon blood.

There are moments that change the world. The Lisbon earthquake was one of them. Europe’s educated elite wondered: How can a gracious God let something like that happen? Of course, there had been terrible natural disasters before – but there had never been such a high amount of reports on one of them.

When British envoys were received by the Chinese Emperor for the first time in 1793, two fundamentally different world views collided. Although the diplomatic mission of the envoys was no success, their report on China became a bestseller.

How would you go about gaining self-confidence and daring to take on new challenges? In the past, people turned to prominent figures of antiquity, from Alexander to Caesar, and their great achievements. This what made Plutarch’s timeless work “Parallel Lives” so successful.

Samuel Auguste Tissot was probably the most respected physician of his time: the rich and noble people of Europe queued up to see him. This book gives health advice to these very persons. After all, it became clear at that time that the decadent life at court with its opulent meals wasn’t very beneficial to their health.

What does an Augustinian priest who left his monastery spend his time doing? Among other things, he deals with the question of whether it’s possible to lead a Christian life outside the monastery. And if your name is Erasmus of Rotterdam, these considerations become a best seller.

Today we go on a little scavenger hunt. We start with an undated book on the Sons of Aymon, meet Charlemagne and, after many bloody battles, end up with Saint Reinold of Cologne, who went on to become the patron saint of Dortmund. Follow me!

For Roman aristocrat Pliny, it wasn’t enough to fulfil his duties obediently, he was thirsty for eternal glory. For this purposes, he created a new literary genre: the letters written for publication. For the humanists, Pliny’s letters were the ultimate example for their intense correspondence.

The field of classical studies was first established in the 19th c. The foundations for the work of scholars such as Mommsen and Curtius were initially laid by teachers like E. Th. Hohler, who produced illustrated introductory books to nudge their knowledge-hungry pupils, who loved pictures, in the right direction.

In 1546, Heinrich Petri printed a luxury edition of the completed work by the Roman scholar Boethius. Boethius once rose to the highest political ranks – only to fall to rock bottom, at which point, he was moved to write his philosophical work ‘Consolation of Philosophy’, which remained a best seller for centuries.

‘When legend becomes fact, print the legend!’ This film quote is very fitting for Rome’s early period. The Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus turned legend to fact, and people believed it for millennia. This edition from 1563 shows how popular his work remained.

Artists in modern Ethiopia are still producing paintings that draw their inspiration directly from Byzantium. This Ethiopian picture bible depicts scenes from the life of Jesus, thus recalling one of the oldest Christian kingdoms in history.

The court of the Sun King was a shark pool. Those who were popular – and who stepped on as few toes as possible – survived. Abbot de Bellegarde explained how to do this in the style of a modern manual. He wrote a bestseller.

Five Francs, 60 Francs, two Louisdor – what can money buy? A cup of coffee, a visit to the theater, the love of a woman? De Maupassant’s bestselling and highly entertaining novel shows that participation in social life is rarely possible without money.

One of the title pages of Honoré de Balzac’s novel The Wild Ass’s Skin is decorated with a strange squiggle. The sign is supposed to come from the 322nd chapter of a book by Laurence Sterne – however, such a chapter does not exist. We tell you what the enigmatic sign is all about and why it is sometimes worthwhile not skipping over the title pages of a book.

Ever since it was discovered, America has played a major role in the dreams of European emigrants. With the mass emigration of the 19th century, a new genre became popular: self-help books. Find out what emigrants needed to know ca. 1870 in this article.

A Bavarian toll ordinance from 1765 gives us an insight into the people’s everyday life: what goods were transported on the roads, how were they taxed and why did the subsistence economy endure until the 19th century?

Yes, it’s true. The Catholic Church prohibited its believers from reading vernacular translations of biblical texts. At the time, they thought they had good reasons for it. We present a book that summarises these reasons.

In the 1770s, Scottish soldier John Stedman travelled to South America to suppress a slave uprising in a Dutch colony. His account of the atrocities inflicted on the slaves there sent shock waves throughout Europe.

What does it take to invent statistics? Well, a huge amount of data and a fussy character. Johann Heinrich Waser was fussy and unscrupulous enough to make use of methods that weren’t legally impeccable to obtain data. But was that the actual reason for his execution?