Search by year of publication.

A concerned author urges the European powers to be wary of the supremacy of Russia. The mind behind this work was Gustav III, King of Sweden, who pursued completely different interests: By expressing concerns about the European balance, he wanted to shake the balance of power in his country.

The Zurich scholar Johann Caspar Lavater argued in his four-volume work “Physiognomic fragments” that it is possible to reveal a person’s character by reading what’s “written all over his face”, as the saying goes. Some scholars mocked him, but he had many followers.

Do you like bibliophile books? Then you have to browse through this work! It shows how complicated printing was before offset printing made publishing books a piece of cake. Gessner’s compendium tells you everything one had to know about creating books in the age of movable type printing.

In the 21st century, marriages result from love matches in large parts of the world. Jane Austen’s popular novels show that this is a relatively recent historical development. After all, their heroines marry not just for love, but usually also for money.

The Reformation had far-reaching implications, also regarding the Catholic Church. The competition of the Protestants pushed the Catholic clergy to do something no saint had ever been able to do before: purifying the Church. In 1566, this reformed Church presented in its catechism what “new believers” were supposed to believe.