No. 110/2019

30 HUMBOLDT KOSMOS 110/2019 W olfenbüttel, a rainy afternoon in spring. A handful of researchers sit at long tables in the reading room of the Herzog August Library, leafing through old manuscripts and typing notes on their laptops. In the first row, a woman with long, blonde hair is bent over a leather-bound volume. This must be her: Ulinka Rublack, Professor of History in Cambridge, UK, Reimar Lüst Award Winner and author of the highly praised reconstruction of the witchcraft trial at which the famous astronomer Johannes Kepler defended his mother. Rublack is an expert on Early Modern European His- tory. “The period between the 15th and 18th centuries is one of the great epochs of upheaval,” says the 52-year-old historian, evoking the Reformation and the media revo- lution unleashed by printing, the burgeoning natural sciences, the great voyages of discovery and early globali- sation. It was then that princes set up experimental rooms in their palaces and filled their cabinets of curiosities with corals, crystals and curios from around the world, brought back by art-loving merchants like Philipp Hainhofer from Augsburg. In the first half of the 16th century, Hainhofer helped satisfy the increasing demand for original objects, and it is about him and his vast network across Europe that Ulinka Rublack is writing her next book. That is why she is spending so much time in Wolfenbüttel at present – because it is only in the Augusta, as the famous library is known for short, that the fifty-odd volumes of Hainhofer’s notes dating from around 1600 are available. The art dealer Ulinka Rublack’s book about the astronomer Johannes Kepler, who defended his mother in a witchcraft trial, caused a stir. Drawing on old sources, the historian reconstructs a fascinating image of the Early Modern Era in which superstition meets science. Text  LILO BERG kept a meticulous record of absolutely everything – from his impressions of journeys to Italy and Pomerania to the stock on sale at trade fairs or his thoughts on the status of painting in the age of chambers of art and curiosities. “Luckily, most of the books are in legible Gothic script,” says Ulinka Rublack. Unlike Hainhofer’s letters – it can take an entire day to decipher a few pages of the lines he jotted down there. The historian then sits in the library and transcribes large sections of the original manuscript into her own notes. In doing so, she explains, she is trac- ing the themes that the sources uncover and relating them to her research topics. This is a method of work she observed her father, a Ref- ormation historian from Tübingen, using. “He was an incredibly tenacious scholar who closely studied sources and was always developing new perspectives on history,” says Rublack, who was born near Tübingen. Later, when she was studying in Hamburg, he sparked and constantly rekindled her interest in Early Modern History – and also when she started working at St John’s College in the mid- 1990s and put down roots in Cambridge. “My father knew how to dispense a mix of distance and support,” says Rub- lack, the mother of two teenage children. “And,” she adds gratefully, “he bolstered my belief in my own originality.” It is, indeed, the courage with which she adopts her own ways of looking at and addressing her topics that has gained Ulinka Rublack international esteem. She is a Fellow of the British Academy, chairs the German History Society in the UK and received the Reimar Lüst Award in 2018. This award is granted jointly by the Humboldt Foundation and the Fritz Thyssen Foundation in recognition of a life’s work that strengthens cultural and academic relations with Germany. Rublack, who holds British and German nation- WITCHES, FASHION FIENDS AND CABINETS OF CURIOSITIES CLOSE UP ON RESEARCH