Ernst-Christian Steinecke

A Material History of Historical Research 1750/1800

The dissertation will offer analyses of the material culture(s), that effected the development of historical research and historical knowledge in the German states between ca. 1750 and 1800. Thus it is the project's objective to contribute to a field of inquiry that may be circumscribed as the cultural or material history of science and scholarship.

The subject is a threefold or three-dimensional one at this, for its main aspects are the actual practices and routines, the places and spaces as well as the instruments and the media of the historians' work.

Talking about practices and routines I refer to activities, (manual) skills and cultural competences such as travelling, collecting, ordering, deciphering, counting and estimating, but also to modalities of note-taking, of managing information or of conducting one's correspondence.

As for the places and spaces of historical research I think of e.g. libraries, cabinets, auditoria, monasteries, offices, archives or even field sites.

At last the media and instruments of the historians' work are numerous and multifarious. That is why they immediately call for an internal arrangement. I therefore discern between a few major categories. First of all there are typical products of handwriting or print such as journals, letters or library catalogues. Secondly one has to reckon in technical innovations like the establishment of postal services. In the third place we find special tools of knowledge, for example maps, atlases, diagrams or timetables. Fourthly and finally ›human media‹ play a major role in the development of historical research. Thus it is almost impossible to overestimate the impact that amanuenses, copists, printers, engravers and, of course, librarians had on the ways this research was planned and conducted.