H. C. Erik Midelfort

H.C. (Hans Christian ) Erik Midelfort ( * 1942 in Eau Claire ( Wisconsin)), is an American historian of the University of Virginia.

Life

He became known for his research in the field of early modernity, the Reformation and the Christian religious history in Central Europe. Among other things, with various translations of secondary sources he has significantly boosted the German - American historical research collaboration. With topics such as magic, witch hunts and mental illness he became acquainted with several award -winning books, teaching assignments and publications. He has worked among others at the universities of Stanford, Yale, Bern, Stuttgart, Harvard and Oxford.

He began his studies at Yale and graduated there in 1964 with the Baccalaureusgrad from. He remained some years at Yale, where he worked with, among others Jaroslav Pelikan, Claus Peter Clasn, JH Hexter and Edmund S. Morgan. He received his doctorate degree in 1970 His first book, Witch Hunting in Southwestern Germany, 1562-1684: . The Social and Intellectual Foundations awarded the Gustav O. Arlt Award from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

In addition to the work on witchcraft he became acquainted with studies such as Mad Princes in Renaissance Germany (1994, German Crazy sovereignty ) or 1997 A History of Madness in Sixteenth - Century Germany. He received the Roland Bainton twice the price for the historical book of the year and once the Ralph Waldo Emerson Award of Phi Beta Kappa.

In Germany, he was honored, among others, with a Festschrift, so Against all witchcraft and the devil's work: The European witch-hunts and their impact on West Germany, edited by Sönke Lorenz and Jürgen Michael Schmidt. 2008, a second Festschrift, Ideas and Cultural Margins in Early Modern Germany was issued by Marjorie Elizabeth Plummer and Robin Barnes.

After a recent lecture on the Magic and the Modern in 2008, he moved back from university life.

Midelfort is in the spring of 2011 when Ellen Maria Gorrison Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin.

Publications (selection)

Book Title

  • Exorcism and Enlightenment: Johann Joseph Gassner and the Demons of 18th - Century Germany. Yale University Press, 2005
  • A History of Madness in Sixteenth - Century Germany. Stanford University Press, 1999.
  • Mad Princes of Renaissance Germany. University Press of Virginia, 1994
  • Witch Hunting in Southwestern Germany, 1562-1684: The Social and Intellectual Foundations. Stanford University Press, 1972.

Editing and Translation

  • Publication with Jonathan Dewald et al, Europe. 1450-1789. Encyclopedia of the Early Modern World, 6 volumes, Charles Scribner's Sons, 2003
  • Translation by Wolfgang Behringer, Shaman of Oberstdorf: Conrad Stoechkhlin and the Phantoms of the Night. University of Virginia Press, 1998.
  • Translation by Benjamin Kohl, Johan Weyer, On Witchraft. Pegasus Press, 1998.
  • Translation by Thomas A. Brady, Jr. by Peter Blickle, The Revolution of 1525. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981.
  • Translation by Mark U. Edwards by Bernd Moeller, Imperial Cities and the Reformation, Three Essays. Fortress Press, 1972 and subsequent offer editions.
  • Co-editor of the series witchcraft research together with Dieter R. Bauer, Wolfgang Behringer, heath service, Sönke Lorenz, Wolfgang shield and the Institute of Regional History and Auxiliary Historical Sciences at the University of Tübingen
  • Editor of the Studies in Early Modern German History, University of Virginia Press

Article

  • . "? Melancholy Ice Age" in Wolfgang Behringer, Hartmut Lehmann, and Christian Pfister, eds, Cultural consequences of the ' Little Ice Age ' (Göttingen: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 239-254.
  • " Nature and obsession: Natural explanations for possession of melancholy to the magnetism, " in Hans de Waardt et al, eds, Demonic possession. . For the interpretation of a cultural-historical phenomenon ( Bielefeld: Publisher of Regional History, 2005), pp. 73-88
  • " Charcot, Freud and the Demons, " in Werewolves, Witches, and Wandering Spirits. Traditionsl Belief & Folklore in Early Modern Europe, edited by Kathryn A. Edwards ( Kirksville, 2002), pp. 199-215.
  • " Madness and the Millennium of Münster, 1534-1535, " in C. Kleinhenz and FJ Lemoine, editors, Fearful Hope (Madison, 1999), 115-134
  • "Religious Melancholy and Suicide: On the Reformation Origins of a Sociological stereotypes, " in Madness, Melancholy and the Limits of the Self ( = Graven Images Vol 3) (1996 ), pp. 41-56
  • "Suicide in the judgment of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, " in Wolfgang Reinhard and Heinz Schilling, eds, The Catholic confessionalisation ( Gütersloh: Gütersloher Publishing House, 1995), p.296 -310
  • " Insane princes in the 16th century: From the deduction for the treatment, " in Yearbook of the Institute for the History of Medicine of the Robert Bosch Foundation Vol 7 (1990 ), pp. 25-40.
  • " Aristocratic country life and the legitimacy crisis of the German nobility in the 16th century, " in Georg Schmidt, eds, stalls and society in the Old Kingdom (Stuttgart, 1989), pp. 245-264.
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