Lecture by Alicia Wolff from the University of Heidelberg
In the past, historians have exclusively paid attention to the narrative passages of the pilgrimage reports, while the numerous lists in the texts received little attention. These include, for example, lists of traveling companions, medicines or ship contracts, calculations, itineraries, and glossaries. Many of these lists did not even make it into the critical editions. These omissions may seem sensible at first glance. Many of the lists are very similar in content and monotone in style. A closer inspection, however, reveals them to be a hidden treasure for historians. Lists are the main tool for organizing, saving, and sharing knowledge in the accounts. The focus of Alicia Wolff’s dissertation is on pilgrimage reports from the German-speaking world and the period between the beginning of the 14th century and the Reformation. She is interested in the complexity of lists and the processes involved in their compilation and usage.
Alicia Wolff (Lohmann) is a research associate at the University of Heidelberg. Before joining the chair of Medieval History at Heidelberg (Professor Romedio Schmitz-Esser) in 2020, she attended FU Berlin between 2015 and 2020, where she obtained a master‘s degree in History and Political Science. From 2018 to 2020 she worked as a student research assistant at the Leibniz-Edition project of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities and the chair of High and Late Medieval History (Professor Thomas Ertl) at FU.
Lecture series Prager Voträge are organised by Collegium Carolinum, Deutsches Historisches Institut Warschau and Leibniz Institut für Geschichte und Kultur des östlichen Europa in cooperation with the Masaryk Institute and Archives of the CAS and other institutions.
