Translating Toleration: Concepts, Texts and Intermediaries Between Poland and Protestant Germany 1645-1795

Principal investigator (Berlin): Univ.-Prof. Dr. Alexander Schunka

Co-investigator (Berlin): Lennart Gard

PhD student (Berlin): Julian Pfau

Funding: „Beethoven Classic 4“ – Polish-German Funding Initiative, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG); Narodowe Centrum Nauki (NCN)

Religious toleration has been either praised or cursed as an intellectual road to modernity, in western Europe born from the minds of philosophers and theologians who posited that religious difference was insignificant, or in eastern Europe rooted in the unavoidable coexistence of different religions and beliefs. In order to sidestep and overcome this dichotomy between a “Western theoretical approach” and an “Eastern practical approach” to toleration, our project will examine toleration among Christian denominations as a subject, product, and sometimes unintended effect of ‘cultural translation’ between two neighboring European regions, Poland-Lithuania and Brandenburg-Prussia (1645–1795). By analyzing manuscript sources such as diplomatic correspondence, political and theological treatises, and occasional prints and pamphlets in German, Polish, French and Latin, we will investigate the evolution, modification, and dissemination of concepts of toleration in these regions. The proposed project will, inter alia, focus on Polish-German intermediaries.

Our goal is to demonstrate that phenomena of early modern toleration, both as practices and as theories, developed by means of interaction and cultural exchange. Our analysis of the evolution of toleration as a trans-regional and multi-lingual communication process will follow two related tracks. On one hand, we will demonstrate how political, economic, and ideological motives contributed to the creation of concepts of “tolerant” or “intolerant” states. On the other hand, we will reveal the potential of political agency as driven by different concepts of toleration and their proponents.

 

Collaborators:

• Dr. hab. Maciej Ptaszyński (University of Warsaw)

e-mail: m.ptaszynski@uw.edu.pl

• Dr. Jacek Kordel (University of Warsaw)

e-mail: jkordel@uw.edu.pl

• Aleksandra Frączek (University of Warsaw, PhD student)

e-mail: aleksandra.fraczek@student.uw.edu.pl

Homepage of the Polish project team: https://historia.uw.edu.pl/en/research-project/translation-of-tolerance-concepts-texts-and-intermediaries-between-poland-and-protestant-germany-1645-1795/