Gerald Wiemers, ed. SÖ¤chische Lebensbilder, Band 5. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2003. 611 pp. EUR 79.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-3-515-08417-8.

Reviewed by Margaret E. Menninger (Department of History, Texas State University-San Marcos)
Published on H-German (April, 2006)

Regional Notables

Soon after 1989, the Akademie der Wissenschaften in Leipzig (in association with a Stuttgart publishing house) began compiling short biographies of meaningful individuals associated with Saxony whose lives made a critical impact on the region and Germany at large. The fifth volume of this series (and the twenty-second of a more ambitious effort to print important sources in Saxon history) has now been published, featuring the first appearance of an important Saxon woman as well as twenty-five men.

As with the previous volumes, the selection covers university professors, important bankers, publishers, manufacturers and clergy. The contributors to the volume are an equally diverse group, including younger and older scholars, German and non-Germans. All share an impressively deep knowledge of their subject; many of the entries rely on an exacting knowledge of the archival sources. Those contributors known personally to me are acknowledged experts on their subjects.

Only two of the entries predate the nineteenth century. Caspar Borner (ca. 1492-1547) was a correspondent of both Luther and Melanchthon, and he remained influential in the religious reforms in Leipzig and taught at the St. Thomas parish school (where Bach later served as Kantor). The eighteenth century's sole representative in this volume, also the only female, is Luise Gottsched (1713-62), poet and wife of Johann Christoph.

The remaining entries cluster around several general themes. Participants in the 1848 Revolution portrayed here include Alexander Karl Braun (1807-68), Minister President of Saxony and enemy of the revolution as well as the cigar manufacturer Wilhelm Fritzsche (1825-1905), who stood against Braun on the barricades. The complexities of the German past, both during National Socialism and during the GDR, are clearly addressed across numerous entries.

Leipzig's position as a premiere book city is highlighted within the majority of the entries. Publishers and booksellers are well represented by Friedrich Volckmar (1799-1876) and Heinrich Brockhaus, arguably the most important of all of Leipzig's publishing houses. Educators, academics and scholars are also heavily featured. Leipzig's reputation in the sciences drew particularly important physicists and mathematicians to it over many decades--for example the Norwegian mathematician Sophus Lie (1842-1899) and the Karlsruhe physicist Friedrich Hund (1896-1997). However, there are also several representatives of the humanities among the biographers, including some who ultimately had to follow their profession to the West, such as the medievalist Walter Schlesinger (1908-84).

In sum, then, this is an excellent addition to an extremely useful series. It should certainly be recommended to anyone interested in Saxony. I look forward to the publication of future volumes.

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Citation: Margaret E. Menninger. Review of Wiemers, Gerald, ed., SÖ¤chische Lebensbilder, Band 5. H-German, H-Net Reviews. April, 2006.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=11690

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