PUBLIC LECTURE: "In each town I find a triple harmony': Utopian Dimensions in Early Modern Urban Historiography"

In referring to the history of ideas,"the Begriffsgeschichte“ and literary studies the paper examines the parallels between the pre-1800 urban historiography and the literary genre of early modern utopia as introduced and developed by Thomas More, Francis Bacon, Johann Valentin Andreae and/or Tommaso Campanella. The analysis of mostly Central European urban chronicles, burgher diaries and panegyrical texts discloses the strong presence of a normative vision of an idealized community which was projected, however, into the life of an existing city.