Have you ever made your own stationery? Or reconstructed an exchange of letters in radio play format? Letters, once the most important means of communication in the world, are the focus of a student exhibition soiree in the Lecture Hall Centre on 9 February.
The event entitled "You've Got Email. Letters of the Early Modern Era" is organised by the Institute of History from 19:00 to 21:00. It is the result of two project seminars in the "Early Modern History" department, which focused on the historical letter from different perspectives in the past winter semester - as a medium and important source on early modern life, communication practice, thought and action before the age of modernity.
Both seminars complement each other for the exhibition, so that visitors can gain insights into letters and hear from the people to whom we owe these treasures today. In addition, a professional papermaker will introduce visitors to the traditional art of letter paper production.
Letters meant the world to a certain extent: they were carriers of relationships, written dialogue, messengers of the soul or long-awaited signs of life. Their senders captured everyday life, love, faith, hope, business, grief, fear and horror, affection and friendship on paper. However, the seminars were also about getting to know the people and stories behind historical letters and understanding how this form of communication actually worked in the past.
In the Bachelor's seminar "Historical Letter Practice", the students reconstructed letters and letter writing: they analysed the content, form and postal routes and used goose quills and sealing wax. The results are faithful reconstructions of original letters, folding examples, mail boards, correspondence in radio play format, artistic exhibits such as pegboards and films on the production process of sealing wax.
The exhibition invites visitors to look at, listen to, try out and experience, as well as to touch: for example, history buffs can hold Marie Antoinette's last letter in their hands - as a reconstruction.
In the Master's seminar "Global Microhistory(ies)", the students focussed on unique, previously unexplored letters from an early modern privateer collection, the so-called London "Prize Papers". They prepared their stories in various formats for the exhibition. The rich diversity and broad scope of these stories, compiled by the students through intensive research, gives an idea of how significant the letters once were for their authors.
For example, visitors learn about a man from a village in Hesse who was drawn to America at an early age, a traveller in a city in Africa that never really existed, or about merchants from Emden who drank from Chinese teapots that they may have smuggled into their home countries themselves.
Master's students and doctoral candidates from Uppsala University (Sweden) are also guests at the exhibition, who are organising a research-oriented workshop together with Oldenburg students.
