Konversionen im Umkreis des Wiener Hofs um 1700

Between 1670 and 1720 quite a few members of the Imperial Court of Vienna converted from various protestant churches to Catholicism. Among these converts members of the leading princely families of the Holy Roman Empire can be found as well as leading officials of the Imperial Court or individuals who either were connected to court members in terms of patronage or who recieved some sort of charity because of their conversions (e. g. from the "Convertiten-Cassa" founded by the Empress Eleonora Magdalena Theresia of Pfalz-Neuburg). In this book, the phenomenon of early modern religious conversion is approached from various points of view: Aspects of social, political and intellectual history as well as aspects of religious history are examined in their interdependence. Printed accounts of conversions are used as sources as well as a wide range of original material from archives in Wolfenbüttel, Rome, and Vienna. The concept of religious conversion as the transgression of a social and mental borderline which seperated confessional communities in the Holy Roman Empire and the Habsburg Monarchy is fundamental to this approach. These quite diverse issues find a common focus in the extraordinarily well-documented conversion of Elisabeth Christine of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel, who converted in Bamberg in 1707 in order to become the wife of the later Emperor Charles VI.