Changing the 17th century paradigm through Harrach´s diaries

This project aims at uniting critically different tendencies in recent research on 17th-century life in central and eastern Europe. Even though many analyses have led to a deepening of our knowledge of early modern society, we still don`t have a comprehensive view of it. The pub-lication of one of the most interesting sources of the first half of the 17th Century would give us, in my opinion, not only an ability to understand the everyday life of the leading class, but also to provide specialists with new information about topical issues of historiography, such as the Catholic recovery in central Europe; the progressive growth of absolutism; and the sig-nificance of the Austrian Habsburg court. A new interpretation of the rule of the court and the aristocracy - broadened in recent years - stems from a conspicuous growth in the volume of documents at the scholar`s disposal. In recent years numerous sources previously neglected have been rediscovered, among them the so-called diaries of the cardinal Ernst Adalbert von Harrach (1598-1667). Despite the radical change in the diaries` style they maintain, together with the tagzettel of the sixties, many common aspects: mainly, Harrach`s need to record for himself, his relatives, and his friends the increasingly chaotic events of the times. Harrach`s diary is not private writing, but a series of weekly reports for select friends. This semiprivate nature gave the texts more freedom of opinion in contrast to the printed press. What makes them important for today`s historian is that they do not constitute a stereotypical daily record of events or activities, but an often elaborately detailed description of them. Also crucial for Harrach: the registration of births and deaths; the most insignificant mutations in the court`s hierarchy; his own health and the health of his friends; and meals in the palaces of the nobil-ity. Harrach was at the top of the Catholic hierarchy of the 17th Century and the political power that he wielded that is of supreme importance for the historian: not only was he the primary conduit between the papal court in Rome and the Habsburg court, but also the leader of the Counterreformation in the Kingdom of Bohemia. For this reason he was obliged to stay in Prague, far away from the political centre, and because of that he needed an effective in-formation system. He solved this problem by founding a web of "Brief Zeitungen," which became the most complete source for reconstructing central European and Bohemian history in the first half of the 17th Century. The goal of this project is to publish the manuscript of the diaries (I`ve already typed up almost 15% of them) along with an introduction and exhaustive commentary. Considering the growing specialisation of university studies, it is increasingly important to build bridges between interdisciplinary issues, because it is here that we find the key to understanding the modern age. To that end, we must unite linguistic, historical, and Slavic competencies.